Will She or Won’t She?: Sarah Palin titillates a teabagger crowd in Iowa, but remains mum on her presidential aspirations. More to come tomorrow…
Go Sustainability: The Snohomish County Public Utility District is drilling a mile down for a sustainable source of geothermal energy.
Bezos’ Rocket Won’t Lift Off: After making the Internet go crazy with sneak previews of an upcoming Kindle tablet, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was dealt a personal setback when his personal commercial spacecraft failed in a test.
Gene Simmons to Wed: USA Today reports that, after a quarter century and two shared kids with “longtime squeeze Shannon Tweed,” the once-confirmed rocker bachelor is tying the knot.
Best Local Headline Today: “Police: Marijuana may have been motivation for machete attack.”
Self-Proclaimed Squatters Arrested for Burglary: Four squatters loaded up someone’s house while they were in Bellingham for health reasons. They cited some squatters rights they had heard about on the Internet when deputies arrived.
This Really Happens Everywhere, Doesn’t It?: The Vatican has more claims—this time from Ireland—that it gets to deny and then admit when it becomes too obvious to lie about anymore.
In Case You Missed It: Bumbershoot is going on today!
Learn how to make and eat ice cream when you’re drunk!
Gawd, I just hated it when my personal commercial spacecraft failed in its testflight.
It was uber embarrassing.
Staggeringly, Obama yesterday decided to cancel plans to improve ozone standards. For 3 years he has been promising to tighten standards from the Bush administration. Yesterday, he announced he had caved completely. Lord knows I have tried not to judge him too harshly, but this is a very, very, very big fucking deal.
^ Yeah, that and the fact that the administration is asking not to have DADT declared unconstitutional, thereby laying it open to reinstatement by the next Republican administration. (Unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible)
Also – the Vatican stuff. WTF. Does anybody believe them any more?
@2: How can you be staggered by Obama’s caving completely on any issue? He hastily accepts the premise of the Republicans’ argument, then emptily threatens to give them less than what they want, then gives them everything they want. (The “debt crisis” debacle that just happened is only the most recent, glaring example.)
P.S.: Don’t you mean “a werrah, werrah, werrah, big facking deal?”
#2
Hydrogen makes air pollution obsolete.
I kinda love My Drunk Kitchen.
Maybe the rocket should have been more rocket shaped?
Just sayin’.
@7, yeah, when are the Blue Origin guys going to tell him that it’s actually just an old water heater?
Ozone thing mentioned in the comments: Seriously? The scientific community has pretty much stated it’s a non-issue now. While we shouldn’t go back to saying “use CFCs for everything!” the ozone layer is not in danger just because one politician loosened up some restrictions. But, the new breed of environmentalist is pretty much just an extremist anyway,
The personal spacecraft story: People, don’t laugh, NASA is pretty much dead and without these rich people doing this, there would be no space program left, it’s corporations and rich eccentrics that are keeping it alive at all. All the satellites in orbit that we use for communications (internet included) are launched by private businesses now. If anyone wants to see manned missions again, we need these millionaires and billionaires to keep this up. Though, I think the Virgin guy is probably having the best ideas so far.
Too bad Bezos’ rocket blowed up. At least his investment in keeping an income tax out of WA State paid off so that he can afford to blow up another one.
Still going to Bumbershoot for all three days, even though they got rid of two stages — the NW Court stage and the Backyard/Broad Street stage (where Ra Ra Riot put on a great show last year) — and the musical lineup keeps getting less and less appealing with more local (i.e. not very good) bands. San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival — which I went to last year for the first time and which is free* and where people can smoke pot pretty much with abandon — has far better music than Bumbershoot (unless, of course, your idea of good music is rap and shitty-to-mediocre indie rock.) But, I am looking forward to Mavis Staples, Leon Russell and Over the Rhine.
* Seattle’s music-loving rich guy, Paul Allen, builds a hideous-looking museum and changes people for it. In contrast, San Francisco’s music-loving rich guy, financier Warren Hellman, puts on HSB for free (last year was the 10th year anniversary)
I think someone’s trying to follow in Will in Seattle’s footsteps.
Snohomish county deserves kudos. Geothermal is the way to go.
Too bad Snohomish County shat out a fuckton of completely unsustainable, sprawling single-family subdivisions during the boom years. They’d need a helluva lot less energy if they’d funneled growth into more sustainable models.
Also: ozone is a big fucking deal if you care about breathing. It’s true that the hole is getting smaller, but the ozone clotting up our cities in summer cause respiratory ailments and deaths. Not a big deal, I suppose, if you’re a free market purist who wants to privatize the air, but I, for one, probably wouldn’t qualify for an oxygen tank subsidy.
And there would go Lil TVDinner’s college fund.
Uh…. Ireland has been at the forefront of this issue. The Irish government, in 1999, apologized for it’s role in the scandal. The commission to investigate Catholic Child Abuse has been standing since 2000. So writing “It happens everywhere, don’t it?” is a ludicrously ignorant attitude, like being bemused that other countries have people who ride bikes. America can only dream of having Ireland’s response to this horror.
Vince, it’s because of I-937. Every utility in the state is going to be doing similar stuff. I think SnoPUD is also looking at tidal generation.
All these renewables are wreaking havoc on the system operators, but they’ll get it ironed out. It’s an exciting time to be a utility dork.
@14 uh … way to not know what ozone is.
@17: Uh, way to not be reading up on the issue.
Hmm, Unpaid Intern, wherever did you hear of My Drunk Kitchen?
@17 – picardfacepalm.jpg
9 – Stratospheric ozone: Protects living things from UV. Good thing.
Ground-level ozone: Pollutant. Damages people’s lungs. Bad thing.
Caving into Republicans’ demands to reduce ground level ozone emissions: Bad thing.
CFCs and the ozone hole: Irrelevant to this discussion.
@17: See #21.
fullretard.bmp
@everyone …. meh, this whole environut extremism has pretty distorted everything so much that I gave up worrying about the details anymore. Hijacking a great cause and turning it into what it is today was the lowest form of stupidity, now I’m with the ex-organizer of Green Peace …. must fight them just because their extremism will do more damage if not stopped. 😉
@23 – If the “environut extremists” have caused you to give up worrying about the details, fine. But when giving your opinion on environmental issues, at least include the disclaimer that they aren’t based on facts, which you can’t be bothered with, but rather they are pulled out of your ass.
@24 Actually, I do know science, just didn’t know the most recent button they had.
@25, it’s awesome that you know science! Good going, that’s terrific! Just one thing: why then do you continue to make completely ignorant misstatements about it? Ozone as a component of smog — the major component, in fact — isn’t a new thing, either; it’s been well-known for sixty-plus years.
But hey, it’s OK — the slowdown in economic activity due to the New Depression is going to reduce those ozone levels just fine.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44358964/ns/…
Fnarf, do you have to be so cruel? After all, she’s just a kitten, and she doesn’t even know how to spell coder. (She’s probably one of those koders for krist)
Kitten honey, don’t mind Fnarf. Go ahead and use all the Aqua-Net you want. You’ll catch a husband yet! (just remember to add a spritz or two of Secret, and maybe some FDS – if it’s Date Night)
@25: If you did know science, you’d probably know what Lamarckism is, and you’d certainly know better than to unironically present its tenets as scientifically sound.
The geothermal story is exciting. There is sufficient heat a mile down pretty much anywhere in the US. There is no reason to continue ignoring this endless supply of energy. As a plus it gives the oil companies (you know, those guys who know how to drill that far down) a migration path for their business. Gotta give ’em somewhere to go besides out of business or they’ll fight geothermal to the death.
@9 re: Space (or, another thing you’ve misunderstood)
The USAF has an extensive space & satellite program, and it is not going anywhere. This is arguably where the entire US space program should have been all along.