crikey...

sharks to the northwest, sharks to the southeast, sharks to the southwest and sharks with frickin' lasers to the south.

LET'S GO SURFING, DUDE!!!!




digg

if you still want to go..

making

as I kid, I built model airplanes, so this is cool..

don't get glue on your fingers, now..





I'd especially like to be the guy that tests the landing gear and the flaps.

Neatorama

everyone's a critic

his criticism is succinct and to the point

an homage

One of my favorite movie genres is the Spaghetti Western and one of the best is Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo  better known here as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
 A few years ago a twist of the genre was released,  Sukiyaki Western Django*. A Ramen Western ?


and now from South Korea...



I can't wait...

* small part by a big American Director/Screenwriter

tea is brown, the tea party is not..

op-ed from the New York Times

On Thursday, I came here outside Dallas for a Tea Party rally.
At first I thought, “Wow! This is much more diverse than the rallies I’ve seen on television.”
Then I realized that I was looking at stadium workers. I should have figured as much when I approached the gate. The greeter had asked, “Are you working tonight?”
I sat in the front row. But when the emcee asked, “Do we have any infiltrators?” and I almost raised my hand, I realized that sitting there might not be such a good idea.
I had specifically come to this rally because it was supposed to be especially diverse. And, on the stage at least, it was. The speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God. It felt like a bizarre spoof of a 1980s Benetton ad.
The juxtaposition was striking: an abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd, with the exception of a few minorities like the young black man who carried a sign that read “Quit calling me a racist.”
They saved the best for last, however: Alfonzo “Zo” Rachel. According to his Web site, Zo, who is black and performs skits as “Zo-bama,” allowed drugs to cost him “his graduation.” Before ripping into the president for unconstitutional behavior, he cautioned, “I don’t have the education that our president has, so if I misinterpret some things in the founding documents I kind of have an excuse.” That was the understatement of the evening.
I found the imagery surreal and a bit sad: the minorities trying desperately to prove that they were “one of the good ones”; the organizers trying desperately to resolve any racial guilt among the crowd. The message was clear: How could we be intolerant if these multicolored faces feel the same way we do?
It was a farce. This Tea Party wanted to project a mainstream image of a group that is anything but. A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Wednesday found that only 1 percent of Tea Party supporters are black and only 1 percent are Hispanic. It’s almost all white.
And even when compared to other whites, their views are extreme and marginal. For instance, white Tea Party supporters are twice as likely as white independents and eight times as likely as white Democrats to believe that Barack Obama was born in another country.
Furthermore, they were more than eight times as likely as white independents and six times as likely as white Democrats to think that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites.
Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused.

neither am I ...

The quote Tea Party unquote has rapidly become a gathering place of cranks, right wing nuts,and more dangerously ,militants who may have extreme methods in mind..


On this the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building that killed 149, 19 of which were children in a day care facility, a line must be drawn.

Recent statements by members of the so called Tea Party have been racist, homophobic and just plain hateful.

Irresponsibly, certain members of Congress have fueled the fire.

This should not stand.

If you cry out fire!! in a crowded theater, you had better be able to back it up.

However, some comments by elected officials seem to only fan the flames of  hate and provide justification to those that wish to divide our country from within.



If left without public scrutiny something similar to the tragic bombing in Oklahoma City will occur again, and we, as Americans will be much the less for it.

ahhhh, nature...

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano

taken on April, 17th, 2010 as on APOD

as far away from the sweet idylls of spring that I can imagine..

and a weird coincidence, I started reading Krakatoa, The Day the World Exploded a few days before the eruption made the news.


BTW, this pic is now my computer background

I hate corks, I really do

I have always been a fan of the Stelvin closure for wine solely for it's ability to prevent cork taint, now it appears that it works well in the case of ageing too.

that's it!! case closed!!

What's it about? All 14 bottles contain identical samples of a Leasingham Estate 1999 Clare Valley Semillon, all cellared together for a decade. The colors tell the tale that 10 years of aging wrote: They range all the way from watery pale to a dank, dead dark brown.

The bottle on the left, perfect in color (and reportedly in taste), was closed with a sturdy Stelvin-brand metal screw cap. All the others are plugged with a variety of natural and processed cork or synthetic stoppers. If this doesn't close the case, it makes a mighty strong argument to the jury.

It is well known that screw cap closures eliminate cork taint (TCA) and premature oxidization, but what this trial reveals is the fact that wine does mature/age in the bottle over time under screw cap. This is the most misunderstood aspect of the closure debate. Australians have been conducting both red and white wine screw cap trials for 20-30 years, so experience tells us this is indeed the case, but this is the first trial on such a grand scale to highlight this little-known fact.
The wine involved was a 1999 Clare Valley Semillon made by Kerri Thompson of Leasingham Estate. Thousands of bottles were sealed with 14 different closures, including multiple natural and synthetic corks as well as one sample under screw cap.

UK wine Journalist Jamie Goode has followed the trial closely while remaining independent and was fortunate enough to taste the Semillon after being in bottle for 10 years and 8 months, saying 'It's a full yellow color, with a minerally, flinty edge to the attractive honeysuckle and citrus fruit nose. The palate has a lovely focused fruit quality to it with pithy citrus fruit and a hint of grapefruit. There are also some subtle toasty notes. Very attractive and amazingly fresh for a 10 year old Clare Semillon.

more at Wine Lovers Page

ohhh Nellie!!!

Nellie Cruz of my Texas Rangers is tearing it up...

CLEVELAND -- Nelson Cruz struck again on Wednesday in continuing his potentially historic start to the season.

With two out in the third inning, Cruz smashed a 2-1 fastball over the left-field wall off Indians starter Justin Masterson to give the Rangers a 4-0 lead. It was also his sixth home run in the first eight games, as the Rangers went on to a 6-2 victory at Progressive Field.

Cruz leads the American League with both the six home runs and 12 RBIs. But the home run was also just his only hit in five at-bats so his league-leading slugging percentage slipped to 1.172.

"You see it when you're leading the league," Cruz said. "But I'm not here to lead the league, I'm here to win games and help the team."

Cruz has also driven in 32 percent of the 38 runs scored by the Rangers. Guerrero and Julio Borbon, who had a two-run single in the eighth inning on Wednesday, are tied for second with four RBIs while Hamilton has two and Davis has just one.

Of course Davis has an excuse. He has been hitting behind Cruz, who hasn't been leaving much out there. Cruz's six home runs are the most by a Rangers player through eight games and his 12 RBIs match what Juan Gonzalez did in his first eight games of the 1998 season. That was the season Gonzalez ended up setting a club record with 157 RBIs.

Texas Rangers

time moves a little slow some places

Walthall County in Mississippi has backslide on desegregation a bit..

More than 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, it is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We will take action so that school districts subject to federal desegregation orders comply with their obligation to eliminate vestiges of separate black and white schools.”

According to the motion, the district’s practice of permitting hundreds of students — the vast majority whom are white — to attend schools outside their assigned residential attendance zone without restriction prompted a disproportionate number of white students to attend a single school in the district, leaving a number of other schools disproportionately black.

Indeed, evidence in the case suggested that the community regarded certain schools in the district as “white schools” or “black schools.” The United States also asserted that officials in certain district schools grouped, or “clustered,” white students together in particular classrooms, resulting in large numbers of all-black classes at every grade level in those schools.

Think Progress

Those running Walthall Co. must of thought no one was watching, and maybe no one was...

Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era
Conservative leanings stressed
July 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.
In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.

Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.

The Boston Globe


Or it could have been intentional..

WASHINGTON — Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

“I think the wounds that were inflicted on this division were deep, and it will take some time for them to fully heal,” said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.

The New York Times

both newspaper articles by Charlie Savage

blow, baby, blow

AUSTIN, Texas -- Feb. 28, 2010, was a banner day for Texas wind to set the clouds -- and electrons -- flying.

In the Panhandle, gusts reached 47 miles per hour and wind generators delivered a record 6,242 megawatts of power to Dallas, Austin and other population centers. At 1 p.m., 22 percent of all the electricity consumed in the Texas grid was coming from wind.

At the end of 2009, the capacity of Texas wind turbines, reaching to the horizons of farm and prairie land, totaled 9,410 megawatts, well more than the combined total of the next three largest wind-power states, Iowa, California and Washington. Over the course of a year, wind power is providing 5 percent of Texas' demand, and that would more than double if the state's grid goals are achieved.

More than half the states now have renewable energy mandates or goals, but Texas was at the front of the pack.

more at Scientific American

what's next? flying pigs?..

ladies and gentlemen ..

The Standing Cat

The cat's name is Rocky. He is 2 years old and his owners are French (Daisy and Yann). Rocky used to stand up because he couldn't see the birds through the windows, and wanted to, so he stood up. Why does he raise his leg in the middle of the video? Probably because there was a bird outside, according to Daisy, or maybe a dog wandering around. Rocky hates dogs.

boingboing

from the local

short item from the Austin American Statesman

COPENHAGEN — Hundreds
of Carlsberg workers walked
off their jobs in protest after
the brewer tightened rules
on workplace drinking. The
Danish workers are rebelling
against a new company policy
that lets them drink beer only
at lunch in the canteen. Previously,
they could help themselves
to beer throughout the
day from coolers placed around
their work sites.

the horror, the horror...


I have had Carlsberg, you can drink it all day and it will not affect your performance..
except, maybe, an inordinate amount of pee breaks..

04/01/2010

there is water on the moon!!!

kudos to APOD, one of my favorite sites for eye candy.