California Dreaming

http://tinyurl.com/272bj4q




California is trying to service obligations and a population in fiscal year 2011, with a workforce last seen in the year 2000. That is grim.

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California government: Brown wants to complete budget agreement in 60 days - latimes.com:  

California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer

'So far, I've heard good ideas about how to spend more money. Great. It ain't there. It's time to make cuts, I believe deep cuts,' Lockyer said. 'I'd do the 25% across the board and just say those who wanted less government, you're going to get your wish.'

On the other hand

In 1952, Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was

asked about his position on whiskey. Here’s how he answered:

If you mean whiskey, the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that

defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea,

literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink

that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious

living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and

hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the

elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in

their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas

cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a

frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget

life’s great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of

which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides

tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully

aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community

colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it. This

is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.

|| Dummy Text Generator | Lorem ipsum for webdesigners ||

|| Dummy Text Generator | Lorem ipsum for webdesigners ||: "Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar."

Seth’s blog » Blog Archive » Chinese Economics Joke

Seth’s blog 

Person A to Person B: “See that piece of shit? If you eat it I’ll give you 100 million yuan.”

Person B eats the shit.

But Person A doesn’t want to give him 100 million yuan. He says to Person B: “How about I eat shit too? Then we’ll be even.”

Person B agrees.

Person A eats some shit. “Now we’re even,” he says.

They have just increased GDP by 200 million yuan.

TSA is still fighting hard see you naked, but ....

http://tinyurl.com/28rly57: "But even more scary than that is the article notes that the TSA admits that it's really bad at finding weapons, saying that the 'failure rate' of tests is reaching 70% at some major airports and at some airports 'every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners.' So, while scanners are looking at or touching your crotch, they're apparently not bothering to look for guns. Comforting."

theory ages badly.

When a theory of aging ages badly.- PubMed result:
Lapointe J, Hekimi S.

Department of Biology, McGill University
According to the widely acknowledged mitochondrial free radical theory of aging (MFRTA), the macromolecular damage that results from the production of toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) during cellular respiration is the cause of aging. However, although it is clear that oxidative damage increases during aging, the fundamental question regarding whether mitochondrial oxidative stress is in any way causal to the aging process remains unresolved. An increasing number of studies on long-lived vertebrate species, mutants and transgenic animals have seriously challenged the pervasive MFRTA.

Neighbors

A Russian peasant's cow died suddenly  The great spirit came down from heaven and granted the peasant one wish in compensation.  The peasant said, "Let my neighbors cow die too."

Coffins Go High-Tech

Coffins Go High-Tech With Touchscreens For Full Customization

Must be grim work, assembling coffins in a factory that churns out 1,100 daily. That's a lot of dead bodies.Batesville Casket Company, in Manchester, Tennessee, offers touchscreen computers to customers for choosing from 22 colors, plus all the trimmings.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture: "Google Maps Foreclosure Listings

1. Punch in any US address into Google Maps.

2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select “More”)

3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for “Real Estate.”

4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select “Show Options”)

5. Check the box marked “Foreclosure.”"

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

"When asked how certain he was that QE2 would work, Bernanke replied: '100%!'

Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind:

'When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever say he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.'"

New NASA model: Doubled CO2 means just 1.64°C warming • The Register

NASA says that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.

According to Lahouari Bounoua of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), existing models fail to accurately include the effects of rising CO2 levels on green plants. As green plants breathe in CO2 in the process of photosynthesis – they also release oxygen, the only reason that there is any in the air for us to breathe – more carbon dioxide has important effects on them."

Did Bernanke Pull a Fast One Last Night?

"The fact is that the Fed is buying something quite tangible – Treasury securities – with something that they create with the simple press of a key and, while this may not have been such a big deal over the many decades that it took to buy the first $800 billion in U.S. debt, the thought of continuing to do this to raise their total holdings to over $3 trillion in a stretch of a little over two years is what really has people freaked out."


http://goo.gl/pnDXg

The Government's Extralegal Pursuit Of Wikileaks Is A Blow To Democracy

"The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us “You went after Wikileaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.”"

http://goo.gl/SX1XT

Massive war rodents 'like to lick your finger'

US ARMY prepares force of GIGANTIC BOMB RATS
Massive war rodents 'like to lick your finger'
By Lewis Page
Posted in Science, 25th November 2010 11:08 GMT

US military combat rodent operations, Pentagon considering deployment of crack units composed of highly trained, enormous bomb rats .
The rats in question - African Giant Pouched Rats- are highly trained to sniff out explosives. They have an advantage over the sniffer dogs sometimes employed on such tasks as, typically weighing less, they aren't as prone to set off mines and booby traps as they work.

I'll just confuse them.

Eisenhower knew he had to say something ..., but he meant to convey as little as possible. His press conferences, notorious for obfuscation and mangled syntax, were not so artless .... his Press Secretary James Hagerty asked what he would say about the sticky Formosa Straits issue. Eisenhower: "Don't worry, Jim. If tha...t question comes up I'll just confuse them.

Christmas Tradition

“The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.” John Cleese