"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Blackmail by Rebecca Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Conyers' wife targeted in federal investigation
Is this why Conyers has done everything he can to protect criminal President Bush, despite writing a book in 2006 on the reasons to impeach Bush? Rebecca Makes no difference to me whether Conyers became Bush's butt-boy because that's his goal in life or because he's a criminal himself and being blackmailed. Either way, he's Bush's right-hand man in Congress, and deserves prosecution as a co-conspirator in everything. Helen & Harry
 Send Rove to jail by Marshall S. Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Group claims 100,000 signatures in 'Send Rove to Jail' campaign
Fat chance. In fact, the chance is fatter than Mr. Rove himself. workers, not employers, in immigration raids
Since when did the little guy count?
The mine owner had to pay a fine. No murder charge, no jail time for killing 6 people. Marshall S. Over a barrel by Kathy Fisher Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Yes, let's all have a party! Gas prices are coming down. Don't be fooled, wait and see what happens this fall. Nothing else is going down in price. The last rebate checks went out. They want to give the sheeple a bit of a false sense of security and they want them to go somewhere nice and spend that money! It will work on a few but not enough, because in the end we will be faced with high gas prices, heating and energy costs once again will soar this winter. Food prices in the NE stay high and although we make bigger salaries here it does not help with the increases, so it won't matter if a friggin barrel of crude goes down to $90. It's still a rip-off and way too damn high. It's the threshold of how much pain the American sheeple can take, rev it up until they cry out loud, then lower it, but they are still in pain, it's just that they don't hurt as bad. An old trick. We were pissed and outraged and scared when we saw it go to 50 bucks, then each and every day they tested us to see if we'd say UNCLE as it climbed on a weekly basis, but we didn't until they drained our pockets and finally the magic number was $150 a barrel... So now they are forced to push it back to $90-85 a barrel... SHIT! What happened to $28.50 a barrel? This is all a ploy. It's been tried before. They were always after $75-100 a barrel. That's what they want, even if they do horizontal drilling right here at home a barrel of the stuff will still be around $80 to 100 barrel, which is what they always wanted! But first they had to put the squeeze on us, then gradually ease the pressure off us. And in the end we'll still be getting ripped off. Come on people wake up! You're a state employee, Schwarzenegger — start with your salary and the cronies who work for you, then work you way up! Kathy Fisher (klfisher@webtv.net) 10x13 km nippleheaded Republicans by SirJ Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re The inverse squared law by Chris M. You can focus the beam using antennas. See "6.2 Beam Collection Efficiency " on page 40 of Wireless Power Transmission for Solar Power Satellite [pdf] . The transmitting antenna would be about 1 kilometer wide and the receiving antenna would be about 10 kilometers by 13 kilometers! Please don't ask me to explain any details, as I haven't a clue. I'm impressed I was able to find what I did in as little as 40 minutes of research. I would conjecture the use of lasers or masers would improve on the size of the antenna on the ground as the beams from lasers and masers don't diverge to any significant degree and thus do not follow the inverse square law. This image shows how the beam does diverge from the transmitting station, as Chris M. expects, but the divergence has been reduced from an inverse square relationship due to the use of antennas/reflectors. The image is entitled "Fig. 2. Microwave beam scanning control" on this page (on my computer I had to scroll down quite a bit to get to the text). Microwave power transmission from space is theoretically do-able. Currently, humankind is too fu[ked up to take on a risk this big. We'd rather blow each other up on good ole terra firma. SOUTH PARK is on cable TV. The FCC doesn't regulate cable TV. 2003: Canada discovers its first mad cow case. USDA bans all imports to the U.S. 2005: Imports of beef from Canada resume. 2008: Canada discovers its THIRTEENTH mad cow case in June. Imports continue as though nothing at all has happened. On a totally reassuring note, Canada banned the use of ground cattle meat in cattle feed in 1997. Eating infected meat is the only known way the disease is transmitted. BUT the cow which died in June of this year was 5 years old and thus couldn't have eaten infected meat. Officials didn't know which farm the dead cow came from! Will the owner of the dead cow parked outside please contact the management? SirJ I'm still eating cows, but nowhere near as many of 'em as I was eating a few years ago. Helen & Harry The prudes and easily offended turdheads must live outside the broadcast area of your TV station. I never understood the Janet Boob Affair one bit. I always wondered if the whole thing was choreographed all the way from the wardrobe slip to the moral outrage and complaints to the FCC. Did you know the Jackson's were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses? Maybe that had something to do with the moral outrage. I've never watched SOUTH PARK as I don't have cable. I just ran across this, which explains that SOUTH PARK reruns are available online for free! I best get on over there and watch some episodes so I will know what I'm talking about when I write my letter of complaint to the FCC about how some stations are rerunning this trash during the kiddies' dinner hour. We can't have the future leaders of our country exposed to such preversions. They might grow up thinking liberally and join the Democratic Party. What a fix that would place us in! Without enough nippleheaded Republicans around constantly making asses of themselves, where would Unknown News find enough news to write about? For the sake of the future of Unknown News, the FCC must take SOUTH PARK off the air! SirJ Sacred Republican duty by JR Mooneyham Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Bush cronies work to ensure more on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins
The Bush Administration is just trying to tie up any loose ends in their sacred Republican duty to transform America into a third world country.
The notion mentioned, that "everyone has equal chances of winning the lottery" — despite not having equal chances in most other aspects of life — is itself a lie, and in possibly two different ways. One, just like rich folks can make more money in interest-bearing savings accounts or the stock market due to investing much larger sums than average people, in lotteries too they can increase their chances of winning by buying much larger blocks of tickets than poorer folks. Indeed, when poorer people do win the lottery, it sometimes appears they did so only by banding together to buy lots more tickets and sharing the proceeds, than acting as individuals. Or in other words, buying large blocks as a group, similar to what a single rich individual might do. The possible second way the idea of "equal chances" is wrong may exist in the phenomenon of luck itself. For luck may indeed not be as entirely random as many believe. That is, certain people may indeed enjoy more good luck (or suffer more bad luck) than true randomness would provide. Ergo, a rich person — someone who really doesn't need it — may have at least a slightly better statistical chance at winning any lottery entered, than the average poor person, assuming both buy an equal number of tickets. Virtually zero research has been done in areas like this by anyone at all. So there's only a smattering of possibly related statistics and anecdotal reports to offer for this idea of luck not being quite as random as people believe. However, I've personally spent years delving into what scant information IS available on this topic, and compiled it in the two pages below — to which I add updates too, as possible. Your true chances of getting rich The nature of luck JR Mooneyham (www.jrmooneyham.com/) I'm instantly skeptical of the notion that some people have better luck than others... but chilling my scowl and thinking it through, I guess I'd have to admit, I'm just not sure. We've all known people who seem to blessed by good luck beyond the ordinary quantifiable factors (whiteness, maleness, money...) but I've never stopped to ponder whether such luckiness could be quantified. Never seen any scientific studies that would either confirm or contradict my own observation — that some folks are lucky — so why should I doubt my own perceptions? Helen & Harry Actually, some people naturally having better luck than others in general is basically a parallel to indisputable cases of someone being born rich, or born beautiful. Both those qualities can make for a lifetime of better than average outcomes for those so blessed, even if they experience no other better-than-usual luck afterwards in events. Cute kids for instance usually get treated better than ugly ones, practically by default. By everybody, from relatives to teachers to strangers on the street. There's all sorts of odd and end references which seem to support the idea that luck isn't entirely random. For instance, there's certain people who win lotteries multiple times, over and over again. In the ever-growing anecdotal bin, there seems an inordinate number of folks already rich or well off who win lotteries atop that. Then there's the reverse luck curse: quite a few poor people who only win lotteries when they're close to death already by age or health, and so won't be able to enjoy it. And this reverse luck curse seems to play against we the masses in general, by often bestowing lottery wins, investment windfalls, and juicy government contracts upon fairly evil folks, including convicted criminals. One example is a study showing a large number of people who score big in the stock market — or tend to win high corporate and government positions — exhibiting psychopathic personalities. Different studies show education or intelligence in general to seemingly play a negligible role in acquiring wealth(!). There's references for these in my previously listed page — although some I may be recalling at the moment may be in an as yet unposted update. I might also point out that in a universe which (for most of us) has proven itself to be for the most part terribly unfair and unjust in a great many other ways, the possible discovery someday of hard evidence that luck itself isn't completely random really shouldn't come as a major surprise. JR Mooneyham Confused about 'liberal bias' by MonkeyMan Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Liberal bias by SirJ Liberal — free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant.
Bias — a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.
"Liberal bias" seems to be an oxymoron. How can one be unprejudicially prejudicial? MonkeyMan Well said. Sometimes I envision a liberal alternative to Fox News and the other right-wing liars, but it's a daydream that disintegrates with any serious thought. Liberals (at least, the liberals I've known and the liberal I am) are interested in looking at all sides of an issue, so even if we had the funding to put together a liberal-tilted news channel, it wouldn't be a left-leaning ideological opposite to Fox. It would just be what the mainstream media pretends to be but never is — a straightforward, unslanted look at the daily news. Helen & Harry No, YOU said it well. Liberals are the ones trying to change things for the better. Our heroes have always been liberals, why is it suddenly a bad word? No one celebrates those who crucified Jesus, shot JFK or resisted segregation — in other words, those who resisted change, by definition conservatives. Liberals got the vote for women and blacks, equal housing and access to jobs and education. Most people shake their head, yes, that these are good things. Good things we wouldn't have without liberals. Boston Tea Party? Wasn't conservatives that threw that party. Nixon, Conservative, crook, Watergate, FBI/Gov. spied on Martin Luther King Jr., Crooked deals in Laos, Viet Nam etc. Reagan, Conservative, reversed all social programs of the 60s, propped up foreign regimes in Central and South America George Sr., Conservative, war in the Gulf, tax increases for building military, invested in Al Qaeda, Trained Osama bin Laden George Jr., Conservative, where do I start? Incalculable damage to people, economy, earth, climate, foreign relations, and honor of the office of the President. Is Conservative a code word for crook? MonkeyMan Sure seems to be, especially over the past 7½ years. Helen & Harry
The storm of pent-up anger by Herb Ruhs, MD Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK This is my main message to people who would survive the coming struggles: Protect yourself and your family by doing everything you can think of to make your neighborhood peaceful and sustainable. Organize cooperatively for mutual aid or expect to find your independent self totally out of luck. Herb Ruhs, MD My battle by Sherri B. Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Choosing one's battles by JS Magruder JS wrote, The only behavior we can be responsible for is our own. Giving a tongue lashing to the clueless might feel like accomplishing something in the moment, but it doesn't leave anyone better off for having had the encounter.That's why people REMAIN clueless. It's because people "choose their battles" and slink away allowing the rudeness to continue unchecked. There is no way an adult would have been rude enough to push a child out of the way to ride a toy when I was a child. It was called standing in line, waiting your turn, and having manners. The more people are allowed to behave badly the more it will occur. You wrote: Obviously, people who behave that way have things going on in their lives causing them to behave that way and probably deserve our pity, if not excusing.That can certainly be true but what is the child told? "Oh they're having a bad day, let's go?" Thus ruining this child's day to appease someone else? An adult that should know better? A person can be told politely: "Excuse me we were here first." So the adult is "stressed out" so the kid gets the shaft? We're told to pity those that are rude and disrespectful because people are "choosing their battles." When this child becomes the one pushing people off of swingsets, cutting in line, and being rude what happens then? (It IS happening by the way-This generation of children and teenagers are often incredibly rude with parents standing right by.) My battle is to make sure that a child is not treated with disrespect because an adult is having a "bad day." They should stay home if they can't function in public. My 3 cents. Sherri B. Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but you sound like a character in an action movie, someone looking for trouble. And what I've always noticed about people looking for trouble is, if they don't find trouble they'll look closer until they do. If you don't choose your battles, Sherri, your battles choose you. Helen & Harry
Proud of what? by The Alchemist Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Nice rant on being a "proud" soldier: Proud to be a Vietnam vet? The Alchemist Cameras at red lights by Chris M. Friday, July 25, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Orlando reveals 7 red-light-camera locations
Not sure about this personally. However the State of Florida itself has not made this practice legal. A law came up a while back to legalize this practice but was defeated. Would be interesting when doing this gets challenged in court. Which I'm sure it will be before long. Chris M. I think I'll agree with your "not sure about this". I remember just a few years ago being outraged by the notion of cameras catching traffic scofflaws. I'm sure we linked to articles pointing out how wrong this is, and I know my anger was sincere, but now ... I dunno. Maybe it's because so many much more serious atrocities have been popping up over the past 7½ years, but today I just can't see the scandal. You break the law, you get caught on film, you pay the fine. What's the problem? Helen & Harry
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