Books, movies, politics, and whatever I want

Clean Energy and plenty of it

April 22, 2009 – 09:10 | by Mark Urbin

Here is my special Lenin’s Birthday post.

If you want clean, “Carbon Neutral” electrical energy, and plenty of it, to power enough electric & plug in hybrid vehicles to tell the House of Saud they can drink their oil, then you need to follow the advice of Dr. Pournelle.

I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore thinks it is the ecologically sound thing to do.

I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.

the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually — the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.

Supporting the use of Nuclear Power in the United States is the Green thing to do.

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BHO’s slap in the face to America

April 21, 2009 – 10:36 | by Mark Urbin

Hundreds of thousands of Americans protested against massive government spending and the crushing federal debt, and our Dear Leader responded by getting his entire cabinet to cut about half of what BHO spend on his inauguration.

Let’s put this in perspective. This is the equivalent of a family with an annual income of $60,000 cutting $6 out of their budget.

The Spin Meter points out a few examples of just how small the President’s gesture is:

$100 million amounts to:

–Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

–Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

–7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

–1/10,000th of the government’s operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Oh, and if you thought he was asking for new cuts, guess again.

Many of the savings he asked them to achieve are already under way and are included in the calculation.

So what we have is an empty promise and a massive government spending spree, unparalleled in American History, and a crushing debt our grandchildren will still be paying off.

Is this the “Hope & Change” you were expecting?

Update: While our Dear Leader makes empty gestures at “cutting costs”, he’s printing up more money to spend outside the US. In this case $100 Billion for the International Monetary Fund. You remember the IMF, that’s the organization that reimbursed tax cheat and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner for taxes he never planned on paying.

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Monday Book Pick: The Mote in God’s Eye

April 20, 2009 – 14:54 | by Mark Urbin

The Mote in God’s Eye by Dr. Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven

One of the classics of modern SciFi, vetted by the Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein prior to publishng. A brilliant first contact novel set in the Second Empire of Man.

Monday Book Pick Archive.

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More Tea Party photos

April 20, 2009 – 09:54 | by Mark Urbin

Not mine, but from a Tea Party in Southern California.

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About that Global Warming Thing

April 19, 2009 – 10:44 | by Mark Urbin

AGW Cultists will tell you that the ice caps are melting/shrinking. Too bad actual real science shows the opposite.

Australia Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

“Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally,” Allison said.

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia’s Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Center shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

A national Rasmussen poll shows that less Americans are buying to Al Gore’s scam to line is pockets.

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity,

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.
These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

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Delusional and a liar.

April 18, 2009 – 09:10 | by Mark Urbin

Extreme far hard left extremist kook Garofalo is not only spouting race based hate on MSNBC (the self-proclaimed “Obama network”), she is also stupid enough to flat out lie about verifiable facts. The Radio Equalizer checks the facts on her statements about her actions on the set of 24. The site quotes from an email from Rush Limbaugh, whom Garofalo claims she snubbed when he visited the set.

“The last time I visited the set of 24, Garofalo had not been hired to appear in the series. She was not there, she was not a member of the cast the last time I visited. I wouldn’t have wanted to meet her anyway.”

Given Garofalo’s history of not coming anywhere near the truth on just about anything, she doesn’t have much credibility on this, or any other topic.

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Prof. Reynolds was right

April 17, 2009 – 17:14 | by Mark Urbin

Back on June 7, 2008, law professor Glenn Reynolds (better known as Instapundit) posted the following:

I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism.

Well folks, as it has been shown before, he was bloody well right.
The extremist far left has their spokeskook, Garofalo, on MSNBC with Olbermann spouting their nonsense.

The rational thought content in her rant is stuck at zero. This is pure leftism, no logic, no facts, just raw hate.

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Friday B-Movie Pick: L.A. Confidential

April 17, 2009 – 14:16 | by Mark Urbin

L.A. Confidential

Keeping on the film noir trend, comes this classic from 1997. A great cast, a gripping story and look into the dark steamy side of beautiful, sunny, southern California. Kim Basinger won an Oscar for her role in this film. Other cast members includes: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, and James Cromwell. Cromwell shows his range in this role. His other work has included Star Trek films and the “Revenge of the Nerds” films. Part the films depth is watching the growth of the characters played by Crowe, Pearce and Spacey. In all, it’s a dark, well made film that tells its story through complex characters.

The Friday B-Movie Archive.

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Translating Obamaspeak

April 17, 2009 – 13:37 | by Mark Urbin

As a public service, I’m providing translations for some of our Dear Leader‘s “code words” into English.

“Overseas Contingency Operations” is Obamaspeak for the Global War on Islamofascism.

“Man-caused disasters” is Obamaspeak for Islamic Terrorism.

“Secretary of the Treasury” is Obamaspeak for Tax Cheat.

“Rightwing Extremist” is Obamaspeak for Veterans of the United States Military

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Amazon pokes associates in the eye

April 16, 2009 – 14:31 | by admin

Amazon has a nice program going for years, called the Associate program. Associates link to Amazon from their websites for books, music, table saws, etc., and if someone uses that link to buy the item, the associate gets a referral fee. It’s a small fee, we’re talking pennies from a new paperback sale, but it adds up and a lot of Associates get their referral fee in Amazon gift certificates, so the money gets poured back into Amazon.

Recently, Amazon changed it’s policy on Kindle ebook referrals. The associates don’t make any referral fee at all. Nix, nada, nothing.

Thanks Amazon, at least you could have bought the associates dinner and couple of drinks first.

The book I was going to buy as an ebook from Amazon is now a sale going to go to my local brick & mortar bookstore as a dead tree version.

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