As Borders closed forever this weekend, one patron snapped a photograph of a bitter bookseller’s manifesto at an unidentified store: “Things We Never Told You: Ode to a Bookstore Death.”
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Borders ex-employees vent frustration
Since Borders closed forever this past weekend, here is a poster at an unnamed Borders store:
For Women, yes. For men, no.
CAN LACK OF SLEEP RUIN YOUR MARRIAGE? “A new study finds that lack of sleep can make women grumpy. And we end up taking it out on our husbands. . . . But here’s the weird part. They also looked at the husbands’ sleep patterns as well. Get this, they found no increase in negative interactions with their wives whatsoever–even amongst those who suffered insomnia.”
3 Reasons Why Windows 8 May Be Dead on Arrival: 1) No adobe flash, 2) passé, and 3) who cares what operating system you are on.
With Microsoft's crosshairs fixed on the iPad, Windows 8 refocuses on tablets and touch features.
There was a time in the tech business when your company could be as slow as molasses in January yet still prevail based on shear market size. That day disappeared in the rear view mirror many years ago, as Microsoft is about to learn as it prepares to introduce a major Windows upgrade.
If you haven't heard of Windows 8, it's understandable. (Most of us have been distracted by all those iPhone 5 rumors, Netflix pricing complaints, and Kendra.) Microsoft has been giving software developers the big pitch to introduce new features and get them to create software for the new operation system.
History Channel can’t wait for this. (Small point: shouldn’t the name be changed to the Job Channel?)
The massive airship that could replace trucks in the Arctic
Airships may soon soar in the cold skies of northern Canada and Alaska, bringing supplies to remote mining communities where planes can't always fly and roads are cost-prohibitive.
British airship manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced a major contract with Canada's Discovery Air Innovations to build airships capable of lifting as much as 50 tons, delivering freight at one-quarter the cost of other alternatives. Though various militaries have expressed interest in airships, this is HAV's first commercial contract. The first ship is expected by 2014.
http://jalopnik.com/5837639/the-massive-airship-that-could-replace-trucks-in-the-arctic
World’s biggest dog (female).
Take a bow-wow-wow: Nova the Great Dane is recognized as world's tallest female dog
- 'Super' Nova munches on 30lb of food a week
Stop hounding me: Nova, who weighs more than 11 stone, climbs into the back of her owner's car in Addison, Illinois
Give us a piggyback: Ann goes for a walk with Nova, who has been officially recognised as the world's tallest female dog at 5ft 11in on her hind legs
To whom are they misleading?
Holder: Hey, we’re still totally going to close Gitmo. “At this point, it’s getting difficult to determine whether the Obama administration is working harder to fool its allies, its base, or itself.”
One Size Doesn't Fit All for Vitamin D and Men: African-American Men in Northern Regions Especially Need High Doses of Supplements
ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2011) — African-American men living in areas with low sunlight are up to 3.5 times more likely to have Vitamin D deficiency than Caucasian men and should take high levels of Vitamin D supplements, according to a new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The EU paradigm is in tatters, so why is Obama trying to copy it?
Victor Davis Hanson:
After Obama, I don’t think there will be any more John Kerry or Al Gore sermons about the superior Europe model either. A disarmed, undemocratic, insolvent, shrinking, and increasingly polarized continent is now a model of what the United States should not be. There simply have been too many California as Greece stories for any politicians to advise us with the old admonition: “But In Europe, they….”
Obama thought that he would replicate the EU paradigm. He would bring in properly certified technocrats from academia or government like Chu, Geithner, Goolsbee, Holder, Orszag, Romer, and Summers to oversee massive new regulations and taxes that would dictate from on high how the ignorant masses must be protected from everything from cheap gas to old-style light bulbs. In less than three years, they all proved far more ignorant about what makes America work than the local car dealer, welder, or farmer. After Obama, Americans will not be fooled for a generation or so into thinking that a Harvard PhD or Berkeley professor “really” knows that borrowing is prosperity, that gas should cost as much as it does in Europe, and that the more we pay millions to regulate, the more the vastly fewer who produce make us all prosperous. (And given Obama’s mysterious silence about the undergraduate record at Occidental and Columbia that won him a scholarship to Harvard Law, we won’t take seriously any more the usual liberal critique of supposedly weak-minded conservative candidates who, based on their leaked undergraduate transcripts, could not get As decades ago in college.)
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-great-obama-catharsis/2/
After Obama, I don’t think there will be any more John Kerry or Al Gore sermons about the superior Europe model either. A disarmed, undemocratic, insolvent, shrinking, and increasingly polarized continent is now a model of what the United States should not be. There simply have been too many California as Greece stories for any politicians to advise us with the old admonition: “But In Europe, they….”
Obama thought that he would replicate the EU paradigm. He would bring in properly certified technocrats from academia or government like Chu, Geithner, Goolsbee, Holder, Orszag, Romer, and Summers to oversee massive new regulations and taxes that would dictate from on high how the ignorant masses must be protected from everything from cheap gas to old-style light bulbs. In less than three years, they all proved far more ignorant about what makes America work than the local car dealer, welder, or farmer. After Obama, Americans will not be fooled for a generation or so into thinking that a Harvard PhD or Berkeley professor “really” knows that borrowing is prosperity, that gas should cost as much as it does in Europe, and that the more we pay millions to regulate, the more the vastly fewer who produce make us all prosperous. (And given Obama’s mysterious silence about the undergraduate record at Occidental and Columbia that won him a scholarship to Harvard Law, we won’t take seriously any more the usual liberal critique of supposedly weak-minded conservative candidates who, based on their leaked undergraduate transcripts, could not get As decades ago in college.)
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-great-obama-catharsis/2/
Rest in Peace, Ziggy!
Tom Wilson, creator of the iconic Ziggy comic-strip character, died in his sleep Friday at age 80. Wilson’s death was confirmed by his son, Tom Wilson, Jr., who took over his father’s comic strip in 1987. A survivor of lung cancer, the late Wilson debuted Ziggy in a 1969 collection of greeting cards, When You’re Not Around. It was published byAmerican Greetings, where the artist worked for 35 years, becoming Creative Director in 1957 and vice-president of creative development in 1978. Beginning in 1971, Ziggy was launched in over a dozen periodicals, and is currently published in more than 500 newspapers. The worldwide franchise also appears in calendars and books, on top of greeting cards and comic-strips. In a phone interview with Associated Press, Tom Wilson, Jr., said of his father’s creation: “Ziggy is a last-in-line character. The last picked for everything, and kind of a lovable kind of loser character.” Rest in peace, Tom Wilson, and thank you for giving us Ziggy.
Has Obama Quit Already?
“Penn wonders why Obama didn’t think to work with House Republicans on deficit reduction, but he might have asked why Obama didn’t bother to work with Senate Democrats on the jobs bill, either. The White House apparently forgot to consult with its own allies in the upper chamber when writing the rerun of the 2009 stimulus bill, only to discover to their embarrassment that it won’t pass the Senate. . . . Obama mailed in both proposals rather than engage in the hard work of governance. If Obama had any interest in actually passing his deficit-reduction plan, he would not have filled it with tax hikes that have floated around the Beltway for years — and which both Republicans and Democrats have rejected in the past. The jobs bill was even less creative than his approach to deficit reduction, cribbed from a failed and costly exercise in central economic control. Obama didn’t bother to put much effort into either because he has no intention of doing the hard work needed to accomplish actual deficit reduction or improve the job-creation climate. The president has more than a year to go before the next election, but Obama has stopped governing and has shifted entirely to campaign mode. This is what it looks like when a president quits.”
An example of how "tipsy" can work for you
Beats going the long way round! How sailors got their 80ft mast under 65ft bridge
These sailors came up with an ingenious way to get their boat - complete with 80ft mast - under a 65ft bridge on the Intracoastal Waterway. A video posted on youtube shows how the sailors keeled the boat over by dangling containers filled with two tons of water from the mast....read
Amazing picture
From the website that brought you the amazing video of an orbit of the Earth: See the Southern Lights from above as space station astronauts hurtle past
SPECTACULAR VIDEO:Astronauts on the International Space Station have released footage of Aurora Australis.
At $111,000,000.00 each I don’t think we will build 3,162 of them.
The F-35 Price Flies Too High
September 19, 2011: The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force are trying to agree on what the new F-35 fighter will cost. The air force insists that it is $65 million each, while the Department of Defense says when all costs are included; it will be more like $111 million each. Another number being debated is how many F-35s will actually be produced. The air force assumes 3,162, but the Department of Defense is not so sure that many will eventually be built. Total development cost is now put at $65 billion, which comes to over $20 million per aircraft if 3,162 are built. Development costs for the new U.S. F-35 fighter-bomber has grown by more than a third over the last few years. The additional development costs are accompanied by additional delays. Current estimates are that the F-35 will enter service in another 6-7 years. The Department of Defense believes production and development costs will continue to rise, and that the number to be built will decline. Both trends increase the average aircraft cost. Based on past experience, the higher Department of Defense estimates are more likely to be accurate.
Obama call for more taxes and tax reality
Obama derides fat cats, then meets them for dinner to collect cash...
Doesn't Mention Tax Hikes on Rich at High-Dollar Fundraiser...
AP FACTCHECK: 'The wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class'...
235,000 millionaires pay 20% of all tax revenue...
With the president pushing the 'Buffett Rule' in his new $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction plan, new IRS data show millionaires are already paying taxes at a much higher rate than middle-class families.
Regulating cowboys and horses out of existence.
EPA Declares Hay to Be a Pollutant
The EPA is tightening not only around industry and energy production. The agency has declared hay a pollutant:
A recent report from R-CALF USA, an advocacy group for American cattle producers, says the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared harmless cattle hay a “pollutant,” which is part of the agency’s agenda to squelch family-scale cattle ranches in favor of corporately-owned, mega-sized feedlot operations.
At the recent 12th Annual R-CALF USA Convention in Rapid City, SD, an audience member asked Mike Callicrate, a Kansas cattle feeder, if the EPA had, indeed, declared hay a pollutant. His affirmative answer was startling to many, but not necessarily surprising in light of the US government’s apparent agenda to destroy every single producing sector in the nation and to reduce the country to a poverty-stricken, corporately-dominated wasteland.
“Now that EPA has declared hay a pollutant, every farmer and rancher that stores hay, or that leaves a broken hay bale in the field, is potentially violating EPA rules and subject to an EPA enforcement action,” responded Callicrate. “How far are we going to let this agency go before we stand up and do something about it?”
Evidently the big feedlot operations have more money to donate to Obama’s reelection campaign, so the crocodile will eat them last, after smaller feedlots have been ground out of existence. Under Obama, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu.
Hope Fades for the Messiah on the NYT Opinion Page
I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.
When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/opinion/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html#ixzz1YVKQFfxD
The joke is that Dems will not support the latest Obama “jobs/tax” bill. O is trying to portray it as a partisan issue. It is a failed policy.
Will Democrats vote down Obama’s tax hikes?
Speaking with a number of Senate Republicans today, in background conversations, it’s clear that President Obama’s debt-reduction plan is not being taken seriously. To show their dissatisfaction, many are hoping to bring it to the floor soon, in order to vote it down — with the help of Democrats. One key thing to watch, many say, is how many Democrats break with the president in coming days.
“The problem we have here is a very weak executive,” one GOP senator says. “The Democrats smell that more than us, they talk about it constantly. [Republicans] are together on this, but I don’t think they are.”
Now that the myth of GW is behind us we can back to real threats that we can do absolutely nothing about.
The Deadliest Volcano In the Planet Is Ready to Explode Again
The last time the deadliest volcano in the planet exploded it was 1815. It killed more than 71,000 people on the spot and it was responsible for a volcanic winter that caused the worst worldwide famine of the 19th century.
Now it may explode again.
Its name is Mount Tambora and it's located in the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. And while it wasn't the most powerful volcano explosion in history, it's the one that caused more direct and indirect deaths.
When it happened in April 1815, Sumbawa was obliterated. The caldera collapsed then, following some months of heavy activity. Most of the island's population was killed and its vegetation was reduced to ashes. Some trees were uprooted and pushed into the sea along with ash, creating three-mile-long rafts. And tsunamis generated by the explosion affected islands nearby.
Experts are now saying that Mount Tambora is ready to erupt again. A steady stream of earthquakes are shaking the island, from less than five a month in April to more than 200 now. Columns of ash are already venting as high as 4,600 feet.
http://gizmodo.com/5842066/the-deadliest-volcano-in-the-planet-is-ready-to-explode-again
Where the Millionaires are
The analysis of IRS statistics indicates 64 communities nationwide where residents would suffer under the President's plans.
Millionaire map: Locations across the U.S. are pinpointed, showing areas populated densely with millionaires, according to the Forbes study
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039422/Survey-reveals-wealthiest-towns-Americas-millionaires-live.html#ixzz1YV6T05Co
Millionaire map: Locations across the U.S. are pinpointed, showing areas populated densely with millionaires, according to the Forbes study
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039422/Survey-reveals-wealthiest-towns-Americas-millionaires-live.html#ixzz1YV6T05Co
Sap for Obama
David Brooks: “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.”
“The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.”
The Obama way
THE TAXPAYER PAYS TWICE: Green Jobs: Laid Off Solyndra Employees Applying for Federal Re-Training Funds.
Illegals Bilking Billions from Treasury
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, illegal aliens are bilking the federal government for billions because they are filing fraudulent returns, and the sum is much higher than even a top group opposed to illegal immigration has estimated.
The Treasury reported in July that the Internal Revenue Service coughed up $4.2 billion in child tax credits for illegal aliens in 2010.
Given how nasty the IRS gets with taxpayers who err even honestly on their taxes, or those who do not err at all, observers note that the agency is rather insouciant about the indirect subsidy to those who aren’t supposed to be in the country.
About Obama’s claims re Buffet’s secretary. He is lying unless she makes significantly over $200k a year. Millionaires pay 24.5%, 100k to 125 pay 10%, 50 to 75k pay 15%, 40 to 50k pay 12.5 and 20 to 30 pay 6%. It is just class warfare.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.
The latest IRS figures are a few years older _ and limited to federal income taxes _ but show much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.
Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9 percent in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3 percent.
http://mynorthwest.com/178/549000/FACT-CHECK-Are-rich-taxed-less-than-secretaries
Ghastly New 'Fees' Found in Obama Tax Plan
By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Barack Obama's latest plan.
Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a nonstop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017, raising $25 billion over the coming decade. Federal workers would face an additional 1.2 percentage point deduction from their paychecks to contribute $21 billion more for their pensions over the same period. Military retirees would pay a $200 fee upon turning 65 to have the government pay their out-of-pocket Medicare expenses. They'd also pay more for non-generic prescription drugs.
And it'll cost corporate jet owners a new $100 fee for each flight.
GWers caught again.
- World Atlas ice loss claim exaggerated: scientists
LONDON (Reuters) - The Times Atlas of the World exaggerated the rate of Greenland's ice loss in its thirteenth edition last week, scientists said on Monday.
The atlas, published by HarperCollins, showed that Greenland lost 15 percent of its ice cover over the past 12 years, based on information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado in the United States.
The Greenland ice sheet is the second biggest in the world and significant shrinking could lead to a global rise in sea levels.
"While global warming has played a role in this reduction, it is also as a result of the much more accurate data and in-depth research that is now available," HarperCollins said on its website on Monday.
However, a number of scientists disputed the claim.
"We believe that the figure of a 15 percent decrease in permanent ice cover since the publication of the previous atlas 12 years (ago) is both incorrect and misleading," said Poul Christoffersen, glaciologist at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) at the University of Cambridge.
"We concluded that a sizable portion of the area mapped as ice-free in the Atlas is clearly still ice-covered."
Other scientists agreed.
"These new maps are ridiculously off base, way exaggerated relative to the reality of rapid change in Greenland," said Jeffrey S. Kargel, senior research scientist at the University of Arizona.
Asking people to lie to Congress is very serious.
White House offered “guidance” to second witness in LightSquared inquiry
Last week, The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake opened up a new scandal in the White House by revealing that a four-star Air Force general told Congress that Obama administration officials had pressured him to change his testimony about LightSquared, a company with ties to Obama and his election campaign. Eli follows up today with a report that a second witness, a head of a federal agency, says the White House also offered him “guidance” by asking him to insert a paragraph expressing confidence in LightSquared’s efforts:
[T]he White House’s Office of Management and Budget urged federal officials testifying before two House oversight hearings in the last month to say they hoped testing for GPS and LightSquared interference would take only 90 days, according to interviews.
The Daily Beast obtained the paragraph the OMB asked government witnesses to insert into their recent congressional testimony, which says in part, “We hope that testing can be complete within 90 days.”
The issue of LightSquared and the OMB’s interest in testimony came to light last week when The Daily Beast reported that Gen. William Shelton, the four-star general in charge of the Air Force Space Command, told House lawmakers in a classified briefing that he felt pressured by the White House to change his testimony on LightSquared. Shelton ultimately rejected the White House suggestions and delivered his own testimony last week.
On Monday, a second witness, Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, told The Daily Beast that he too was asked by the OMB to insert the 90-day timeframe into his testimony before the House Science Committee, but he refused. The hearing originally was scheduled for Aug. 3, then rescheduled for Sept. 8.
Russo says he assumed that the White House approached all of the other witnesses and asked them to insert the paragraph into their prepared testimony. Russo scoffed at the notion that the testing could be complete in 90 days, and ended up editing out that claim.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
