Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

On the road again - Ms. Rachel Veitch

Meet Ms. Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Florida. She knows how to take care of an automobile.
From the Detroit News:

557,000 miles on her Chariot
Sweet old Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Fla., could be the ruination of the automobile industry. But at least she's cute.

When GrowingBolder.com first interviewed her, she was 89 years old and had 540,000 miles on her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente. Now she's 90, still packing a sharp tongue and a stubby pistol, and the odometer has clicked past 557,000.

Unlike her three husbands, Veitch says, the Mercury has “never lied to me, never cheated on me, and I can always depend on her.”

Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty. She's had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.

“She's demonstrating the perfect way to take care of a car,” says Mike Hardie, director of global quality and productivity for Ford Motor Co., and that's what makes her a menace.

“If everyone did that,” he says, “we'd never sell another one, so don't spread it around too far.”

Hat tip to Miss Celania writing at Neatorama for the link to this great story.

On the road again - our elected representatives

Our representatives sure love spending our money don't they.

The latest from The Wall Street Journal:

Congress's Travel Tab Swells
Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

A reason why:

Lawmakers say that the trips are a good use of government funds because they allow members of Congress and their staff members to learn more about the world, inspect U.S. assets abroad and forge better working relationships with each other. The travel, for example, includes official visits to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How about just picking up the phone for a change instead of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.

And some of the costs incurred:

Congressional Fleet
The congressional trips are possible thanks in part to an unlimited fund created by a three-decade old law. Nearly two dozen government officials work full-time organizing the trips. Much of the costs are not made public, including the cost of flying on government jets. The Air Force maintains a fleet of 16 passenger planes for use by lawmakers.

Documents obtained by the Journal show that the cost of flying a small group of lawmakers to the Middle East is about $150,000. Larger trips on the Air Force's version of the Boeing 757 cost about $12,000 an hour. Two federal agencies pay for most of the travel — the Defense Department and the State Department.

I am reminded of this great quote:

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
—Benjamin Franklin

Remember, it is our tax dollars that these people are spending…

Nice job if you can get it

Wow! Talk about supreme Geek Fu!
From The Salt Lake Tribune:

Spies like us: NSA to build huge facility in Utah
Hoping to protect its top-secret operations by decentralizing its massive computer hubs, the National Security Agency will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah's Camp Williams.

The years-in-the-making project, which may cost billions over time, got a $181 million start last week when President Obama signed a war spending bill in which Congress agreed to pay for primary construction, power access and security infrastructure. The enormous building, which will have a footprint about three times the size of the Utah State Capitol building, will be constructed on a 200-acre site near the Utah National Guard facility's runway.

Congressional records show that initial construction — which may begin this year — will include tens of millions in electrical work and utility construction, a $9.3 million vehicle inspection facility, and $6.8 million in perimeter security fencing. The budget also allots $6.5 million for the relocation of an existing access road, communications building and training area.

Officials familiar with the project say it may bring as many as 1,200 high-tech jobs to Camp Williams, which borders Salt Lake, Utah and Tooele counties.

It will also require at least 65 megawatts of power — about the same amount used by every home in Salt Lake City combined. A separate power substation will have to be built at Camp Williams to sustain that demand, said Col. Scott Olson, the Utah National Guard's legislative liaison.

Emphasis mine. Talk about serious computer power!
A bit more:

The NSA's heavily automated computerized operations have for years been based at Fort Meade, Maryland, but the agency began looking to decentralize its efforts following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Propelling that desire was the insatiable energy appetite of the agency's computers. In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA — Baltimore Gas & Electric's biggest customer — had maxed out the local grid and could not bring online several supercomputers it needed to expand its operations.

I would love to spend six months there just wandering around finding what people were doing. This is an amazing collection of computer power.

Psssst - hey buddy Want to buy some assets?

Highly toxic assets that is. From Bloomberg:

GM Plans ‘Garage Sale’ for Toxic Plants, Golf Course
As General Motors Corp. prepares to sell its best assets to a streamlined new entity, the worst of what it owns will be auctioned off in bankruptcy court, including contaminated factory sites, parking lots in Flint, Michigan, and a nine-hole golf course in New Jersey.

One property the carmaker is ditching is a foundry in Massena, New York, bordered on the east by the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation and on the north by the St. Lawrence River. Built to make aluminum cylinder heads for the Chevrolet Corvair in the 1950s, it generated PCB sludge and waste from hydraulic fluids.

“It was created by GM dumping hazardous waste on the banks of the river, such that the waste oozed into the water and the land,” said John Privitera, a lawyer for the tribe at McNamee Lochner Titus & Williams PC in Albany, New York. “It was picked up by animals and moved up the food chain through fish and into Mohawk women — into their breast milk, into their babies.”

The largest U.S. automaker, following its smaller rival Chrysler LLC, is using the bankruptcy process to spin off a new entity with reduced costs and debt while leaving the old GM with unwanted property and obligations to creditors, dealers, retirees, accident victims and environmental agencies.

The discarded assets will be all that creditors have to satisfy their claims as GM starts to unwind liabilities of $172.8 billion — more than twice its reported assets.

So rather than clean up these sites, they just let them sit fallow.

I am wondering if they had asked for and received any money to clean them up at an earlier time and if so, where did it go.

More on the Massena area from the EPA and General Motors specifically from Silo Breaker.

Sick fucks…

Wishing everyone a fantastic Independence Day (a day early)

Saw this over at the Instadude's site and had to share:

I wish…

Interesting news - Sarah Palin resigns

From CBS News:

Sarah Palin To Resign As Alaska Governor
At Hastily Convened Press Conference Says She Will Not Run for 2nd Term, Mum On Future Plans

Sarah Palin has announced that she will resign as governor of Alaska and will not seek a second term.

CBS Affiliate KTVA reports that at a press conference this morning Palin said she will resign the governorship within a few weeks.

CBSNews.com producer Scott Conroy, who covered Palin's vice presidential campaign last year, confirmed through a source close to the governor said she is leaving office.

Earlier today, a holiday, Palin sent out an early morning press release indicating that she would be making an announcement from her home in Wasilla.

Joining Palin were her parents, family and state commissioners.

Palin said that power will be transferred to Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, who will be sworn in during the upcoming governor's picnic in Fairbanks.

She did not field questions, and would not give any indications about her future plans.

I hope that she and her family are all right. It is a bit early to start campaigning for 2012.

How Germany sees us

Hat tip to Rachel Lucas for this link to Der Spiegel and to Chancellor Angela Merkel's view of the Obama Presidency:

Chancellor Merkel Visits the Debt President
The occupant of the White House may have changed recently. But the amount of ill-advised ideology coming from Washington has remained constant. Obama's list of economic errors is long — and continues to grow.

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis — and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price — and that price might be America's position as a global power.

A bit more:

Obama's Cheney
Obama's Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama's senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers' self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.

The crisis, Summers intoned last week at a conference of Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society in Washington, was caused by too much confidence, too much credit and too many debts. It was hard not to nod along in agreement.

But then Summers added that the way to bring about an end to the crisis was — more confidence, more credit and more debt. And the nodding stopped. Experts and non-experts alike were perplexed. Even in an interview following the presentation, Summers was unable to supply an adequate explanation for how a crisis caused by frivolous lending was going to be solved through yet more frivolity.

Rachel also linked to this article:

Merkel Faces Difficult Talks in Washington
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is traveling to Washington this week to discuss the financial crisis and climate change with US President Barack Obama — two issues where Germany and the US are deeply divided. In the new world order, Europe is looking increasingly irrelevant for the US.

And a bit more:

As it is, the US president in person is by no means the charming and smiling character many have come to expect from his television appearances. He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”

Our supreme leader indeed…

The question now is how many years will it take to undo the harm he has caused when he gets booted out of office in 2012.

Barney Frank - always classy

The sooner this odious little turd is out of power, the better. The man is a craven idiot.

From John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Quick, Spend the Money Before the Taxpayers Find Out!
Byron York catches Barney Frank with his hand in the till. The issue is TARP: recall that the banks that received TARP money are supposed to repay it to the Treasury, along with dividend payments. President Obama has held out hope that the taxpayers may, in the end, make money on the TARP program. Recall, too, that TARP was billed as an extraordinary response to an unacceptable risk—that the nation's financial system might come crashing down. So the federal government bailed out the banks, but the banks were supposed to repay the money and the TARP statute provides that when the money is repaid, it “shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.” Which, of course, benefits the taxpayers who put up the money.

The greedy Congressman Frank apparently can't bear the idea of taxpayers getting their money back, so he has proposed to divert the money to a more politically appealing purpose. York explains:

Now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the “TARP for Main Street Act of 2009,” a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats. …

The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program “shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.”

But now Frank wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the “TARP for Main Street” proposal would take $1 billion “from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under…the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called “neighborhood stabilization” fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The “TARP for Main Street” bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to “stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure.”

So TARP would be transmuted into another slush fund for pet Democratic Party projects and constituencies. Phone or email your Congressman and Senators.

These people are supposed to be representing us.

Instead, they spend their time playing with our money in their own private sandbox, isolated from their constituants.

This kind of naked power grab is obscene and makes the United States look bad to other Nations.

A serious WTF moment - END22

This is an egregious power grab — no wonder Obama is so supportive of the Honduran president who tried (and failed so far) to end the restriction on term limits.

President for life Barack Hussein Obama? Not if I have anything to say about it…

From the END22 website:

REPEAL THE 22ND AMENDMENT
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the United States four times. FDR died early in his fourth term after serving three full, successful terms. It was his leadership that brought our great country out of Economic Crisis and War.

Congress passed the 22nd Amendment on March 21, 1947 to limit future Presidents to two terms and took the choice out of the hands of the American People, where it belongs.

History has no way of determining what would have happened to the United States if Roosevelt had been limited to two terms and had been unable to lead us out of the Great Depression and through World War II. With our current crisis, the American People need to take back their right to elect the leader of their choice. The task is too large and the risk is too great - we must act now!

The hyperbolic emphases are all theirs.

What a steaming pile of crap: “lead us out of the Great Depression” Roosevelt prolonged the depression with the same kind of spending on make-work projects idiocy that Obama is trying today. I must note that the WPA did some wonderful work on the National Parks and the dam and hydro systems are still running fine. Do we see Obama doing anything there? No.

It was only the entry of the United States into World War II that the factories started getting real jobs and the Federal monies started to pay for those salaries that the economy started to turn around.

As a War leader, Roosevelt was basically ineffectual; fortunately, he knew this and he became the go-between between the Military and the general public — fireside chats and all that. People like Patton, Eisenhower, Groves — they are the ones who won the War.

There is no information as to who is behind this — the about page has the following:

Launched on January 20, 2009, the day of Barack Obama's first inauguration, END22.com was founded by a group of ordinary Americans: Democrats, Republicans and Independents, who found common ground in their belief that the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is unnecessarily restrictive and takes away the basic right that we may select the person of our choice to lead us.

It will be interesting to do a little digging…

A walk down memory lane

I have done photography for forty years at least — still have both of my Nikon F2 bodies and all the lenses. They work great on my D1X and my D90 (love that camera!).

For six years, I owned a copy and print shop in Seattle. I had been interested in Graphic Arts and typesetting most of my life so this seemed like a good idea and it was — made some decent money.

I still have a lot of the smaller pieces of equipment (dearly regret selling my stat camera though).

If you are into Graphic Arts, check out this wonderful Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies.

Click on each thumbnail for a larger image and an explanation.

Here is their photo for the Agfa Repromaster (the one I had was made by the same company, just a few models lower down — I didn't need the auto exposure stuff…)

Helen Thomas at the White House

I was going to comment about how she put Robert Gibbs in his place but Vanderleun does so in his usual superlative style. A wonderful read.

Mr. Pecksniff Meets the Press
Peck·sniff·i·an adj. Hypocritically benevolent; sanctimonious.

Is it my imagination or is Robert Gibbs now so out-front arrogant and condescending that even the whores of the White House Press Corps are beginning to feel insulted every time he opens his mouth?

More and more Gibbs, as can certainly be seen here, is proving to be the very model of that modern Obama apparatchik; a model updated for our era into the very glass and form of a Little Hitler reigning secure in the White House Dwarf Cavern.

We all know the contemporary type of “Little Hitlers.” We meet them whenever we have to interact with people whose positions do not rest upon doing a good job but upon pleasing some master above them. Most often we see them in Government bureaucracies where rules are not announced to you until you break them. At which point you are instructed, in the patient smarmy tones reserved for pre-schoolers, to “fill out the proper form” or “obtain the proper documents,” and then come back to wait in the longer line in the next building.

Wonderful stuff — this is only the briefest of excerpts. Go and Read.

It's down, it's up - what is happening?

From the Mackinac Center for Public Policy comes this exploration of the water level of the Great Lakes:

Great Lakes Water Levels Are Up: Must be Global Cooling
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports that Great Lakes water levels are up from this time a year ago. Lakes Michigan and Huron are up 12 inches, Lake Superior 2 inches and Lake Erie 5 inches while Lake Ontario is unchanged. Even Lake St. Clair is up 9 inches. Erie and Ontario (and St. Clair) are between 2 and 6 inches above long-term monthly averages for June. Superior, Michigan and Huron are only 6 to 7 inches below long-term averages for June. While this change in the water levels is pronounced, it is not unusual. The Great Lakes have a history of considerable fluctuation in water levels.

During the last 10 years, water levels in the Great Lakes have been below long-term averages. For 30 years prior to that the levels were above average. In fact, historical water level data indicates there is no normal water level for the Great Lakes. A normal water level and an average water level are not the same thing.

The press has been quick to report on lower-than-average Great Lakes levels over the last decade. Many of the articles quote environmental and other groups predicting the dire consequences of global warming's influence. “Warming saps Great Lakes: Water levels could take big drop as Earth gets hotter” is the headline of an article that appeared April 7, 2007, in The Detroit News. In the article, Scudder Mackey of Canada's University of Windsor predicts that in a worst case scenario, Lake St. Clair's shoreline could recede by as much as 3.5 miles. In the same article George Kling, a University of Michigan ecologist, suggests that within 30 years summers in Michigan are likely to feel more like those in Kentucky today and that by the end of the century, summer weather will resemble Arkansas and northern Mississippi.

Take note of the line: “The press has been quick to report on lower-than-average Great Lakes levels over the last decade” Ten years ago was 1999. In 1998, the sun's output started declining.

There had been a 30 year upward trend of global temperatures but this stopped in 1998. We had about five years of no increase and then, the last five-six years, the overall temperature has been going down. All the while, the sun is being very very quiet. Temperatures on Mars are down as well as evidenced by the increased extent of the polar ice caps.

Who do you believe — a politician with an agenda to promote or a scientist or professional actively working their field?

Green jobs - been tried in Spain, didn't work

From George Will writing at the Charlotte Observer:

Green jobs carry high price
The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating “green jobs” in “alternative energy” even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent – more than double the European Union average – partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending – no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources – on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies – wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation – sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency – of capital.

The idea is noble. The rhetoric is mellifluent. The models say great things.

The only problem is that it flat does not work. The model is bogus and the numbers simply do not pencil out. It happened in Spain, it will happen here too.

Nuclear power now.

People unclear on the concept - Anthony Beninati

Talk about trying to sue your way out of being an idiot.
From Lowering the Bar:

Court: Man Burned at Burning Man Assumed Risk of Being Burned by Burning Man
On June 30, the California Court of Appeal held that a man who was burned by the huge bonfire that ends the Burning Man festival each year could not sue the festival organizers. Anthony Beninati admitted he had intentionally walked into the fire, and that he had previously known fire was hot. But he argued, basically, that the organizers were negligent because they should not have let him approach the fire so closely.

He did not win.

The defendants argued the lawsuit was barred by the doctrine of “primary assumption of the risk.” This doctrine bars negligence claims by someone who was hurt while participating in an activity “involving an inherent risk of injury to voluntary participants . . ., where the risk cannot be eliminated without altering the fundamental nature of the activity.” To date, California courts have applied this only if the activity is a sport of some kind, although a couple of cases have stretched that definition a bit (unless you think “recreational dancing” and being pulled behind a boat on an inner tube are “sports”).

Generally, walking into a bonfire is not considered a “sport,” so this case squarely presented the question whether the doctrine should apply to anything else. The court held that, at least on these facts, it did.

But… but… the fire huuurrrt me!

Deserves what he got. No mention if recreational drugs were involved.

Just Wow!

The show was just wonderful — I was a fan of Shawn Colvin when she first started recording and her voice has gotten a lot more powerful with more depth behind it. The three-part harmony was ethereal.

They played a solid two hours and came back for a couple of encores.

There were a few tickets available at the gate but these quickly sold out.
The Zoo now has a new and much larger stage so the lighting and PA is now up to commercial venue standards.

No posting today - down to Seattle

Heading down to Seattle for one of these concerts: Zoo Tunes

Specifically:

With the “Three Girls and Their Buddy” tour, seminal singer-songwriters Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller share the stage to trade music and stories spanning decades of performing experience and musical history. With dozens of albums and Grammy awards between them, these rock and folk fixtures join together to explore the intimate relationships among their musical genres and styles.

Sigh — I know, life can be rough at times…

People unclear on the concept - bidding at an Auction

I love going to auctions but I make sure to do my homework first and to drop out when the bidding gets into cloud cuckoo land.

Witness (or is that witless) this poor schlub bidding $760.00 on a clapped out 40 year old South Bend engine lathe.

The bid:

The Lathe:

The Location:

This was once a nice lathe — probably purchased sometime in the late 1960's to mid 1970's judging from the magnetic motor switch. South Bend made really nice equipment. I have a much older South Bend lathe that I bought off some guy who was cleaning out his grandfather's house. Still had the old manuals and tooling and it was in pristine condition — the old guy knew how to work it. One of the best $1,200 I ever spent…

This poor unit spent the last 40 years under the tender ministrations of teenagers in shop classes. No tooling visible, one chuck but no indication as to the runout or condition of the ways. And some poor fool thinks that it is worth $760.

As an example, $1,500 gets you this fine unit from Grizzly:

Really similar capacity (11” swing and 26” length v/s 12” swing and 24” length), brand new with free shipping (USA only), good guarantee and it comes with a couple of chucks, some tooling, a faceplate and it basically ready to roll whereas the poor South Bend will require several hundred hours (if there is any damage to the ways) and at least a bearing replacement to bring up to snuff…

If I saw this at an auction, I would drop out right around $150 at the maximum.

Caveat Emptor.

A little ditty for our times

Swiped from Denny

A scientific debate with an environmentalist

A wonderful explanation of how Green's debate over at The Daily Bayonet:

So SUE Me
The debate is over, the science is settled.

How often have radical greens repeated those phrases in an effort to shield their global warming hoax from the inconvenient truth that there is no global warming? Well we won’t be hearing those tired old phrases much longer, because there is a new explanation greens can use when faced with inconvenient truths.

I call it the SUE defense, the Shut-Up Explanation. Here’s a quick and dirty example of how it works:

Skeptic – “There has been no global warming since 1998.”
Green – “Shut up!”

See how effective it is? It’s brilliant. In fact, it’s so easy to use that there have been two high profile cases of the new Shut Up Explanation in the news already.

Exhibit One: The recent EPA action to bury an internal study that found CO2 has no impact on climate. Really? How interesting. Shut Up!

Exhibit Two: The fate of Mitchell Taylor, a scientist who has studied polar bears for 30 years and who says that the number of bears are increasing or stable, not decreasing as the WWF and scaredy-greens claim. His views won’t be presented at the upcoming Copenhagen conference because, well, Shut Up!

Occasionally the fervent green activist will come across a person who does not immediately fold at the Shut Up Explanation. In which case greens are authorized to escalate to DefCon Eleventy and accuse them of treason. Here’s a snippet from the Alarmist’s Handbook:

Use of excessive exclamation points is approved when calling for the death, execution, incarceration or public flogging of stubborn skeptics, for appropriate usage please apply the Romm standard.

Clearly skeptics need new tactics to deal with the devastating new argument, I’ll have to bring it up at the next vast right-wing conspiracy meeting.

What they said.

DaveH — who doesn't shut up very well…

Blogroll update

Deleted a few links that I no longer visit regularly. Added some new ones.

If you were a fan of Gary Larsen's The Far Side comics, be sure to check out The Argyle Sweater.

Going Vegan? Watch these restaurants

An interesting report from Vegan blog QuarryGirl:

Operation Pancake: Undercover investigation of LA vegan restaurants
Is your vegan food really vegan? We pull out all the stops to test 17 LA area vegan restaurants for non-vegan ingredients, and to find out why seven of them failed miserably.

From Pure Luck to Green Leaves, Vegan House to Vegan Plate and Rosemead to Taipei we pull back the covers on the seedy world of vegan restaurants, and an international supply chain that pumps eggs and milk into our supposedly vegan food on a daily basis.

Surely, a vegan restaurant is safe to eat at if I’m a vegan?
Really? Regular readers of quarrygirl.com will recall us publishing an email and photos from “Mr. Wishbone” detailing the contents of a dumpster at LA Vegan Thai with non-vegan ingredients plainly visible, and presumably used as ingredients in the food (pancakes in this case).

After we published Mr. Wishbone’s findings, several people wrote in with stories about potentially non-vegan ingredients being sighted in vegan restaurants, and one particular thread on the quarrums “Vegan Dirt” began to get rather busy, with accusations flying here and there about shrimp paste being spotted in some restaurants, and “vegan cheese” that looked and tasted exactly like dairy-based cheese being served in others.

And The Plan:

The Plan
During the meeting, Mr. Wishbone outlined an ambitious plan that would enable us to test for common non-vegan ingredients (eggs, casein [a component of milk], and shellfish) in a multitude of menu items from local vegan restaurants. The plan would be a logistical, financial and time-sucking nightmare but, if done properly, and to scientific testing standards, it would be a ground-breaking and highly reliable indicator of just how “pure” food from vegan restaurants really is.

The technique:

The testing kits that Mr. Wishbone was to obtain could positively identify three common non-vegan allergens (hen’s egg, milk protein (casein), shell-fish), and were highly sensitive (down to parts per million, which explains our intense focus on process and hygiene), so we targeted food items that contained vegan “cheese”, vegan “fish” (including shellfish and non-shellfish), creamy sauces, breads and stuff that had an expanded, sweet, crispy or bubbly texture (often created using eggs as binders in the cooking process).

Of 17 restaurants tested, ten came back clean, some of them came back with overload ratings (higher than high). A lot of the raw materials are imported from Taiwan so mislabeling is a big issue. Still, casein based cheese (as noted in the article) behaves completely differently from Vegan cheese that it is odd that the chefs at these restaurants would not have noticed the difference. For someone with food allergies, this is a sobering read…

Michael Jackson's Patent

Michael Jackson was the owner of US Patent #5,255,452

Method and Means for Creating Anti-Gravity Illusion.

Cap and Trade bill to cut our dependence on foreign oil

You got it the wrong way around if you believe that steaming load.
From Bloomberg:

Big Oil’s Answer to Carbon Law May Be Fuel Imports
America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports.

Under the Waxman-Markey climate bill that may be voted on today by the U.S. House, refiners would have to buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter, which ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Jim Mulva said would create a competitive imbalance.

“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,” Mulva said in a June 16 interview in Detroit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips has the second-largest U.S. refining capacity.

The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obama’s goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.

We have two refineries here which are big drivers of the economy. A lot of people live in towns like ours and drive 40 miles to the refinery to work. A local community college has an excellent welding program and graduates get excellent job offers from the refinery. If the refinery closes, there will be a lot of ancillary jobs that will be lost.

The politicians do not know what they are doing — they are so out of touch with reality it makes my eyes bleed…

Timmy's is becoming Canadian

Whenever I go up into Canada, there seems to be a Tim Horton's on every streetcorner. Decent coffee, good food, great donuts. A Canadian institution…

Actually no, they are a spin-off from Wendy's.

But they are reorganizing as a Canadian company.

Feeling confused — check out this story from the CBC:

Tim Hortons to register as Canadian firm
Tim Hortons Inc., the coffee chain with an image as Canadian as hockey and maple syrup, said Monday it plans to change its registration to become a Canadian company.

The company said it has filed a plan with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to become a subsidiary of a firm incorporated in Canada. Tim Hortons is currently the subsidiary of a U.S. firm, after being spun off by former owner Wendy's International in 2006.

The management and board of directors of Tim Hortons said the move would boost the company's position to take advantage of lower Canadian tax rates commencing in the year after the change is made.

“The company currently earns the substantial majority of its income in Canada,” Tim Hortons said, owing to the fact that it has 2,930 outlets in Canada and 527 in the United States.

Some of the stores share a building with a Wendy's — this explains a lot…

Typical Seattle

Talk about being an idiot — from The Seattle Times:

Seattle man sues city to stop fireworks show at Gas Works Park
The city should conduct a thorough environmental review before letting thousands of people watch fireworks from the partially remediated toxic waste site that is Gas Works Park, an environmental activist says.

A Lake City man has sued to stop Fourth of July events at the park at the north end of Lake Union until the state shows that gathering to watch fireworks there is safe for viewers, the park and surrounding wildlife.

Benjamin Schroeter, who is not an attorney, filed the suit, arguing that the city failed to conduct a review in accordance with the State Environmental Policy Act before permitting the annual event.

But city officials maintain that the fireworks display, a once-a-year civic event, is exactly what the state had in mind when it exempted certain activities from environmental review requirements.

And the city already places conditions on the event's private contractor so it doesn't do anything to release any contamination during the Independence Day celebration, Christopher Williams, deputy superintendent of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

Talk about causing a waste of time and money during a time when budgets are hurting. Schroeter needs to go back on his meds or something…

DOH! Why don't they do this here...

From CNN/Tech:

Europe getting a universal cell-phone charger
(CNN) — The frantic hunt for the right cell-phone charger will soon be a thing of the past — in Europe at least — as major manufacturers on Monday agreed to introduce a universal adaptor within six months.

Most cell phones currently rely on different chargers, causing mountains of waste electronics.

Industry leaders, including Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, have struck a deal with the European Union to introduce the one-size-fits-all charger by January 1, 2010, offering a solution to one of modern life's chief frustrations.

As the number of cell phones has exploded over the past few years, so have the number of chargers — generating mountains of waste technology as users change or upgrade handsets.

Now the cell phone industry has agreed to standardize its chargers, making all handsets compatible with a micro-USB plug already standard on handsets such BlackBerrys.

This will be a breath of fresh air. There are several people that drive the store van and most of their cellphones have a mini-USB jack but there are some electronic incompatibilities. Our Motorola phones will not charge with the Sprint/Nokia charger even though it plugs in just fine.

I thought there were supposed to be some standards here…

Neverland - an urban exploration

Urban Explorer Jonathan Haeber broke into Neverland one evening in late 2007 and took some photographs. He posted his images at Bearnings. Flash forward to the present — Jonathan reposted his thoughts, this time with a lot more images. Haunting words and story:

Saying Goodbye to Neverland and Michael Jackson
I wanted to make this post, not simply to jump on the bandwagon of the media outpouring for Michael Jackson. I’m not here to judge his life or talk about his finances, or his troubled past, or the allegations, or even Bubbles. I’m writing this simply to tell a story. It’s a story that I didn’t really have the inclination to say before. Now that Michael’s “Ranch” no longer exists, and — rides dismantled — it simply stands as a bank-owned shadow of its former self, I wanted say a few things about my experience at Neverland, and the truth behind how I was able to get in.

In many ways, I feel this is sort of a confession. I never saw Neverland as an interesting place. At first, I didn’t understood its potential to tell a photographic story. As someone who finds significance in historic architecture, I neither saw Neverland as significant, nor historic. All of that changed.

In December of 2007, I was on my way down to Ventura for the Holidays. I had taken multiple trips down the 101 before. Each trip, I made it a point to stop at a roadside abandonment to photograph at night. As it invariably is every December, just prior to Christmas, the radios are filled with the repetitious yuletide jingles of yore. Usually, the six-hour drive is bearable if I switch from one station to the next - between commercials. This particular drive down, I grew weary of the music. I’m not exactly sure why Michael came to mind. Part of it probably had to do with the silence and the habit of mine to imagine music in my head in such moments. It’s also possible that I passed the off-ramp for Los Olivos and thought of the place, only to think of it more and more. Whatever it was, the idea of then-abandoned Neverland began to roll around in my mind. The radio was off, and I began mentally turning over rocks in the process. What did Neverland mean about Michael? Then the big one loomed: Why couldn’t Neverland be “historic” in my mind?

Here are four of the photographs — gorgeous work:

Bend over -- tax increases for those earning under $250K

From ABC News:

Axelrod: Obama Won't Rule Out Middle-Class Tax Hike
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.

“The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that,” Axelrod told me on This Week, “But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey.”

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year — despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

“One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people — middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks,” Axelrod said.

“But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with.”

What a little weasel… Say one thing to get elected and then turn right around and pursue the socialist agenda you have been talking about since before you were a senator.

The good news is that this sort of thing will hopefully motivate people to get up and act when the time comes around. There is a TEA party being held in Bellingham on the 4th and I am planning on being there…

Our bailout, their Rum

There are lots of stories like this ready to crawl out of the woodwork.
From Bloomberg:

Bailout of U.S. Banks Gives British Rum a $2.7 Billion Benefit
In June 2008, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island — Puerto Rico — to another, namely St. Croix.

DeJongh says he had no idea his deal would help make the world’s largest liquor distiller the most unlikely beneficiary of the emergency Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress just four months later.

Today, as two 56-foot-high (17-meter-high) tanks for holding fermenting molasses will soon rise from the ground on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, the extent to which dozens of nonbank companies benefited from last October’s emergency financial rescue plan is just beginning to come to light.

The hurried legislation adopted by a Congress voting under the threat of sudden global economic collapse led to hidden tax breaks for firms in dozens of industries. They included builders of Nascar auto-racing tracks, restaurant chains such as Burger King Holdings Inc., movie and television producers — and London’s Diageo.

“It’s kind of like the magician’s sleight of hand,” says former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman William Thomas, a California Republican who ran the committee from 2001 to 2007 and oversaw all tax legislation. “They snuck these things in a bill that was focused on other things.”

The article goes into great detail on several of these scams. Everyone in Congress had their pet project they wanted to fun. Pork writ large.

What was Obama's campaign promise again? Government transparency and cutting back on Pork?

More news from Honduras

Good news if they can hold out! From the Wall Street Journal:

Honduras Defends Its Democracy
Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.
Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating “the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter” and said it “should be condemned by all.” Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. “We won't go backwards,” one sign said. “We want to live in peace, freedom and development.”

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

Interesting times — the article goes on to talk about the history of Honduras and its time under military rule back in the 1980s.