David Roberts at Grist places the blame on the Senate’s failure to pass climate legislation not on environmentalists, but on the broken political situation in the Senate itself: But step back for a moment and think about it. Climate and clean energy are incredibly difficult issues for any number of reasons. Yet environmentalists pulled together a huge coalition of businesses, religious groups, military groups, unions, and social justice groups. They got a majority of U.S. citizens on their side, as polls repeatedly showed. And — here’s the kicker — on the back of all that work, they...
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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s from Paul \”The Little Professor\” Krugman, who in his column,...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Friday, 30 July 2010
Good morning, everybody. Ellen\’s leaving American Idol, and Diddy wants in. Now, your morning constitutional: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are meeting in Beirut to work together to help stabilize Lebanon if a UN tribunal indicts members of the Hezbollah movement for the killing of Rafik Hariri. Republicans succeeded in filibustering a Senate bill that would create a $30B fund for small business lending. July has been the deadliest month for American troops since the beginning of the war nine years ago. Economic growth in the U.S. slowed to 2.4% in the...
Continue reading...Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), or Welcome to the "No-Spin Zone"
Filed under “Science is freaking crazy.” Witold Fraczek from Esri ran some models using ArcGIS on an interesting—but unlikely—question: What would happen if the world actually stopped turning? The answer is actually rather fascinating: If earth ceased rotating about its axis but continued revolving around the sun and its axis of rotation maintained the same inclination, the length of a year would remain the same, but a day would last as long as a year. In this fictitious scenario, the sequential disappearance of centrifugal force would cause a catastrophic change in climate and disastrous geologic adjustments (expressed...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
Have you ever before encountered a poem with a camel in it? I hadn’t. Man and Camel by Mark Strand On the eve of my fortieth birthday I sat on the porch having a smoke when out of the blue a man and a camel happened by. Neither uttered a sound at first, but as they drifted up the street and out of town the two of them began to sing. Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me— the words were indistinct and the tune too ornamental to recall. Into the desert they went...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, who in his...
Continue reading...The "news-and-information conveyor belt"
Mark Halperin, in his latest piece in Time, compares the “news” media coverage of O.J. Simpson (really) and the recent Shirley Sherrod ordeal, and actually comes out of it with a good point: Just as there was something intrinsically interesting about one of America’s best-known and best-liked athletes being charged with a brutal double murder, the craven sacking of Sherrod contained some elements that are undeniably compelling. And both stories involved racial elements that increased their news velocity. But the coverage of both sagas — Simpson’s, literally, for years; Sherrod’s for the better part of a week...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Good morning, folks. Spain\’s finally getting their own version of The Golden Girls. Now, your morning constitutional: No matter who wins, whether it be Republican U.S. Representative Mary Fallin or Democratic Lieutenant Governor Jari Askins, Oklahoma is virtually assured of electing its first woman governor in November. Interestingly enough, Oklahoma ranks 49th in percentage of women in their state legislature; South Carolina, which ranks 50th, may also elect its first woman governor (Nikki Haley). The oil spill in the Gulf seems to be clearing faster than anticipated, but of course, concerns about unseen effects remain. A study...
Continue reading..."Joe the Plummer" likes underdogs
Don’t tell Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher this, but the horse he’s betting on is down 62-13 according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His horse would be state lawmaker Chuck Purgason (no, not Turd Ferguson, sadly), and the race is the August 3 Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat from Missouri. The odds-on favorite horse in this race is Rep. Roy Blunt (no, not Roy Blount Jr., sadly), who, based on the context, I guess is a “politician like Obama.”
Continue reading...What's Next for Touchdown Jesus
As you’ll recall, last month a 62-foot statue of Jesus burned down after a lightning strike. It happens that this monstrosity is right along the highway I take from the airport when I visit my family in Ohio, so I got to see the skeletal remains of TD Jesus when I was there last week. I was curious about the church’s plans– perhaps after the fire, they’d had an epiphany that there are more worthy uses of $250,000 than reconstructing hideous flammable statuary? Ha! Of course not. Pastor Darlene Bishop brushed off such suggestions, saying that Solid...
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