Ephemera

[trysail]

A collection of articles without a theme, other than they happen to strike my fancy for their offbeat and occasionally eccentric subjects.
____________________________________



Philadelphia, Los Angeles Have Worst City Drivers
By Tian Huang

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Philadelphia and Los Angeles have the most accident-prone big-city drivers, according to Allstate Corp., the biggest publicly traded U.S. auto insurer.

Philadelphia has scored worst in each of the five years Allstate compiled data for cities with at least 1 million people. The city’s motorists get in a collision every 6.4 years, meaning they have a 57 percent higher chance of being in an accident than the average American driver, Allstate said. Los Angeles drivers get in crashes every 6.8 years, the insurer said in a statement today.

“We are not concurring” with the report, said Jennifer Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. She said Philadelphia had its lowest level of car crashes and fatalities in 10 years in 2008 and that Allstate’s estimates, tied to company claims data, may not be based on a large enough sample.

The overall frequency of collision claims increased 1.6 percent in the quarter ended March 31, the first rise since 2007, the Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer said in May. Motorists drove 0.6 percent more miles in April than a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Transportation said last month, ending a record 16 month-streak of driving declines after gas prices fell.

Allstate analyzed company claim data to determine the likelihood of crashes in America’s 200 largest cities. New York, the most populous, ranked 145th, with drivers expected to experience a car crash every eight years.

‘Highly Urbanized’
“No city is made the same,” said Frank Quon, deputy district director for operations for the California Department of Transportation. Los Angeles is “highly urbanized,” with a major central business district and civic centers that may cause its higher rate of accidents, Quon said.

Allstate’s figures may not match government records because the insurer includes minor accidents known as fender benders that may be reported to the insurer and not the police, said Krissy Posey, a spokeswoman for the company.

Insurers study accident trends, health-care costs and prices for replacement parts in determining how much to charge for coverage. Posey said today’s report will not be used directly in setting rates for drivers.

Dallas motorists were rated worst of the Texan drivers in large cities, with an average of 7.2 years expected between collisions. San Antonio drivers had an average of 7.3 years while Houston drivers have an average of 7.6 years.

Phoenix fared the best of the cities with a population more than one million. Drivers from that city are expected to have an accident every 9.2 years. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ranked first overall, with drivers having an average of 13.5 years between collisions.

The study excluded cities in Massachusetts, where the company hasn’t been selling car coverage. Allstate said in May it plans to reenter the state’s market in November.

 

[KRCummings]

The whole problem is they didn't count Boston and anyone who's been there KNOWS they have the worst drivers.

 

[Shugahhhh]

I miss Philly.

 

[jomar]

Welcome to the GB, try.

 

[trysail]

Welcome to the GB, try.

Thanks. I had hoped to make an unobserved reconnaissance; you caught me. The bait that lured me here was effective.

 

[notDV81]

The whole problem is they didn't count Boston and anyone who's been there KNOWS they have the worst drivers.

They don't even have street signs in Boston for fuck's sake. It's like the movie Road Warrior there. I always expected some guy in leather chaps and a mohawk to shoot me a with crossbow as he drove by in an army jeep in Roxbury.

 

[jomar]

.....

 

[Generic_chick]

They don't even have street signs in Boston for fuck's sake. It's like the movie Road Warrior there. I always expected some guy in leather chaps and a mohawk to shoot me a with crossbow as he drove by in an army jeep in Roxbury.

You have to pay extra for that tour.

 

[notDV81]

You have to pay extra for that tour.

Just off the Freedom Trail a block or two.

 

[trysail]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane

Believe it or not, Gropecunt Lane is Wikipedia's featured article today.



Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb
Kingpin
Me, Myself & Irene
Patton
Fargo
2001, A Space Odyssey
The Bourne Identity
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Rain Man
Animal House
The Silence of The Lambs
Gladiator
Amadeus
Saving Private Ryan
Lawrence Of Arabia
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Goodfellas
The Scent Of A Woman
Dances With Wolves
Stop Making Sense
Caddyshack
The Thomas Crown Affair ( Brosnan/Russo version )
Das Boot
The Magnificent Seven
Grizzly Man
North By Northwest
Dr. Zhivago
Pink Flamingos
Unforgiven
Hairspray
Dirty Harry
Le Mans
In The Line of Fire
The Gods Must Be Crazy
The Great Escape
Victor Victoria
Chicago
The Fugitive
Little Shop of Horrors
A Beautiful Mind
Little Big Man
Body Heat

 

[KRCummings]

They don't even have street signs in Boston for fuck's sake. It's like the movie Road Warrior there. I always expected some guy in leather chaps and a mohawk to shoot me a with crossbow as he drove by in an army jeep in Roxbury.

No shit. That's about the most accurate description of it I've seen. Those people are fucking crazy but not a smart crazy like you get in Chicago. They're just fucking nuts behind the wheel.

 

[trysail]

"Sex is something I don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it- the same night, as a matter of fact. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phoney named Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't."

-J. D. Salinger
The Catcher In The Rye
New York, 1951
___________________________________

"......Pearl argued that any man who entertained a lady for so little as two minutes was guilty of a gross offense, not only against her person but also against the peace and dignity of the human race..... [Brodel] had simply never heard that copulation could be prolonged at will- at all events, far beyond the limits he had set..... On the heels of this grotesque discussion Pearl announced the founding of an organization to be called the Society for More and Better Fucking in the Home."

-H. L. Mencken
The Diary of H.L. Mencken
New York, 1989
__________________________

"I never did like dirty tales, true or false; if they're any good, they just make you wistful; if not there's nothing more boresome in the world, I reckon."

-Thomas Berger
Little Big Man
New York, 1964
______________________________

"For it is part of my craft to make every swain fall in love with me. I do it for sport, for craftsmanship, on a bet, on a dare. My heart fills, my thighs ache; my silk panties moisten; the sense memories of love make me feel that I feel love though I love not- or only love my art- ah, my first acting teacher, Arnold Feibleman, would be proud of me! As would my dear feisty Vivian Lovecraft, my mentor. To make someone believe you are in love when you are not- this is my craft, my witchery. For as I gaze into Wolfgang's eyes, I fall in love with the image of my beloved self that I see there. Oscar Wilde was right: an actress is a little more than a woman, an actor a little more than a man. I cannot help myself, I am in love with the Jessica that Wolfgang is in love with! I am besotted with my craft, like a witch who turns a mouse into a lizard only to prove she can. Poor mouse, poor lizard, what do they know? Acted on as they are by the powers that be, what do they feel when time stops and the fur turns to scale. Poor creatures. Poveretti. We witches, we actresses are as wanton boys to flies; we kill them for our sport."

-Erica Jong
Serenissima, A Novel of Venice
Boston, 1987

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Stationed in the NE in the 70's.

Driving in the NE was a very intimidating experience, but at least it wasn't occurring at the speeds they employ in Texas.

THOSE people are in-fawkin'-sane!

 

[trysail]

[ Emphasis added ]
______________________

"The solution to perceived market manipulation is overt market manipulation."


That's what federal regulators are saying with Tuesday's announcement that they will consider curtailing "excessive speculation" in energy markets. The move comes in response to last year's spike in oil prices, which soared to a record $145 a barrel a year ago next week and pushed gasoline prices above $4 at the pump in many parts of the country. Since the start of this year, crude prices have jumped 42 percent, even though the recession has crimped demand and storage tanks are full.

Speculators must be to blame.

No one seems upset about last fall, though, when those same speculators helped drive down prices by more than $111 a barrel in the last five months of the year.




=======================================================






Big government has been doing this:

"... government has a whole laundry list of (often-contradictory) goals. For example, it wants to (take a deep breath) prevent foreclosures, attract private capital, halt home price declines, enhance housing affordability, enhance the liquidity of the mortgage market, control executive compensation, and encourage lending. (Exhale.) These are all worthwhile aims, I suppose. But many are completely at odds with each other. You can try to halt the slide in home values, for instance, or you can try to make homes more affordable. But you can’t do both at once."​

for seventy+ years.

It took seventy+ years for the banks to completely crackup from the inherently contradictory mandates of populism. For seventy+ years, the banking business has been— without question— THE most heavily regulated industry in America. You can't go to the bathroom in this business without reference to some rule of one of the four ( count 'em— 4— Treasury Department, Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ) Federal government regulators that DIRECTLY oversee the industry.

I'm not even counting all the other regulators— OSHA, HHS and god-only-knows-what-else or the various state banking regulators.

Its very easy to say that banks ought to raise private capital. In reality, it's mighty hard to persuade any investor to put capital into banks when loose cannons like Chris "Bigmouth" Dodd are running around suggesting nationalization. After all, who wants to put dough to work in Venezuela following Boss Chavez's handiwork?

 

[trysail]

Central Park, NYC

THIS JUNE IS TIED FOR THE 8TH COOLEST ON RECORD. THE AVERAGE
TEMPERATURE WAS 67.5...3.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...WHICH ALSO
OCCURRED IN 1897.

THIS WAS THE COOLEST JUNE SINCE 1958...WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.2 DEGREES.

BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES OCCURRED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS
JUNE...OR 75 PERCENT OF THE MONTH.

CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 90 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR.
THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1996.

CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 85 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR.
THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1916. THIS HAS ONLY OCCURRED 2 OTHER TIMES...1903 AND 1886.

THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN
APRIL. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 90 IN APRIL...BUT NOT IN
JUNE WAS BACK IN 1990.

THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 OR GREATER THIS YEAR WAS IN
MAY. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN MAY...BUT NOT IN JUNE
WAS BACK IN 1903. THE LAST TIME THAT CENTRAL PARK HIT 85 IN
APRIL...BUT NOT IN JUNE WAS ALSO BACK IN 1903.

THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE REACHED IN CENTRAL PARK IN THE MONTH OF JUNE WAS 50 DEGREES. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 2003.

THE LOW TEMPERATURE DIPPED BELOW 60 DEGREES 11 TIMES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS IN 2003 WHEN IT OCCURRED 17 TIMES.

IT WAS THE SECOND WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD WITH 10.06 INCHES OF RAIN.

THE WETTEST JUNE ON RECORD IS 2003 WITH 10.27 INCHES.

THERE WERE 19 DAYS THIS JUNE WHERE THERE WAS AT LEAST 0.01 INCHES OF RAINFALL. THIS HAS NEVER OCCURRED IN CENTRAL PARK

_________________________________________________


Sea level rise? Don't let facts get in the way of a good story!

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/PacificSealevel07.jpg

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Sealevelstation.GIF



Where's the missing ice??

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

 

[trysail]

Peter Sissons: BBC standards are falling - and bosses are too scared to do anything about it
Daily Mail
Last updated at 3:10 PM on 12th July 2009

Peter Sissons, the veteran newsreader who announced his retirement last month, has launched a withering attack on the BBC - claiming standards have fallen and accusing producers of being too mired in political correctness to do anything about it.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, he says: 'At today's BBC, a complaint I often heard from senior producers was that they dared not reprimand their subordinates for basic journalistic mistakes - such as getting ages, dates, titles and even football scores wrong - it being politically incorrect to risk offending them.'

Mr Sissons, 66, who has worked for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, says there was 'great attention' to the text of news bulletins when he joined the Corporation 20 years ago, but that now appeared to be lacking.

In a wide-ranging attack, he also claims it is now 'effectively BBC policy' to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming. He says: 'I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.

'The Corporation's most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that "the science is settled", when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn't.

'But it is effectively BBC policy... that those views should not be heard.'

*****​

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...alling--bosses-scared-it.html#ixzz0LFDv7GNd&C

 

[trysail]

Sheesh— go away for a week and I come back to see this stuff. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind that Gates mouthed off to the policeman. Gates has a chip on his shoulder the size of Ayers Rock.

I nodded knowingly at Haynie's practice of keeping his hands on the wheel ( i.e., in plain sight ) whenever he's stopped by the police ( highlighted below ). I've always made a practice and a habit of doing the exact same thing ( I'm Caucasian, by the way ). If you ever made an effort to put youself in the shoes of a policeman, you'll do the same thing. Can you imagine the anxiety policeman must experience everytime they approach an automobile they've pulled over?

I make damn sure the cop can see my hands ( even going so far as to hang them out the window ). The last thing I want is a cop— who's already nervous and anxious— mistaking my actions.
_____________________


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXTIR79ZzJ30
( Fair Use Excerpt )
Harvard’s Gates in Handcuffs Sounds Familiar Note to Black Men
By John Lauerman and Tom Moroney

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University’s top expert on African-American history and culture, sounded a familiar note to professors and social scientists, who said black men at all levels of U.S. society are vulnerable to similar treatment.

The Cambridge Police Department in Massachusetts dropped a disorderly conduct charge against Gates, calling his arrest “regrettable and unfortunate” in a statement yesterday. Police arrested Gates at his home July 16 after a verbal confrontation with him. They said they were called to the house after a passerby mistook Gates’ effort to open his jammed front door for a break-in.

E-mails and telephone calls flew among black academics around the U.S. after Gates, 58, a leading scholar who has written about race and justice, was handcuffed on the front porch of his home, and only three blocks from the Harvard campus where he teaches. Kerry Haynie, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said he received more than a dozen calls and e-mails from friends about Gates’s trouble.

“It’s shocking,” Haynie said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Even before this incident came up, I spoke with a reporter about whether we’re in a post-race society. My immediate thought was, hell no.”

Haynie, who is black, said such encounters aren’t unique to Cambridge. Whenever stopped by police for traffic infractions, he said he deliberately keeps his hands on top of the steering wheel to avoid misunderstandings...

 

[trysail]

Gore should have won a Nobel Prize— just not for science or peace. He should have won the prize for propaganda!


Information on the specific issue of polar bear populations is widely scattered and it takes a bit of effort to gather it. Here are some snippets and some links:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/some-global-warming-qa-to-consider-in-light-of-the-epa-ruling/
"AREN’T THE POLAR BEARS DYING FROM DISAPPEARING SEA ICE?
Generally speaking, no. While 2 sub-populations of polar bears appear to be threatened by the recent reduction in Arctic sea ice, the other dozen or more sub-populations are either stable or growing. Polar bears survived previous periods of Arctic warmth, and they will survive this one, too.
Polar bears, especially the cubs, tug at our heartstrings because they are so cute, and so make wonderful ‘poster children’ for global warming."
-Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/polar_bear_expert_barred_by_global_warmists/

"Jun 28, 2009
Polar bear expert barred by global warmists

By Christopher Booker, UK Telegraph
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 - as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues - but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image. "

_______________________




Demographic and Ecological Perspectives
on the Status of Polar Bears

by Dr. Mitchell Taylor and Dr. Martha Dowsley

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/taylor_polar_bears.pdf

...The popular notion that polar bears are declining or already expatriated worldwide has been initiated and perpetuated by environmental organizations and individuals who apparently believe that current subpopulation numbers and trends are an insufficient basis for an appropriate status determination. These individuals and organizations suggest that an ecological consideration constitutes more appropriate methodology to assess status of polar bears and presumably all species. Observations of natural mortality, intra-specific aggression, poor condition, and even healthy bears in good condition on ice floes have been cited as evidence of a population impacts on polar bears due to declining sea ice. Anecdotal information, although useful and interesting, is not equivalent to scientific information based on valid statistical analysis of sample data. Simultaneously, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) from Inuit has been largely ignored because TEK is mostly oral, and because TEK generally does not support the assertion that polar bear populations are in general, or even local decline...

PolarBears
PolarBear

 

[trysail]

Global warming alarmists out in cold
Andrew Bolt

April 29, 2009 12:00am
It's snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.

And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

Doubt it? Then here's a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.
And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me.

Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?

So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.

MYTH 1

THE WORLD IS WARMING

Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week "temperatures have dropped" since - "both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites". In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain's Hadley Centre, NASA's Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)

( for rest of article, see: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25401759-5000117,00.html )

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

__________________________________________


http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/uah_may09.png

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/1626767871_bab06c00d9_o.jpg​

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/JMGISSPLOT.gif



Met Office Hadley Centre:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/msu_timeseries.png

http://www.hadobs.org

 

[trysail]

Dawkins' The Selfish Gene ( as are his other works ) is as fundamental to an understanding of human behavior as is E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Osborne_Wilson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology_(book)

 

[trysail]

She isn't reaching, at all— not by a long shot.

The quiet rustling that you hear is the sound of capital checking to see where the exits are. A potential exists for capital flight; in all ages and in all civilizations and in all countries, capital is ALWAYS sensitive to suggestions of and the whispering of the words "spread the wealth" or "redistribution of income."

Beyond that, owners of capital in the United States have spent the past decade in limbo, befuddled and completely unable to divine the intentions of the body politic with respect to levels of estate taxation— which, as you know— will be substantially altered after 2009 in the absence of Congressional action.

As a result, trust and estate attorneys have been placed in the awkward position of suggesting ( with only partial tongue in cheek ) to their clients that it would be advisable to die in 2009.

Throw aging demographics, the portent of high tax rates for dividends and capital gains, an economy apparently based on paper shuffling, home pizza delivery, mass tort litigation, financial institutions destroyed by madmen, a young generation brainwashed into thinkng carbon dioxide is a pollutant, unfunded unaccounted-for entitlement programs and a hemorrhaging government budget into the mix and you have the perfect brew to make capital very, very, very twitchy.






My point is there is a risk of an environment that is perceived as punitive, hostile and unfriendly toward capital and that has potentially serious unintended consequences at a time when the U.S. is dependent on outside capital to finance its massive government spending.

I know for a fact that there are already persons who are deeply alarmed and there are places in the world that cater to them. Some of those places are safer than others ( I'm not going to name names )— but secrecy isn't required.

It has nothing to do with "smart money" ( a term almost always misapplied by the mass financial media industry which is generally clueless and wouldn't know it if they saw it ). It has everything to do with perceptions of the potential for constructive confiscation. There are long memories arising from the knowledge and experience of history. Some have already acted ( the ____ family is one that comes to mind ).

I'm not suggesting the phenomena is either imminent or likely in scale— merely pointing out that there are people who are edgy and anxious and for whom recent political rhetoric rings alarm bells. They are nodding knowingly while muttering sotto voce, "We've seen this before. Let's keep an eye peeled and see how far things go down that path."





Hundreds of wealthy Americans are revealing they have offshore bank accounts as the U.S. and Swiss bank UBS AG negotiate to resolve a lawsuit seeking the identities of 52,000 Americans suspected of tax evasion.

The Internal Revenue Service received about 400 applications last week for a temporary program that waives some penalties related to hiding assets in undeclared accounts, spokesman Terry Lemons said.

A federal judge has scheduled a hearing in the case for Aug. 3, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is meeting tomorrow with Swiss officials. The Justice Department has said it will insist that UBS disclose the identities of “a significant number” of account holders.

“We’ve been seeing an increasing amount of interest in the voluntary disclosure program,” Lemons said. The 400 applicants in a single week is four times the number of taxpayers who disclosed offshore accounts for all of 2008, he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in today’s editions on account holders who have come forward.

The IRS yesterday released instructions to make it easier to comply with its voluntary disclosure program.

The three-page document asks applicants to disclose their Social Security number, occupation, passport number, other personal information and whether they have been notified they face an audit. Taxpayers whose identities are discovered by the IRS aren’t eligible for the leniency program.

Coming Forward
“The IRS wants it as easy as possible for taxpayers with offshore accounts to come forward and present their cases,” said Bruce Friedland, an agency spokesman. The instructions are intended to reduce the need for follow-up interviews and other requests for information, he said.

Applicants also are asked to identify the amount in their accounts, anyone affiliated with it and the account’s purpose. In cases where accounts were established by Jews fleeing the Holocaust, the IRS said it will take as little as 5 percent of asset values.

UBS last year closed the accounts of all Americans who haven’t declared them, forcing some customers to choose between revealing themselves to the IRS or trying to find another offshore bank for their funds.

Taxpayers with undeclared offshore accounts have until Sept. 23 to apply with the leniency program, announced by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman in March.

Collecting Assets
The IRS will seek to collect from 5 percent to 20 percent of the assets under the voluntary program. The assets will be assessed at their peak value in the last six years.

Individuals whose hidden assets are discovered by the IRS can be forced to pay more than the value of the account balance in penalties, back taxes and interest for up to six years.

Normally, the rules let the IRS confiscate the higher of $100,000 or 50 percent of a secret offshore account’s value. After three years of noncompliance, for example, an account holder can owe 150 percent of the account’s value.

The U.S. and Switzerland are far from reaching a settlement in the case, Stuart Gibson, a Justice Department attorney, told U.S. District Judge Alan Gold in Miami yesterday in a telephone conference.

 

[trysail]

Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. is a former NASA climatologist and well-known skeptic of the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

A recent article on his website contains an interesting description of a non-fossil fuel powered electricity generating facility:


My Favorite Renewable Energy Concept: The Solar Updraft Tower
August 5th, 2009
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

There are many different ways that you can extract usable energy from sunlight, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Historically, the biggest disadvantage has been cost when compared to more traditional sources of energy, such as coal-fired power plants. For if solar power was an economical and practical alternative to other forms of energy generation today, it would already be deployed on a wide scale.

I think it is only a matter of time before renewable energy sources become more cost competitive. The question is which methods make the most sense. My favorite idea is the ‘Solar Tower’ (or ‘solar updraft tower’, or ‘solar chimney’), an artists rendering of which is shown below ( see hotlink below to access the full article ).

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Solar-Tower.jpg

While most people have never heard about it, the Solar Tower design was implemented on a small scale in Spain years ago to test the concept. More recently, a privately-funded company called EnviroMission has been working toward the construction of one or more 200 megawatt power plants in the Australian Outback. The company has also been actively pursuing plans to build power plants in China and Nevada.

The design appeals to me because it harnesses the weather, albeit on a small scale. Specifically, it collects the daily production of warm air that forms near the ground, and funnels all of that warm air into a chimney where turbines are located to extract energy from the rising air. It’s a little like wind tower technology, but rather than just extracting energy from whatever horizontally-flowing wind happens to be passing by, the Solar Tower concentrates all of that warm air heated by the ground into the central tower, or chimney, where the air naturally rises. Even on a day with no wind, the solar tower will be generating electricity while conventional wind towers are sitting there motionless.

Full article & illustration:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/08/my-favorite-renewable-energy-concept-the-solar-updraft-tower/

 

[trysail]

Debt Raters Say Getting It Wrong Is Their Right
by Ann Woolner

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- A lawyer called one day offering to pay me to write an article about him. He wanted it to run either in the city daily where I then worked or in a national legal newspaper where I sometimes freelanced.

His proposal sounded like the journalistic equivalent of a profession older than mine. I told him I get paid by the newspaper, not by the people I cover, and that was that.

The decades-old offer comes to mind because, faced with a wave of lawsuits, debt-rating companies defend the thumbs-up they gave to toxic debt in part by likening what they do to what journalists do. This lets them claim the same First Amendment right to be wrong that journalists have.

That they generally are hired by the very firms whose securities they rate doesn’t diminish their claim, they say. Each of them has said it expects to prove in court that these suits have no merit.

I don’t accuse the ratings companies of engaging in the old profession previously referenced. But in lawsuits from one coast to the other, shareholders, states and investors say the ratings weren’t exactly objective, either.

“This is issuing false opinions for profit,” Ronald Grassi, one of a growing number of people suing the top three raters, said in federal court last week.

A retired lawyer, Grassi represents himself and his wife, a retired teacher. They are suing Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings because they lost $40,000 by buying bonds issued by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. that all three rated as investment grade.

The Abrams Factor
Hardly the heftiest of the lawsuits against the firms, the Grassi case nonetheless brought to a Sacramento, California, courtroom a squad of lawyers defending the raters, chief among them legal legend Floyd Abrams.

Abrams, who represents Standard & Poor’s owners, McGraw Hill Cos., argued for the case’s dismissal. Within a half hour, the hearing was over without a ruling but with clear hints from the bench that the companies would prevail.

It is telling that McGraw Hill had brought in Abrams, known best for his First Amendment cases, and that the other lawyers, in court and in briefs, mostly second what he says. A partner in New York City-based Cahill Gordon & Reindel, Abrams was on the New York Times’ legal team in the landmark 1971 Pentagon Papers case and has represented most of the nation’s top news organizations.

The First Amendment defense won’t apply in many of the lawsuits against the rating companies, which will rely on other defenses. But in some of those cases, the freedom of speech claim could be the firms’ path out of the courthouse.

‘World’s Shortest Opinions’
For one thing, you can’t win a libel case against someone for publishing an opinion, as long as it contains no errors of fact. (This is one of the ironies of the law. You can thoroughly trash someone’s reputation, but as long as you leave out any facts for fear they could be wrong, you can’t be sued.)

Debt ratings “are the world’s shortest opinions,” says William McGuinness, who heads litigation in Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson’s New York office.

“They’re three-letter opinions,” he says, and some courts have therefore ruled them eligible for First Amendment protection.

That issuers often pay the rating companies doesn’t change that, Abrams said, answering questions by e-mail.

“Newspapers and magazines carry advertisements from companies whose activities they describe or comment on” without giving up their constitutional rights, Abrams wrote.

Legal Protection
That isn’t all the help ratings firms get from the First Amendment. Once a court says they’re covered by it, the law makes it easier for them to defeat lawsuits because their ratings get the same extra protections given news stories about officials.

For a public figure to win a libel case, it isn’t enough that a reporter got the facts wrong. The official must prove the newspaper acted maliciously or didn’t care whether what it said was true.

Two federal appeals courts have said the same rule applies to rating firms. But both rulings were in cases brought by companies complaining about debt downgrades. That’s the opposite of the problem we have today.

Of course we want ratings firms to feel free to displease an issuer if that is where their research leads them. So it makes sense for them to get First Amendment protection.

Question of Precedent
But does that mean the rating company gets off the hook if it fails to look closely at the peculiar debt that underlies a security the client wants to sell?

“Because this issue was coming up in a different environment and in a different setting,” says McGuinness, “it’s not clear that courts will give the same weight to First Amendment defenses that once they did.”

The onslaught of cases that accuse the ratings companies of leading the country into economic chaos either by failing to perform due diligence or knowingly puffing up an issuer’s offering could tempt judges to take another look at the use of the First Amendment in such cases. In most of the country, no appellate court has set a clear precedent.

As for journalists, the truth is that somebody has to pay for the news. It’s a pretty good guess that among the thousands of Bloomberg LP subscribers who contribute to my paycheck whether they like it are not are Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch.

 

[trysail]

Georgian Peace Key to Pipelines
06 August 2009
By Niko Mchedlishvili, Matt Robinson / Reuters

BASHKOI, Georgia — More than 800,000 barrels of high-quality Caspian crude oil flow daily to the Mediterranean beneath this Georgian village, 42 kilometers from breakaway South Ossetia.

Bashkoi marks the closest point at which the BP-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline — one of several crossing the region — skirts the Russian-backed territory, underscoring the risks to investors with stakes in Georgia as an energy corridor to the West.

Last August’s five-day war over South Ossetia rattled nerves over the flow of oil and gas. Analysts cite current plans to expand BTC as evidence the worst fears were misplaced.

But a year on, with the sides facing off over tense boundaries and no sign of a peace process, the risk of renewed hostilities remains high.

That threat could impact future projects, notably the U.S.- and European Union-backed Nabucco gas pipeline plan, a 3,300-kilometer transit route to bring gas to Europe from the Caspian and Middle East by 2014.

Villagers in Bashkoi, a bumpy 110-kilometer drive west of the Georgian capital, recall seeing jets and Russian Mi-24 helicopter gunships during the war, and people fleeing the fighting.

“We still think about the possibility of another war with Russia,” said 45-year-old school librarian Ketino Devdariani. “Do you think war will start?” she asked a visiting reporter.

Devdariani said she hoped Nabucco would be built nearby, providing a much-needed boost to the impoverished rural area, where some homes stand abandoned by villagers who left looking for work elsewhere.

Nabucco’s rationale is to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, but it has long been beset by problems with supply and financing.

Last month’s breakthrough transit deal between EU countries and Turkey “indicates confidence in Georgia as a transport corridor,” said Kate Hardin, head of Russian and Caspian Research at U.S.-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

A new war, however, would renew doubts about the viability of Nabucco, which has yet to secure gas supplies from Azerbaijan. Instability in Georgia has already played into Azeri thinking about where to sell its gas, with Baku now looking to Russia as an attractive alternative.

“We still have no map for the pipeline and as a result there is no discussion yet about Georgia being a transit nation,” said Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group.

“If Azeri supplies are secured by the Nabucco consortium and pipeline construction discussions begin in earnest, then Georgia would be discussed as a potential transit nation,” Jelenkovic said. “I think at that point you might have that issue [instability in Georgia] raised.”

Georgia hosts major pipelines feeding oil and gas to Europe from the Caspian Sea, including BTC and gas counterpart Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum. It also has three major Black Sea ports — Batumi, Poti and Supsa — handling oil products and crude.

The war shattered progress made since Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution to attract investment to the former Soviet republic under pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Poti was briefly held by Russian troops, and thousands of Russian soldiers remain in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, some 50 kilometers from Tbilisi at their nearest point.

BTC was closed for two weeks at the time of last year’s war due to an unrelated explosion in Turkey, and it was not damaged in the conflict. But bombs did fall within 15 meters of the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which BP was then in the process of reopening, two years after it had been closed for maintenance.

Russian troops seized the main East-West highway, and explosions hit the key railway also used to export Azeri oil.

But the immediate impact of the war “was more like a hiccup in terms of export disruptions — oil and gas exports were interrupted only briefly, and the long-term impact on transportation has been less than it could have been,” Hardin said.

Azerbaijan re-routed some oil through Russia.

Then in June, it agreed to sell Russia a modest 500 million cubic meters of gas beginning in 2010. Russian state-run gas giant Gazprom said it had secured priority in buying gas from the second phase of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz deposit — Europe’s main hope for supplying Nabucco.

Analysts say Azerbaijan, faced with an unstable Georgia and trying to balance political interests between East and West, wants to diversify export options.

Underscoring the interplay between energy interests and territorial disputes in the Caucasus, Baku is also looking for Moscow’s backing in its dispute with Russian ally Armenia over the Armenian-backed rebel region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

[trysail]

Atlantic Tropical Storm ( Hurricane ) Names- 2009

Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda


2009 Updated Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook: Summary

NOAA’s updated 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook indicates a 90% chance of a near-normal or below normal hurricane season. These seasons are classified using the ACE index, which accounts for the combined intensity and duration of the total named storms and hurricanes, and NOT by the numbers of named storms and hurricanes. The Atlantic hurricane region includes the North Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.

This outlook reflects two competing climate factors. The ongoing multi-decadal signal remains in place and has been associated with elevated levels of Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, along with warmer than average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Offsetting this signal is El Niño, which developed in the tropical Pacific Ocean during June and is already producing increased wind shear in the Main hurricane Development Region (MDR, consisting of the tropical North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea).

This combination of climate factors indicates a 50% chance of a near-normal hurricane season for 2009, and a 40% chance of a below normal season. An above-normal season is not likely (10% chance).

The outlook indicates a 70% probability for each of the following seasonal ranges: 7-11 named storms, 3-6 hurricanes, 1-2 major hurricanes, and an ACE range of 60%-110% of the median. Most of this activity is expected during the upcoming peak months (August-October) of the hurricane season.

These predicted ranges have been observed in about 70% of past seasons having similar climate conditions to those expected this year. They do not represent the total range of activity seen in those past seasons.

NOAA’s seasonal outlook issued in May reflected the possibility that El Niño would develop during the hurricane season. El Niño has now developed, and the Climate Prediction Center is issuing El Niño advisories.

El Niño is now expected to substantially offset the ongoing multi-decadal signal and warmer Atlantic SSTs. Consequently, the probability of a below-normal season has increased compared to the May outlook, and the predicted range of tropical cyclone activity has decreased. The May outlook called for 9-14 named storms, 4-7 hurricanes, 1-3 major hurricanes, and an ACE range of 65%-130% of the median. It indicated a 50% chance of a near normal season, and a 25% chance each for an above-normal and a below-normal season.