Boy what a fiasco in Georgia. Russia has blustered its way into a smaller country claiming that it's coming to the rescue of the South Ossetians from a despotic Georgian president a la Hussein. It's showed nothing but ineptitude in taking over the country (ostensibly) with aging equipment and an unprofessional army that resembles more the S. Ossetian militias that lick their boots. It's lying much like in the days of Stalin, yesing the West to death while doing precisely what it wants. Now, the Georgians are not Chechens, but look for Chechen-like warfare on Russia in the weeks to come. Bombings in Moscow, etc. I guess Russia will learn like the U.S. that invading a country in the style of "back in the day" works for a while. But then the insurgents come out of the woodwork, get organized, and start popping the invaders in little skirmishes here and there. Humiliating a country might be fun, but at some point, it'll have to pay for the bullying.
Meanwhile, Europe does nothing. Sure, you can say, Where's the U.S.? But this is Europe's issue in which to take the lead. So it will be interesting to see how they handle it. No doubt the strategy will be appeasment, appeasment, appeasment. Putin will do what he wants. NATO has already showed its hand in a feckless "statement." The world will watch, shake its head in quiet frustration and hope that in the words of MLK, "the moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice."
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Kind of like a Petroleum Transfer Engineer
A good example of marketing flotsam; a phrase that's like corn -- it goes right through you: Certified Packing & Shipping Specialist. This is something from UPS. What the hell is a CPSS? And is there a place where I can get certified? Is it at Harvard like the Harvard Bartending School? Heh heh. Always loved that faux affiliation. How about The Thunderbird School for International Packing & Shipping? That has a nice ring to it.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Revoltin developments
Listen, I'm an idiot. Some have even called me stupid. So I am allowed to say this: people are unbelievably STUPID. I know. I recognize it. I can say this. Some of my best friends are stupid.
So if I hear one more stupid comment about energy policy and which candidate has the right one and which should be taken out and dipped in hot oil and feathered (both, frankly), I'm gonna..... I don't know... just get red all over and scream inside like I always do, and rail against city hall and the gods and Ryan Seacrest.
But here's a comment I heard today that almost made me drive off the road. This is from the Brian Lehrer Show, which this week has a stand-in, an idiotic stand-in, filling in while Brian is away. A caller, Rob from New City, complains that the reason we have high gas prices is because "this administration" does "nothing about oil companies," "they pass legislation" and "there's no oversight" and it "lets oil companies gouge consumers," etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.... fucking asshole. The administration, by the way, Rob, can't pass legislation. In any case, the host, whatever her name is, and her two guests, two bozos who also stood by silently, said nothing about the remark. They just let it go like it was fact. Like Rob from New City was talking about the answer to a simple math equation. "Steve (bozo 1), what is Obama going to do about that?" Jesus h! Would they let someone call in and deny the Holocaust? Or say the earth is flat? Or say blood letting is the best way to cure a cold? And then turn to an expert and say, "what do you think?" No.
Unless we decide to nationalize oil, then we have to let the free market dictate. Furthermore, oil companies make just a few cents on the dollar. Their profit margins are less than 10%. They don't make as much as Microsoft or Google, each of which has a margin above 25%. Why not attack them? So the caller wants the administration to do something? Why not go after Google and Microsoft; they're making obscene money, too. And let's not forget the taxes the U.S. government is making on all those oil profits and the gasoline at the pump! In New York, the higher the gas price, the higher the tax! The state is raking in cash from oil.
And the argument that more drilling offshore won't do anything for our energy needs now? Are they nuts? The point isn't to solve the problem of "now." It's to help start the problem of "later." What do they think is driving up the oil price now? Speculation, pure and simple. There is nothing materially different about today's demand than there was a year ago or even two years ago. Sure, there's likely going to be a problem, but not if we start doing something about it now. There is not now a problem with oil supplies. It's all based on future demand; not just next year but the next 10 years. So if we announce we're going to drill and create more supply, that will take off pressure now. The argument is not that we'll suddenly flood the market. It's all about the future. It's about jawboning the oil back to its sensible level (whatever that is, $80 a barrel?
In any case, conservation is the way to go. New forms of energy (nuclear, anyone?) is another. Oil will probably never go away, however, but it would be great if we used less, much less, of it. I think we should explore all possibilities, for the future. That gets the wheels o' commerce going. New investment in wind, sun, etc. But in my lifetime it's going to be oil oil oil. But reducing demand over time with alternatives, will bring the oil price down. It should also be noted that drivers don't use the bulk of oil. Manufacturing and utilities do. So we're going to have to come up with a replacement to plastic, too. And imagine how much a glut of oil there would be if utilities didn't use oil? Or gas for that matter. We'd be paying 75 cents a gallon for gas. If they used nuclear energy, it would save us millions.
And don't tell me about the environmental imact of nuclear energy. The fact that we've trashed the earth and skies with oil while letting clean-burning nuke slide by is ridiculous. I always suspected Big Oil was behind all the No-Nuke nonsense of the 70s and 80s. And who paid for the towering piece of crap, China Syndrome? That whole movement and that movie probably set us back 100 years in terms of getting the US oil independent.
What a revoltin thought. Jack Lemmon my ass. Mike Douglas... ugh. To think that those two clowns may have helped screw up the country is painful.
Ah well...
"Shukhov went to sleep fully content. He'd had many strokes of luck that day: they hadn’t put him in the cells; they hadn’t sent his squad to the settlements; he’d swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’d built a wall and had enjoyed doing it … And he hadn’t fallen ill. He had got over it."
So if I hear one more stupid comment about energy policy and which candidate has the right one and which should be taken out and dipped in hot oil and feathered (both, frankly), I'm gonna..... I don't know... just get red all over and scream inside like I always do, and rail against city hall and the gods and Ryan Seacrest.
But here's a comment I heard today that almost made me drive off the road. This is from the Brian Lehrer Show, which this week has a stand-in, an idiotic stand-in, filling in while Brian is away. A caller, Rob from New City, complains that the reason we have high gas prices is because "this administration" does "nothing about oil companies," "they pass legislation" and "there's no oversight" and it "lets oil companies gouge consumers," etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.... fucking asshole. The administration, by the way, Rob, can't pass legislation. In any case, the host, whatever her name is, and her two guests, two bozos who also stood by silently, said nothing about the remark. They just let it go like it was fact. Like Rob from New City was talking about the answer to a simple math equation. "Steve (bozo 1), what is Obama going to do about that?" Jesus h! Would they let someone call in and deny the Holocaust? Or say the earth is flat? Or say blood letting is the best way to cure a cold? And then turn to an expert and say, "what do you think?" No.
Unless we decide to nationalize oil, then we have to let the free market dictate. Furthermore, oil companies make just a few cents on the dollar. Their profit margins are less than 10%. They don't make as much as Microsoft or Google, each of which has a margin above 25%. Why not attack them? So the caller wants the administration to do something? Why not go after Google and Microsoft; they're making obscene money, too. And let's not forget the taxes the U.S. government is making on all those oil profits and the gasoline at the pump! In New York, the higher the gas price, the higher the tax! The state is raking in cash from oil.
And the argument that more drilling offshore won't do anything for our energy needs now? Are they nuts? The point isn't to solve the problem of "now." It's to help start the problem of "later." What do they think is driving up the oil price now? Speculation, pure and simple. There is nothing materially different about today's demand than there was a year ago or even two years ago. Sure, there's likely going to be a problem, but not if we start doing something about it now. There is not now a problem with oil supplies. It's all based on future demand; not just next year but the next 10 years. So if we announce we're going to drill and create more supply, that will take off pressure now. The argument is not that we'll suddenly flood the market. It's all about the future. It's about jawboning the oil back to its sensible level (whatever that is, $80 a barrel?
In any case, conservation is the way to go. New forms of energy (nuclear, anyone?) is another. Oil will probably never go away, however, but it would be great if we used less, much less, of it. I think we should explore all possibilities, for the future. That gets the wheels o' commerce going. New investment in wind, sun, etc. But in my lifetime it's going to be oil oil oil. But reducing demand over time with alternatives, will bring the oil price down. It should also be noted that drivers don't use the bulk of oil. Manufacturing and utilities do. So we're going to have to come up with a replacement to plastic, too. And imagine how much a glut of oil there would be if utilities didn't use oil? Or gas for that matter. We'd be paying 75 cents a gallon for gas. If they used nuclear energy, it would save us millions.
And don't tell me about the environmental imact of nuclear energy. The fact that we've trashed the earth and skies with oil while letting clean-burning nuke slide by is ridiculous. I always suspected Big Oil was behind all the No-Nuke nonsense of the 70s and 80s. And who paid for the towering piece of crap, China Syndrome? That whole movement and that movie probably set us back 100 years in terms of getting the US oil independent.
What a revoltin thought. Jack Lemmon my ass. Mike Douglas... ugh. To think that those two clowns may have helped screw up the country is painful.
Ah well...
"Shukhov went to sleep fully content. He'd had many strokes of luck that day: they hadn’t put him in the cells; they hadn’t sent his squad to the settlements; he’d swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’d built a wall and had enjoyed doing it … And he hadn’t fallen ill. He had got over it."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died the other day. What an incredible, odd, crabby guy. Brilliant in his thinking, legendary in his cantankerousness. He might have been a charming guy but it looked like he had all the charm of the villain who gets caught at the end of every Scooby Doo episode. And he had the blinking, 'you've just torn off my disguise!' look to match.
Oddly enough, I never read A Day in the Life or Gulag, though I read much about them. I did read Cancer Ward, however. A great book. The subjects it touches on -- politics and labor camps and materialism, etc -- can be an overlay of sorts for the U.S. No, we don't have labor camps (although we have far too many people -- men -- in prisons), but in a larger sense, some people are in the same suspended sense of misery imparted by a gulag: miserable job, debts up the wazoo, not much hope, etc. And certainly the materialism -- it's unbelievable. We buy buy buy and basically shit shit shit. Produce, use, discard, repeat.
America, as Alex Sol-zn saw it in the 70s, was living in "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses." And our vulgar materialism and weak morals would doom us the way Stalinism (and its descendant philosophies) would doom the Soviet Union. I think he was entirely confused about the mores of the U.S. -- individualism (the me generation), low culture (imagine what he thought of reality TV), and for the most part godless (sure, everyone thinks they're faithful/spiritual, but they don't act spiritual and the old European sense and most know nothing about the bible -- new or old test). "On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility." So he wasn't a fan of the West either, really.
Now don't get me wrong. I think it's all great. I love this country. And who is to say what is right? Materialism, individualism, communism, socialism, capitalism, watching jism? The only factor that makes whatever thing "right" is people's freedom to choose that thing. Here in the U.S. we choose to be material. We choose to watch mind-numbing TV and follow assidously the thinnest crust of society -- celebrity. And buy all manner of stuff and live well beyond our means. It's dumb and it's stupid and it's banal and it's a huge waste. But is it wrong in the grand scheme of things? I don't know. From a resource standpoint, yes, it's wrong. We can't keep using and wasting indefinitely. And perhaps it can be argued that we become so soft and wasteful and fat that we become easy pickings for the hordes waiting for us to stumble; and we start looking at the world from a Hollywood-movie script viewpoint (life is fair and has happy endings and big business is bad and the we're all bad and must be punished for our frittering!). But in the grand scheme-humanity standpoint? Who the hell knows?
"Until I came to the West myself and spent two years looking around, I could never have imagined to what an extreme degree the West had actually become a world without a will, a world gradually petrifying in the face of the danger confronting it…All of us are standing on the brink of a great historical cataclysm, a flood that swallows up civilization and changes whole epochs." Congressional testimony, 1975
Let's hope he's wrong.
Oddly enough, I never read A Day in the Life or Gulag, though I read much about them. I did read Cancer Ward, however. A great book. The subjects it touches on -- politics and labor camps and materialism, etc -- can be an overlay of sorts for the U.S. No, we don't have labor camps (although we have far too many people -- men -- in prisons), but in a larger sense, some people are in the same suspended sense of misery imparted by a gulag: miserable job, debts up the wazoo, not much hope, etc. And certainly the materialism -- it's unbelievable. We buy buy buy and basically shit shit shit. Produce, use, discard, repeat.
America, as Alex Sol-zn saw it in the 70s, was living in "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses." And our vulgar materialism and weak morals would doom us the way Stalinism (and its descendant philosophies) would doom the Soviet Union. I think he was entirely confused about the mores of the U.S. -- individualism (the me generation), low culture (imagine what he thought of reality TV), and for the most part godless (sure, everyone thinks they're faithful/spiritual, but they don't act spiritual and the old European sense and most know nothing about the bible -- new or old test). "On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility." So he wasn't a fan of the West either, really.
Now don't get me wrong. I think it's all great. I love this country. And who is to say what is right? Materialism, individualism, communism, socialism, capitalism, watching jism? The only factor that makes whatever thing "right" is people's freedom to choose that thing. Here in the U.S. we choose to be material. We choose to watch mind-numbing TV and follow assidously the thinnest crust of society -- celebrity. And buy all manner of stuff and live well beyond our means. It's dumb and it's stupid and it's banal and it's a huge waste. But is it wrong in the grand scheme of things? I don't know. From a resource standpoint, yes, it's wrong. We can't keep using and wasting indefinitely. And perhaps it can be argued that we become so soft and wasteful and fat that we become easy pickings for the hordes waiting for us to stumble; and we start looking at the world from a Hollywood-movie script viewpoint (life is fair and has happy endings and big business is bad and the we're all bad and must be punished for our frittering!). But in the grand scheme-humanity standpoint? Who the hell knows?
"Until I came to the West myself and spent two years looking around, I could never have imagined to what an extreme degree the West had actually become a world without a will, a world gradually petrifying in the face of the danger confronting it…All of us are standing on the brink of a great historical cataclysm, a flood that swallows up civilization and changes whole epochs." Congressional testimony, 1975
Let's hope he's wrong.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Sarah Jessica Parker's Mole
Where did it go?
The mole. On some people they're nice, others find them...um...witchy? Maybe it's considered a glorified pimple; a pimple that's squatting.
Some of you may recall the mole in Caddyshack. That one was hard to get rid of.
But there are ways....
What do you do with a mole once you're done with it? Slippers are nice. Keep an eye on Sarah's feet for the next couple of weeks.
Hope it gets figured out soon.
The mole. On some people they're nice, others find them...um...witchy? Maybe it's considered a glorified pimple; a pimple that's squatting.
Some of you may recall the mole in Caddyshack. That one was hard to get rid of.
But there are ways....
What do you do with a mole once you're done with it? Slippers are nice. Keep an eye on Sarah's feet for the next couple of weeks.
Hope it gets figured out soon.
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