Hard_Rom
Northumbrian Skald
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Good Reads
- Thread starter Laurel
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Bacigalupo
Person of Disinterest
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A lot of folks deserve credit for keeping the RNC protests peaceful, but in my experience covering all four days, one man stood above the rest: Vermin Supreme.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/vermin-supreme-hero-rnc-protests-need/
http://www.cracked.com/blog/vermin-supreme-hero-rnc-protests-need/
JohnnySavage
Literotica Guru
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- Aug 25, 2008
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Mountain Turnpike twists through dense oak, hickory and spruce trees and keeps winding, like a slithering snake, through the mountains that separate Virginia and West Virginia. But on a clear day, looking south from the Monongahela National Forest, what looks like a giant white Lego structure emerges from this sea of green.
And that's about when it starts. Your cell phone drops reception. Your radio spins, unable to pull up any stations. You can shake your phone all you want, but it won't help. If you're a city slicker accustomed to continuous connectivity, you might start to panic.
Keep driving and hook onto the Potomac Highlands Trail toward that magnificent structure. You eventually reach Green Bank, population 143, best known as The Quietest Town in America. Where cell phones and wireless devices are banned, their use potentially prosecutable by law.
...
It's not that people are backward or fearful of technology. Quite the opposite.
Tucked in the Allegheny Mountains, researchers are listening to exploding galaxies at the edge of the universe -- a signal that is so faint, it's about a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a watt.
A cell phone emits about 3 watts and can swamp the sounds that are teaching astronomers how the Milky Way was formed and how it is still evolving. So, cell phone use is limited in the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square mile area that limits radio frequency in the eastern half of West Virginia and parts of Virginia, stretching to the Maryland border.
The quiet zone gets drastically more restrictive the closer you get to Green Bank, home to the world's largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Read more here ~ Green Bank W.Va. - about 45 minutes from SavageMountain
And that's about when it starts. Your cell phone drops reception. Your radio spins, unable to pull up any stations. You can shake your phone all you want, but it won't help. If you're a city slicker accustomed to continuous connectivity, you might start to panic.
Keep driving and hook onto the Potomac Highlands Trail toward that magnificent structure. You eventually reach Green Bank, population 143, best known as The Quietest Town in America. Where cell phones and wireless devices are banned, their use potentially prosecutable by law.
...
It's not that people are backward or fearful of technology. Quite the opposite.
Tucked in the Allegheny Mountains, researchers are listening to exploding galaxies at the edge of the universe -- a signal that is so faint, it's about a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a watt.
A cell phone emits about 3 watts and can swamp the sounds that are teaching astronomers how the Milky Way was formed and how it is still evolving. So, cell phone use is limited in the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square mile area that limits radio frequency in the eastern half of West Virginia and parts of Virginia, stretching to the Maryland border.
The quiet zone gets drastically more restrictive the closer you get to Green Bank, home to the world's largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Read more here ~ Green Bank W.Va. - about 45 minutes from SavageMountain
R
removed9556
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Sean
We'll see.
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It's one of those rare pieces of writing one has to share with one's friends and say, "you have GOT to read this!"
R
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trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Mutual Funds: How a Profession with Elements of a Business Became a Business with Elements of a Profession
Remarks by John C. Bogle
Founder and Former Chairman, The Vanguard Group
At Boston Security Analysts Society
Boston, Massachusetts
February 24, 2006
https://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20060224.htm
***
Managers Triumph Over Owners
The overarching theme... is the pathological mutation from owners' capitalism where the rewards of investing were largely directed to those who put up the capital and assumed the risks—to a new managers' capitalism, in which the hired managers of corporate America, investment America, and mutual fund America have arrogated to themselves an excessive share of the rewards of investing...
Here's how I describe it in my new book: "Observing this change in 1967, economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson sized it up pungently: 'There was only one place to make money in the mutual fund business—as there is only one place for a temperate man in a saloon—behind the bar and not in front of it . . . so I invested in a management company.' When he realized that public ownership of management companies would not only be a boon for the managers who worked behind the bar, as it were, but be a bane for the fund owners who enjoyed their libations in the front of the bar, he was wiser then he could have imagined."
Despite being an industry insider as leader of Wellington Management Company (which, you may be surprised to know, had itself gone public in 1960), I shared, with considerable concern, the insight that Dr. Samuelson expressed in his bartender analogy. In a 1971 speech to our management group, I sounded the alarm: "All things considered, it is undesirable for professional enterprises to have public stockholders. This constraint is as applicable to money managers as it is to doctors, or lawyers, or accountants, or architects. In their cases, as in ours (i.e., Wellington's), it is hard to see what unique contribution public investors bring to the enterprise. They do not (contribute) capital; they do not add expertise; they do not enhance the well-being of our clients . . . Indeed, it is possible to envision circumstances in which the pressure for earnings and earnings growth engendered by public ownership is antithetical to the responsible operation of a professional organization and . . . to the exercise of our fiduciary duty."
more...
***
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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Politics in the UK used to be, and mainly still is, very different from that in the US.
Any UK Member of Parliament has to have a 'pair' - someone from the opposing party that they can work with to ensure that the relative party votes are maintained on minor matters.
If one MP has to attend an event away from Westminster for example on business for the government or in their constituency, they have to arrange for the MP from the other party to be away as well so that the government's majority is maintained.
That means that YOU HAVE TO BE FRIENDS WITH AN OPPONENT. It is in your interest and his/hers that you can work together on a daily basis. You might hate their politics, object to their party's stand on a particular issue, but you need them, and they need you.
Because you work with an opponent you get to understand what is and is not important to the other side. You can ridicule their policy in the House of Commons, and they can be equally rude about yours, but you still meet outside the chamber and behave like adults who have a disagreement but can still remain on speaking terms.
Most legislation in the UK Parliament is not controversial. MPs from all parties can debate the legislation and offer suggestions or improvements. It doesn't matter that the improvement is suggested by an opponent if it is sensible and helpful.
Of course there are controversial policies that the opposition will object to as strongly as they can, and for those discussions the 'pair' system does not operate. Every MP who can get to the House of Commons is expected to be there for the critical votes. But after that? The next item on the agenda could be non-controversial and most of the MPs will leave. The few people on each side who have an interest in the next item will stay in the correct proportions to ensure that the government has a majority in the chamber - but for most of those items no vote is necessary.
The House of Commons has been accused of being like a Men's Debating Club. To some extent that is true in that there are rules of debate and people are expected to behave as civilised people even if they hate what the other person stands for.
It can be difficult for those not directly involved in UK politics to appreciate that MPs work together more often than against each other, and that they respect each other despite their differences.
But even in the UK politics is changing and becoming more adversarial.
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
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This Device Will Turn Old Bottles Into Drinking Cups
By Lizzy Halberstadt and Cait Munro
Great news for people who consume a lot of beer and wine (or, you know, other drinks that come in glass bottles): You can help save the planet by turning your bottles into reusable cups. Also, with all of those logo-covered vessels everywhere, it will be much easier to imagine that your home is a bar. Really, it seems like a win-win.
Buy it: $49.99 at Amazon.
http://www.grubstreet.com/2016/08/this-device-will-turn-old-beer-bottles-into-drinking-cups.html?mid=twitter_grubst
By Lizzy Halberstadt and Cait Munro
Great news for people who consume a lot of beer and wine (or, you know, other drinks that come in glass bottles): You can help save the planet by turning your bottles into reusable cups. Also, with all of those logo-covered vessels everywhere, it will be much easier to imagine that your home is a bar. Really, it seems like a win-win.
Buy it: $49.99 at Amazon.
http://www.grubstreet.com/2016/08/this-device-will-turn-old-beer-bottles-into-drinking-cups.html?mid=twitter_grubst
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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- 56,017
It's far cheaper to recycle the glass to make new bottles.
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
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True, but I'd hazard a lowball guess as to how many people are actually separating their glass trash properly for purposed recycling, or packaging and returning/mailing bottles back to their makers, which is still not a commonplace thing.
This way, people can repurpose something within reach and make it an activity. Although there is probably a limit to how many drinking glasses you'll want from all your boozing in your household. Then you could probably give the device away to someone else you know or pay it forward as a freecycle donation.
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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Locally our glass is collected kerbside, or we can take it to the recycling yard half a mile away.
Drinking glasses? Any local charity shop would sell me half a dozen for a pound. My local auction often has boxes of unused glasses at three pounds for 48.
The device was on sale in the UK about thirty years ago. It was difficult to make perfect glasses then when bottles were made of thicker glass. I suspect that it would be even harder now. Glass bottles are designed to minimise the thickness to just sufficient for the product. Once you cut the bottle the inherent strength has gone.
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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- Nov 8, 2005
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The Clintons Wrote The Book On How Politicians Climb Out of the Middle Class
(NPR)...Forbes estimates of their wealth range at $50 million...In 1999, Bill Clinton's second term was winding down and Hillary Clinton was preparing her Senate campaign in New York. They bought their post-presidency home, an 1889-vintage, five-bedroom house in Chappaqua, N.Y. It cost $1.7 million — also what it's worth today according to an estimate by the online real estate firm Zillow.
The Clintons got a five-year, interest-only mortgage. By not paying down the principal, they would keep payments low until they were settled. The mortgage required a down payment of $350,000. For the borrowed amount, $1.35 million, the lending bank wanted some sort of guarantee.
Again, a friend stepped in to help. Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic fundraising wizard and close friend of the Clintons who's now the governor of Virginia, put $1.35 million in a bank account to backstop the mortgage.
The following year, barely a month after Hillary Clinton won the New York Senate race, the Clintons bought a second home: a red brick Colonial, also with five bedrooms, near Washington's Embassy Row. The asking price was $3.5 million; they got it for $2.85 million. News accounts noted the sellers were registered Republicans. Zillow now values the house at $6.6 million.
This was a period of financial stress. When Hillary Clinton famously said, "We came out of the White House not only dead broke but millions of dollars in debt..."
...An analysis by CNN early this year concluded that the Clintons were paid $153.7 million for speeches they gave between 2001 and 2015...Subsequent tax records show both Clintons earning money as speakers and writers, and Bill also as a consultant. These have raised political questions: Why was Hillary giving well-paid speeches at big banks...
(from NPR) more...
The Clintons got a five-year, interest-only mortgage. By not paying down the principal, they would keep payments low until they were settled. The mortgage required a down payment of $350,000. For the borrowed amount, $1.35 million, the lending bank wanted some sort of guarantee.
Again, a friend stepped in to help. Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic fundraising wizard and close friend of the Clintons who's now the governor of Virginia, put $1.35 million in a bank account to backstop the mortgage.
The following year, barely a month after Hillary Clinton won the New York Senate race, the Clintons bought a second home: a red brick Colonial, also with five bedrooms, near Washington's Embassy Row. The asking price was $3.5 million; they got it for $2.85 million. News accounts noted the sellers were registered Republicans. Zillow now values the house at $6.6 million.
This was a period of financial stress. When Hillary Clinton famously said, "We came out of the White House not only dead broke but millions of dollars in debt..."
...An analysis by CNN early this year concluded that the Clintons were paid $153.7 million for speeches they gave between 2001 and 2015...Subsequent tax records show both Clintons earning money as speakers and writers, and Bill also as a consultant. These have raised political questions: Why was Hillary giving well-paid speeches at big banks...
(from NPR) more...
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Environmentalism As A Religion
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/14/environmentalism-as-a-religion/
by Anthony Watts
September 14, 2016
The late Dr. Michael Crichton was wonderful writer. In 2003 he presented a wonderful essay in San Francisco equating environmentalism to religion. Nobel prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaver makes the same point in a presentation here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk60CUkf3Kw ). In religion man is meant to be saved from the consequences of his sins. In the environmentalist religion the world was a wonderful, beautiful Eden until man and his technology came along. Man has eaten the apple and lost Eden. Now we must give up our “evil” technology and go back to nature, otherwise all is lost.
As Crichton notes:
“There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up … And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly, the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. … The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated…”
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up … And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly, the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. … The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated…”
Environmentalists are horrible at predictions. We haven’t run out of oil, millions haven’t starved due to overpopulation, half of all species have not gone extinct, temperatures have not risen in over 18 years, total Antarctic ice and sea ice are increasing and on and on. But, it’s a religion, facts don’t matter. The bearded idiot on the street doesn’t put down his “end of the world is near” sign just because we pass the date he predicted we would all die. He just changes the date of destruction and carries on.
As Dr. Crichton explains, DDT is not a carcinogen, it did not cause birds to die and the people who banned it knew these facts. But, they banned it anyway and as a result tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, died. This was because of religion, not science.
The “Church of Global Warming” is probably the worst sect. The world has warmed from 288 Kelvin to 288.8 Kelvin in the last 135 years and not at all since 2002 according to the UAH satellite data. This is insignificant and very normal variability. The world is greener, food crops better and larger than ever, fewer people are hungry or in poverty, life expectancy is longer than ever before, and we have more arable land. There is no evidence that global warming is either man-made or dangerous and there is no evidence that carbon dioxide is either the sole cause of the minor warming we have seen or the dominant cause. We can show it is a greenhouse gas like water vapor, but that is about it.
We must get the religion out of environmentalism. We must get it back on a scientific basis. Too many organizations are simply lying, pure and simple. It started with DDT and has only gotten worse since. Science, especially environmental science, is becoming more and more politicized and this could have disastrous consequences.
Bacigalupo
Person of Disinterest
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- Oct 28, 2002
- Posts
- 16,018
They made up their minds and they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way
http://www.signature-reads.com/2014/04/memoir-in-a-melody-the-tragic-disappearance-behind-fastballs-the-way/
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way
http://www.signature-reads.com/2014/04/memoir-in-a-melody-the-tragic-disappearance-behind-fastballs-the-way/
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
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- Feb 11, 2007
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- 72,643
Welcome to the Women’s Locker Room
JENN MATTERN · MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2016
Dear Straight White Men,
“Telling it like it is” seems to be something many of you prize highly right now. Some of you have gone on record saying you are delighted that one of our Presidential candidates is a real man’s man, not afraid to say whatever he likes. Some of you are unfazed by his “locker-room talk.” Some of you think “rape culture” is a meaningless phrase whipped up by histrionic women just to irritate you. Some of you doubt the concept of white privilege, and many of you bristle at the need for the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the fact that the sanctity of your white male life has never once been in question in what is the United States of America. Trump’s not helping you understand this, either: No matter how “annoyed” you are by this election, you (and he) are not victims of politics or circumstance. In fact, you are the single demographic he has yet to threaten or menace directly. The guy’s got his own back and yours—if no one else’s—and some of you really seem to appreciate being part of the Trump “tell it like it is” club.
Since many of you straight white men seem to enjoy Trump’s approach, I’ll tell it like it is, too — just for you. But first I’ll tell it like it was. And then I’ll tell it like it will always be, for me, a woman. Don’t get your boxer-briefs all in a wad. This is just some locker-room talk for you. You can handle that, right?
Welcome to the women’s locker room:
Read: https://www.facebook.com/notes/jenn-mattern/welcome-to-the-womens-locker-room/10155575272654848
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
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Bacigalupo
Person of Disinterest
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N
NickStJohn
Guest
.....
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Last edited by a moderator:
IrezumiKiss
Literotica Guru
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Radiohead
You look so tired-unhappy
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
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- 9,779
In light of
Cohen spent nearly a year in Mumbai, calling on Balsekar in the mornings, and spending the rest of the day swimming, writing, and wandering the city. For reasons that he now says are “impossible to penetrate,” his depression lifted. He was ready to come home. The story, and the way Cohen tells it now, full of uncertainty and modesty, reminded me of the chorus of “Anthem,” a song that took him ten years to write and that he recorded just before he first headed up the mountain:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker
Cohen spent nearly a year in Mumbai, calling on Balsekar in the mornings, and spending the rest of the day swimming, writing, and wandering the city. For reasons that he now says are “impossible to penetrate,” his depression lifted. He was ready to come home. The story, and the way Cohen tells it now, full of uncertainty and modesty, reminded me of the chorus of “Anthem,” a song that took him ten years to write and that he recorded just before he first headed up the mountain:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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- Nov 8, 2005
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- 25,593
Supermoons— A Unique Observing Challenge
by Daniel Fischer
Sky and Telescope
November 10
It's "supermoon" season again, with three full moons in a row taking place quite close to lunar perigee — that is, when the Moon is closest to Earth on its somewhat elliptical orbit. Monday's full Moon is the closest of the three, and as pointed out here already it will actually be the closest full Moon since 1948.
more...
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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- Nov 8, 2005
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- 25,593
U.S. Geological Survey Announces Its Largest Oil and Gas Discovery Ever In The States
November 16, 2016
by Rebecca Hersher
(NPR) The U.S. Geological Survey says it has found the largest continuous oil and gas deposit ever discovered in the United States.
On Tuesday, the USGS announced that a swath of West Texas known as the Wolfcamp shale contains 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
That is nearly three times more petroleum than the agency found in North Dakota's Bakken shale in 2013.
As NPR's Jeff Brady reported, the amount of oil in the Wolfcamp shale formation is nearly three times the amount of petroleum products used by the entire country in a year.
The USGS says all 20 billion barrels of oil are "technically recoverable," meaning the oil could be brought to the surface "using currently available technology and industry practices."
"The Texas discovery is in a place that has been drilled before by conventional methods," Jeff reported for NPR's Newscast Unit. "But now that oil companies use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — they can access reserves that previously were out of reach."
"Changes in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable, and that's why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world," said Walter Guidroz, a program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program, in the USGS statement.
"Even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more," he said...
..A map shows the six separately assessed regions, designated according to depth by the petroleum industry, that make up the Wolfcamp shale.
A map of the Wolfcamp shale formation. The red line denotes the boundary of the Permian Basin province; the rest of the thick colored lines denote areas of newly discovered petroleum, at varying depths...
more...
On Tuesday, the USGS announced that a swath of West Texas known as the Wolfcamp shale contains 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
That is nearly three times more petroleum than the agency found in North Dakota's Bakken shale in 2013.
As NPR's Jeff Brady reported, the amount of oil in the Wolfcamp shale formation is nearly three times the amount of petroleum products used by the entire country in a year.
The USGS says all 20 billion barrels of oil are "technically recoverable," meaning the oil could be brought to the surface "using currently available technology and industry practices."
"The Texas discovery is in a place that has been drilled before by conventional methods," Jeff reported for NPR's Newscast Unit. "But now that oil companies use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — they can access reserves that previously were out of reach."
"Changes in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable, and that's why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world," said Walter Guidroz, a program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program, in the USGS statement.
"Even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more," he said...
..A map shows the six separately assessed regions, designated according to depth by the petroleum industry, that make up the Wolfcamp shale.
A map of the Wolfcamp shale formation. The red line denotes the boundary of the Permian Basin province; the rest of the thick colored lines denote areas of newly discovered petroleum, at varying depths...
more...
Tattersail
Really Experienced
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- Nov 11, 2016
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- 137
Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Dark Tower
The Wheel of Time
The Dresden Files
The Kate Daniels Series
The Acts of Caine
The Dark Tower
The Wheel of Time
The Dresden Files
The Kate Daniels Series
The Acts of Caine
Conager
¿Que? Cornelius!
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2014
- Posts
- 18,282
https://newrepublic.com/article/138068/last-unknown-man
Hard to do excerpts from my phone.
A likely homeless man with no memory. He seems to have no idea who he was. Details the frustrations of people trying to figure out who he actually is in a modern society where there are some record of everyone.
Hard to do excerpts from my phone.
A likely homeless man with no memory. He seems to have no idea who he was. Details the frustrations of people trying to figure out who he actually is in a modern society where there are some record of everyone.
