More cannon fodder
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 17:31 - Category: Unfiled ;
The Pentagon is mobilizing 13,000 reserve troops to send to Iraq.
Archive for April 9th, 2007
Supremes say US must regulate co2 car exhaust
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 14:25 - Category: Unfiled ;
While enviros rejoiced at this decision, rumors that the White House will issue a statement saying the Supreme Court “clearly loathes the free enterprise system upon which this country is based as well as loving the terrorists” are probably unfounded.
More on burning wood for heat
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 12:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
There’s some excellent comments on our previous post here about the carbon footprint of heating a home with wood vs. heating oil.
DJ, who lives way out in the country, uses a wood burning stove rather than a fireplace, as the heat output is far greater. Our neighbors across the street here in Connecticut also heat their home entirely with wood. They currently use a wood pellet stove, which is high tech, has a computer in it, but the neighbor says it requires considerable tweaking and cleaning, so he may go back to a wood burning stove.
After a few days burning wood I can say 1) it takes considerable time to get the wood ready, and then to prepare and stoke the fire, 2) to heat a home during the winter takes large amounts of wood. So, how sustainable really is wood, especially if used on a mass scale?
Joe Hartley says forests have been dedicated to growing wood for fuel, but such monoculture can have unintended consequences. He mentions friends in Wisconsin who used 5-6 cords of wood each winter. A cord is 4×4x8 or 128 sq ft. 6 cords is 1068 sq ft. That’s a lot of wood. Way out in the country this is doable. But even where we live, in an area where each home has at least an acre, if all homes were heated with wood, the air would be hazy with soot.
Joe and Eli Stephens both mention that burning wood produces quite a lot of particulate air pollution and other nasties too.
My sister’s boyfriend is an environmental engineer, so I asked him. He says, everything considered, heating oil (the primary home-heating method in New England) is probably more eco-friendly than burning wood. Which is not the intuitive answer, but no doubt the correct one.
The Tribune offer by Zell. Who will profit?
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 08:37 - Category: Unfiled ;
The Detroit Free Press (a mainstream newspaper) sums it up well in an article about billionaires Kirk Kerkorian and Sam Zell plans to, respectively, buy Chrysler and the Chicago Tribune by using an employee ownership plan (partly funded by employee pension funds, no doubt, as well as by employees giving up pay and benefits)
Zell and Kerkorian got to be stupendously wealthy by crafting deals that were immensely profitable for them, not necessarily for others.
Zell also appears to want to make profits through litigation, as witness his ludicrous attack on Google for “stealing” content. Jason Calcanis, who started weblogs.com then sold it to AOL for millions, rips Zell’s statement to shreds.
Neither billionaire, I think it’s safe to say, has the interest of the company or its employees uppermost in their minds.
Complete capitulation from the Democrats
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 00:23 - Category: Anti-war ;
The Senate will not stop paying for the Iraq war or relent from insisting that President Bush keep pressing the Baghdad government for a negotiated end to the violence, a top Democrat said Sunday.
This, in the spineless world of congressional Democrats, is what passes for opposition. They’ve completely collapsed, and add absurdity to it by saying the Iraqi government needs to negotiate an end to the war.
The Iraqi government didn’t start the war. The US did. By invading. To say a puppet government with little if any real power in a country occupied by a foreign power is the reason the war is continuing is so uncomprehending as to be lunatic.
Thus, despite all the blather from Dems about being antiwar, their position of the war is now indistinguishable from that of Bush and they surrendered on funding the war after barely putting up a fight. Given this capitulation, how real can their position on troop withdrawal be?
I recently had a somewhat heated discussion with an antiwar Democrat activist who was morally outraged that I linked Pelosi in with Bush on the war. Oh no, he said, they are very different, and besides, you have to work towards incremental gain, not like what you radicals in ANSWER want.
Well, there’s your ANSWER, Mr. Antiwar Democrat. Your party just betrayed you. Again.
Radical action is what’s needed. A massive people’s movement can and will stop the wars. Timidly hoping congressional Democrats will do so is delusion.
Geek gets political
Bob Morris @ Apr 9th 2007 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
Chris Pirillo, who has a gaggle of tech-oriented websites, has been blogging some about politics of late, not quite sure if it’s a good idea, but trying it anyway. This is from his cartoon site, Blaugh. Keep it up, Chris!
