The Notorious B.I.G. died fifteen years ago today (9 March).
The video for "Sky's the Limit", apparently made after Biggie died, is inspired by Bugsy Malone.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Cornucopians to the Left, Cornucopians to the Right
Keith Olbermann:
http://twitter.com/#!/KeithOlbermann/status/177472185424818177
It means, Sasquatch, that if you can artificially recreate the natural compression process you can MAKE crude oil
http://twitter.com/#!/KeithOlbermann/status/177457115110191104
Answer? Oil was once algae, plankton RT @GingerGibson Newt "I don't think your car is going to go very far if you s... http://tl.gd/ga8hph
===
Rush Limbaugh: "The supply may be infinite [sic], but we're nowhere near its end. There is enough oil in this country to run this country at current levels of usage for around 250 years, and the regime wants you to believe we've only got 20 billion barrels; we're gonna run out here in ten years or so. That's outrageous."
==
Cornucopians: A Guide for the Perplexed.
A further definition.
==
10 March update: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore on "What North Dakota Could Teach California: While One Plays Host to a Modern-Day Gold Rush, the Other Shuns Evil Fossil Fuels and Wallows in Debt.":
"Williston [North Dakota] sits atop the Bakken Shale, which will later this year be producing more oil than any other site in the country, surpassing even Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output." (Subscription required for full access.)
Michael Klare, interviewed in 2010 by Chris Hayes, is certainly not a cornucopian. Neither is he a doomer.
(Here, Chris Hayes casts a skeptical eye on Kunstler's book The Long Emergency.)
http://twitter.com/#!/KeithOlbermann/status/177472185424818177
It means, Sasquatch, that if you can artificially recreate the natural compression process you can MAKE crude oil
http://twitter.com/#!/KeithOlbermann/status/177457115110191104
Answer? Oil was once algae, plankton RT @GingerGibson Newt "I don't think your car is going to go very far if you s... http://tl.gd/ga8hph
===
Rush Limbaugh: "The supply may be infinite [sic], but we're nowhere near its end. There is enough oil in this country to run this country at current levels of usage for around 250 years, and the regime wants you to believe we've only got 20 billion barrels; we're gonna run out here in ten years or so. That's outrageous."
==
Cornucopians: A Guide for the Perplexed.
A further definition.
==
10 March update: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore on "What North Dakota Could Teach California: While One Plays Host to a Modern-Day Gold Rush, the Other Shuns Evil Fossil Fuels and Wallows in Debt.":
"Williston [North Dakota] sits atop the Bakken Shale, which will later this year be producing more oil than any other site in the country, surpassing even Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output." (Subscription required for full access.)
Michael Klare, interviewed in 2010 by Chris Hayes, is certainly not a cornucopian. Neither is he a doomer.
(Here, Chris Hayes casts a skeptical eye on Kunstler's book The Long Emergency.)
Monday, March 05, 2012
Rush Limbaugh: No Longer on KPUA
Who could have thought today was the last day The Rush Limbaugh Show would air in Hilo--at least for now? KPUA became the first radio station in the United States to stop carrying the program. This New England station soon followed suit.
KPUA's announcement
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/141474943.html
I wonder if this will make tomorrow's Tribune-Herald.
(6 March update: Full front-page treatment. An article by John Burnett incorporating content from the Associated Press, and a large color photo of station manager Chris Leonard.)
And check out HFP for this pungent rant, headlined CENSORSHIP:
(Make one nasty comment about an abortion activist and you will be silenced. Meanwhile UH Hilo Faculty is infested with 9-11 trooothers and anti-Semites. And they are PAID to spout their filth.)
==
11 March update: Rush scrubbed his website of "slut" comment and demand for sex videos.
Dropping Rush Attracts Support Across Nation (10 March Hawaii Tribune-Herald)
==
14 March update: Michael J. Smith at StopMeBeforeIVoteAgain takes it in stride.
KPUA's announcement
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/141474943.html
I wonder if this will make tomorrow's Tribune-Herald.
(6 March update: Full front-page treatment. An article by John Burnett incorporating content from the Associated Press, and a large color photo of station manager Chris Leonard.)
And check out HFP for this pungent rant, headlined CENSORSHIP:
(Make one nasty comment about an abortion activist and you will be silenced. Meanwhile UH Hilo Faculty is infested with 9-11 trooothers and anti-Semites. And they are PAID to spout their filth.)
==
11 March update: Rush scrubbed his website of "slut" comment and demand for sex videos.
Dropping Rush Attracts Support Across Nation (10 March Hawaii Tribune-Herald)
==
14 March update: Michael J. Smith at StopMeBeforeIVoteAgain takes it in stride.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Breakfast at Wailoa State Park
Busy at home, but I had a nice breakfast (from Hilo Lunch Shop) with a friend today at Wailoa State Park. The ducks and other fowl came right up to our pavilion. I found that Hilo Lunch Shop serves generous cups of coffee, and ogo salad. (Recipe for ogo salad if you want to make it yourself.)
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The Oscars
The Artist won five awards, and it's playing at the Prince Kuhio Stadium Cinemas, not yet at the Palace. I haven't seen it yet. Interestingly, it's only the second silent movie to win Best Picture. I figure that the Academy Awards began around the time silent movies began to be displaced by the "talkies."
Oscar site.
I don't like the recent practice of nominating ten films for the Best Picture category.
Oscar site.
I don't like the recent practice of nominating ten films for the Best Picture category.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Kunstler: "A Fog of Mendacity"
[Note: All links added by me.--P.Z.]
A Fog of Mendacity
By James Howard Kunstler
on February 27, 2012 9:43 AM
Those frightening sounds, sights, and odors on the wind this foreboding snowless winter - like emanations from some back ward of a global psychiatric hospital - are the signs of a nation going completely mad. The traumatic rise of oil prices above the $100 level is one irritant, prompting a range of people-who-oughta-know-better to gibber and fulminate as though they'd been locked in the nation's attic since Thanksgiving with nothing to do but play with a box of pencils. Meanwhile, several absurd "narratives" circulate around the mainstream media that are sure to cause this country more trouble - as any set of pernicious untruths will.
One popular new lie is that US oil production is suddenly so robust that America is about to become a leading world oil exporter again - which is completely untrue. The lie arises at the intersection of wishful thinking and the willful misuse of statistics. It was trumpeted by the appallingly credulous Tom Friedman in his Sunday New York Times column, of all places, and it shows how effective the oil and gas industry's propaganda campaign has been.
A lot of the wishing comes out of the shale oil and shale gas sectors. Those TV commercials you see around the news hours on the cable networks are designed to extract investment capital from elderly people who have been swindled in the bond markets and don't know where to stick their dwindling retirement funds. Shale oil and gas must seem like a good bet to them, especially the ones marooned in retirement housing clusters in dismal places like Arizona and Florida, where not being able to drive is a virtual death sentence.
The US government is in on this propaganda offensive, especially the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency (EIA), which routinely issues overly optimistic reports about future oil production. The political spin is a quixotic effort to promote another commonly touted lie about the future: that the US is approaching a point of "energy independence." You'll know we got there when you have to walk to your new job weeding the potato fields. The mendacity behind this propaganda is strictly the wish of politicians to avoid telling voters the truth, out of sheer cowardice for the consequences. US Energy Secretary Steven Chu will go down in history as a pathetically passive quisling, who thought he was honest and patriotic by standing in the background and keeping his mouth shut.
In fact, a lot of the propaganda behind the current madness is based on the incapacity of Americans to imagine daily life without all the cars. One very active drummer on the propaganda scene is John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil. About a week ago he debated Tad Patzek, a petroleum engineer from the University of Texas. {See below for the embedded video.--P.Z.] Hofmeister's rap is based on one central fallacious idea: that American life can only continue if we keep all the cars and trucks running. Any other outcome is unthinkable, off the table. To put a finer point on it, he insists that our national identity and destiny are tied to "personal transportation," code for car dependency. The debate was therefore absurd and Patzek was way too polite. He never challenged Hofmeisiter's core idea.
The public's gross misunderstanding of these issues arises over a set of mis-statements made in recent years especially focusing on the Bakken shale oil basin on North Dakota, the various shale gas plays around the country, and the tar sands of Canada (which so many spinmeisters seem to regard as belonging to the United States). The true state of the US oil industry is that we only barely stalled a 40-year decline in oil production by throwing massive amounts of money (capital) at oil reserves that are very expensive and difficult to get. In so far as we've entered the terminal stage of a long debt cycle, one thing we can be sure of is a shrinking pool of real capital investment. Hence the frantic propaganda effort to funnel remaining available money into the shale plays.
A companion fantasy to all this is that the US has a hundred year supply of natural gas. President Obama is guilty of this whopper. (One commentator, financier Bert Dohmen, made the ridiculous claim in a recent podcast on the Financial Sense News Network, that the US has a thousand year supply.) These are the kinds of irresponsible statements that will eventually inflame a public yet again swindled by authorities they desperately want to trust. The truth is we probably have perhaps a seven-year supply of shale gas, and maybe 20 of all gas including the regular old conventional gas. And even that could easily be reduced by the disorders in capital formation now underway in the destabilizing banking sector.
In any case, all this wishing and lying is about to collide with price volatility to make the American voting public absolutely batshit crazy with dread and anger. That, of course, will only prompt more lying, whopper-spinning, and grievance-flogging in the political arena. It will be nearly impossible for the public to evaluate reality. In the meantime, those disorders in banking and financial markets are close to running out of control. Events are tending ever closer to criticality. I believe they will be expressed in political violence around the major party conventions this summer. Those will be interesting fog-lifting weeks.
A Fog of Mendacity
By James Howard Kunstler
on February 27, 2012 9:43 AM
Those frightening sounds, sights, and odors on the wind this foreboding snowless winter - like emanations from some back ward of a global psychiatric hospital - are the signs of a nation going completely mad. The traumatic rise of oil prices above the $100 level is one irritant, prompting a range of people-who-oughta-know-better to gibber and fulminate as though they'd been locked in the nation's attic since Thanksgiving with nothing to do but play with a box of pencils. Meanwhile, several absurd "narratives" circulate around the mainstream media that are sure to cause this country more trouble - as any set of pernicious untruths will.
One popular new lie is that US oil production is suddenly so robust that America is about to become a leading world oil exporter again - which is completely untrue. The lie arises at the intersection of wishful thinking and the willful misuse of statistics. It was trumpeted by the appallingly credulous Tom Friedman in his Sunday New York Times column, of all places, and it shows how effective the oil and gas industry's propaganda campaign has been.
A lot of the wishing comes out of the shale oil and shale gas sectors. Those TV commercials you see around the news hours on the cable networks are designed to extract investment capital from elderly people who have been swindled in the bond markets and don't know where to stick their dwindling retirement funds. Shale oil and gas must seem like a good bet to them, especially the ones marooned in retirement housing clusters in dismal places like Arizona and Florida, where not being able to drive is a virtual death sentence.
The US government is in on this propaganda offensive, especially the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency (EIA), which routinely issues overly optimistic reports about future oil production. The political spin is a quixotic effort to promote another commonly touted lie about the future: that the US is approaching a point of "energy independence." You'll know we got there when you have to walk to your new job weeding the potato fields. The mendacity behind this propaganda is strictly the wish of politicians to avoid telling voters the truth, out of sheer cowardice for the consequences. US Energy Secretary Steven Chu will go down in history as a pathetically passive quisling, who thought he was honest and patriotic by standing in the background and keeping his mouth shut.
In fact, a lot of the propaganda behind the current madness is based on the incapacity of Americans to imagine daily life without all the cars. One very active drummer on the propaganda scene is John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil. About a week ago he debated Tad Patzek, a petroleum engineer from the University of Texas. {See below for the embedded video.--P.Z.] Hofmeister's rap is based on one central fallacious idea: that American life can only continue if we keep all the cars and trucks running. Any other outcome is unthinkable, off the table. To put a finer point on it, he insists that our national identity and destiny are tied to "personal transportation," code for car dependency. The debate was therefore absurd and Patzek was way too polite. He never challenged Hofmeisiter's core idea.
The public's gross misunderstanding of these issues arises over a set of mis-statements made in recent years especially focusing on the Bakken shale oil basin on North Dakota, the various shale gas plays around the country, and the tar sands of Canada (which so many spinmeisters seem to regard as belonging to the United States). The true state of the US oil industry is that we only barely stalled a 40-year decline in oil production by throwing massive amounts of money (capital) at oil reserves that are very expensive and difficult to get. In so far as we've entered the terminal stage of a long debt cycle, one thing we can be sure of is a shrinking pool of real capital investment. Hence the frantic propaganda effort to funnel remaining available money into the shale plays.
A companion fantasy to all this is that the US has a hundred year supply of natural gas. President Obama is guilty of this whopper. (One commentator, financier Bert Dohmen, made the ridiculous claim in a recent podcast on the Financial Sense News Network, that the US has a thousand year supply.) These are the kinds of irresponsible statements that will eventually inflame a public yet again swindled by authorities they desperately want to trust. The truth is we probably have perhaps a seven-year supply of shale gas, and maybe 20 of all gas including the regular old conventional gas. And even that could easily be reduced by the disorders in capital formation now underway in the destabilizing banking sector.
In any case, all this wishing and lying is about to collide with price volatility to make the American voting public absolutely batshit crazy with dread and anger. That, of course, will only prompt more lying, whopper-spinning, and grievance-flogging in the political arena. It will be nearly impossible for the public to evaluate reality. In the meantime, those disorders in banking and financial markets are close to running out of control. Events are tending ever closer to criticality. I believe they will be expressed in political violence around the major party conventions this summer. Those will be interesting fog-lifting weeks.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Everyone Has Feet of Clay
Elizabeth Warren
Ron Paul
If what I hear is accurate, that Ron Paul intends to withdraw troops from around the world, only to install them on the border between the United States and Mexico, then I don't like that at all.
Ron Paul
If what I hear is accurate, that Ron Paul intends to withdraw troops from around the world, only to install them on the border between the United States and Mexico, then I don't like that at all.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Lookalikes: Bashar al-Assad and Glenn Quinn
Glenn Quinn, who played Becky's boyfriend Mark on Roseanne and the president of Syria, the aptly-named Bashar al-Assad.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Whitney Houston Dead!
I just logged onto the Internet at 4:15 P.M. and saw a headline announcing the death of Whitney Houston at age 48. Immediately I turned on CNN. It's all over the news.
L.A. Times: Houston Found Dead at Beverly Hilton Hotel in L.A.
(The first CD I ever got, on Christmas Day 1991, was Whitney Houston (1985), her self-titled debut album.)
L.A. Times: Houston Found Dead at Beverly Hilton Hotel in L.A.
(The first CD I ever got, on Christmas Day 1991, was Whitney Houston (1985), her self-titled debut album.)
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Komen
Some thoughts off the top of my head: The Komen group was compromised long before this controversy. I would donate to Breast Cancer Action.
Breast Cancer Action
55 New Montgomery Street, Suite 323
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-9301
877-2-STOPBC
http://bcaction.org
info@bcaction.org
Friday, February 03, 2012
The Super Bowl
An interesting column on four reasons to watch the Super Bowl.
I'll add another one: Madonna's halftime show.
I'll add another one: Madonna's halftime show.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
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