“Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture.”
— Alan Watts
The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed two dust disks circling the nearby star Beta Pictoris. The images confirm a decade of speculation that a warp in the young star’s dust disk may actually be a second inclined disk, which is evidence for the possibility of at least one Jupiter-size planet orbiting the star. Beta Pictoris is located 63 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor. Although the star is much younger than the Sun, it is twice as massive and nine times more luminous.
The dense mesquite-covered mid-section of Texas could provide fuel for about 400 small ethanol plants, according to one Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researcher.
Researchers have discovered that merely putting a photo of a pair of watching eyes near an honor-system payment box nearly triples the amount of money put in the box. Besides affecting your office coffeepot payments, this research may result in a second look at research on human altruism, as people may have behaved altruistically because they believed they were being watched.
UPS drivers in Detroit will be testing new hybrid delivery trucks developed by the U.S. EPA, which the agency claims will boost fuel efficiency up to 70 percent in stop-and-go traffic. The “hydraulic hybrid” trucks — also intriguing to the Army and FedEx — sport low-emission diesel engines and store braking energy not in a battery, but in a hydraulic system. A hydraulic hybrid will save about 1,000 gallons of fuel a year compared to a typical UPS truck. If the trucks are mass-produced, the new hybrid technology will add $7,000 to their cost, but could save companies as much as $50,000 over a delivery truck’s 10- to 20-year lifetime.
Portabella and crimini mushrooms rank with carrots, green beans, red peppers and broccoli as good sources of dietary antioxidants, researchers have found.
Senator Domenici has proposed that the government to store civilian nuclear waste for up to 25 years at federal sites across the country, under a proposal in the Senate to deal with growing volumes of used reactor fuel at power plants. Currently there are more than 50,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste in form of spent reactor fuel rods at nuclear power plants in 31 states. The government under contracts is obligated to take the waste off the utilities’ hands, but has not done so because it has no place to put it, pending completion of the Yucca facility slated for 2018. The proposal is likely to be controversial because it would give the DOE authority to build a waste facility within a state even if a state or local authorities objected.
Truthout has a translation of a story from the French paper Le Monde on oceanic acidification from carbon dioxide, one of those quietly developing crises we tend to forget about. Worth a read.
Speeches planned by the premier of Nova Scotia and his energy minister for later this week have fueled speculation that EnCana Corp.’s long-stalled Deep Panuke natural gas project may be revived. The Deep Panuke field, located offshore 155 miles southeast of Halifax, contains an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Meanwhile, in China, the chase is on after a different energy source: China’s state-owned rocket maker and its Spanish partner are churning out wind turbines from a plant north of Shanghai, in a bid to reduce imports of wind turbines, address domestic needs, and develop another potential product for export.
MMMmmm, mushrooms. I learned from my Polish Grandpa how to pick “perpinki”, or “little brown mushrooms” in the woods of Pa. (I’m sure the Polish version is spelled wrong… not enough consonants) When we were first married, my husband would never touch the mushrooms until he watched me for a few hours. If I lived, he’d eat the mushrooms. So I’d stuff every last mushroom down on purpose. Cured him of THAT little habit.
Ethanol, wind turbines, hybrid vehichles; I bet that we’ll continue to see small enterpreneurs leading the way long before big energy lifts a finger to go in that direction. In a country with responsible leadership we’d see billions going towards research/development as well as incentives for everyone from big business to individual homeowners to go with alternative renewable energy.
Link
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) – A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory – a find archaeologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.
The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.
On the shortest day of the year – Dec. 21 – the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.
“It is this block’s alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory,” said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute. “We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture.”
Regarding the flag amendment:
Link
Has she been spending too much time with Lieberman?
Oh my.
Well I sure am glad the flag is safe. Perhaps she could turn her attention to, you know, human beings in need of some protection?
Ah fuck it. Way too many things wrong with that paragraph. I’m going back to bed.
Ah, if I could only sleep ’til ’08.
Actually, even Lieberman voted against this one. She has more than enough of her own problems. This has been a pet project for years now. & I’m sure she’ll be flying the ole red white ‘n blue from her Pacific Heights war-profit mansion this Fourth of July.
Here are the other ‘patriotic’ dems:
Democrats who voted for the amendment:
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Dayton (D-MN)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Why doesn’t he just go Nighthorse Campbell on us and get it fucking over with!
I just want you to know that I will NEVER EVER forget that you troll rated me for no reason and deleted something from my post without the decency of a comment. Baby.
It was probably an inappropriate way of showing displeasure at a “joke” relying on an ethnic stereotype as I was hurrying out of the house. On reflection, i could have ignored it. My apologies. If that makes it an unforgettable crime in your mind, so be it.
(I don’t understand the “deleted something from your post” remark. I can’t even correct or remove my own typos, which you may have noticed are legion.)
From CNET News:
Adobe Systems on Wednesday plans to release upgrades to its Flash Player software and Flex development tool for building Web applications.
Flash Player 9 for Windows and Macintosh, available as a free download, has been rewritten to improve the performance and “expressiveness,” or interactivity, of Flash applications, said Sydney Sloan, group product marketing manager of Adobe’s enterprise and developer business.
Sloan said Adobe will release a Linux version of Flash Player 9 but didn’t specify a date.
In tandem with the Flash Player 9 release, Adobe is making its Flex 2 product line available, including a free, entry-level Flex 2 Software Development Kit meant to encourage development of more Flash applications.
What this means:
I’ve never done much with Flash — I haven’t really seen a need for it. I guess it’s okay…but in moderation, please…
Maybe someone with better knowledge can clue me in…
Republican leaders in Congress decide to focus on what’s REALLY IMPORTANT: guns, abortion, gays and flag burning.
No link, just snark.
I honestly don’t know why anyone here on Bootrib would give a troll rating without even half a word of explanation. Maybe someone pissed in your cheerios today. Maybe you’re Mullah Omar, I don’t know. Perhaps you follow Islam and are a bit defensive. Maybe you’re a republican troll. I don’t know. You see, here at Bootrib we don’t fling ratings, we DISCUSS. So, seeing as I only have your troll ratings and nothing else to respond to, here’s my response to you: BITE ME.
What the hell ?????
Have a 4. I thought we DISCUSSED things here.
The picture above was of three Taliban gentlemen… it’s been removed. If it was removed by Booman, he would have emailed me first, so the obvious choice of what happened was that Arcturus, who troll rated this and the following comment of mine without comment, took it upon him/herself to delete it somehow. Now if a picture of the Taliban offends someone, I’d LOVE to know why. Look, I’m not going to make a big fat hairy Taliban type deal over this. I do admit that the deleting of that picture just pissed me right the fuck off. I could keep posting it, but why play games with an asshole troll?
Have another 4.
Where the fuck did that image go?
It was good. I hope Arcturus has a good explanation for the 2 troll-ratings for Nag. Unbecoming, in my opinion.
Turning to the U.N., Again
(But only when convenient.)
can’t get you out of it…..you try to put out a few feelers for a sugar daddy! I’m sure that George is familiar with the “Sugar Daddy” solution, but I’m not sure that he ever thought he would be needing one. It super sucks too that there is only one potential Daddy out there who may be able to get him out of this jam! If he thought the New York Times has violated his personal boundaries and exposed his vulnerabilities he hasn’t experienced anything yet.