Ranting and Roaring

Nothing is worse that an elite that demands egalitarianism for others but ensures privilege for itself.

cf. Al Gore flying around in his private jet; London's congestion tax.

Well, there you go:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
Boston
The Midland
The West
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The South
"http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have">What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Watch the Penn & Teller Video.

Andy Ihnatko says "avoid the loony Zune":

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."

Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?

Then go ahead and buy a Zune. You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Take the Zune's one unique and potentially ginchy feature: Wi-Fi. You see this printed on the box and you immediately think "Cool. So I can sync files from my desktop library without having to plug in a USB cable, right? Maybe even download new content directly to the device from the Internet?"

Typical, selfish user: How does your convenience help make money for Universal? No wonder Doug despises you.

No, the Zune's sole wireless feature is "squirting" — I know, I know, it's Microsoft's term, not mine — music and pictures to any other Zune device within direct Wi-Fi range. Even if the track is inherently free (like a podcast) the Zune wraps it in a DRM scheme that causes the track to self-destruct after three days or three plays, whichever comes first.

After that, it's nothing more than a bookmark for purchasing the track in the Zune Marketplace. It amounts to nothing more than free advertising.

Invest in anything that produces energy:

Nocera calculates that if 9 billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans do today that the world would have to generate 102.2 TW of power—more than seven times current production. If people adopted the energy lifestyle of Western Europe, power production would need to rise to 45.5 terawatts. On the other hand if the world's 9 billion in 2050 adopted India's current living standards, the world would need to produce only 4 TW of power. Nocera suggests, assuming heroic conservation measures that would enable affluent American lifestyles, that "conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28-35 TW in 2050."  This means that the world will need an additional 15-22 TW of energy over the current base of 13.5 TW.

 

So where will the extra energy come from? Relying on figures from the World Energy Assessment by the United Nations Development Program, Nocera looks at the maximum amounts of power that various non-fossil fuel sources might supply. Biomass could supply 7-10 TW of energy, but that is the equivalent of harvesting all current crops solely for energy. Nuclear could produce 8 TW which implies building 8000 new reactors over the 45 years at a rate of one new plant every two days. Wind would generate 2.1 TW if every site on the globe with class 3 winds or greater were occupied with windmills. Winds at a class 3 site blow at 11.5 miles per hour at 33 feet above the ground. And hydro-power could produce 0.7-2 TW if dams were placed on every untapped river on the earth. Nocera concludes, "The message is clear. The additional energy we need in 2050 over the current 13.5 TW base, is simply not attainable from long discussed sources—the global appetite for energy is simply too great."

Lileks on Edwards:

Young Master Jack needs better manners. It's possible the kid didn't have access to a Bruno Magli outlet store, and his folks shopped at Wal-Mart because it fit their budget — in which case being lectured by the scion of a millionaire trial lawyer is a little like scolding classmates for drinking Tang instead of having Alfred hand-squeeze a dozen Valencias

Further details here (via Kathy).

Alice Miules in The Times is saying that the UK Olympics have all gone to hell (and that the UK should pull out):

Yesterday Ms Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and political leader of the Games, admitted that costs for the Olympic park had risen 40 per cent in a year. It will now cost not the £2.375 billion of public money she promised last year that she was applying “absolute rigour” to, but £3.3 billion of public money. Then there is another £1.044 billion for regenerating the East End. London Assembly members, who meet today to discuss the Olympics budget, think it may cost £8 billion or more in the end.

Take a figure . . . double it . . . add whatever you like. Which part of the extra costs were not predictable when the bid was submitted in October 2004? A spiralling security budget, more than quadrupled now to £850 million? Did the bid team really need to wait for 7/7 to realise that an Olympics in London in 2012 would be under particular threat from Islamist terrorism? Or was it the increasing cost of land in the East End that took them by surprise, from a predicted £478 million to £1 billion and rising? I wonder who it was who failed to predict that landowners would make sure they squeezed as much as they could from a Government that had no choice but to buy their land, and fast. “We have also adjusted the transport figure to put it in 2012 figures,” Ms Jowell blithely added yesterday. Well, what figures was it in before? And who drew them up? Ah, yes. Tessa Jowell.

I was so happy when Vancouver got the Winter Olympics, knowing that this would scuttle Toronto's chances for quite some time.

Mike has a lengthy post about Al Gore and Global Warming. Of particular interest is this paragraph:

We learned this lesson again the hard way in the US when we were warned that the levees were about to break in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina and those warnings were ignored. Later, a bipartisan group of members of Congress, chaired by Representative Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, said in an official report: "The White House failed to act on the massive amounts of information at its disposal."

This bipartisan group added that a "blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision-making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina's horror".

Actually, the White House was warned that the levees were going to overtop, not break. This is the difference between putting too much water in the bathtub (a few wet towels) and having the bottom falling out of it (tens of thousands of dollars of damage); a person incapable of grasping the difference should probably refrain from lecturing the world on scientific consensus. Like the the melting glaciers of Kilimanjaro (which attempts to pin on C02 an effect that was happening long before), drowning polar bears, melting glaciers and so forth, note the bait and switch to try to sell the unsellable. If there was a strong, or even defensible, case for AGW there'd be no for Gore and his flock of AGW Hysterics to do this.

Neat, but:

• judging by the lineups, Asians in Toronto live lonely empty sex-free lives
• a PS3 can really take a beating — that's a damned sledgehammer (the wii, not so much)

• "Social justice" is "the endless concoction by incompetent people of unworkable solutions to imaginary problems"
• The Globe & Mail has just hired a new editor. Do you agree with this decision…?

Michael Ignatieff certainly wants to offer himself as a clear alternative to Stephen Harper, with Canada offered fully supine to our betters:

Liberal leadership contender Michael Ignatieff blasted Stephen Harper Thursday, criticizing the prime minister for engaging in "megaphone diplomacy" on his foreign policy stance toward China

"Mr. Harper, I think, believes you can go to one of the greatest civilizations on earth, a superpower of the 21st century and give them a little lecture on human rights," Ignatieff told CBC News.

[...]  Ignatieff said the best way for Canada to raise those concerns is to get in a room with the Chinese president and say "here are the files, here are the issues where we have specific disagreements with you; how can we work to get these things resolved?"

[...] "But the right way to do that is to lower the megaphone, lower the volume, get into rooms, stand up for our values quietly."

Sad. If Canada was only 10,000 people living in sod huts, I'd still consider ourselves a superior civilization to one that chops up its citizens to sell for spare parts. I'm not a progressive though.

Little Tobacco:

Should this surprise you?: Hollywood is one of California's top air polluters:

Big-budget special effects and disposable sets help make Hollywood one of California's top air polluters, pumping out 127,000 tonnes of ozone and diesel emissions a year, a study found.

[...] The institute found that the industry emits 127,000 tonnes of ozone and diesel particulate pollutant emissions from idling trucks, generators, special-effect fires and earthquakes, and the demolition of sets with dynamite and other methods.

Hollywood produced more pollution than four other industries: aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing, the study found.

Defining the problem is for our betters to do; being forced to be part of the solution is for the little people.

Iain Murry (late of The Edge of England's Sword) writes about America's coming power crunch:

The ERO projects that U.S. demand will increase by 141,000 megawatts (MW) over the next 10 years. Supply, however, will increase by only 57,000 MW, and that assumes that all currently proposed new facilities are approved and built.

[...] One key problem is the sheer difficulty in building new power plants in America today. Politically powerful green lobby groups object to the building of any new plant that does not use some form of renewable energy, yet renewable energy cannot meet demand for power on its own.

[...] This is why the ERO has recommended a series of reforms. Foremost among these is the removal of regulatory barriers to the building of new infrastructure. Power plants and transmission lines need to be built urgently; measures that facilitate green obstructionism must be repealed. Without this new capacity, the power supply system will fail.

Let us be clear about what that would mean. The electric power supply will be interrupted when it cannot meet demand. Lights will go out. Offices will cease to function. People will freeze or swelter. Elderly people will die. If sustained, this situation will severely damage the economy. Jobs will be lost. Health will suffer. The poor will get poorer. Flows of money from America to the developing world will shrink.

[...] It is a moral imperative to keep the power flowing. If our forefathers a century ago had worried about the side effects of using all that energy and set in place restrictions to stop it, millions — no, billions — would have suffered as a result.

Denied the technological advances that energy use enabled, we would live shorter lives and be doomed to labor — a poorer life in every sense. We should be thankful our ancestors chose not to legislate in our interests.

I always though there was a wonderful opportunity for the Maritime Provinces — particularly New Brunswick — to built power plants, oil refineries, etc. that rich Americans are afraid to build.

In the meantime, Dullard Dalton's plans to shut down parts of Ontario's power grids have shifted back from 2007 to 2014.

Seeing what an exceptionally clear night it was, Trinity-Anne and I went to the back porch, turned off all the lights and lay down under a big blanket and watched the stars. Due to the time of year, time of day, the position of our house and city lights (and perhaps lack of knowledge on my part) the only consellations we could make out at first were Cassiopeia and the Great Square of Pegasus. When our eyes adjusted, we also saw Delphinus. The highlight of the night (and the main reason for lying out there) was to look for satellites; we saw one going north to south speeding across the sky. Very very cool.

Apparently there's also a Comet Swan hanging about, but I could make no sign of it.

I've posted a brief review and comments last night about Enterprise 2.0 Camp 2 over on my technical blog.

Christopher Hitchens says the election results are "unanalyzable". Sorry, but in the words of South Park, You Got F'd in the A.

That's it, I'm moving to Canada!

Thanks to Flea for reminding us of this, but remember that this election is an even numbered year so Democrats vote on Wednesday.

Your boy is going to hang.

Here's a few photos from the other night. Alas, some of my favorite shots never worked out, but there's always next year!

Toronto is not going to get the 2015 World Expo:

Toronto's bid for the 2015 World Expo is dead.

Mayor David Miller said early Thursday afternoon that Toronto will not be submitting a bid for the six-month world's fair.

"It slipped through the premier's fingers," said Coun. Brian Ashton. "There's no doubt in my mind that in the months to come what he will suddenly realize what he lost."

Note the weasel-like shifting of blame to someone else. Even the Greatest Mayor in the History of the Universe^® (i.e. Toronto) gets in on the act:

Miller had declared the bid dead once before — last Tuesday — when he pointedly blamed both governments.

Cities are about competently delivering core services, not about mega-project ribbon cutting.

BTW: this is pretty well what I'm believing, but Cristos, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Update: VDH:

How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth, lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education.

[...] The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.

 

Coyne:

The predictable attempt to elevate this into an attack on all women, or indeed to portray any criticism of a female politician as sexist slander, is gender-baiting, pure and simple. So perhaps it's best to have this out now. Either female politicians are the equals of their male counterparts, able to dish it out and take it, or they are not. But let's stop pretending that Sheila Copps or Carolyn Parrish or Alexa McDonough or Deb Grey — or Belinda Stronach — are some sort of hothouse flowers, who can be trusted to battle terrorists and murderers but swoon at a little rough language.

The NDP are all over this, of course:

Judy Wasylycia-Leis, another New Democrat MP, said Spector's comments were an affront to not only Stronach, but to women throughout Canada.

"What he has done is absolutely unforgivable," she said.

"It hurts women everywhere, and there is no place for that kind of language and that kind of attitude in our society today."

You ignorant little privledged though-police commie bitch. Why don't you set an example by having the NDP dismiss who has used the phrase "testosterone poisoning" and deratives?

Chair Force Engineer (via Simberg, who says the current plans the results of the elected self-styled space engineers in Congress):

NASA's "shuttle derived" fraud is slowly revealing itself for what it is: an expensive make-work program that isn't really shuttle derived at all. It's a mostly-new SRB, mostly-new J-2 engine, new launch pads and support structures, and three all-new rocket stages: the 5m upper stage for Ares I and both liquid-fueled stages of Ares V.

Now there are a maverick group of NASA engineers who are advocating something I pushed for a few months ago; something that maximizes commonality with the shuttle program. The plan is being referred to as "Direct Launcher." The 8.38 meter tank, SRB's, pads and service towers are all being reused from the shuttle program under the "direct launcher" proposal. And because the crew and cargo launchers are so similar to each other, the program's operational cost is expected to be under $2 bil per year. The current baseline of Ares I and V will be similar to the shuttle program's current $3 bil per year.

Here's some sample missions and configurations, if you like looking at pretty but theoretical pictures. I believe that the real future of space has to lie in production lines rolling off vehicles, whether it's private or government operations, but most likely both. That's the way expensive equipment becomes affordable.