Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 22:57 - Category: Unfiled ;
This is probably not a good time to dress in black looking dashing with your black anarchist bandana hiding your face.
Anarchist manual, firearms found in motel room with ricin
It’s not known in the man in the hotel room manufactured the ricin because he’s too ill to speak.
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 18:55 - Category: Renewable energy, Wind turbines ;
Texas is getting increasing amounts of power from wind. But a cold front stopped the wind, traditional power plants failed to make up the difference, and blackout nearly happened.
That’s why storage of unused power and interconnected grids of renewable energy are increasingly important. Solar can store heat in molten salt to create power at night, and wind can create hydrogen that can be stored. We will see more of this as renewables go mainstream.
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 14:45 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: California budget;
Multiple commenters on Calculated Risk created new lyrics to “Hotel California” while discussing the current disastrous budget crunches in California happening simultaneously at state, county, and local levels.
“On a dark desert highway
Cool winds through my hair
Warm smell of foreclosures
Risin’ up through the air
Up ahead in the distance
I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my wallet thin
From the capital flight …
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the Dow Jones bell
And I was thinking to myself,
’this could be Vallejo or this could be hell’
Then she gave me an SIV, and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…
Smoke and mirrors in the budget,
red ink on the books
And she said ’we are all just prisoners here, of the lies we cook’
And in the legislative chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab us with their steely knives,
And this time they might just kill the beast
Welcome to the third-world, California
T’was a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Now a sad disgrace
There’s plenty of room in the third-world, California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Goin’ chapter 9 …”
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 11:07 - Category: Credit crisis ;
The damage from the frozen auction rate security market is spreading to municipal bonds in general. Hedge funds were borrowing short-term to go long-term and now that short term money is frozen or available. Hello margin calls and forced selling, which of course just speeds up the death spiral.
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 07:44 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Steve Earle;
Steve Earle recently moved to NYC from Nashville. At the concert Thursday night, he said living there makes him feel more hopeful about the possibility for change in the country, that the Korean who runs the deli at the end of his block speaks better English than he does, Spanish too, and that this is amazing.
Livin’ in a city of immigrants
I don’t need to go travelin’
Open my door and the world walks in
Livin’ in a city of immigrantsLivin’ in a city that never sleeps
My heart keepin’ time to a thousand beats
Singin’ in languages I don’t speak
Livin’ in a city of immigrantsCity of black, city of white, city of light, city of innocents
City of sweat, city of tears, city of prayers, city of immigrantsAll of us are immigrants
Every daughter, every son
Everyone is everyone
All of us are immigrants
Everyone
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 03:45 - Category: Climate change, Renewable energy ;
Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, says biotech expert Craig Venter (who sequenced the human genome in 2001.)
He wants to create new organisms with synthetic genes that input CO2 and output methane. (The organisms would have a suicide gene so if they escaped from the lab, they couldn’t reproduce.)
He says “”We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy, we think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.”
The more ideas like this, the better. Eventually some of them will go mainstream and clean, renewable energy will then become commonplace.
Bob Morris @ Mar 1st 2008 00:15 - Category: Unfiled Tags: 4GW, Henry Okah;
Global Guerrillas has a fascinating piece on Henry Okah who apparently founded and ran a gun-running empire that also shut down and diverted huge amounts of oil in Nigeria. He ran it from South Africa, often communicating by cell phone text messages, recruiting people as needed on an ad hoc basis.
While liberation movements sometimes turn to crime to finance themselves, the liberation movement he created appears to have been a front for crime all along. Helped along of course by the wretched poverty next to overweening foreign oil company wealth in Nigeria and a notoriously corrupt government. Can’t start a fire without a spark.
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