21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: True Love: It Begins In The Mirror.
Archive for 2012
June 30, 2012
BOY, WHO SAW THIS ONE COMING? Another subsidized solar company craters. “Abound Solar, a Loveland, Colorado-based maker of thin-film cadmium telluride solar modules has announced it will file for bankruptcy protection and suspend its operation. It’s the latest failure of an energy company that had received funding under the Department of Energy’s loan program.”
TEST-DRIVING THE 2013 Honda Fit EV. “The Fit EV proves that there is room for a fun-to-drive electric vehicle that doesn’t cost as much as a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. And its range of 82 miles and 118 mpge fuel economy beats its competitors. The fact that this is a only a lease program for the 2013 and 2014 model years leads us to imagine that perhaps an even more powerful and efficient version will be right around the corner, especially as the gas Fit is due to be redesigned soon. Perhaps we’ll see an all-new Fit, Fit Hybrid, and Fit EV. That’s a lineup that looks awfully smart to us.”
A NEW MAC OSX VIRUS, which appears to originate in China.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: DO CANADIANS EVER THREATEN TO MOVE TO THE UNITED STATES? “Not really. They just move here.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Grants, Loans Fuel Higher Education Bubble. “Students are paying less and less of direct college costs, relying more on government grants and loans. That has encouraged universities to jack up tuition expenses, fueling a vicious circle reminiscent of the housing bubble. U.S. universities charged students $190 billion in 2001-02 for tuition, fees, room and board and more, according to data from Sallie Mae. By 2010-11 that had more than doubled to $410 billion. Even after adjusting for inflation, student charges shot up 72%.”
Say, did I mention I’ve got a book out on this subject?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Are You In Love or Lust? Depends on Which Part of the Brain Is Activated. “Two parts of the brain, the insula and the striatum, are responsible for tracking the way in which sexual desire develops into feelings of love, researchers said. Lust triggers parts of the brain that control pleasurable feelings, associated with sex and food, but love triggers parts of the brain associated with habits.”
JIM LINDGREN & ROSS STOLZENBERG: Retirement and Death in Office of U.S. Supreme Court Justices. “Computing robust standard errors with adjustments for clustering by justice, we find that the odds that a justice will retire (or resign or take senior status) in the first two years of the term of a president of the same political party as the president who first appointed him to the Court are about 2.6 times the odds of retiring under a president of the opposing party in the last two years of his presidential term.”
CLAYTON CRAMER: Violence Policy Center’s Concealed Carry Killers: Less than it Appears. Do not trust content from Violence Policy Center.
More here.
TWITTER FEED OF THE DAY: 50 Sheds Of Grey. It’s about sheds.
THE PROBLEM IS, THE WAY WE DID IT PROVIDED INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: US Carbon Output Forecasts Shrink Again.
Much to the surprise (and, one suspects, the chagrin) of the deranged doomsaying wing of the environmental movement, new forecasts of US CO2 emission are out and they point to an even steeper drop than the last set of predictions.
No cap and trade, no huge new taxes on oil, no draconian driver restrictions, no air conditioning bans, no rationing — and the US is on track to cut its CO2 emissions 17 percent below the 2005 levels by 2020 — and to keep cutting our emissions levels beyond that.
And this news doesn’t come from embattled climate skeptics banished to the fringes of the scientific community; these numbers come from the Obama administration and are sitting right up on Don Lashof’s well respected blog at the National Resource Defense Council website. Take a look for yourselves.
So, to summarize, the United States of America basically blew the global greens off completely, trampling all over their carbon tax and cap and trade agendas, and earning wails and shrieks of hatred at the Rio+20 Summit — while making huge strides toward reducing CO2 emission levels.
It’s almost as if there is no connection between the green policy agenda and environmental progress.
Next you’ll be telling me that Solyndra was a scam.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: EPA official who quit over ‘crucify’ remarks hired by green group. Revolving doors and mutual back-scratching.
MOVIES & TV: New Stuff on Blu-Ray.
BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Fast and Furious: Follow The Ideology.
ZIMMERMAN’S ATTORNEY: Trayvon Martin killed ‘because of his own doing.’
THE SUPREME COURT SAYS “YOU LIE:” White House Already Denying That Mandate Is A Tax. If you deny that it’s a tax, you admit that it’s unconstitutional. . . .
ECO-HYPOCRISY from Nanny Bloomberg.
A POSSIBLE NEW LOGO FOR THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN — artwork by Zombie.
RIC LOCKE SAYS THANK YOU: “My normal response to donations is to reply to each one with a ‘thank you’. In this case, that won’t be very practical — several thousand such replies would be necessary, and having to wade through them one at a time (the only way I can do it with my email program) would sort of cancel the good effects.”
IS THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE A “TAX” UNDER THE ORIGINAL MEANING?