foraker

Then we'd have the best non-functioning multi-billion-dollar anti-missle system the world has ever seen! USA! USA! We're #1! We're #1!

Sarcasm, JayB, sarcasm. It's the sign of fine literature....

Fuck Yeah! Let's pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan too and if it means nukes for Iran, so be it!

My friend Paul has a short bit about some dude's work describing scoring in soccer as Bessel functions and other stuff.

If global warming increases as the number of pirates decreases, it only stands to reason that the size of their undies decreases as well.

Wouldn't a little fiscal responsibility taste good right about now? A couple of years without any signing statements, anyone? Maybe a little less pandering to big business and polluting industries? Sounds like a Frank Capra movie, doesn't it?

Speaking of boxes: Clinton vs. Terror, Republicans vs. Clinton By original author unknown - search ongoing Apr 16, 2004 President Clinton led the fight against terrorism over strong opposition from Republicans in Congress and the pro-Republican Media. Here's a partial - yet incredibly long - list of accomplishments against terrorism for which the Clinton Administration gets almost no credit or even recognition. President Clinton: -- sent legislation to Congress to TIGHTEN AIRPORT SECURITY. (Remember, this is before 911) The legislation was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the airlines. -- sent legislation to Congress to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF TERRORIST FUNDING. It was defeated by Republicans in the Senate because of opposition from banking interests. -- sent legislation to Congress to add tagents to explosives, to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF EXPLOSIVES USED BY TERRORISTS. It was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the NRA. When Republicans couldn't prevent executive action, President Clinton: -- Developed the nation's first anti-terrorism policy, and appointed first national coordinator. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up UN Headquarters. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up FBI Headquarters. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington. --Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Boston airport. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the George Washington Bridge. -- Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the US Embassy in Albania. -- Tried to kill Osama bin Laden and disrupt Al Qaeda through preemptive strikes (efforts denounced by the G.O.P.). -- Brought perpetrators of first World Trade Center bombing and CIA killings to justice. -- Did not blame Bush I administration for first World Trade Center bombing even though it occurred 38 days after they had left office. Instead, worked hard, even obsessively -- and successfully -- to stop future terrorist attacks. -- Named the Hart-Rudman commission to report on nature of terrorist threats and major steps to be taken to combat terrorism. -- Tripled the budget of the FBI for counterterrorism and doubled overall funding for counterterrorism. -- Detected and destroyed cells of Al Qaeda in over 20 countries -- Created a national stockpile of drugs and vaccines including 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine. -- Robert Oakley, Reagan Counterterrorism Czar says of Clinton's efforts "Overall, I give them very high marks" and "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama" -- Paul Bremer, Bush's Administrator of Iraq disagrees slightly with Robert Oakley saying he believed the Clinton Administration had "correctly focused on bin Laden. " -- Barton Gellman of the Washington Post put it best, "By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him" and was the "first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort." Here, in stark contrast, is part of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism record before September 11, 2001: -- Backed off Clinton administration's anti-terrorism efforts. -- Shelved the Hart-Rudman report. -- Appointed new anti-terrorism task force under Dick Cheney. Group did not even meet before 9/11. -- Called for cuts in anti-terrorism efforts by the Department of Defense. -- Gave no priority to anti-terrorism efforts by Justice Department. -- Ignored warnings from Sandy Berger, Louis Freeh, George Tennant, Paul Bremer, and Richard Clarke about the urgency of terrorist threats. -- Halted Predator drone tracking of Osama bin Laden. -- Did nothing in wake of August 6 C.I.A. report to president saying Al Qaeda attack by hijack of an airliner almost certain. -- Bush - knowing about the terrorists' plans to attack in America, warned that terrorists were in flight schools in the US - took a four week vacation. -- By failing to order any coordination of intelligence data, missed opportunity to stop the 9/11 plot as Clinton-Gore had stopped the millennium plots. -- Blamed President Clinton for 9/11

I liked how the InnoCentive site has a cross-link to 'buy lab equipment on e-Bay'....

I bet they owe it all to silk thong underwear.

Photography is a fiendishly difficult arena to make money in, and this was true even before Internet stock photo sites. This is even more true in landscape/nature photography. I was talking to Joe FamousPhotographer once and he was detailing how difficult it was for him even having name recoginition and several books out. He said only about a handful of his colleagues were making decent money at it. This is why most photographers end up doing product photography or weddings. Yes, you could probably make some money at stock photography, but you need to have at least several thousand pictures out there, of good quality, to generate any decent income. Your average person isn't likely to see enough money out of it to make it worthwhile.

I don't want to 'increase the safety factor'. I want to start trundling boulders to teach some fools about assessing objective hazards and having some skills. The 'safer' you make things, the more people will come to underestimate the risks which will lead to more injuries and deaths than you might have otherwise.

Amazon rep pwns telco lobbyist If you remember the name Mike McCurry, it's even funnier. Talk about strange bedfellows.

NASA shelves climate satellites Environmental science may suffer By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | June 9, 2006 NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment. The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled. And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models. The changes come as NASA prioritizes its budget to pay for completion of the International Space Station and the return of astronauts to the moon by 2020 -- a goal set by President Bush that promises a more distant and arguably less practical scientific payoff. Ultimately, scientists say, the delays and cancellations could make hurricane predictions less accurate, create gaps in long-term monitoring of weather, and result in less clarity about the earth's hydrological systems, which play an integral part in climate change. ``Today, when the need for information about the planet is more important than ever, this process of building understanding through increasingly powerful observations . . . is at risk of collapse," said Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire. Moore is cochairman of a National Research Council committee that will recommend NASA's future earth science agenda later this year. It is unclear, however, whether NASA will follow those recommendations. ``NASA has canceled, scaled back, or delayed all of the planned earth observing missions," he said. Despite NASA's best-known role as a space agency, one of its key missions is to study the earth. Scientists collect data through ground- and space-based observatories using instruments that can sense heat and through which they can see with exquisite detail from many miles up. In recent years, these missions have increased in importance and visibility as global temperatures rise and scientists rush to better understand the phenomenon and the role of humans in it. While NASA is proposing similarly deep cuts to other important science programs such as astrobiology -- the search for life in space -- the earth science mission cancellations and delays take on greater significance, some scientists say, given recent allegations by a top NASA researcher and other government scientists that the Bush administration tried to silence their warnings about global warming. While scientists interviewed for this story said they do not believe the earth science cuts are a deliberate attempt to stall science on climate change, they say it comes at a time when more research, not less, is needed. NASA's earth science budget also has sustained a prior round of cuts during the last two years. NASA, which projects its budget five years out, intends to cut the overall science budget about $3.1 billion below program projections over that time. In 2004, the overall science budget was projected to grow from about $5.5 billion to about $7 billion in 2008. The new projections provide for $5.38 billion in 2008, and less than the cost of inflation after that, according to a report issued last month by the Space Studies Board, a National Research Council committee charged with analyzing NASA's science program. The exact amount of cuts to earth science programs could not be determined because they are not listed separately in the budget proposal. A NASA earth science official acknowledged that the proposed earth science cuts are steep, and said the agency is attempting to replace some of the funding. He noted the satellite data are used by other agencies, from the military to the US Department of Agriculture. But given competing priorities, there is little chance all the money will be replaced, he said. ``Right now, we are going through the program carefully looking for efficiencies to restore some of these cuts," Bryant Cramer, acting director of NASA's earth science division, said in an interview. ``We are keenly aware of the shortfall, of the necessary research that should be funded, and we are trying to respond. I can't tell you a solution yet." Almost every planned earth studying mission, all that have some contribution to understanding global warming, has been affected. The $100 million Deep Space Climate Observatory , already built, was canceled earlier this year. First proposed by then-Vice President Al Gore in the 1990s, the satellite was planned to give researchers a continuous picture of the sunlit surface of the earth and allow the first direct measurements of how much sunlight is absorbed and emitted, key information that could serve as an indicator of global warming. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission, designed to record rain, snow, and ice fall more accurately, has been delayed 2 1/2 years. It is meant to replace another satellite whose mission was extended last year. Now, scientists do not believe the older satellite will last until the Global Precipitation mission is launched, creating a big gap in data collection for weather prediction and climate modeling. Another key satellite, the $10 billion National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, is over budget and has been delayed at least 18 months. And while NASA previously told earth scientists to start developing proposals for other earth-centered missions to be chosen in 2004, no such round of proposals will be analyzed until 2008. Scientists at area universities say that they are worried most about a proposed 20 percent cut to research and analysis in the earth science budget, which funds smaller-scale projects. Many of these projects analyze data from satellites and help with long-term monitoring of earth systems. The cuts also may have a chilling effect on attracting and retaining university scientists, who realize their research could be only partially funded -- or not at all. ``Missions can be delayed a year or two, but the most urgent issue right now is to restore the cuts to research and analysis," said Ronald G. Prinn, director of the Center for Global Change Science at MIT. ``We need to understand the climate system much better than we do." NASA's earth science program was fairly robust until about two years ago, when several missions were canceled or delayed -- a situation that has made the current round of cuts all the more painful, scientists said. Last month, a report by the Space Studies Board concluded that the space and earth science program is neither robust nor sustainable. ``There is a widespread sense that earth sciences has been suffering more than its fair share," said Drew Shindell, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Having trouble hooking up with my partner lately. Not looking for anything hard-ass. Just have to get out and brush the cobwebs off after skiing all winter.

I guess it's too much to hope for that it's one of our resident haters of the Lenin statue...

Hey, it's Friday night. Maybe they just wanted a date....

cold celery and peanut butter

So you don't believe people should be allowed to lived their lives without interference from the government and that what government we do have shouldn't be influenced by either corporations or religious entities? Interesting.... Of course, most people I know that you would call 'liberals' sound like libertarians and sound nothing like Republicans.

Oh, come on PP. You can troll better than that!

Now he can look Green without pissing off any on-shore economic interests.

You're pulling out? That doesn't sound like the manly thing to do. Guess you'll be spending your days over at Ascensionist....

All that I'm saying is I thought it odd that *somebody* didn't say more. Given how much people in DC like to 'press the face', what's so hard to understand about that? It's not like I'm a contestant in the Obfuscation Olympics here.

Fairweather, maybe no conspiracy I'll grant you. Still, given the high profile nature of the case you'd think more would be forthcoming than 'well, no, not today' if for no other reason than to silence rumors. Besides, it's not like we don't live in a world of politicians and lawyers, all of whom like like "face time" on national TV....

Where's the beef?