Tax Cuts vs. Food Stamps

From Harper's Index:

Estimated amount by which the U.S. GDP increases for each additional dollar of tax cuts:
$1.03
Amount for each additional dollar of infrastructure spending and food stamps, respectively:
$1.59, $1.73

Are Republicans, supposedly the business minded and business friendly party, unaware of this fact? Maybe I don't have such a great business acumen but I have always thought a 73% or even a meagrer 59% return on investment is much better than a 3% return. But then again, the Republicans were at the helm when the economy went into the toilet, so what do they know.

What are we waiting for, Obama? Let's start feeding people and building bridges!!!

Don't candles also make greenhouses gases?

From an Antarctic research base to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and beyond, the world switched off the lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world's most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change.

Sounds like a good idea. But I am not sure if everyone got the idea completely.

"In Australia, people attended candlelit speed-dating events..."

Candles burn oxygen creating carbon dioxide, a green house gas. Therefore they were still adding to the problem.

"A key 2010 football World Cup qualifier against Serbia posed a dilemma for Romanians. "Shall we watch the match or turn off the lights?," the 7plus daily asked in its main front-page headline."

Couldn't they just play the game during the day time when there is carbon free light?

"McDonald's Corp. planned to dim its arches at 500 locations around the U.S. Midwest"

Why not stop selling burgers for an hour? The consumption of meat adds more to global warming than transportation.

Irish Police

Sounds like the police in Ireland could use the Rosetta Stone.

from the BBC -

"Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country's most reckless driver have emerged.

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

Poles are Ireland's largest immigrant population

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police's rank and file had been looking for - a Mr Prawo Jazdy - wasn't exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn't even human.

"Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence," read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda's traffic division.

"Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.

"It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities."

The officer added that the "mistake" needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.

In a bid to avoid similar mistakes being made in future relevant guidelines were also amended.

And if nothing else is learnt from this driving-related debacle, Irish police officers should now know at least two words of Polish.

As for the seemingly elusive Mr Prawo Jazdy, he has presumably become a cult hero among Ireland's largest immigrant population"

Solar Panels over Parking Lots

After seeing this on the news yesterday, I had one of those moments of - Duh, why didn't I think of that? (a feeling that also happens when viewing contemporary art) In Sunnyvale, Ca, the parking lot of Applied Materials is covered in solar panels. Electric vehicles can charge up in that lot.

Why are we not covering every single parking lot south of San Francisco with such structures? I remember listening to a Science Friday on NPR that talked about solar panels and part of the problem is that there isn't enough room for solar farms near where the power is needed, i.e. urban areas.

Well, doesn't this just solve that problem? How many parking lots, huge parking lots, are there in L.A., in Pheonix, in Houston, that are just baking in the sun 300+ days of the year? Why are we not demanding these solar farms be built? They could be a revenue source by charging people to recharge their cars while they are at the mall or the movies or at Disneyland or the golf courses outside Palm Springs.

Why are we not doing this? Are projects like this in the Stimulus Package?



p.s. why are there golf courses in the desert?

A piece of the Pi

3.
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58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
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54285844479526586782105114135473573952311342716610

Art = Science

"[Art] is what it is simply because it can break down fetishes and superstitions and is bold in explorations and because it opposes following the beaten path and dares to destroy outmoded conventions and bad customs."

- Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The first word in his quote is "science", but art works just as well, if not better. In many repressive regimes throughout history, art is suppressed. As is science.

Galileo, Degenerate Art, Evolution...just to name a few.

Love Hurts With Frequency

Love hurts with frequency.

Drinking a lot of beer is what ails me.

The young lad wept loudly because he didn't catch the ball.

Johnnie Carson was as good as a host as Jack Paar.

Hank always wore nylons when he went stalking

The geologist thought the coarsely foliated and crystallized rock was nice.

After a vigorous food fight, the Maitré d was gored by the spaghetti squash.

Hank spends much of his time looking at a book about reeds and other marsh flora.

He chewed in rhythm while eating a beet salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Insanity

"Hamas had it coming" read a sign I saw at a protest near the Oakland Farmer's Market last Saturday. Did these children in Palestine have it coming?

Did Hamas think Israel would respond in any other way?

How can Israel not think that killing more wives, husbands, daughters and sons will make even more "terrorists"?

How can Hamas not think that Israel is going to pound the #^@% out of Gaza once they start firing rockets?



Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

"Israel is in "all-out war" with Hamas, the nation's defense minister said Monday as Israeli jets continued to hammer targets in Gaza and the Palestinian death toll reportedly topped 300."

"The attacks also have wounded about 650 people, the sources said."

"One of the strikes killed an Israeli at a construction site in Ashkelon, 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of Gaza, and wounded eight others, a hospital spokeswoman said. The Israeli fatality is the second since the airstrikes began Saturday."

"An Israeli strike early Monday hit the Jabalya refugee camp, leaving five children dead in a home that was damaged when a nearby mosque was hit, said Dr. Mu'awiya Hassanein. The Israeli military had no immediate comment."

excerpts from an article by CNN

Hamas, in its idiocy, shoots rockets at Israel and kills one person. Israel, in its over-adrenalized fedupness (if that is a word), bombs the piss out of Gaza killing hundreds, children included.

Going by the numbers, Palestine kills 2 and Israel kills 300. Overkill, no?

But why did Hamas think that shooting rockets at Israel was a good idea? Did they expect this time to be different?

Idiots, the lot of them.

Lying to ourselves

Under Unesco standards, a country can be declared free of illiteracy if 96% of its population over the age of 15 can read and write.

Is someone HIV free if 96% of the virus is gone?

Does a country have no unemployment if 4% of the population is unemployed?

Choreography

Choreography -

c.1789, from Fr. chorégraphie, coined from Gk. khoreia "dance" + graphein "to write." Choreograph (v.) is from 1943.

If this is true then Laban was the first (and only?) choreographer.

The Perfect Name

Could his name be any better?

Where did all those people's money go?

Well, Bernard made off with their billions.

ha, ha, ha.

What the Fuck? File # 17-f

First US face transplant complete

Surgeons at a clinic in a Cleveland, Ohio, have performed America's first almost-total face transplant.

Chevron...

could do a lot more.



Maybe put all this money



they are spending on their new ad campaign

and put it towards research into renewable sources of energy.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi is my hero

An interesting scene

"Three blind men, each one as old and bent as a caricature of Father Time, move slowly up the street where foreigners' hotels are concentrated. Each one holds a corner of an undyed cotton sheet. A small, sighted boy, about 6, holds the front corner in one hand, pulling them along; in the other hand, the boy holds up a kerosene lantern. The old men are singing an unearthly melody, words I don't understand. Passers-by toss coins into the cloth."

jewel heist

I'd wear a dress for that kind of money.

Four armed robbers -- two of them men disguised as women -- walked into a luxury jewelry store in Paris and swiped an estimated €80 million (U.S. $101 million) in jewels, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

Makes you wonder though if this was some kind of an inside job - >

"The same shop was robbed of millions of euros worth of jewelry just 14 months ago, in October 2007."

Also makes you wonder why the robbers felt the need to wear dresses. How did that figure into the plan? Maybe shock and awe? Maybe we should have gone into Iraq with an army in drag and the whole mess would already be cleaned up. Never underestimate the power of a good outfit.

surplus

Obama's organization retains some $30 million after his successful presidential bid.

Can I get my $100 back?

Well, maybe it's better than being a McCain supporter now. That money went nowhere.

fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again

Dec 3, 2008

(CNN) — A Florida congresswoman – convinced she was being prank-called by a Barack Obama sound-alike – hung up on the actual president-elect Wednesday.

Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was told by an aide that Obama wanted to speak with her. According to a statement released by her office, the Republican congresswoman cut off the caller, telling him she thought “this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks.” She then hung up.

Obama’s future White House chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel – a fellow congressman – then called her to let her know she’d actually been speaking with the future commander-in-chief. Ros-Lehtinen, convinced the call was another hoax, hung up on him, too.

Finally, an aide told Ros-Lehtinen she had an urgent call from Chairman Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Still suspicious, Ros-Lehtinen urged the California Democrat to recount a story only both of them would know.

Berman passed the test — and told her she had, in fact, hung up on President-elect Obama.

Thai protesters shut down airport

How come we couldn't/didn't do this in protest to Bush and his terrible administration? to the war in Iraq?

Excerpts-
"Flights from Thailand's international airport have been suspended after hundreds of anti-government protesters stormed the building outside Bangkok."

"We will stay until the government steps down. This government is not legitimate," retired university lecturer Sunthorn Kaewlai told the Reuters news agency."

We certainly have changed, as a people, since the founding days of our country -
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Where was I in the run up to the war? Well, I attended one protest. Maybe I should ask how come I couldn't/didn't do that?