When the high price of gas starts to bother me, I try to keep things in perspective. After all, I am truly a privileged person. People are being forced to go with out electricity so that I can have gas.
You see, oil is something everyone wants, but not everybody can have. So some people Click Here to continue reading.
There has been a lot of mockery of the British military as a result of the recent performance of the British hostages in Iran. If you have read that mockery, and more importantly, if you have taken part in that mockery, you ought to read this piece by Michael Yon who rode with the British into what they knew was going to be an ambush.
For a less personal view of the battle, you can read this piece in the Telegraph.
This guy likes to play around with huge stones, and is building his own stonehenge—without modern tools! It’s not only cool to see, I think it also serves as a lesson. It may or may not be the way the stonehenge was built, but it goes to show that there are non-technological ways to do some impressive feats. All it takes is some basic knowledge of how large objects behave.
I am always being told that global warming is going to raise sea leaves and such. So you think that people living on an island would be happy to have an earthquake that rises said island up in the air by 10 feet. But no, they are crying about what a catastrophe it is (h/t Pierre Legrand).
In an instant, the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 foot).
Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.
Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.
The stench of rotting fish and other marine life stranded on the reefs when the seas receded is overwhelming and the once vibrant coral is dry and crunches underfoot.
Dazed villagers stand on the shoreline, still coming to terms with the cataclysmic shift that changed the geography of their island forever, pushing the shoreline out to sea by up to 70 metres.
Snark aside, I do feel for the actual people affected, but I think that it is cool that an earthquake can raise an entire Island by 10 feet.
The two videos shown below are meant to glorify the skill of Dick Schaffert. And we must confess that his skill can not be dismissed. But we think that the real lesson is all about how unreliable technology is when you need it. Watch the videos and make up your own mind.
Here is part one….
And here is part two…..
If all that was too confusing for you, you can read this. And from the Federation of American Scientists you can read this account of the history of Crusaders in action (including more details on Schafferts fight).
Or rather, a complimentary list:
*They don’t melt.
*When you leave them in a pot, they don’t get hot and burn your fingers when you come back.
*If you drop them in the gravy by accident, they float.
*They don’t get bent out of shape when you apply stern pressure.
*When you lick the chocolate pudding off of them, it reminds you of eating a fudgsicle.
They are nice in every way. So why, why, why are they so hard to find? I especially like the “paddles”. The closest I’ve been able to find are bamboo utensils, but those are usually meant for “stir-frys” and are huge and unweildly.
Bah, humbug.
Dr. Bob writes poetry as well as prose, and he does disgustingly well at both. The poem that he posted today seems like the appropriate counterpoint to the lost soul documented in the essay of the week.
An opinion piece in the New York Times by Austan Goolsbee has rallied various free market types to the defense of sup prime lenders. It is strange to see the New York Times rallying free market types. But I suppose they could not break the mold completely because the Dr. Goolsbee piece was very poorly reasoned.
Dr. Goolsbee piece was so poorly reasoned that the Ape Man was going to write a rant about it. But it is time to go to press and Ape Man is still not done, so we shall have to link to Tanta having her say on the issue instead.
This week’ss essay is written by Vanderleun. It is a well written human interest story about a lost soul. We think that lost souls are an appropriate thing to be thinking about on Easter.
From the Telegraph comes a quote from the British Health Secretary. She is speaking about the female British solder that Iran captured….
“It was deplorable,” pronounced our tight-lipped Health Secretary, “that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.”