Shithead robots with no feedback

 The Yellow Fringe has recently been discovered by people who leave mindless comments  not well hidden as advertisements, and robots doing the same.   I have more than once started down the path of setting up the code puzzle window trap.  But, each time decided I rather have the door wide open.
Few of these comments end up on my blog, most end up coming to me as email.  Either way they can be dispatched with a couple of finger wiggles.
For all the apparent hi-tech-ness they possess, it blows my mind they are so stupid, they have no feedback loop.  They waste their time, they can never get any return if 100% of their efforts fail to appear.
In case you never get these, most look something like this;  "This is very interesting, I want to learn more on this important subject.  Please contact me so we can be friends.  @jerkyouaroundsales.something.

Gas and Oil industry to attack new movie about fracking

Matt Damon and John Krasinski (The Office) wrote the "Promised Land" movie script together, took the two lead roles, and it's in theaters today.
It's about fracking, the destructive practice of freeing oil or more often gas from their proper storage space underground and the wealth and pollution it produces.  Last month the fossil fuel industry set out to hamper and discredit the movie.  They put a pool of money together to fund "bad" reviews for papers that will take the gift review, rebuttals on editorial pages, send out speakers to clubs and media events, spur if they can a few dingbats to picket a few theaters in hope they can reduce the number who will see it and/or convince small town theaters to not show it at all.
Based on the gas industries reaction to this movie, thats all I need, I will see it.

Avaaz.org 's 17 million will take on Wyndham Hotels

About 1 million of those (us) are in the USA.  It is the largest social action organization in the world, and extremely effective.  Today they announced to Wyndham Hotels, the worlds largest hotel chain, they will launch a petition drive against them if they do not withdraw support to the NRA and the 10% discount to NRA members in the next few days.
I just looked at the Wyndham facebook site, it is already flooding with complaints from around the world about the connection to an organization with blood on it's hands.   In fact a spontaneous boycott has emerged, many are informing Wyndham they will never stay again if the change isn't made.  The Wyndham brands:

Avaaz is targeting them first among the businesses who give discounts to NRA members because this chain has a reputation for doing the right thing in environmental issues and other events.

I think next some car rental companies will catch hell, they also give money and discounts.  Without these discounts members will be less likely to renew.
Currently social media has power to change the actions of companies.  USE IT DAMN-IT, you probably have excess cell phone minutes, the internet ...........

Find Wyndham on facebook or the web, send them a note, or call their headquarters.

November hell, and stuff

Thousands of land and sea temperatures are taken daily around the globe.  Averaged it gives us the worlds temperature.  The month of November was the 36th consecutive November the world another high.  And least you forget your math, every time the average is exceeded then next year the new average is a bit harder to exceed, but it happened 36 times in a row.  In fact we exceeding the previous global temperature every month of the year for decades.  February 1985 was the last month that did not exceed the previous average.

Olive Garden and Red Lobster say they are having a bad quarter.  Since they shot their mouth off about Obama and Obamacare, people just aren't coming in at the same pace.

Pfizer drugs hung on against months of bad publicity, but the emails and calls and public demonstrations at their events finally got to them.  Phizer is the last drug maker to cut their ties with Heartland Institute.  Heartland is the HMFWIC of the waco climate deniers and lobby group.  They now have lost most all their corporate suppliers except tobacco and fossil fuel.

Signing on line petitions and calling, and staying away from prick businesses has been very powerful these last few months.  We are powerful, if we just write, call, march, donate.

It was a hell of a November for weather, and for pricks on the right.

weapons of choice

Should the NRA be named a hate group?

The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors and studies hate groups in the US.  I wonder if they will look at the NRA?

Pine beetle puts Grizzlies back on endangered list

Brown area = dead pines

Dead pine trees now cover the west all the way to just north of the Canada border.  Billions of dead trees.  Loss of forest that rivals the clearing of the Amazon, maybe exceeds it. Pine tree beetles can not survive multiple severe freezes.  Years of ever warming winters allowed a population explosion that is altering North America.  Drive to New Mexico, Montana, it breaks your heart to see whole mountains of dead pines.  Get close to the tree and you see sawdust at the base, holes in the trunk, this is the leading edge of a dying ecosystem.

Pine nuts feed lots of animals, birds and porcupines, chipmunks, even bears. Most of the critters that live off them feed the wolf, badger, coyote, fox, eagle, owl, bear, martin, mink, wolverine.   Bears in the hardest hit areas are going hungry with the  the health problems and migration that come with that.  For this reason the Grizzly in recent days was returned to the endangered list.

Without the pine, its erosion prevention, it's cooling and air filtering, it's shade, it's shelter, the Rockies and all the west will grow hotter and dryer with faster snow melts, flash floods.  Spray can protect the pines, but it's an impossible task, spray all the western pines, not enough equipment or chemical is available nor is it safe.  The only hope is a return to cold winters, or a new promising decoy pheromone that leads males to mate with a pile of goo, but that too will require a near impossible network of distributors to dab girl bug stink on a half dozen trees per acre each year, but it could work in limited areas if the pheromone is made in volume, and if government and landowners and foresters are willing to buy it.

The whole of the Rockies should be put on the endangered list, this is alters the whole ecosystem.   Are you doing anything, even a small thing, about this?

Snow ski resorts are leading the cry about global warming.

Environmental update:
*A leaked report from the main body watching climate change will up the predictions again, expect temp change of from 10 to 15°F in your kids lifetime.  New York 115, Needles CA 130, Oklahoma City 125.  These temps kill, outside activities will be impossible on many days of the year.
*350 parts per million of CO2 is thought to be the tipping point.  In the last few years we are creeping right up to it.  The same report predicts 400+.
* Ocean acidity is up 30% in the last 200 years, and increasing.
*Mercury in the ocean is up sharply in the last 100 years, and increasing.

Good news:
EPA came through with a soot reduction requirement Friday.  Diesels and smokestacks and open burning activities will be cleaned up or curtailed.  The deadlines are short, changes must be made in the next few years. Soot absorbs solar heat from incoming rays and heats the atmosphere, carried on the wind it reaches every part of the world then falls on snow and ice collecting suns heat to accelerate the melt, and it makes the snow look yucky.  You can see it in layers of ice growing more evident over the last 2 centuries.  Catching some of this soot also catches Mercury and Lead.

Here is what Cleveland looked like in the late 70's, the EPA has been a positive, there is no doubt, no one wants to go back to that.

Conn. gov says this is sad

He marches out and says the correct things about the loss.  He did not say I will do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.  It will happen again.  With no action, it's what, 2 weeks, 1 week until another shooting.  Mexico killed 40k in the drug war in 5 years, we kill 20k every year, Mexico looks the safer.

Converted, just barely, and reluctantly, caveats apply.

I have for a long time been against growing food for fuel.  Using up the nutrients of the good earth, and our dwindling water supply to blow it through a cylinder and into the air we breath.  Then there's the issue of shifting the grain economy from the food chain to energy, with a none to suttle impact on food prices and the environment.  Either the food shelves will have fewer products at a higher price, or more jungle and marginal land must be stripped of nature, flushed with chemicals and thrown into monoculture production.   So far all this is a moral and logic issue.

All that and I still didn't point out, corn to fuel is nearly a break-even.  It takes about one unit of energy to make one unit.  We use oil to make fertilizer, for pesticides, herbicides, trucks to deliver all that crap, tractor and combine fuel to farm and harvest it, energy to pump water to it, trucks to deliver it, fuel to distill it, more fuel to deliver it to market.  And then you have ethanol with fewer calories than fossil fuel gas, meaning fewer btu in the cylinder.  Now, good news, maybe.  The last couple years the new distilling methods are a little more efficient, and they are making progress using cow poo, and corn stalks and some kinds of grass.  I don't know the ratio now but they can make more than a unit from a unit of energy.  OK, hauling corn stalks off for this sounds good till you understand laying on the field they are a form of fertilizer, stop erosion and provide a place for small game to hide.  Clearing these off may be one more mistake.

So am I converted after all that?  Maybe.  Here's why.

Under Obama we have more drilling in the US, more new production coming on line than any time in history.  Palin got her wish, drill ding bat drill.  We could in 10 years be an oil exporter.  According to all the bullshit this will make oil cheaper.  If your bullshit alarm isn't slapping like a derelict metronome then let me point out, oil prices are set in the world market, no matter the local supply.  The price is set  by the driver in India filling up, not by a smart ass blonde in white pants on TV with pictures of happy people and sunsets and promise of lower price fuel.  So all that to say oil prices do not go down if we drill a well, or a butt load of'm.  Look at the US, Canada, and Japan.  US produces less than it needs, Canada more, Japan none.  All three have the same price fluctuations for transportation fuel. World demand, not a surplus or a dearth set the price.

Vulnerability is what we have now in transportation.  Single source.  Almost 100% of US transport is oil driven.  To make it even more scary, the oil has to go through a refinery.  The US has no excess.  For years and years refineries have run at maximum capacity.  No reserve.  Every time there is a fire or one shuts down for repairs prices soar.  US transportation is at extreme risk for two reasons, the source and the bottleneck processors.

Electricity is not that risky, we have a reasonable set of overlapping sources.  Coal, dirty fucking stuff, natural gas, and nukes.  These are our primary sources, in that order, though coal is being changed out at a fast pace mostly with NG.  Then we have wind, growing, it produces several percent of our needs already, in a few areas it is substantial.  Solar, biomass, hydroelectric dams, a few geothermals and a few other smaller forms help out.  The electric sources are getting more diverse, the risks growing smaller.

Transportation.  Getting to work or to the casino to piss away your money is a concern sure, but think of where your going to get food or viagra next week if the trucks are out of gas, damn.  The mormons are OK, they keep a years worth of food on hand, and when I was a kid we had home canned food, might have been a years worth if you had to eat grandma's yucky canned mincemeat.  So........

I'm starting to think using corn for fuel might be OK, just barely.  But all those reasons against it are eating on me.  And ethanol still gets mixed with gas, so it doesn't solve much does it?  It won't lower prices, it may raise them.  And therein is the little peg I hang onto, however weak.  Higher prices, and a little bit of diversity in the fuel sources may be a good thing.  Why?  Higher prices will incentivize hybrids, high mpg cars, and electric cars, public modes, and conservation.  Electric cars are on the way, they have their place, and they use a fuel from multiple sources - electricity, it's trending towards cleaner all the time.    The EV models coming next year or so have a little better range, and that will grow year to year.  Trucks too are dinking around with EV's.  UPS and Fed-ex are both using EV's in some small city markets, it's a learning process, and they will get there.

One more thing, I have a farm, raise corn some years.  But I want it to go for food.  I can't wait for  electric tractors some day with a solar paneled cabin.  That would be cool.   Yea, I'm not sure yet about my conversion, I could backslide.  I did once before, went to a camp with a bunch of thumpers, said me too, then on a hike the hottest girl there was setting so I could see her legs, winking and flipping her hair around, yea I don't think that conversion took.

Earth to get new supply of minerals tonight, free.

December 13/14, 10pm - 5am, wherever their is a clear sky in North America.  Geminid meteor shower, up to 100 per hour, peak fall rate at 2am.  The stuff is free, intergalactic immigrants falling to earth,  stardust, get some.

Santa Claus Takes Action

 Santa video, making a list, check it twice.  I have called my representive's local office, emailed his DC office, called and emailed both Senators, called both congressmen from adjoining districts.  HO HO HO

Just a few more days and I am free of state taxes

No, I'm not retiring.  Better than that, the money I make will be tax free in the state of Kansas.  I'm a friggin job creator now, or soon will be, Jan 1.

The GOP run state decided to make more money for the state lets stop collecting tax dollars from job creators, the highest earners in most cases.  We had a surplus of hundreds of millions, now it's projected to dive into the red by the same amount in one year, and within a few years be a billion.  Oh not so not so at all say the Gov and the Repubs.  Here's how it's gonna work. ---  I don't pay taxes.  That will make me fucking rich.  I hire a guy to wash my car windows.  He pays taxes instead of me.  The state collects even more money than it use to.  Me, the window guy and the state are all rolling in dough.  That'll work, just ask anyone.

OK why don't I have to pay state tax starting next year?  Farm income, not taxable.  Small business income, not taxable.  I have a farm, and I sell crap (hey it's a business OK?).  So, you see I am a job creator.  What's my plan for the few hundred I will save?  My spending will not change one penny.  And that's what will happen with most the savings, nothing.  So, lets stop calling people in this situation, or the 1%ers or the 10%ers job creators.  Lets be honest.  Idle rich is the proper term.

For all the hubbub of this two things are very interesting.  More than one of the GOP have said they know this will crash the state into multiyear severe debt, and glad of it, bankrupt the state is the only way to cut services and make the poor scrounge for their own or get out.  (Can you say Christianista?)  The other thing is this helps the federal government pay off it's debt.  The deduction on federal income tax for state tax is lost, the added fed tax due will be about the same as the state cut, the GOP is helping Obama, and seem to be ignorant of it.

Conservatives hate the EPA, now I'm bummed after leaning this

 The EPA has given over 100 wavers to fracking operations to pollute the aquifer they are drilling in or near.  This is an exemption saying it's OK to violate the rules. ONE HUNDRED aquifers are now poisoned, and with a fucking government permit.  The gas and oil and chemicals seeping into the underground lakes makes them unusable for generations, 100 years minimum for most of these slow moving slow filling reservoirs.  For what?  So we can have a 10 or 20 years glut of natural gas.
Can you drink Natural Gas?  Can you wash your kids in it?

We need to let the EPA know this needs fixed.

Fox douche bag takes one to the puss

Watch this!  I haven't seen such an uplifting scene since John Stossel was bitch slapped by a wrestler.

The fossil fuel and utilities catch 22, and 23.

 
In 48 states self made electricity cannot be sent across a street or road.  The utilities happily set astride a law that says no.  In the case of a farmer, he has a solar driven water pump with excess energy, but cannot rout it across the road to power a pump in another pasture.

Most states have net metering, but in my state it is strongly in favor of the utility.  The excess you might sell to the grid is bought at a miserable low price, and in some utility zones they don't settle up monthly but yearly, cheap watts treated as a zero interest loan to boot.  Still, in many regions the pay back is  good and the satisfaction of selling your extra power I am told is akin to a toke of Lebanonese blonde hashish.

If ever you have a chance to speak up on changing the rules on these issues, please bluster and sputter and stamp until you win for all of us.

Your TRASHED again aren't you? Your gonna have to stop.

Did you know that the US consumer lifestyle produces 141 pounds of waste every day for every one of us.  How?  Not just the shit you throw away, loose, waste, or pack into basement like it's gold, but the manufacturing and marketing waste to make it, ship it, store it, advertise it, sell it.  And here we are at Christmas, and I'll bet your fucking trashed again.  Get help.  Stop buy'n all that crap, and recycle, and watch this video from Jeremy Irons.

A threat multiplier, what's that?

Veterans can get involved in the fight for solar and wind and alternatives to fossil fuel.  Vent your spleen on congress's bald face opposition to more fuel efficient vehicles, tanks, ships, buildings.  Congress is trying to keep the biggest fleet of vehicles and the biggest owner of buildings in the world (the US military complex)  gobbling up oil and coal and part of the force tied to fuel convoys, no matter the cost in $'s or lives.   Go to   http://www.operationfree.net, they will guide you through letter writing and phoning if you want the help.

Profiles in Kansas Courage

Kansas Senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran, both Republicans RSVP'd and attended a pre vote reception held by former Kansas GOP Senator Bob Dole, contender for VP and for Prez and WWII wounded vet.  His wife former Senator Elisabeth Dole attended also caring for and pushing the ailing Senator in a wheelchair.

The reception attended by most the Senators, was to promote the disability treaty which vote counters thought would pass.  Both Roberts and Moran promised the Dole's they would vote for the treaty.  Dole sat in wheelchair on the floor of the Senate and was wheeled off by Elisabeth when the vote  started.

Both Kansas Senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran then slithered to the bench and whispered their votes against the treaty.  Both cowards had stood next to Dole 5 minutes earlier with their hands on the ailing giants shoulder.  Neither coward was willing to call out their vote for fear the CNN broadcast would pick up their betrayal of Dole.  Others failed Dole as well, but these two from his own state, this was vile and disgusting, and for what, bowing to the tea bags and the fear media.  What a sad day that the GOP couldn't stand up for disabled people around the world, this treaty had one goal and impacted only one thing, disabled people elsewhere, it imposed rights copied from our own laws, it would not have affected us in any way.  Instead, it showed the 100+ nations that have ratified the treaty that we are hostage to and afraid of the political midgets among us.

Profiles in GOP Courage.  What a display.

tear tracks

Squandering away the hours of my life on this sculpture, a low relief in alabaster about 8"x8".   Not finished yet with the detail or the polishing.  The pattern in the stone is really dramatic, but it's playing hell with the shadows and detail in certain lighting, competing and confusing the contour created image.  It may end up as one of those sculptures that only looks good in the right lighting situations, in other words, it won't be winning any gallery space.  

Exxon Hates Your Children

I am not sure about this kind of add.  It makes a good point, though in an uneasy way.  Being a recovering Republican, reregistered as a Dem a few years ago, I'm well aware the Reichwing uses this kind of "bloody their noses" attack adds and are completely OK with it, in fact they thrive on it, it's their cottage industry.  Still, the video has a point, profit first, delay and sew doubt, bribe and greenwash your way to a few more years of massive profits and welfare.

Kentucky Senator Ashley Judd

Sure sounds better than Senator McConnell.  Mitch has never won in a landslide and 2014 is his year, 72 then.  This week McConnell hired a 2014 campaign manager, same guy that ran teabag Dentist Rand Pauls campaign.  Ashley, 8th generation Kentuckian, may be able to retire the red neck wattle of McConnell.  I sure hope so.  I have heard her in two interviews.  She is an excellent speaker, smart, and she cares about common folks and fair play for people and the environment.  It appears she will run.

The free market, utility rates based on GOP tax model

My local natural gas supplier ask for a rate increase.  Oh the red state said sure, so long as you don't hose the rich guys.
Why the rate increase?  Global warming has given years of mild winters and record highs, such as yesterday 72°F, night time temps in the high 50's.  Gas usage is low, at the same time fracking is creating a glut.  If the market is to work, our rates should be going down down down, supply exceeds demand.
Well, doesn't work that way in the red states, not when capitalist have a monopoly on the market and in the state government.  To ease the burden on people with big houses, rather than raise the rates on volume, they raised it as a service charge.  Everyone saw an increase, even if you use nothing, the volume rate also went up, but not much.
Same thing happened here last month with water rates, but for a different reason, we are using too much water, the demand is putting pressure on the supply, so whats the cure, sha-zam, same cure, raise the service rate more than the volume rate.
In both cases, people who use large volumes of gas and water have a proportional increase smaller than those who use very little.  I say it favors the rich and/or wasteful, same as the GOP tax plan.

Black Carbon the global warming multiplier

Black Carbon, or soot, primarily comes from burning wood, dung, coal (unscrubbed smokestack or in the open), from forest fires, from 3rd world dirty diesel fuel.  Soot comes off the fire with CO2, but acts differently.

CO2 is mostly invisible, stays in the atmosphere almost forever if not absorbed, and only a percentage can be absorbed at any one time.  CO2 acts as a blanket, increasing the earths temp by holding in heat that would otherwise be radiated into space.

Black Carbon can be seen, floating about it absorbs the incoming solar heat, increasing the atmospheric temperature in a completely different way than CO2.  Winds carry it around the world, falling to earth within a few weeks, but most of it falls within the first few days in the region it was generated, that which falls on snow and ice absorb sun light raising local temps and accelerating the melt

From Pakistan to China intense levels of heating and cooking with wood, dung, grass, plus the dirtiest power plants and diesel trucks in the world produce smoke that is visible from space, much of it settleing on Himalaya glaciers.  Within 15 years the glaciers will be nearly gone.  Large areas of Southeast Asia gets 30 to 40% of its water from the glacier melt.  Famine and starvation on a scale the earth has never seen is near, the vultures will be fat.

Black carbon is thought to be about 40% of the heat gain problem among the various greenhouse gasses.  It is also the easiest to halt, with the shortest payback, a couple of months it's out of the atmosphere, a hard snowfall and it is hidden from absorbing heat into the glacier.  There is a big push in India to get people to use a new style of cooking stove that burns 60% less fuel and sends up 70% less soot, but at $20 many cannot afford it.  Cleaner diesel and a turning away from coal has to be immediate as well.

In some cities in the US, mostly small resort locations, Vail for example, fire places are now regulated, fewer are allowed to be built, there are days where it is not allowed to use them at all.  We have a fireplace, but rarely use it, and now, knowing this, it may never burn again.

Mid 70's (F) here in central Kansas the last few days have seen each with a record high.  Mid December and the cows are covered with flies, and the drought continues.  Meat prices up 8% by late spring.  The water table is dropping, irrigation from underground sources has it's limits.