Drill Baby Drill!
Posted 7:48 AM

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, titled "Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)."

This isn't some "liberal spin" organization. It's the DOE. The same DOE that liberals like to say is "in the pocket" of oil companies:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

And what about after 2030? How much more oil would we get?

...annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher...any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant...

Only seven percent increase after 20 years. And even in 2030, there is not significant impact on prices? Basically that's ZERO increases EVER as far as I'm concerned. Forget environmental concerns, that's just a waste of time, effort and money.

So why does McCain like to talk about it?

Because he knows that it pushes the buttons of his opponents and wins him votes so he can take your hard earned money and line the pockets of his buddies. The oil industry doesn't give a crap about offshore drilling. They know there's nothing out there. They just want a campaign issue to fight on that appeals to Americans.

And they got it. 60% of Americans, who have been tricked and duped by the McCain spin doctors think that the "offshore drilling issue" is a "significant reason" to support McCain.

You can't blame the American people. We are being LIED TO. McCain's camp has convinced us that offshore drilling is going to make a difference... while they laugh behind their backs at our ignorance. Please email the DOE link to as many people you know that think drilling is important.

Here's the DOE link again:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html

This issue is a *red herring*. And if you think it matters, you're a sucker. And your tax dollars will go to people who are laughing at you.

Labels: politics

[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Wall St. Doesn't Need Bailout
Posted 6:41 PM

After a few banks who made bad loans crumbled (after all, foreclosing isn't easy, and lenders should be more cautious), investors seemed to absorb the news by frantically selling off everything Monday (9% overall drop), and then buying up a bunch of stocks on Tuesday (MSFT up 6% for example).

So... smart investors are buying stocks whose gains aren't pinned to low-interest real-estate lending and certain commodities. Why is the U.S. government frantic to *stop* this reinvestment strategy? Are they afraid it might work?

Despite what some may think, our economy is not predicated on cheap real estate loans. If real-estate credit costs go up, there are other avenues of innovation and growth that can be banked on. The market seems to know this. It's unfortunate that our nations leaders don't.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Good Example of How Google's Broken & Some Reccomedations
Posted 9:05 AM

If I search for the Jordan Lake Music And Arts Festival, I get a bunch of people who talk about it. But nobody links directly to it. Some people *mention* the website, but everyone's policy is to link with a "nofollow" .... just to be safe.

Google's policies of punishing people for linking to each other (bad neighborhoods, etc), instead of just punishing sites that are spam (and it's obvious what they are) has gotten web developers so scared that they no longer, ever, put a straight link to another site. My dad's got written up on the front page of the WSJ and the Huffington Post and over 200 other newspapers... guess what...no improvement in search for his site. Really! Because *everyone* puts "nofollow" on links now, or they just don't put a link at all and just mention the site's name.

Who knows, Google might think it's a "paid link" (not that there's anything wrong or irrelevant with paying for links in *my* opinion).

Scaring people away from putting up links is killing Google's search.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Can We Afford Healthcare?
Posted 6:37 AM

Even a simple plan that included basic services for children and some catastrophic coverage for Americans (who take reasonable care of themselves) is going to cost us a lot.

The Republicans have spent more taxpayer dollars than any other administration in the history of this country. They bankrupted the country in a fruitless war (we didn't even get the oil, sheesh), and now Bush is pushing to spend *another trillion* rescuing the banks that went under *because of his policies*.

Even Obama can't manage to clean up the mess these guys have wrought. I feel sorry for him. He's applying for a job to be President with the hope to improve our country with green power and education. What he's getting handed is a big pile of trash to clean up... that will take him 2 full terms of fixing Bush's mistakes and no time for improving anything.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Better Idea Than a Bailout!
Posted 2:21 AM

I have a good idea that might fix the economy faster than a bailout... and it won't increase our taxes. Step 1: Find a local banks, credit unions, etc that aren't going under because they weren't engaged in sketchy loans. Step 2: Move your money and securities portfolios there.

If everyone in the country did that, then 1) the banks that engaged in bad practices would go out of business faster 2) the banks that were doing business well would stay in business, and 3) nobody would lose money except the owners and trustees of banks and loans that were sketchy in the first place.

The only issue is... how do you find a bank that has underlying stability?

Well, I can tell you a simple rule: don't put your money (especially uninsured assets like securities) in banks with "high numbers" of writedowns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writedowns_due_to_subprime_crisis

Now, a high number really depends on the cash flow of the bank (revenue or market cap are probably easier to look up, and will be a ok numbers).

Basing things on revenues is a bit hard because some companies, like Ambac and MBIA have lost so much money that you can't properly divide by a negative number. I'm butting those 2 on my "definitely will go under without government help" list.

For the rest, Countrywide, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup top the list of banks whose reported writedowns are a large percentage of my adjusted revenue/market cap numbers, followed by Washington Mutual and Wachovia. I would say the only banks in the writedown list above that look clean (writedowns are significantly low compared to overall revenue) are Goldman and JP Morgan Chase. Really, that's it.

I'm guessing Citigroup is putting the heavy political pressure on to get the bailout passed. They have the Washington connectons, and they have the girth to claim "if we go under America goes under". Well, sort of. Chase is just as big, and they don't have a tenth the billions in mortgage losses that you do Citi.

So, do we really need a bailout system? Perhaps some smaller banks who are failing due to "overall sector" failures, and not due to poor judgement and bad loans should be the first ones to get help. Citigroup should be the last on any list. Their poor judgment should result in other banks assuming their assets, not in a federal subsidy that keeps a bunch of bad money managers around to screw things up again.

My guess is though that small banks will be excluded from any help and this bill with be a "fat cats only" measure.

I really hope Obama has the foresight to vote down any bill that doesn't prioritize help for small banks and credit unions. It's kind of like the Iraq war bill that he voted against. It's an "emergency measure" declared by our creepy Republican administration that, when held to the light of scrutiny, has a rotten core.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Paradigm Shifts and Knowledge Acquisition
Posted 8:38 AM

It is my opinion that the most important things we know (knowledge) cannot be justified with easily reducible logic.

By "we", I mean myself and anyone else, including imagined entities comprised of aggregates, such as a "nation" or "Gaea" or "science".

This is not to say that they (our knowledge of this kind) are leaps of faith or irrational conclusions. Just that they are conclusions arrived at using the available evidence in a manner which is sufficiently complex enough so as to not allow for trivial inquiry. (Ask anyone in love, whether with nature, woman or god, to explain why and there are not volumes on earth to contain this revelation.)

Fortunately, there are methods of inquiry with which these conclusions can be tested, known as "experimentation" ... thus without necessitating an understanding of "why" a thing is correct, we can infer it's correctness in, at least, a broad range of circumstances.

Some would call these sorts of revelations "hypothesis", thereby implying that they require testing. Is love tested? Of course. Is it a hypotheses? Perhaps, but I think most would feel uncomfortable defining love in this way. And although it meets the criteria for a hypothesis, I think there is something more to this kind of knowledge. Something that perhaps does include a bit of faith, and a bit of emotion yet not without the temperance of reason.

Some time in the last century, mankind has "fallen out of love" with this kind of knowledge. Radical insight, love and passion have been surgically replaced, in the circles of academia and in business, with logic, organization and efficiency.

The modern replacement of the "insight & experiment" model of discovery is "proof and derivation". Whether it applies to linguistics or particle physics, this model is no substitute. Each model suffers from the others lack, and it seems to me that the balance now sits far in the field of "derivers" who are busy staring at themselves in mirrors and admiring the fractal nature of inquiry that guarantees them larger and larger budgets without need for results.

(I've run out of steam)
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Email Hack Worked in Palin's Favor
Posted 5:08 AM

Alaskan "Troopergate" investigators had discovered that Gov. Palin had been using private email accounts to ensure she wouldn't be audited or subpoenaed when doing something illegal, and were seeking a warrant for access to these accounts, which at the time of the warrant request, contained over 1000 emails. If Palin had merely deleted these accounts herself... it would be a violation of the law. But now, since the accounts were "compromised" by her 'anonymous' hacker friends, they were simply and promptly deleted by Yahoo, and we will never know what emails they originally held. She was fighting to keep those emails hidden. She even filed to have them locked up using the "executive privilege" law. Soon ater this request was denied, her account was hacked.

Whoever hacked them was probably tricked into doing it and didn't even know they were doing her a favor. And whoever hacked them *needs to come clean* about who tricked them into doing it. This message is *for you*. We cannot have someone like her even near the Whitehouse.... it's too scary.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Sara "Crazy" Palin
Posted 10:45 AM

I can't believe she actually believes that a) the world is going to end in her lifetime and that b) we should actively bring about the end of the world by attacking Russia.

We can NOT elect someone who believes these things, or someone who would even consider hiring such a nut-job as VP. The fact that McCain and her are even still polling in double-digits shows how crazy some Americans really are. Maybe it's all the lead the Chinese put in kids toys... coming back to haunt us now.

You really have to read this.

The media has to stop calling crazy people who want to blow up the planet "fundamentalists" or "Christians". There's nothing "fundamental" or "Christ-like" or even "religious" about believing that America's "biblical duty" is to start World War III by starting a war with Russia over some little mountain country (no not the state Georgia, who we would fight for...the country that most Americans couldn't find on a map).

"If you put lipstick on a violent extremist... you still get a violent extremist."
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Google is Asymptotically Approaching Evil
Posted 7:02 AM

Apparently all of my websites (even my wife's and my son's sites too) have been marked "ignored" by Google because they think (some computer program thinks) that I sell links. This includes my free hosting site, my costume company... everything. I don't sell links and never have, but Google has created a system of judgment without trial or jury. If Google thinks you sell links, they kick your site off the web and there's no one you can complain to and no formal appeals process.

Yes, it's their legal right to do this, I mean... nobody has to use Google. I can just go on trying to conduct business as a web developer without being accorded the same level of importance on their search engine as my competitors.

When you achieve a certain level of power, you also take on a certain level of responsibility and you should operate with a higher level of accountability. Surely the company with the motto "Don't be evil" can understand that?

I think once Google went public, their standards went out the window. Unfortunately, they are still the only game in town.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Ouch! Firefox 3 Doesn't Work With Gmail
Posted 5:56 PM

Despite some who claim otherwise, the new Firefox 3 just doesn't work "as well" with Gmail as Firefox 2. I get Gmail errors over and over, "Oops there's been an error... retrying". My solution so far is just to use IE for Gmail (works fine) until it's fixed, because it's not trivial to have Firefox 2 and 3 installed on the same machine.

(Turns out this is only true on my Vista machine, not my XP box)

(OK, I fixed it. How? I turned off all my addons, and then...oddly, i turned them all back on again. This helped. My guess is there must be a storage format difference or something that gets fixed when you do that.)
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]