Month: June 2008

Relax, liberals. You’ve already won

Relax, liberals. You’ve already won | Salon
No matter who prevails at the ballot box in November, John McCain or Barack Obama, the four-decade-long conservative counterrevolution is over. And the celebrating Bob Bopp sent this to our attention. Click on the link to”Salon” to read the article.

Furthermore, the demise of the counterrevolutionary right could lead to the birth of a far more formidable and competitive version of American conservatism. Liberated from its unpopular libertarian and neoconservative wings, a more populist and “Gaullist” American conservatism might emulate the successful parties of the European right that govern today in Berlin, Paris and Rome and perhaps soon in London. Progressives who demand that the American right abandon its small-government obsessions and its neoconservative foreign policy and look to Europe for models should worry that their wish will come true.

For the moment, however, the prospects for the moderate, reformist center left are better than they have been in nearly half a century. If it is hard for most conservatives to admit that they have lost, it is even harder for many liberals to admit that they have won. But sometimes history forces you to take yes for an answer.

Lexophiles’ Humour

Humour for lexophiles – Lovers of words enjoy… – on Bore Me
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis Continue reading “Lexophiles’ Humour”

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent
Proven oil reserves are likely to be far larger than reported because of the way the capacity of oilfields is estimated and how those estimates are added to form the proven reserves of a company or a country. Companies add the estimated capacity of oil fields in a simple arithmetic manner to get proven oil reserves. This gives a deliberately conservative total deemed suitable for shareholders who do not want proven reserves hyped, Dr Pike said.

However, mathematically it is more accurate to add the proven oil capacity of individual fields in a probabilistic manner based on the bell-shaped statistical curve used to estimate the proven, probable and possible reserves of each field. This way, the final capacity is typically more than twice that of simple, arithmetic addition, Dr Pike said. “The same also goes for natural gas because these fields are being estimated in much the same way. The world is understating the environmental challenge and appears unprepared for the difficult compromises that will have to be made.” Click on image to enlarge

Jeremy Leggett, author of Half Gone, a book on peak oil, is not convinced that Dr Pike is right. “The flow rates from the existing projects are the key. Capacity coming on stream falls fast beyond 2011,” Dr Leggett said. “On top of that, if the big old fields begin collapsing, the descent in supply will hit the world very hard.”

The Science of Sarcasm

Katherine P. Rankin, a Neuropsychologist, Studies Sarcasm – NYTimes.com
What you may not have realized is that perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking. Those who lose the ability, whether through a head injury or the frontotemporal dementias afflicting the patients in Dr. Rankin’s study, just do not get it when someone says during a hurricane, “Nice weather we’re having.”

“The left hemisphere does language in the narrow sense, understanding of individual words and sentences,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “But it’s now thought that the appreciation of humor and language that is not literal, puns and jokes, requires the right hemisphere.”

American farms’ answer to illegal immigration is to grow crops in Mexico

American farms’ answer to illegal immigration is to grow crops in Mexico – International Herald Tribune
Scaroni owns VegPacker, a California and Guanajuato-based company that grows lettuce, celery, cauliflower and other vegetables. VegPacker has struggled after forking out millions of dollars to launch its Mexico division two years ago.

The problem is that cheaper labor in Mexico often is offset by lower productivity and high training costs, especially when it comes to enforcing U.S. food-safety standards.

“The only thing that’s cheaper down here is diesel fuel and the labor per day,” Scaroni said. “My productivity is down 40 percent” from U.S. levels.

“I’m very concerned about the future of agriculture in the U.S.,” he added.