Lurking under foot

Die biosphere, die!

An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia. Scientists are starting to uncover the remnants of a supervolcano, that was walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago, killing 90 percent of all life.

Now a team of researchers led by Henrik Svenson of the University of Oslo in Norway have performed a series of experiments, showing the volcano employed an arsenal of deadly weapons during its 200,000-year-long assault on the biosphere.

Prime among them was carbon. Searing magmas from the volcano intruded into the Tunguska Basin in eastern Siberia, a region laden with thick deposits of coal, oil and gas. Heat from the molten rock baked the hydrocarbons, turning the area into the world's largest fossil fuel-burning plant. In all, the volcano may have belched as much as 100,000 gigatons of carbon into the air (all of humanity emits about eight gigatons of carbon annually).

Also on the menu: Lava.  Which heated up the salt deposits.  Which releases methyl chloride. Which kills ozone.

The Siberian Traps did this number on our biosphere for 200,000 years.

Adios Fred On Everything

Goodbye?

All things must end, and Fred on Everything just has. This will be the last regular column, although the site will stay up and I'll add things from time to time as the mood urges.

Dang.

My reasons for inditing the sucker were, first, to see whether a web column could work and, second, to get away from the strangling grasp of political correctness. A third reason, common I suppose to most columnists, was the hope that, however minor my voice might be, in combination with thousands of others it might engender pressure for slowing the rush into the high-tech medieval twilight that the culture has undertaken.

This by now is clearly quixotic. The civilizational changes we now see are both irremediable and beyond control. The peasantrification and empty glitter of society, pervasive hostility to careful thought, onrushing authoritarianism, and distaste for cultivation are now endemic. I do not know where these lead, but we are assuredly going to get there. Fuming buys nothing.

Hard to disagree with him.

Take care, Fred. Get better soon. And if you don't write another lick, thanks for what you've done.


As an adios, here is Fred on Playing At Adventure.

I have no fantasies about shooting anyone. I have seen enough of that for one lifetime. I don’t hunt, having no desire to kill anything I don’t have to kill. I don’t need to pose with a rifle. Having carried one in the Marine Corps, I do not regard them as exotic. But when you are far from anywhere, you provide your own security. I am comfortable with the idea. So are a lot of men. In today’s suburban, mall-ridden world security is what answers 911.

Women are realists pretending to be romantics, and men, romantics pretending to be realists. Yes. The male desire is to explore, to fly higher and higher, to invent and dare and go and see. The Apollo landings were not inspired by a desire to know the nature of lunar rocks. A man does not get on a rice-burning crotch-rocket on a desert road in Arizona and scream through the hot vastness, wap-wap-wap through the gears, 95, 105, 120…125 (go baby, get it on, do it for me), because it is particularly practical. It is the sheer glory of the thing, the speed and power, controlled but on the edge.

And now he wakes at five-thirty for the two-hour commute from Fredericksburg to Washington in crawling traffic, then to his cubicle at Agriculture where he tracks soybean yields in North Carolina. For his entire life.

It is not what men are wired to do. We just do not domesticate well. While male behavior is perhaps no more inherently absurd than female, it has little application to the suburbs and bureaucratic salt mines.

It's a done Tom Turkey

Unless a dinosaur killing asteroid arrives tomorrow The Stimulus Bill is a done deal.

I'm sorry - what was that, CBO?

CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009 making it the longest recession since World War II. (The longest such recessions otherwise, the 1973–1974 and 1981–1982 recessions, both lasted 16 months. If the current recession were to continue beyond midyear, it would last at least 19 months.) It could also be the deepest recession during the postwar period: By CBO’s estimates, economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential—that is, the level of output that would be produced if the economy’s resources were fully employed (see Figure 1). This ecession, however, may not result in the highest unemployment rate. That rate, in CBO’s forecast, rises to 9.2 percent by early 2010 (up from a low of 4.4 percent at the end of 2006) but is still below the 10.8 percent rate seen near the end of the 1981–1982 recession.

And ..

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

Why does Congress even have a budget office if they're not going to listen to them?

Self-Centered by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

Self-Centered
by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

if i were the center of everything for a day…

everything would be aimed towards, dictated by, catered to,
tailored for five foot two tattooed Asian females

when you turned on the television – no martha stewart,
no oprah, no tom brokaw, katie couric, or steven colbert,
only five foot two tattooed Asian females giving
make-up tips for the Asian eye, how to raise children
multilingually in America, custom-design builders who
retrofit houses for the fabulously petite, news that focuses
the latest community organizing campaigns and
where the hottest DJ set is for that night.

everything catered to me – all the movies will tell the
stories of wayward brainiac liberated activist single girls
and their pot dealer mc boyfriends, healing wounds
with families overseas while striving to create fair wages for factory
workers around the world, which would be easier since all the governments
would be run by five foot two tattooed Asian girls,
we’d wave to the camera enthusiastically, give free sandwiches
out to the entire world every Wednesday, we’d match our
lipgloss to our fair trade boots and throw a dance party every time
we passed a truly revolutionary bill.

and i’d get to ask people dumb questions all day about things
that just never occurred to me, because isn’t everybody a five foot
two tattooed Asian girl, and isn’t it so great to be us?

but you know what?  i might let you (non-five-foot-two-
tattooed-Asian-girl people) keep your languages, and
i might even give you equal access to health care and education too,
i might even let you share the airwaves, the houses of government,
and give you a shot of working your way up in the financial institutions,
because i know there is no you without me, and from the center to the
margin, there is no me without you.

vi man

Inspired by this comment .. it's vi man!

Pathless by Michael Whelan

Pathless by Michael Whelan

Did you feel something?

OBAMA 1260 - farewell!

Bill Press totally gets upset because he's been knocked out of a market

Dan Snyder's Red Zebra Broadcasting Co., owner of OBAMA 1260, has announced plans to jettison all progressive talk and replace it with pre-recorded financial advice programming.

Dude: get a grip.The station was named after a politician. Didn't that embarrass you?

For years, the Fairness Doctrine prevented such abuse by requiring licensed stations to carry a mix of opinion. However, under pressure from conservatives, President Ronald Reagan's Federal Communications Commission canceled the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, insisting that in a free market, stations would automatically offer a balance in programming.

That experiment has failed. There is no free market in talk radio today, only an exclusive, tightly held, conservative media conspiracy.

Except for the National Public Radio network, which is not exactly in John Birch territory. Which you can hear just about everywhere in the United States, and overseas on the Armed Forces Network.

So, yes, except for a radio network that blankets the US (I can here two NPR affiliates from the middle of inner-nowhere Wisconsin, and a third if I drive down to Oshkosh to catch some sun) it's a complete conservative conspiracy.

Do my bidding, monkey

Fun with Monkeys ..

Dad?

Hmm?

Can I have desert?

Sure.

Cool!

You have to hop on one foot from here to the freezer.

Ok!

And

--thump--thump--thump--thump--thump--thump--

he did it.

Children are fun.

Share The Love

Hey - what's up Team Obama?

The media is filled with numbers about the economic crisis. But the numbers do not tell the full story.

They don't? I'm confused - I thought unless you had numbers you didn't have the full story.

The story of this crisis is in homes across the country -- homes where a family member has lost a job, where parents are struggling to pay a mortgage, and where college tuition has slipped out of reach.

Usually when a politician wants anecdotes and not numbers he's trying to spin a story to a conclusion not supported by the facts.

But Barack doesn't play that way.

You know when Tom Clancy totally let his muse get on top of him and he had Jack Ryan catapulted to the Oval Office and it was like all was Suddenly Right in the world?

Barack is like Jack Ryan, but real. Totally.

Share your story about how this economic crisis is affecting you and your family and join your fellow Americans in supporting bold action to speed our recovery:


http://my.barackobama.com/sharestories

Well, OK then!

My Crisis Story

My government wants to spend a whole bunch of money on a whole bunch projects of dubious value.

The crisis will end once the government stops helping.


Respectfully Submitted,

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin

I'm sure their filter will have that sucker right back into the public's face. Real Soon Now.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Mad Science and Wish Lists

After the Wonders of Physics science demo at UW in Capital City, I was passed this note ...

Older Monkey's Wish List

Liquid Nitrogen
Tank of hydrogen
Tesla Coil
Marshmallows
Balloons
Big Hammer

He likes his science.  The louder and noisier the better.

Spring is here!

It's 42° F here.

After what feels like a decade of temperatures hovering around 0° F this feels like a warm spring day. 

I'm resisting the urge to tear the weather proofing off and hurl open the windows - but it's a powerful urge, friends.  Mighty powerful.

You gotta do it - but it's hard

Teenaged Girl had a cell phone we bought her for Christmas - one of those 'pay as you go' models. She lost it a few weeks ago.

She also has a job ... and $50 left out of her last paycheck. She's about to go to Wal-Mart and spend 80% of her available cash on a new phone.

80%.  For .. a .. cell .. phone.  I'm gritting my teeth and muttering to myself 'let them make their own mistakes' . . .

Wretched but not in a good way

Chris Ballard went to the Super Bowl to see wretched excess ...

I wanted to see the glitterati rinsing their Escalades with Cristal, then drying them off with imported, endangered pandas. I wanted to see supermodels giving table dances to indicted executives wearing Armani do-rags.

Hold on there sport: supermodels?

Watching super-skinny women with no curves gyrate on a table would be an anatomy lesson on the major bones of the skeleton.

Wretched, sure, but not wretched excess.  Pass.

Good News from Anbar Province

Good News from Anbar Province, full text here.

Subject: Election Day in Iraq

All Hands:

Major General John Kelly sends this Iraq election notice
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

I don't suppose this will get much coverage in the States as the news is so good. No, the news is unbelievable.

Something didn't happen in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, today. Once the most violent and most dangerous places on earth, no suicide vest bomber detonated killing dozens of voters. No suicide truck bomber drove into a polling place collapsing the building and killing and injuring over 100. No Marine was in a firefight engaging an Al Qaida terrorist trying to disrupt democracy.

What did happen was Anbar Sunnis came out in their tens of thousands to vote in the first free election of their lives.

(snip)

One of the things I've always said was that we came here to "give" them democracy. Even in the dark days my only consolation was that it was about freedom and democracy. After what I saw today, and having forgotten our own history and revolution, this was arrogance. People are not given freedom and democracy - they take it for themselves. The Anbaris deserve this credit.

Today I step down as the dictator, albeit benevolent, of Anbar Province. Today the Anbaris took it from me. I am ecstatic. It was a privilege to be part of it, to have somehow in a small way to have helped make it happen.

Semper Fi.
Kelly

Sometimes ... sometimes it feels pretty damned good to be an American.

Irksome and Scary

I'm not troubled by the idea that people only ever act on self-interest, because that's obvious, but it's irksome and scary when they take it to the next level of taking choices away from everybody else.

~ Jacob Clifton

How to bow and scrape in the 21st century

John Bergstrom, local car dealer, publishes a letter where he first kowtows to the new administration

The day you were elected was one of the proudest days I have had as an American.  Please accept my apologies for not voting for you. (I was very proud of how John McCain had served our country.)

Then petitions for an economic boon: give everyone who buys a car $5,000 in government vouchers and spare my automobile dealership fiefdom.


You're doing it wrong. 

A proper kowtow involves at least a full paragraph and should allude to how worthless one's opinion is and how abjectly sorry one is for making the wrong choice.  You never mention the wrong choice by name.  You then follow that up with another paragraph expressing hope that the worthless one might be of some small service to the new regime.

Good enunciation is important

A former Marine was at the hand grenade range at ROTC Advanced Camp at Fort Lewis ...

The range control NCOIC had a distinctive southern accent, so when he gave the command to pull the pin, aim, and throw the grenade at the “tire” (you attempt to throw the grenade into a truck tire for accuracy), in his southern drawl it came out sounding like “tywer”. To the former Marine it came out sounding like “tower”, to which he said “Tower, where’s the… oh there it is!”, and proceeded to throw his grenade at the range control tower, the grenade bounced off of the plexiglass, caught the lip of the tower, and exploded on the way down into the impact area, shaking the tower and causing everyone inside to “hit the deck”, the blast caused close to $1800.00 in damages, and a few sets of soiled pants.

Never tell a Marine to do something unless you're sure you want it done.

Also - good enunciation is important.

How many MBAs does it take to organize a project?

A twitter friend wrote from school ...

There are some MBA students with a project due in a few hours. It seems like no one knows their part.

Just think. In a few months these guys are going to be hired by a business - maybe yours - with these solid organizational and managerial skills.

I'd like to dynamic entry on Server 2003, that's what I'd like to do

This tickled my funny bone. Dynamic entry ... Sluggy Freelance style:




And what are Torg, Riff and Gwen doing? They're hunting zombies, duh.

And what am I doing at zero-dark thirty? I was woken up by the forces of darkness and e-vil [1] because a Very Important Server had stopped talking.

Windows - man don't tell me it sucks: it is such a kick-ass operating system that it finds a way to issue a BSOD at 01:00 in the a.m., just so I know it cares.



[1] Also known as third shift.