Tom's Journal

T. Boone Pickens shelves wind farm plan

2009-07-09T03:43:26Z

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/08/pickens.wind.farm/index.html

I never thought he was really going to do it. His map of where he wanted to put wind turbines included major drinking water aquafiers and reports claimed that the contracts he wanted people to sign didn't just give him the wind rights, but included all water rights. This was a big ploy to own all the drinking water in the hot hot south.

yesthattom @ 2009-07-08T09:32:00

2009-07-08T13:32:05Z

yesthattom @ 2009-07-08T08:44:00

2009-07-08T12:44:56Z

We have our own guy named Linus, we can make an OS too.

(j/k)

Votemaster has a great analysis of Palin

2009-07-08T12:31:00Z

Read the whole thing here.

Many pundits have said she wants to carry the conservative banner and that she is a female Ronald Reagan. I don't think that is true. She is a female George Wallace--an angry representative of the lower middle class who feels put upon by elites. She went to six third-tier colleges before managing to graduate and clearly resents people like President Obama who sailed through Columbia and Harvard Law School and surrounded himself with experts from the Ivy League and M.I.T. While she didn't single out pointy-headed intellectuals as the cause of the nation's problems, when listening to her, one feels she easily could and would probably like to except she is smart enough to realize that doing so would cause them to heap even more scorn on her--and she has incredibly thin skin for a politician, constantly blaming the media and hostile (often Republican) politicians for her problems. Her motto is: "It's not my fault."
George W. Bush was no intellectual himself by a long shot, but one didn't feel any rage in him. After all, he went to Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard, and was the son of a President, grandson of a senator, and brother of another governor, not exactly prime white trash material. Nobody would mistake him for a downtrodden and scorned worker barely hanging on and feeling the powerful didn't give a hoot about him. And he knew very well that had he been named Smith instead of Bush he would never have been governor of Texas, let alone President. For all her faults, Palin pulled herself up by her own bootstraps and was elected governor of a state by fighting her own battles. Nobody gave her anything. This makes her a fighter to her admirers, who don't give a damn about her IQ, her diplomas, or even her lack of knowledge of government. There is a lot of class resentment here and graduates of fancy universities can't understand why anybody would fall for what they see as a complete nincompoop. She represents Joe Sixpack a lot better than Joe the Plumber, who simply caught a lucky break when John McCain acquired him as his new best friend.

Stupid American car companies deserve to go out of business

2009-07-08T02:23:00Z

I seem to recall US CEOs saying things like "we'll let other companies take the risk of making hybrids and jump in after they've done the hard work". Some of them ended up licencing entire engines from Japan. I predicted this.

Why don't I go get an MBA and run an American auto company?

MJ's influence on Freddie Mercury and Queen

2009-07-07T18:12:08Z

C has mentioned this to me before. In honor of MJ's memorial today I thought I'd look it up:

"And he credits Jackson's influence for one of Queen's biggest hits - the Thriller legend urged the group to release Another One Bites The Dust, which hit the top of the U.S. charts in 1980.
May says, “It was Michael who heard Another One Bites The Dust when he came to see us on The Game tour and told us we were mad if we didn’t release it as a single.”

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/jackson-mercurys-secret-tracks_1108029

(someone should add that to Wikipedia!)

Gmail is out of Beta!

2009-07-07T17:28:06Z

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-of-beta-yes-really.html

Government regulation is good

2009-07-07T17:24:19Z

”A law in the US that is due to take effect in 2012 mandates such tough efficiency standards for lightbulbs that it has been assumed, until recently, that it would kill off the incandescent bulb. Instead, the law has become a case study of the way government regulation can inspire technical innovation. For example, new incandescent technology from Philips that seals the traditional filament inside a small capsule (which itself is contained within the familiar bulb). The capsule has a coating that reflects heat back to the filament, where it is partially converted to light. The sophisticated ($5.00) bulbs are about 30% more efficient than the old-fashioned ($0.25) kind, and should last about three times as long. So they are less economical than compact fluorescents, but should emit a more pleasing spectrum, not contain mercury, and, one supposes, present the utility company with a more desirable power factor.”

Suck that, libertarians!

Gosh, I keep on finding counter-examples to the old tripes of “government regulation is always bad” and “market forces solve all problems”. I wonder why that is. Maybe... shock-and-horror... they aren’t true???

Robert DeNiro and Elmo

2009-07-04T16:24:30Z

Going to Lollapalooza! Chicago trip Aug 6-11!

2009-07-02T14:53:13Z

quietchris and I have booked tickets to fly to Chicago to attend Lollapalooza! We bought the 3-days passes and we're flying there for $10 thanks to my massive frequent flyer points!

We'll be arriving a few days early and staying a few days after to spend time with my mom and one of my sisters.

I'm so psyched!

An unbiased survey:

2009-07-02T11:37:28Z

http://web.campaignsolutions.com/RNC/2009SurveyForeignPolicy/

16. Obama's handling of which region of the world worries you the most: (Click up to three choices)

Star Trek universal translator... for the web

2009-07-01T18:20:30Z

The new version of Google Toolbar for IE6 has a mode where you tell it your preferred language (for example: English) and then any non-English web pages you visit will result in automatic translation. The translation is now “in place” i.e. the page is rewritten.

I haven’t tried it yet (my Windows box is at home) but it sounds pretty exciting so I’m LJing it:

http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie

ZeFrank in Time Magazine!

2009-06-29T01:16:26Z

Or... Time "website"!

http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=27827129001

NYC Pride

2009-06-27T13:18:28Z

I'll be marching with Google. We meet at West 56th Street between 5th and 6th. (Technically we're marching with The Center).

I'll have my cell phone if you need to reach me.

See you there!

LazyWeb: Help me find the coic strip!

2009-06-26T02:01:07Z

Today's The Onion has a funny video about Obama doing performance reviews for each citizen.

When I say it I thought, "Wow! What a coincidence that a comic strip did a joke about performance reviews today too."

However, now I'm digging around to find what comic strip I was thinking about and I can't find it for the life of me.

Did I imagine it or not? Did anyone see the strip?

Losing my memory,
Tom

Sanford’s Real Sins

2009-06-25T13:30:16Z

http://susiemadrak.com/2009/06/24/18/01/sanfords-real-sins/

I encourage you — and any whom you can influence — to pay attention to all the commentary about Sanford. And, what I predict is that you’ll note precious little to nothing in all the commentary with regard to the effects of his policies and positions and how they affect real people. Oh yes, brief mentions about him and Obama. But nothing substantive. Nothing about how he rejects stimulus money and does other things that push the lowest third of the South Carolina (not to mention US population) into even more extreme economic conditions… conditions that put HUGE stress on marriages and families. This man broke up many marriages before he got that email from Argentina. He ruined the prospects of, I dare say, tens if not hundreds of thousands of struggling people who are more decent than he is and has been as evidence by his parroting right wing bullshit in pursuit of narrow ambition.

He is no more than a rich, powerful man who sought comfort for stress and so forth in an adulterous relationship. That, by itself, is his business. But this whole ’seeking forgiveness thing’ needs to be cast in a larger, more meaningful context.

In all the ‘did he stand up like a man and admit his sin” and ‘did he get forgiveness from Christians with regard to breaking one of God’s absolute laws’, I predict we will see far too little about how this sinning Christian takes positions that do actual damage to other human beings who, to him, are mere abstractions. That is a bigger sin than adultery … a bigger transgression of ‘god’s absolute laws’. He has cast vile, evil and dire consequences on ‘the least among us”…. but where were the media then, where are they now on this horrendous sin?

Instead, it’ll be a mainstream media –and even blogsphere — side show about family values and political prospects. This is a man who has zero compassion for other human beings except those he knows personally and whom he has personally hurt. If he wants forgiveness, then he should immediately quit the Governorship, put on rags and go serve the needy whose numbers he has increased.

If he did that, then, I’d say, reasonable people among us could respect him. Now? He is just another rich, spoiled sanctimonious asshole who got caught. And, the media, who know that nothing sells like sex, will play this for all it’s worth in terms of advertising, traffic and so on… without anymore thought to the helpless, needy and less fortunate. Worse, I fear the so-called progressive blogosphere will not perform much better…… although, of course, I hope I’m wrong on both counts.

How long will I live?

2009-06-20T13:58:40Z

Doing insurance-related paperwork made me realize that I haven't done one of those "life expectancy quizzes" since I was too young for it to really matter. So I googled for some quizzes and found:

Many seemed to be made by MySpace Quizilla Generators. For example: This one was stupidly unscientific and a waste of time: http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=how-long-will-you-live_1
My result was "50-75 more years. If you are over 50, you are SO living to be 100. TRY MY OTHER QUIZZES!"
(Um, dude, I already told you my age in an earlier question.)

A somewhat scientific one, but far from perfect, on moneycentral.msn.com also said I'd live until 2051. Thanks, Bill.

Lastly, the most scientific one that I found was a very intensive one, with very accurately phrased questions by
Professor Gosset at Wharton. It also says I'm living until 2051.

So, the unscientific ones say, "Dude, you're going to live until, like, uh hunred or somthing!" and both a scientific and somewhat-scientific quiz both said 2051.

In other terms, that means I'm going to see 10, possibly 11, more presidential election cycles. (How weird is that?)

Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back?

2009-06-19T14:43:52Z

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/core-myths/

“There’s so much mythology out there about the core,” maintains Stuart McGill, a highly regarded professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a back-pain clinician who has been crusading against ab exercises that require hollowing your belly. “The idea has reached trainers and through them the public that the core means only the abs. There’s no science behind that idea.”

Oh no. I've been focusing on my abs lately. Maybe I should follow the advice from this paragraph:

Instead, he suggests, a core exercise program should emphasize all of the major muscles that girdle the spine, including but not concentrating on the abs. Side plank (lie on your side and raise your upper body) and the “bird dog” (in which, from all fours, you raise an alternate arm and leg) exercise the important muscles embedded along the back and sides of the core. As for the abdominals, no sit-ups, McGill said; they place devastating loads on the disks. An approved crunch begins with you lying down, one knee bent, and hands positioned beneath your lower back for support. “Do not hollow your stomach or press your back against the floor,” McGill says. Gently lift your head and shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down. These three exercises, done regularly, McGill said, can provide well-rounded, thorough core stability. And they avoid the pitfalls of the all-abs core routine. “I see too many people,” McGill told me with a sigh, “who have six-pack abs and a ruined back.”

Google LGBT Pride

2009-06-19T13:29:58Z

Psst....

If you search for certain LGBT words on Google this month, the blue line at the top of the page displays a rainblow stripe instead.

yesthattom @ 2009-06-18T12:48:00

2009-06-18T16:49:24Z

I just signed up for this class:

This class will teach the foundational moves of breakdance including toprock, footwork, freezes, and the foundations for powermoves. These moves will be taught in a choreographed set that can be mastered by first timers and will be set to some pleasant music.

(Free, 90-minutes)

yesthattom @ 2009-06-18T11:29:00

2009-06-18T15:29:42Z

Happy Birthday d33ann!

Cool, calm, and collected. Unflappable.

2009-06-17T17:01:47Z

Even when a fly annoys him. He politely asks it to go away. When it doesn't, he kills it.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/17/obama-takes-out-pestering-fly/

Embedded video from CNN Video

yesthattom @ 2009-06-16T22:17:00

2009-06-17T02:17:42Z

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, on Tuesday admitted that he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff.
And of course in the interest of consistency, we can expect Ensign to announce his resignation, given that he called for Bill Clinton to resign in light of his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/16/743309/-John-Ensign-Was-Right

Weather and Movies, now easier to find on Google

2009-06-16T13:42:48Z

If you search for [ weather 07003 ] or [ movies 07003] or even [ up 07003] google will tell you the weather, movies, or where “Up!” is playing near Bloomfield New Jersey. It works with zip codes, names of towns, states, etc.

I just noticed that now you can leave out the zip code and Google will assume you are searching for movies or weather where you are (it guesses where you are based on your IP address).

It even works for movies currently in the theater. Even Up!

Can We Please Stop Saying the Market is Efficient?

2009-06-15T09:59:41Z

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/vermeulen/2009/06/can-we-please-stop-saying-the.html