Boulder is a Stoopid Place

Hypocrisy?

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Pork doesn’t matter but AIG bonuses do? They are both a very small percentage of their respective budgets/bailouts.

Posted in Obamanomics, stimulus, stoopid politicians | Leave a comment

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

As Boulder City council considers increasing the carbon tax the Democrats in the Federal government are putting the breaks on President Obama’s cap and trade bill to lower green house gas emissions.

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The Peltzman Effect

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Does making things safer actually make them more dangerous?

Reading Tom Vanderbilt’s latest book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), I was struck by a recurring theme: Making things safer may actually make them more dangerous. I wonder if it’s a lesson that also applies off the road.

Vanderbilt describes driving along a narrow, twisting road in Spain, where he navigated hairpin turns with few guardrails or warning signs over steep drop-offs. The result: “I drove as if my life depended on it.” But when he reached a four-lane highway with gentle curves, good visibility and little traffic, “I just about fell asleep and ran off the road … Lulled by safety, I’d acted more dangerously.”

Posted in the weekend | Leave a comment

Climate shift

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Synchronized choas applied to the global temperature data yields some interesting results…

Scientists at the university (University Wisconsin-Milwaukee – ed) used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years.

“Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate,” researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said.

Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.

Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.

“In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century,” Tsonis said. “The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.”

I have no idea if this is glorified curve fitting of a new branch of mathematics or progress in understanding the climate. One can hope that this group will be more open to sharing their methodoologies then the current global warming crowd.

Perhaps Boulder city politicians shouldn’t be in quite such a hurry to increase the carbon tax, especially in the middle of a recession? Of course, what’s the title of this blog?

Cheer up global warming fanatics, it’s still “climate change”!

Posted in Boulder is stoopid, global warming | 1 Comment

Who will buy America’s debt?

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Newmark’s Door explores the question of who will buy America’s Treasury securities and comes up with three potential solutions via Seeking Alpha …

As China throttles way back on its purchase of US debt, America will have three choices –

1. Borrow and spend less

2. Raise taxes tremendously or

3. Print money.

Based on what we have seen so far, it will be some of number 2 and a lot of number 3.

As the graph of the 30 year Treasury bond shows, rates have started to move up. I suspect this is only the very early stages of this bubble bursting. I hope I’m wrong but how obvious can a bubble be?

Posted in bubbles, decline of the west, stimulus | Leave a comment

Private insurance companies are good for something

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

When I first caught wind of this plan, I assumed it was a joke and that the Republican’s were taking something the President had said and twisting it to their advantage. Apparently that isn’t the case.

The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

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Justice Thomas comments on today’s America

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

In a recent speech at Washington and Lee University, Justice Thomas states…

Americans today are self-indulgent and don’t make the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did, and the nation’s leaders don’t ask people to act for the higher good, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Monday at a Virginia college in a rare public speech.

and he went on to say….

He quoted President Kennedy’s famous, “Ask not what your country can do for you” speech, but said Americans today are more likely to say, “Ask not what you can do for yourselves or your country but what your country can do for you.”

I believe Justice Thomas hits the bulls eye. Unfortunately, there are very few political leaders that have the moral authority to “ask people to act for the higher good”. The present Speaker of the House most definitely does not . Pathetic.

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Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Pay no attention to the corrupt legislator behind the curtain.

Posted in Obamanomics, stoopid politicians | Leave a comment

Posted on March 17, 2009 by ChrisA

Pay no attention to the corrupt legislator behind the curtain.

Posted in Obamanomics, stoopid politicians | Leave a comment

Joke of the week

Posted on March 15, 2009 by ChrisA

or month or at least since November.

For anyone who is making House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., out to be the leading purveyor of partisan politics, she has a bone to pick.

Nancy must have a special type of glasses and mirrors not to see herself as partisan. Or perhaps there’s something in the water?

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Change I can believe

Posted on March 15, 2009 by ChrisA

Looks like a case of supply and lack of demand.

Hat-tip to Instapundit.

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Now he tells us

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Now that President Obama has his stimulus and the omnibus spending bill passed he can ease up on the fear.

Posted in Obama, Obamanomics, the weekend | Leave a comment

Charging that car battery…

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Well, doing the fast car charge at home isn’t possible today or anytime soon. Anyone have an extra 180 Kilowatts hanging around?

Posted in alt energy | Leave a comment

Hope for efficient solar

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Well I stumbled on this promising write up on solar photovoltaics thanks to Instapundit.

Twelve composite materials systems were found to have the capacity to meet or exceed the annual worldwide electricity consumption of 17000 TWh, of which nine have the potential for a significant cost reduction over crystalline silicon.

Glenn comments in his pithy way… “Faster please”.

Kim Potter should be pleased.

Posted in alt energy, the weekend | Leave a comment

Can’t say that I blame them

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Japan Warns It May Shoot Down N. Korean Rocket

Japan strongly protested North Korea’s planned rocket launch, warning Friday it could shoot it down after the North said it would fly over Japan and designated a “danger” zone off the country’s coast.

The danger zone that concerns Japan is…

One of the “danger” zones where the rocket’s first stage is expected to fall is in waters less than 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Japan’s northwestern shore, according to coordinates released Thursday by the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization.

It will be interesting to see how their aim is.

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St. Patricks Day, be careful out there

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Take your drinking seriously and plan ahead with alternative transportation or a designated driver.

While I’m not 100% in agreement with Erika Stutzman’s editorial, especially on a day like St. Patrick’s day it’s way better to be safe than sorry. Also I heard on the news that the state patrol is going to be aggresively looking for drunk drivers through Wednesday.

Posted in the weekend | Leave a comment

Global warming groupthink in Boulder

Posted on March 13, 2009 by ChrisA

Kim Potter, a University of Colorado sophomore and CoPIRG intern has a letter to the editor (so far available only on line) on global warming. Points she makes are as follows:

GW is one of the most severe problem facing our nation

Rising sea levels effect our coasts and polar bears

Global warming pollution needs to be reduced 80% by 2050 and we already have the solution to make this possible.

The solutions include…

The entire country can be powered by putting solar panels on just 7% of America’s rooftops.

… improving fuel efficiency and making buildings more sustainable. Steps like these are important to take to help slow global warming down.

Hmmm, this is so “Boulder”. My response to Kim is….

Kim,

Take a course on critical thinking.

There is absolutely no shortage of polar bears, any research at all will enlighten you, but you must be willing to actually do some research instead of allowing yourself to be spoonfed by your immediate peer group.

You state: “The entire country can be powered by putting solar panels on just 7% of America’s rooftops.” Supply me a reference as I would like to learn more. Is there an assumption on solar cell efficiency? Is power cheaper in AZ, FL and the southern US vs. than Northern regions? How do we get power from here to there? Don’t you believe that such a claim needs some type of reference?

I have a friend with a solar panels on his house. Does it make a difference? Yes it does, but that’s just powering his own house. You expect me to believe that putting a solar panel (what size, direction steering, etc, etc?) on only 7 out of every 100 houses (anywhere?) in the US will provide enough energy to power the whole United States? Is that only households or does that included industrial America? How will we charge our electric cars at night? Well I suppose if you collect enough unused energy during the day that you either run the meter backwards or store it in batteries that you can charge the car at night.

You’ve teased us, now do the hard work and supply us with facts from reputable sources.

Posted in Boulder is stoopid, global warming | Leave a comment