Submitted by snake-plisskin on Fri, 03/22/2013 - 20:32.
gas reserves could run out in 36 hours – leaving the country dependent on costly foreign imports.
The UK’s gas stores have less than two days’ supplies remaining after plunging temperatures forced millions of householders to turn up their heating.
And today there were warnings from energy giant SSE of the 'very real risk' of the lights going out in Britain.
With more snow forecast today and the unseasonable freeze to continue into next week, the UK could be left relying on expensive imports from Norway through an under-sea pipeline.
The shortfall is likely to push up the long-term price of gas and could result in household tariffs rising by up to 15 per cent before next winter, adding more than £200 on to family bills, analysts warned.
Gas stores were at their lowest levels for three years last night, sending UK gas prices soaring to near-record highs.
‘There is no other Western economy of our size that uses as much gas as we do but has so little storage,’ said energy analyst Peter Atherton at Liberum Capital.
The UK has only 15 days of storage capacity – less than a sixth of its European neighbours. The US, in contrast, has six months’ worth.
Companies pump gas into stores during summer months when it is cheaper, then draw it down to sell on in winter. British stores were 86 per cent full at the turn of the year, but had less than 20 per cent remaining at the start of the month.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Fri, 03/22/2013 - 20:23.
Who is an author? Under the copyright law, the creator of the original expression in a work is its author. The author is also the owner of copyright unless there is a written agreement by which the author assigns the copyright to another person or entity, such as a publisher. In cases of works made for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author. See Circular 9, Work-Made-For-Hire Under the 1976 Copyright Act. What is a deposit?
A deposit is usually one copy (if unpublished) or two copies (if published) of the work to be registered for copyright. In certain cases such as works of the visual arts, identifying material such as a photograph may be used instead. See Circular 40a, Deposit Requirements for Registration of Claims to Copyright in Visual Arts Material. The deposit is sent with the application and fee and becomes the property of the Library of Congress. What is publication?
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 01/23/2013 - 18:04.
January 23, 2013
The good news is: Obama and the Senate Democrats have no intention of passing more idiotic gun legislation in response to the Newtown massacre. The bad news is that they also have no intention of passing any legislation about the mentally ill, which would actually do something to reduce these mass shootings.
Instead, the Democrats will jawbone about "assault weapons" and other meaningless gun laws for the sole purpose of scaring soccer moms into hating the National Rifle Association. Expect to hear a lot about Republicans preferring "the gun lobby" to "children." (Which is evidently not at all like preferring the teachers lobby to children.)
Democrats are hoping to pick up another dozen congressional seats in 2014, so they need terrified women.
Just don't expect a vote. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid cannot afford a vote on any of these nonsense gun laws because he needs to protect the seats of Democrats who have to get re-elected in districts where voters know something about guns.
Even the stupidest politician has to know how utterly meaningless "assault weapon" bans are. (In fairness, New York's Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and Gov. Andrew Cuomo may not know.) But Democrats need to gin up the most easily fooled voters.
"Assault weapons" are defined as "whatever politicians say they are." The guns that are banned and the ones that aren't are functionally identical. They're all semi-automatics.
Semi-automatics shoot one bullet per trigger pull -- that's the definition. Any handgun manufactured since the Civil War is a "semi-automatic." The most basic self-defense revolver for women is a "semi-automatic."
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 02:48.
George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address about a time in America’s future when we might be tempted to discard the pillars of civility: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”
Let me give a great example of what Washington’s words look like in action.
In February 2011, 11-year-old Jessie Rees was a junior Olympic swimmer for the Mission Viejo Nadadores, and she started getting strange headaches.
One month later, the blond, blue-eyed Southern California girl was diagnosed with two malignant tumors in her brainstem. The cancer was inoperable.
Despite the fact that she had a 1 percent chance to live 18 months, Jessie and her parents still decided to endure 30 rounds of radiation therapy at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. And then the unthinkable happened, at least for many of us adults.
One sunny spring day, when she was moved by the fact that she was able to leave the hospital as an outpatient, she asked her parents about the kids who were inpatients, “What can we do for them?”
Her dad, Erik, explained to Yahoo Sports just last week that it’s a question that “changed the tapestry” of his life. “She’s fighting a battle she can’t win,” Erik explained as he choked up, “and she just chose to help others.”
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Thu, 01/10/2013 - 19:02.
January 9, 2013
In Sunday's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal claimed, as the title of her article put it, "More Guns = More Killing." She based this on evidence that would never be permitted in any other context at the Times: (1) anecdotal observations; and (2) bald assertions of an activist, blandly repeated with absolutely no independent fact-checking by the Times.
There is an academic, peer-reviewed, long-term study of the effect of various public policies on public, multiple shootings in all 50 states over a 20-year period performed by renowned economists at the University of Chicago and Yale, William Landes and John Lott. It concluded that the only policy to reduce the incidence of, and casualties from, mass shootings are concealed-carry laws. The Times will never mention this study.
Instead, Rosenthal's column proclaimed that armed guards do not reduce crime because: "I recently visited some Latin American countries ... where guards with guns grace every office lobby, storefront, ATM, restaurant and gas station. It has not made those countries safer or saner."
So there you have it: The cock crowed, then the sun came up. Therefore, the cock's crowing caused the sun to come up. Rosenthal went to Harvard Medical School.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Thu, 01/10/2013 - 01:44.
With the national debate focused on civilian gun control, is perhaps the biggest armed threat within the U.S. being minimized?
According to the FBI, criminal street gangs – mostly comprised of illegal aliens – are acquiring high-powered, military-style weapons to potentially engage in lethal encounters with law enforcement members and citizens alike.
Criminal street gangs are responsible for the majority of violent crimes within the U.S. and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs, according to a 2009 report by the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, or NDIC.
The NDIC was a task force established in 1993 to coordinate law enforcement actions to stop drug trafficking and to curb the growing threat of violent gangs in the U.S. The agency was closed by the Obama administration in June 2011.
Prior to the shutdown of the NDIC, the agency released statistics on street gangs that some found unusual.
In 2010, the agency’s National Drug Threat Assessment stated that drugs were being sold on behalf of the cartels in “more than 2,500 cities.”
Then, in the 2011 official assessment, that number was reduced to “a thousand U.S. cities” – meaning that in one year, criminal drug gangs were cleaned out of 1,500 cities resulting in a 60-percent reduction.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 01/02/2013 - 20:53.
BAD INVENTIONS
January 2, 2013
I am bored with politics, refuse to pay attention to the news and am watching only True Crime TV shows and Turner Classic Movies these days. With the Democrats controlling the Senate and presidency, nothing good can possibly come out of Washington for at least another two years. So I thought I'd start the new year with something useful, like a short list of bad inventions.
(1) SILENT DISHWASHERS
Are people installing dishwashers next to their beds? I've checked my "Top 500 Daily Irritations" list and dishwasher noise is not on it.
What possible benefit derives from having a dishwasher that makes absolutely no noise? Was that gentle whooshing sound driving some homeowners bonkers? Is this a product designed by the same people who gave us the electric car, a vehicle so silent that the first sign of its approach is the sound of your pelvis breaking as the car hits you?
Not only are the virtues of a silent dishwasher elusive, but there's one big disadvantage: You can't tell if it's running. A dishwasher doesn't have to sound like the Concorde blasting off to provide some indication that the thing is working.
Now, in addition to the usual steps of washing dishes -- loading the dishwasher, inserting the cleaning agent and turning on the machine -- the fancy new quiet dishwashers demand yet another step of the homeowner: You have to hang around and keep putting your ear against the door hoping to hear activity. If you forget to perform this bonus time-waster, every once in a while you'll start unloading dishes the next morning and notice that they're still dirty.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Thu, 12/27/2012 - 12:23.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," which he based on the philosophy of "Mein Kampf" -- and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear.
Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death two Black Panthers on the UCLA campus: Al "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 12/19/2012 - 22:52.
December 19, 2012
In the wake of a monstrous crime like a madman's mass murder of defenseless women and children at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation's attention is riveted on what could have been done to prevent such a massacre.
Luckily, some years ago, two famed economists, William Landes at the University of Chicago and John Lott at Yale, conducted a massive study of multiple victim public shootings in the United States between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll.
Landes and Lott examined many of the very policies being proposed right now in response to the Connecticut massacre: waiting periods and background checks for guns, the death penalty and increased penalties for committing a crime with a gun.
None of these policies had any effect on the frequency of, or carnage from, multiple-victim shootings. (I note that they did not look at reforming our lax mental health laws, presumably because the ACLU is working to keep dangerous nuts on the street in all 50 states.)
Only one public policy has ever been shown to reduce the death rate from such crimes: concealed-carry laws.
Their study controlled for age, sex, race, unemployment, retirement, poverty rates, state population, murder arrest rates, violent crime rates, and on and on.
The effect of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass public shootings was even greater than the impact of such laws on the murder rate generally.
Last December a Canadian judge ruled that a 15 year-old boy murdered one of his closest friends because of the effects of Prozac. The ruling will not be appealed.
Though the case was against the boy and not Prozac’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, you’d think they’d have a thing or two to say about allegations that their drug causes homicidal tendencies.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sat, 12/15/2012 - 12:52.
From ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 2:01 AM, December 15, 2012
Posted: 2:16 PM, December 14, 2012
A gunman at a Connecticut elementary school killed more than two dozen people, including children, on Friday. It is among the world's worst mass shootings. Here is a look at some others:
- Aug. 5, 2012: Army veteran Wade Michael Page kills five men and one woman and wounds three other people, including a police officer, before taking his own life at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin outside Milwaukee.
- July 20, 2012: Twelve people are killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises." James Holmes, a 24-year-old former graduate student at the University of Colorado, has been charged in the deaths.
- March 11, 2012: Sixteen Afghan villagers, including nine children, are killed during a predawn attack in which Army prosecutors have charged Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 39.
- July 22, 2011: Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 in Norway in twin attacks: a bombing in downtown Oslo and a shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the capital. The self-styled anti-Muslim militant admitted both attacks.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Fri, 12/14/2012 - 02:17.
December 12, 2012
Republicans have been forced into a Hobson's choice of either letting the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone or agreeing to a tax hike on the top 2 percent of income earners (not to be confused with "the rich," who have already made, inherited or married their money).
If Republicans object to the Democrats' hitting job creators with a tax hike, three things will happen: Taxes will go up for everyone; Republicans will be seen as the "party of the rich"; and the inevitable economic collapse will be blamed on Republicans.
If Democrats were merely trying to raise taxes on the rich in a vacuum, it would be easier for Republicans to oppose raising anyone's taxes. But because the Bush tax cuts are only temporary, unless the high-income earners' taxes go up, everyone's taxes revert to pre-Bush tax rates.
Republicans cannot be the party that raised everyone's tax rates to prove that they can't be pushed around by the Democratic Senate and Democratic president. You don't want job-killing tax hikes on producers? Vote Republican next time.
It is not helpful to complain, "But Republicans will be blamed no matter what they do!" Yes -- true. When has that not been true? It's not a novel insight, and it's certainly not an argument for handing our enemies a baseball bat to bludgeon us with.
Consider that the media's neurotic fixation on an alleged Republican "War on Women" was going nowhere. It wasn't even working with soccer moms -- until Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock started prattling about rape and abortion.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Tue, 12/11/2012 - 20:14.
Five patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center became infected after a heart surgeon operated with an inflammation on his hands Five heart patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center contracted staph infections after a doctor operated on them with bacteria on his hands, the hospital said this week. The doctor, whom the hospital declined to name, had an inflammation on his hand when he implanted replacement heart valves into five patients last June. He wore gloves, but they developed microscopic tears, the hospital said, causing the infection to pass to patients. All five became infected with the staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria, the hospital said. “We have apologized to the patients involved, worked diligently to answer any questions they have, and provided appropriate follow-up, support and monitoring,” a spokesman for the hospital said in a statement Sunday. The physician involved remains on the hospital’s medical staff, but is no longer performing surgeries, the hospital said. Hospital officials are refusing to release any more information about the case, or to provide historical details on infections at the storied medical center.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 12/09/2012 - 19:46.
Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a strong condemnation of what he calls the “right wing media” and particularly Fox News.
“It’s divided our country in a way that we haven’t been divided probably since the Civil War,” Kennedy said of Fox News during the discussion focused on fracking. “Its empowered large corporations to get certain kinds of politicians and ideologues who are in the United State Congress elected — the Tea Party ideologues who control the Republican Party.”
The nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of former senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy made these claims against Fox while describing what he sees as the two biggest problems in American politics: the influence of big money and “the right-wing control of the American media.”
In addition to Fox News, Kennedy criticized right-wing talk radio that he describes as having a negative and large influence on whole sections of the country.
“Ninety-five percent of talk radio in our country is right-wing, and you need, according to Pew survey, and you–so a whole section of our country that that’s what they’re hearing. They wake up in the morning, when they go to bed at night,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy also claimed that Republicans “are the only ones that have their own (TV) network
