Archive for March 27th, 2008


Renewable energy news

Denmark has so much wind power that needs ways to offload and store the power. A utility company there plans to build a nationwide grid to use that power to charge electric cars.

SoCal Edison just announced a plan to put solar photovoltaic panels on commercial buildings throughout southern California with the eventual plan of generating enough power for 162,000 homes. The owners of the buildings will be able to buy power at a rate less than normal while the rest of it goes into the grid.

It’s amazing how fast renewable energy is going mainstream.

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Manhattan dominatrix offers discount to ex-Bear Stearns employees

Her services include:

-Domestic service training (useful in preparing for future job as a janitor at Goldman Sachs)

-Spanking combined with verbal chastising (”Caused!” -whack- “Sub-prime!” -whack- “Crisis!” -whack- “Very!” -whack- “Very!” -whack- “Naughty!” -whack whack whack-)

-78 cane strokes (number chosen to represent the difference between Bear Stearns’ $80 per share book value and the actual current share price of $2)

-Interrogation roleplay (I am Coughlin Stoia and you are Bear Stearns. Helpful in preparing for upcoming deposition)

-Master/slave roleplay (I am JP Morgan and you are Bear Stearns. Now I own you)

All of which echoes Wayne Kramer’s lyric from “Something Broken in the Promised Land“, “There’s a self improvement tape called ‘Getting Used to Poverty’”.

NYC real estate, restaurants, and upscale stores will be taking a big hit as the money spigot shuts down, what with all the coming layoffs at investment banks. Will there be a flood of new books and seminars advising people how downsizing can be fun? Possibilities include “Advantages to owning a Yugo - No one wants to steal it!,” “Accessorizing your 500 sq ft apartment,” “Adventures in Eating - Rethinking Bob’s Big Boy,” and “How to Use an ATM machine When You No Longer Have Staff to Do It For You.” (That last one is based on a true story I heard about a wealthy Wall Street type who literally did not know how to use an ATM.)

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FDIC gets ready

FDIC hires more workers, readies for bank failures.

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LA Times apologizes for linking Sean Combs to Tupac shooting

The LA Times has apologized to Sean Combs and James Rosemond after The Smoking Gun showed that documents the Times relied on were forged.

Rosemond said in a statement Wednesday that the Times article created “a potentially violent climate in the hip-hop community.” His attorney, Marc Lichtman, added: “I would suggest to Mr. Philips and his editors that they immediately print an apology and take out their checkbooks — or brace themselves for an epic lawsuit.”

Combs’ lawyer Howard Weitzman, in a letter to Times Publisher David Hiller, called the story inaccurate. He expanded an earlier demand for a retraction and said he believed that The Times’ conduct met the legal standard for “actual malice,” which would allow a public figure such as Combs to obtain damages in a libel suit.

Interesting, isn’t it, that a supposed world-class newspaper got their facts so wrong while an independent (and smallish) website did the research and digging and got the story right.

I think the only remaining question is whether the checks the LA Times signs to settle the lawsuits will have seven or eight figures in them.

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Proliferating nukes

Scan the recent posts on Idaho Samizdat and you’ll see how nuclear power is enjoying a huge renaissance worldwide, with a multitude of countries - Turkey, Japan, South Africa, Britain, the US, and more - planning to build new plants.

Why? Nuclear plants create prodigious amounts of cheap energy and emit very little carbon.

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Dean Kamen’s new water purification device


Kamen has invented numerous medical devices, the Segway, and more, and received multiple awards for doing so..

Everyone has been trying to find out more about his claim that “you stick a hose into anything that looks wet … and it comes out … as perfect distilled clean water.”

So far as I can tell however, it’s true. (Note: I still haven’t worked out if it can handle volatile organics like gasoline and benzene.)

It however can handle arsenic, poison, urine, sea water, and more. There are no filters to replace and nothing disposable, either.

Kamen says 50% of diseases are spread by unhealthy water. Once the price of this gets down to $1,000-2,000 then it can be used worldwide to prevent the spread of disease.

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