Well, we're way passed the 50-day mark with this oil spill business and it's enough to cause a Chief Executive to drop expletives in public.
I've still got the germ of a post about this mess in my head. Not sure if it will ever be published, but I did like this video peak at the internal workings of a British Petroleum board room.
tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, British Petroleum, BP, Gulf of Mexico, oil, spill, coffee
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
After the rain
I have this weird kind of obsession that hits whenever we have these really hard rains like we've had the week or two.
It goes back to the first house we owned in the Roeland Park area. Every time a gully-gusher came through, I would get water in the (partially finished) basement. No matter what I did to try to stem the tide, water somehow found its way in during hard rains. It got to the point where whenever it rained more than a little bit, I was walking around the house with an umbrella and heading down to the basement to make sure it was still dry. It could start raining at 3 o'clock in the morning and I would get up to check things out.
The trouble is that when we moved, the obsession didn't stay at our old address. I still have dreams, on particularly stormy nights, about getting up to clear clogged gutters in the middle of a storm, or Shop-vac out a river of water flowing through the basement.
Last night was no exception. The rain was falling hard when I fell asleep between thunder claps that sounded like they were right on top of our house. I had a dream that a water pipe in our clothes closet was leaking with a "drip, drip, drip" sound. In my dream, I saw the leak getting worse. The more I tried to tighten the joints, the worse the leak became. Our clothes were getting wet and moldy and still the water kept coming.
When I woke up, I could still hear the "drip, drip, drip." Obviously, I knew it couldn't be from a water pipe in our clothes closet. They don't put water pipes in there. But I could hear the dripping and it wasn't letting up. As the fog of sleep cleared, I realized that the ceiling fan in our bedroom was out of balance it it was making regular clicking sound that my stupid subconscious had incorporated as a leaky pipe into another water nightmare.
Driving to work, I saw that my nightmare was the least of the damage related to the storms.
The little park at 97th and Roe, next to a storm water creek, was caught in a flash flood. The playground equipment was still there, but the picnic table was gone downstream. And the timber frame containing the wood chips has been washed out of position.
About a block and a half south, I what water damage can really do to a basement that's too close to a storm water creek. About half of the wall for a lower level room had been washed away and there appeared to be pretty severe damage to the garage doors (and presumably the garage itself).
Lots of people in the neighborhood were pumping water out of basements and garages. One guy had moved everything out of his garage and onto his driveway to dry.
I hope it doesn't rain on him again.
tagged: rain, weather, Johnson County, spring, home, dream, water
It goes back to the first house we owned in the Roeland Park area. Every time a gully-gusher came through, I would get water in the (partially finished) basement. No matter what I did to try to stem the tide, water somehow found its way in during hard rains. It got to the point where whenever it rained more than a little bit, I was walking around the house with an umbrella and heading down to the basement to make sure it was still dry. It could start raining at 3 o'clock in the morning and I would get up to check things out.
The trouble is that when we moved, the obsession didn't stay at our old address. I still have dreams, on particularly stormy nights, about getting up to clear clogged gutters in the middle of a storm, or Shop-vac out a river of water flowing through the basement.
Last night was no exception. The rain was falling hard when I fell asleep between thunder claps that sounded like they were right on top of our house. I had a dream that a water pipe in our clothes closet was leaking with a "drip, drip, drip" sound. In my dream, I saw the leak getting worse. The more I tried to tighten the joints, the worse the leak became. Our clothes were getting wet and moldy and still the water kept coming.
When I woke up, I could still hear the "drip, drip, drip." Obviously, I knew it couldn't be from a water pipe in our clothes closet. They don't put water pipes in there. But I could hear the dripping and it wasn't letting up. As the fog of sleep cleared, I realized that the ceiling fan in our bedroom was out of balance it it was making regular clicking sound that my stupid subconscious had incorporated as a leaky pipe into another water nightmare.
Driving to work, I saw that my nightmare was the least of the damage related to the storms.
The little park at 97th and Roe, next to a storm water creek, was caught in a flash flood. The playground equipment was still there, but the picnic table was gone downstream. And the timber frame containing the wood chips has been washed out of position.
About a block and a half south, I what water damage can really do to a basement that's too close to a storm water creek. About half of the wall for a lower level room had been washed away and there appeared to be pretty severe damage to the garage doors (and presumably the garage itself).
Lots of people in the neighborhood were pumping water out of basements and garages. One guy had moved everything out of his garage and onto his driveway to dry.I hope it doesn't rain on him again.
tagged: rain, weather, Johnson County, spring, home, dream, water
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Anyone else?
I'm really having trouble being interested in anything these days. Is it just me?I have some thoughts on the most recent gulf oil spill and college athletic conference realignment, but I don't know whether I can summon the focus to make what passes for a coherent post around here.
As for politics and economy, I've pretty much blown my wad as far as that goes. There are only so many ways to say we're screwed.
Ah well. Guess I'll just keep my eyes and ears and mind open. Surely something will seep in. In the meantime, keep those Viagra spam comments coming.
tagged: blah, politics, sports, blogging, economy
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
YouTube Tuesday: Rip out all the epilogues
This song came up on my iPod's shuffle this morning, and I've had it stuck in my head all day.
I like the tune. I haven't done a deep deconstruction of what Bright Eyes is saying, but to me it's about trying to look at the bright side of our steep cultural decline, kind of a silver lining approach to hitting rock bottom.
Of course I could be way off on that. I have a history of totally misreading this kind of thing.
tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, music, Bright Eyes, At the Bottom of Everything, culture
I like the tune. I haven't done a deep deconstruction of what Bright Eyes is saying, but to me it's about trying to look at the bright side of our steep cultural decline, kind of a silver lining approach to hitting rock bottom.
Of course I could be way off on that. I have a history of totally misreading this kind of thing.
tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, music, Bright Eyes, At the Bottom of Everything, culture
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Random Photo XXXI: Cloudscape
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Can able
A few years back my favorite convenience store chain, QuikTrip, removed 12-ounce cans of soda from their coolers.
Oh sure, they still stocked the big 12 packs of 12-ounce cans, but you couldn't buy a single, cold 12-ounce Mountain Dew from the refrigerator case anymore. Coupled with that, they also removed the 12-ounce cups from their soda fountain.
So, if you wanted to buy a nice refreshing soda beverage, basically had to commit to drinking 22 ounces of carbonated sugar water to quench your thirst and spike your triglyceride levels.
Round about this same time, I noticed that the break rooms where I work removed virtually all of the 12-ounce soda options from the vending machines. You basically were limited to Coke or Diet Coke if you wanted a 12-ouncer.
So yeah, it sucked. I basically chalked it up to another conspiracy hatched by the soda-industrial complex designed to force us to buy more MellowYellow than we actually want. It's just another step in making Americans fatter and lazier and easier to manipulate when leading them to the slaughter.
Now fast-forward to a year or so ago when I started to see small cans of soda appear on supermarket shelves.
Finally, I thought, some of my domestic sleeper operatives in key government regulatory agencies are getting something useful done (aside from the "substance abuse and promiscuity" of some of my agents. I tell ya, good help is hard to find these days).
Now I don't want to take all the credit for soft drink makers putting these more reasonably sized portions back on the shelves. I think it's important to give credit where it's due, and I'd like to encourage the bottlers to sell these smaller 7.5 ounce cans in more locations, including the vending machines in my office.
There are several good reasons why they should.
For one thing, most of us don't want to drink 20 ounces of soda at a time. If you're like me (and god help you if you are, you poor bastard), you typically leave about a third of the soda in a typical 20-ounce bottle unconsumed, only to throw it away when you get to the office the next morning.
This is just wasteful. Forget about the number of plastic bottles that are littering the landfills and creating a floating island of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean, do you know what all that acidic, carbonated sugar water can do to your office trash can when it spills in there? It's a gawdawful mess is what it is!
And then there's the whole nutritional side of things. Not only do we not want a whopping 20 ounces of soda, we shouldn't drink that much anyway. It's just not good for you.
Granted, we all have to drink soda because of the addictive additives used by the secret cabal of high-fructose corn syrup producers (of which Ted Turner is the reigning imperator, btw) to control the population. But it's a well known scientific FACT that we don't need more than about six ounces to maintain our minimum levels of mind-control substances. Anything beyond that and you're just adding weight around your middle. And nobody needs that. Am I right, people?
But there is one reason, above all others, why we need to keep these "mini" cans on store shelves. There is one benefit above all, one advantage beyond the health and environmental advantages, of buying these 7.5-ounce cans.
I love the way they make me feel like a giant when I'm holding one.
They're just so darned cute!
tagged: Coke, can, soda, size, food, waste, environmentalist
Oh sure, they still stocked the big 12 packs of 12-ounce cans, but you couldn't buy a single, cold 12-ounce Mountain Dew from the refrigerator case anymore. Coupled with that, they also removed the 12-ounce cups from their soda fountain.
So, if you wanted to buy a nice refreshing soda beverage, basically had to commit to drinking 22 ounces of carbonated sugar water to quench your thirst and spike your triglyceride levels.
Round about this same time, I noticed that the break rooms where I work removed virtually all of the 12-ounce soda options from the vending machines. You basically were limited to Coke or Diet Coke if you wanted a 12-ouncer.
So yeah, it sucked. I basically chalked it up to another conspiracy hatched by the soda-industrial complex designed to force us to buy more MellowYellow than we actually want. It's just another step in making Americans fatter and lazier and easier to manipulate when leading them to the slaughter.
Now fast-forward to a year or so ago when I started to see small cans of soda appear on supermarket shelves.
Finally, I thought, some of my domestic sleeper operatives in key government regulatory agencies are getting something useful done (aside from the "substance abuse and promiscuity" of some of my agents. I tell ya, good help is hard to find these days).Now I don't want to take all the credit for soft drink makers putting these more reasonably sized portions back on the shelves. I think it's important to give credit where it's due, and I'd like to encourage the bottlers to sell these smaller 7.5 ounce cans in more locations, including the vending machines in my office.
There are several good reasons why they should.
For one thing, most of us don't want to drink 20 ounces of soda at a time. If you're like me (and god help you if you are, you poor bastard), you typically leave about a third of the soda in a typical 20-ounce bottle unconsumed, only to throw it away when you get to the office the next morning.
This is just wasteful. Forget about the number of plastic bottles that are littering the landfills and creating a floating island of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean, do you know what all that acidic, carbonated sugar water can do to your office trash can when it spills in there? It's a gawdawful mess is what it is!
And then there's the whole nutritional side of things. Not only do we not want a whopping 20 ounces of soda, we shouldn't drink that much anyway. It's just not good for you.
Granted, we all have to drink soda because of the addictive additives used by the secret cabal of high-fructose corn syrup producers (of which Ted Turner is the reigning imperator, btw) to control the population. But it's a well known scientific FACT that we don't need more than about six ounces to maintain our minimum levels of mind-control substances. Anything beyond that and you're just adding weight around your middle. And nobody needs that. Am I right, people?
But there is one reason, above all others, why we need to keep these "mini" cans on store shelves. There is one benefit above all, one advantage beyond the health and environmental advantages, of buying these 7.5-ounce cans.
I love the way they make me feel like a giant when I'm holding one.They're just so darned cute!
tagged: Coke, can, soda, size, food, waste, environmentalist
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
YouTube Tuesday: Celebrity
I think we've all become a bit fed up with the celebrity worship.
I mean, like who you like. Idolize your Lady Gagas and Tiger Woodses and your Lindsay Lohans and your Bonos if you like. But some of us are just tired of the paparazzi and the cheering autograph seekers…
tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, animation, celebrity, humor, Lady Gaga, Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan
I mean, like who you like. Idolize your Lady Gagas and Tiger Woodses and your Lindsay Lohans and your Bonos if you like. But some of us are just tired of the paparazzi and the cheering autograph seekers…
tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, animation, celebrity, humor, Lady Gaga, Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan
Monday, May 24, 2010
Random Photo XXX: In flight
I stopped by the side of the road in one of the many suburban wetland ponds to get some pictures of a Great Blue Heron during one of the few sunny day's we've had this spring.
click photo to enlarge
tagged: random, photo, Great Blue Heron, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring
click photo to enlargetagged: random, photo, Great Blue Heron, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
My Big Fat Greek Bailout
A week and a half ago, financial luminaries in Europe (and in the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank) decided to give bankrupt Greece a larger line of credit to bail them out of their financial crisis.
In simple terms, Greece, like many US families, went into debt by spending more than it produced. In fact, it's debts totaled 125% of its total national production.
That essentially means that if everyone in Greece put all of their annual income to paying off the national debt, they still wouldn't have enough to keep Tony Soprano's goombahs from breaking their kneecaps.
The total bailout for Greece is somewhere around $1 trillion, a jawdropping number for such a small country.
But the bailout also came with a few provisos, the "austerity measures" that we've been hearing about and that the Greeks have been rioting about. "Austerity measure" is a nice term for "you've been eating more gyros than you can afford, and now it's time for some budget cuts."
I'm not going to go into an opinion on bailouts. I've done that before. Rather, I'll note that the Greek bailout is interesting because of how common and wide spread the circumstances are that have lead to it.
The Greek government, in order to get reelected, promised everything to the voting public. Government jobs, high salaries, pensions, health care,digital converter boxes... anything to garner votes from Androcles Q. Public. And the governed didn't really worry about how (or whether) all those bribes would be financed.
Anyone who was around two years ago during the "Hope and Change" campaign will recognize this. The "two" parties in the United States were falling all over each other to see who could promise more government bribes to voters.
The same has happened in other European countries. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also in dire financial straits. In fact, the Greek bailout was seen as a way to forestall a financial domino effect that would leave those countries' economies in ruin as well. Even the U.K. is struggling, with some estimates placing it's debt at over 103 percent of its GDP.
Scott Mather, head of global portfolio management at Pimco (one of the largest bond buyers (i.e., "loaners of money") in the world) put it this way in a recent interview with NPR,
Well, it turns out that Europe can't do it. We probably can't either, not without making serious sacrifices in quality of life. And let's face it, we're due for some drastic quality of life downgrades anyway. We've just had it too good for too long.
I don't know how much longer the strategy of bailout-bubble-burst will last here in the US. Hell, even now it's considered safer to lend money to Iraq than the State of California.
I do suspect that we will have the illusion of an economic recovery over the next two years or so.
But you don't have to be Dave Ramsey to know that the party will eventually turn into a pretty serious debt hangover.
When that happens, it won't be just a Greek tragedy.
tagged: Greece, Europe, Greek, bailout, EU, Pimco, Scott Mather
In simple terms, Greece, like many US families, went into debt by spending more than it produced. In fact, it's debts totaled 125% of its total national production.That essentially means that if everyone in Greece put all of their annual income to paying off the national debt, they still wouldn't have enough to keep Tony Soprano's goombahs from breaking their kneecaps.
The total bailout for Greece is somewhere around $1 trillion, a jawdropping number for such a small country.
But the bailout also came with a few provisos, the "austerity measures" that we've been hearing about and that the Greeks have been rioting about. "Austerity measure" is a nice term for "you've been eating more gyros than you can afford, and now it's time for some budget cuts."I'm not going to go into an opinion on bailouts. I've done that before. Rather, I'll note that the Greek bailout is interesting because of how common and wide spread the circumstances are that have lead to it.
The Greek government, in order to get reelected, promised everything to the voting public. Government jobs, high salaries, pensions, health care,
Anyone who was around two years ago during the "Hope and Change" campaign will recognize this. The "two" parties in the United States were falling all over each other to see who could promise more government bribes to voters.
The same has happened in other European countries. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also in dire financial straits. In fact, the Greek bailout was seen as a way to forestall a financial domino effect that would leave those countries' economies in ruin as well. Even the U.K. is struggling, with some estimates placing it's debt at over 103 percent of its GDP.
Scott Mather, head of global portfolio management at Pimco (one of the largest bond buyers (i.e., "loaners of money") in the world) put it this way in a recent interview with NPR,
Most of the developed world is screwed.Mather noted that there is no easy way out of the debt mess. Bailouts like this only delay the day of reckoning. The only way to reduce debt is to either cut spending or default on your bonds.That makes this crisis particularly different from anything we've seen in our lifetimes.
The countries that aren't screwed are the emerging market countries. They have low levels of debt. The emerging market world is lending money to the rich world so the rich countries are continuing to spend more than they've made.
This is going to happen in Greece and the rest of Europe. It will happen in the UK and in the US as well. People have to develop a better connection with what government spending means for them personally. We've had the better part of a couple of decades where people have lost that connection. [Government money] is viewed as manna from heaven and it's an entitlement, something that is deserved and shouldn't have an impact or repercussions on them.When the country was discussing the "health care reform" bill a few months ago, one of the so-called arguments was that, as one of the richest nations in the world we can afford to give everybody great health care. After all, if Europe can do it, we can too.
Well, it turns out that Europe can't do it. We probably can't either, not without making serious sacrifices in quality of life. And let's face it, we're due for some drastic quality of life downgrades anyway. We've just had it too good for too long.
I don't know how much longer the strategy of bailout-bubble-burst will last here in the US. Hell, even now it's considered safer to lend money to Iraq than the State of California.
I do suspect that we will have the illusion of an economic recovery over the next two years or so.
But you don't have to be Dave Ramsey to know that the party will eventually turn into a pretty serious debt hangover.When that happens, it won't be just a Greek tragedy.
tagged: Greece, Europe, Greek, bailout, EU, Pimco, Scott Mather
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