There’s much better reasons not to drink Coors than the politics of the founder, as far as I’m concerned–and if your hands are warming up your beer………
Well, then you’re not drinking nearly fast enough.
Archive for July 12th, 2006
Because I spent an hour playing with it; a chart of Iraqi Oil Production in thousands of barrels a day since January, 2002, taken from data available here and here. The big dip is the American invasion in 2003, obviously.
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The data seems pretty much in line with the statement here by the Iraqi Oil minister, who plans to have production up to 4,300 thousand barrels a day, about the same production level as Iran, over the next 4 years. That goal should be easier to reach once the northern pipeline to Turkey becomes more reliable
Regular insurgent bombings of the crucial northern export pipeline have idled it for all but a few brief periods since the war began.
Iraq resumed crude oil exports from the Turkish Mediterranean port last week after a suspension of almost a year. Since then, Baghdad has sold 8.6 million barrels of crude in its first three tenders, boosting overall exports for June to around 1.66 million barrels a day.
Iraq’s May exports stood at around 1.5 million barrels per day.
Interesting that the Wapo’s May numbers differ from those of the EIA. I wonder where they came from. In the blog world, something like that pretty much has to be documented with a link. As far as I’m concerned, almost every assertion of fact should be backed up with a link. In the world of Wapo and Co. very few ever are.
Heatseek. For the missile in your pants.
Someone covered up a billboard on La Branch at Winbern with a poster featuring a picture of Jesus Christ holding a Budweiser can. The company that leases the billboard believes vandals made the poster at home and then pasted it on top of the ad that’s supposed to be there. It shows Jesus holding a Budweiser in between the phrases “Jesus, King of Jews” and “Jesus, King of Beers.”
Rubber sidewalks go where concrete fears to tread - Yahoo! News
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. - Every fall, Richard Valeriano spends all day, every day, staring at sidewalks that have been busted and broken by tree roots.
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But the idea to build sidewalks of rubber didn’t come to Mr. Valeriano during the day. It came to him at night – in a dream. “I went home and the image was lodged in my subconscious,” says the senior public works inspector for Santa Monica, Calif. “But in my dream, the sidewalks were moving. They were twisting and turning like waves on the ocean.”
Although making sidewalks out of rubber seemed “kind of preposterous,” Valeriano acted on the idea in 1998. Thanks to some partnerships and public grants, his rubber reveries are now very much a reality. Some 130,000 square feet of rubberized sidewalks grace about 60 North American cities, giving local governments an alternative to concrete and its attendant pitfalls, such as rising prices, exorbitant trip-and-fall lawsuits, and a trail of chopped-down urban trees.
“In the early days, whenever you’d say that to someone, they’d just burst out laughing,” says Lindsay Smith of her company, Rubbersidewalks Inc., which she founded in 2001 with inspiration from Valeriano’s vision. “There would be disbelief at first, because we think of sidewalks as synonymous with concrete.”
I link this mainly because I’m an urban runner. Most of the time I’m relegated to running on concrete but I run on asphalt if I have a choice. Asphalt is comparatively much easier on the hips, knees and ankles. Cinder tracks are even easier. There is certainly a palpable difference. I can only imagine rubber sidewalks would be at least comparable to cinder tracks and I’d love Greensboro to replace their miles of concrete sidewalks with something a little more comfortable.
Maybe I can pitch them the savings on medical care. Replacements joints can be so expensive.
Online Venture Seeks To Elevate the Debate
Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd, who were senior advisers in President Bush’s last two campaigns, are joining forces with Joe Lockhart, who served as a spokesman for President Bill Clinton, and Carter Eskew, a top strategist in Al Gore’s presidential campaign, in creating what they have dubbed HotSoup.com.
“There is nobody who knows how broken the system is more than us. . . . Everyone in the room could say they contributed to the polarization,” Lockhart said.
“The perceived polarization that exists in this country today is not a good thing,” said Dowd, adding that people are tired of watching “food fight” debates on television.
One thing I’ve viewed with more and more distaste in recent months is the increasing venom cast by right-wingers at left-wing “moonbats” and by left-wingers at right-wing “nutjobs”. You can hardly debate any issue without it boiling down to the right-wing blaming the left and the left-wing blaming the right. I swear I read someone blame the Mumbai bombings yesterday on George Bush and today the Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiller is calling for the lynching of Supreme Court justices. I can’t find the first link and won’t lend credence to the second by giving it a link.
People have stopped debating ideas and have simply resorted to calling the other side names. It seems the more you froth at the mouth and rail against the other side, the more popular you are with your own, for lack of a better word, constituents.
I have little hope that HotSoup.com can really raise the level of discourse in our increasingly assinine society, but it can’t hurt. The one thing this country needs is a strong independent, moderate movement.
BBC SPORT | Other Sport… | Cycling | Mercado wins but Dessel in yellow
The main overall contenders are expected to start making a move in Thursday’s 11th stage - a tortuous 206.5 kms from Tarbes featuring five climbs, including the last ascent to the finish at the summit of the Plat-de-Beret.
Stage 10 of the Tour didn’t see a Discovery lead attack after all. Team manager Johan Bruyneel talked it up before the stage began but his team didn’t follow through. He was probably just jockeying for verbal strategic position.
Come tomorrow, however, Discovery better do something. The end of today’s stage finds DSC rider Paolo Salvoldelli five minutes, fifty-five seconds behind new Tour leader Cyril Dessel. American and DSC teammate George Hincapie is a further twenty seconds adrift. That’s a lot of time to make up.
Of course, it can be done. Dessel and stage-winner Juan Miguel Mercado put seven minutes and twenty-three seconds into the peloton today. At one point, they led the peloton by about eleven minutes. T-Mobile led the peloton in its chase, but they didn’t seem too motivated to protect the yellow jersey that was up until today worn by Serhiy Honchar. It was only in the last twenty kilometers that the peloton picked up speed.
I guess the race favorites weren’t too worried about losing significant time to Dessel and Mercado. Dessel started the day in 28th place overall and Mercado was way back in 66th. Hopefully this won’t prove to be an unfortunate miscalculation on the part of hopefuls like Floyd Landis, Andreas Kloden and George Hincapie. I guess tomorrow will show whether Dessel and AG2R can defend the yellow jersey or not. Dessel climbed well today but may not have anything left in the tank for tomorrow. The Tour has been so upside-down this year that I don’t know what to expect any more.
I look forward to watching today’s stage on OLN when I get home from class late tonight. Tomorrow’s shoud be exciting too. Thankfully, OLN rebroadcasts the stage several times a day. I wish I could watch it live or even listen to it online, but I cannot find the broadcast for the life of me. Waiting for slow text updates on OLN’s website or at ESPN or on VeloNews.com is killing me!
Moosehead Beer. So good, you forget where your mouth is.
Photo via this story. Happy Birthday, Alverta.
More on Beer and other testosterone-based activites at FDS.
News-Record.com - Greensboro, North Carolina: News: Officials take tax-backed cruise
“It was a good time,” said Rep. Marian McLawhorn, D-Pitt. She took her husband and five other family members. “I don’t know why they invited us. I guess it was to show us about the cultural resources of the state.”
The Raw Story | Video: 50 year study says conservatives ‘followers’
I ran into a massive study that has really been going on 50 years now by academics. They’ve never really shared this with the general public. It’s a remarkable analysis of the authoritarian personality. Both those who are inclined to follow leaders and those who jump in front and want to be the leaders. It was not the opinion of social scientists. It was information they drew by questioning large numbers of people — hundreds of thousands of people — in anonymous testing where [the subjects] conceded their innermost feelings and reactions to things. And it came out that most of these people were pre-qualified to be conservatives and this, did indeed, fit with the authoritarian personality.