busytigger

electric cars

2007-05-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

link to I guess another blog, discussing Tesla and their electric cars - what they are hitting in California-

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/index.php?p=51&

more busytigger feeds

2007-05-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

groups.blogdigger.com/ocs.jsp?id=4347
I think this is a circular reference - I am curious if there is an SEO impact to this sor5t of thing - good or bad. Since I really don't care what happens to my google presence, I just want to see.

One day gas boycott

2007-05-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

http://money.netscape.com/story/2007/05/07/why-one-day-gasoline-boycott-wont-work

I really hate these things. I posted in the thread as busytigger, but want to also say here that these things are a total waste of time and effort, and create the false impression that somethikng is actually happening. It isn't. Without changing consumption, you aren'ty changing anything at all, and you just come off as an idiot.

Chipmark

2007-05-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

http://tech.netscape.com/story/2007/05/08/chipmark-open-source-bookmark-synching

new aggregation linky thing that is getting a lot of attention. I posted a comment in the thread - still waiting to hear what it is really all about.

Joost gets picked up

2007-05-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/09/6022/#comment-1371187

I commented here - I wonder if they are specifically staging themselves to be flipped post-funding, with Sequoia on board.

Netscape

2007-05-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

Started posting to netscape more. Heres my profile there:
http://www.netscape.com/member/busytigger/

Here are a bunch of my posts:
http://tech.netscape.com/story/2007/05/08/chipmark-open-source-bookmark-synching/
http://science.netscape.com/story/2007/05/07/newborn-neurons-like-to-hang-with-the-in-crowd/
http://videos.netscape.com/story/2007/05/06/snowboarding-crash
http://money.netscape.com/story/2007/05/07/why-one-day-gasoline-boycott-wont-work
http://politics.netscape.com/story/2007/05/07/wolfowitz-aide-resigns-from-world-bank
http://politics.netscape.com/story/2007/05/05/white-house-hopeful-romney-woos-religious-right
http://autos.netscape.com/tracker/?page=7
http://donoevil.netscape.com/story/2007/05/07/ceo-pleads-guilty-to-bribing-lawmakers

More to follow.

Arctic risks

2007-05-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Huge amount of money coming into the province, but with what effect????

EDMONTON - Environmentalists will square off against the Arctic pipeline today, saying the 70,000 Alberta jobs its construction is forecast to support should be created by other, cleaner energy projects.
"The northern wilderness could disappear," Tine Steen-Dekker says in a written statement to public hearings set to be held in Edmonton today.
"Canada would not be Canada any longer," says the veteran of work in Labrador and northern Alberta aboriginal communities.
Her warning puts in a nutshell the majority feeling of 27 groups and personal interveners registered to speak at the hearings, which are being held in Edmonton by the federal, Northwest Territories and aboriginal Joint Review Panel on the Mackenzie Gas Project.
Helene Walsh of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's northern Alberta chapter, said in a written brief: "Now that global climate change has finally been recognized as a serious problem that must be dealt with, this proposed project is clearly a step backward,"
"The money and resources that would be needed for this project should be diverted into the production of renewables," writes Walsh, director of the society's boreal forest preservation campaign.
David Parker, of the Edmonton Friends of the North Environmental Society, portrayed the proposed Mackenzie Delta production wells and 1,200-kilometre Mackenzie Valley pipeline as a "brutal" threat.
He rejects industry supporters who say the proposed pipeline is to vast northern Canada as a thread is to a football field. The project is "more like a razor slash across the Mona Lisa," Parker writes.
An Arctic gas pipeline would be vulnerable to vandalism, impossible to police, a target for international terrorism, and a destroyer of communities akin to industrial exploitation of Nigeria and Siberia, he adds.
The Sierra Club of Canada says the Mackenzie project contributes to "catastrophic risks" posed by global warming. New hazards from melting ice roads to flooded wildlife habitat threaten all northern life, the conservationists warn.
"Approval of the Mackenzie Gas Project as currently proposed would commit northwestern Canada to an unsustainable future dominated by the overarching imperative to produce fossil fuels for export," the Sierra Club predicts.
The panel will hear a consensus of environmental critics that the Arctic gas plan would chiefly fuel Alberta oilsands projects, wasting the resource and emitting million-tonne clouds of carbon dioxide.
Environmentalist demands include a prohibition, if the pipeline is approved, against use of northern gas in bitumen extraction and upgrading.
There are also appeals to look after northern aboriginal communities by raising gas royalties and saving them up in a "permanent fund" akin to Alaska and Alberta nest eggs for energy revenue surpluses.
The review panel can recommend project approval conditions. Decisions are up to the National Energy Board.
The NEB has finished a year of roving hearings that did not venture south of the Northwest Territories. Today's Edmonton session is the review panel's second Alberta appearance. In High Level last summer the panel heard regional native and environmental grievances.
After 14 months of often critical and sometimes heated panel sessions, Mackenzie project leader Imperial Oil shows no signs of being ruffled by the Edmonton outpouring of protest.
"Most environmental effects will occur during construction but will be managed so that they are localized and short-term," Imperial says in its opening statement for today's event.
Company representatives attend every panel hearing to describe the project and answer questions.
"Project effects on air, water, land, fish or wildlife will not last a long time or affect a large area," Imperial predicts.
But for the three-year duration of the mammoth construction effort, effects on the Alberta economy are forecast to be large.
The project expects to spend $3.1 billion on Alberta supplies and services. The money is forecast to create more than 70,000 jobs and $2.6 billion in wages in fields from "direct" employment welding pipe to "induced" work, such as selling boots to construction tradesmen.
Southern environmental criticism has yet to erode support for the gas project by its northern aboriginal part owners including the Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and Sahtu Dene of the Mackenzie Delta and central Mackenzie Valley.
At recent "socio-cultural impacts" hearings in Inuvik, the Gwich'in Tribal Council assured the review panel that northern communities most affected by the development plan can take care of themselves.
"Gwich'in has invested a great deal of time and effort to ensure we are ready to be full participants in the Mackenzie Gas Project," the council said. "We feel we can manage our own affairs and have set out a plan to do so. We understand how we can use the tools provided to us."

Hospital at significant risk

2007-05-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

The following, about a hospital roughly 50 miles east of Edmonton, Alberta, is rather alarming.
Dr. Gerhard Benadé, the region's medical health officer, issued a public health order Friday requiring St. Joseph's General Hospital in Vegreville to halt all admissions and close its sterilization room. The order was not made public until Tuesday.
Benadé discovered the sterilization problem while investigating an outbreak among patients of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
Seven patients in the 25-bed hospital east of Edmonton contracted the antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection over a one-month period beginning in mid-January.
"These are minor infections, usually skin infections, if any symptoms at all," said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, deputy provincial health officer.
Dr. Grimsrud is having an Officer Barbrady moment...MRSA isn't called a superbug for nothing. It's resistant to a number of antibiotics, and few versions are really aggressive (previous blog here). Plus as this article notes...
Patients in intensive care units are particularly vulnerable. Hospital mortality associated with MRSA sterile-site infections is reported to be greater than 20 percent.
As one would expect, people with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable to MRSA. Back to the original article...
While investigating the outbreak, Benadé uncovered the unrelated problem of improper sterilization of medical equipment at the hospital.
Benadé said it was the first time he had been in the sterilization room since he started his job six years ago, and he made the decision to shut the room down as soon as he saw the problem.
...
Health officials are now checking records of patients back to April 2003, including those who had surgeries or emergency room procedures. They are sending letters to those exposed to equipment that was inadequately sterilized and advising them to get tested for HIV, as well as hepatitis B and C.
One certainly hopes that one of more of Benadé's staff has actually inspected that room in the last six years. Curious that the authorities are checking records back nearly four years.
Both Benadé and Alberta's health minister made comments about the risk to patients being low...
Grimsrud confirmed that for one biopsy procedure alone—cystoscopy—80 patients were being contacted. Scopes used during surgery need to be thoroughly sterilized, but that wasn't happening at St. Joseph's, she said.
"There's tissue and blood left from the previous patient in that scope if it was not cleaned thoroughly with a brush and scrubbed and then is put into a sterilizer, so the concern was then the scope used on the next patient may still have material in it that can then transmit either HIV, hep B or hep C."
Benadé said if blood tests show anyone contracted HIV or any other disease at the hospital, officials will search for patients from even earlier dates.
Cystoscopy...
Cystoscopy is a test that allows your doctor to look at the interior lining of the bladder and the urethra. The cystoscope is a thin, lighted viewing instrument that is inserted into the urethra and advanced into the bladder.
The cystoscope is inserted into your urethra and slowly advanced into the bladder while your doctor looks through the scope to examine the inside of the urethra. Your doctor then examines the inside of your bladder for stones, tumors, bleeding, and infection. Cystoscopy allows your doctor to look at areas of your bladder and urethra that usually do not show up well on X-rays. Tiny surgical instruments can be advanced through the cystoscope that allow your doctor to remove samples of tissue (biopsy) or samples of urine from each kidney.
Cystoscopy can also be used to treat some bladder problems. Small bladder stones and some small growths can be removed by using tiny surgical instruments that slide through the cystoscope. This may eliminate the need for more extensive surgery.
There are going to be some worried people in that region for awhile.

Traffic Traffic Traffic

2007-05-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

Recent Article out of BC...I'm there a lot on business. Looks lie a potential for real problems.

House by house, Clark County is filling up - and car by car, its streets will follow.
As county leaders prepare for Friday's release of a final environmental impact statement on their 20-year growth plan, they're coming to grips with the cost of keeping the county's roads wide enough to handle 184,000 new residents. In some cases, they are finding that impossible.
"You get a lot of traffic with density," Commissioner Betty Sue Morris said Wednesday. "There's no other way around it."
Last week, looking for ways to close a $260 million shortfall in the county's 20-year road budget, Morris floated the notion of lowering county standards for busy roads, essentially allowing more congestion.
"The former boards, years ago, set the bar higher than what is achievable," she said Wednesday, noting that the city of Vancouver allows average speeds to fall to 10 mph on its most crowded streets.
The county's standards bottom out at 13 mph.
The county's top planner agreed that the county can't afford all the asphalt it'd take to hold down congestion to current levels.
"We can't build ourselves completely out of this," said Planning Director Marty Snell.
Mike Mabrey, a road planner in Snell's office, said the county could cut its road deficit in half by scrapping a handful of road-widening projects around the county.
The county might also stave off expected road costs in the Orchards area by letting the city annex the land before the work takes place.
Further money could be saved by passing more costs to developers or by raising construction fees in rural parts of the county.
Lowering congestion standards can save lots of money, Morris suggested last week. But it can also be a political hot potato.
"Aside from siting a mining operation in the county, there's nothing harder than lowering the level of service," she said.
In 2003, some citizens criticized the county for lowering standards on Salmon Creek Avenue, saying the change wouldn't solve the problem of "inadequate" road funding.
Among them: future Commissioner Steve Stuart - at the time, director of the smart-growth group Friends of Clark County.
Last week, sitting on the board of commissioners, Stuart said a discussion of lower congestion standards should happen during the comprehensive plan process.
He said that would give the county time to look for noncar options residents might need.
"I'd rather have the discussion at this level, up front," Stuart said.
Elisa Murray, a spokeswoman for Seattle-based sustainability group the Sightline Institute, said road improvements are often short-term fixes to congestion.
"When you widen lanes, they often do fill up much faster than traffic models predict, because people make more trips," she said.
People don't actually want bigger roads, Murray said. They want easy commutes. And those, she argued, can come from mass transit and dense urban neighborhoods.
"You're not widening roads just to widen roads - you're widening them to get (people) access to goods or services or jobs," Murray said. "There are often cheaper ways to do that."

Environmentalist Rant

2007-05-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Crossposted from another site - wonderful thoughts....

Claims of significant anthropogenic global warming due to CO2 emissions are either overblown or completely unfounded. The greatest scientific fraud in the history of mankind is this “Global Warming / Climate Change” tandem.

The Global Warming scam was designed to 1. Scare people into giving time, money and power to charlatan scientists and sham politicians 2. Dramatically increase the size and scope of government and proliferate a worldwide socialist agenda 3. Oppress developing Nations
Sadly, the scam is working.

This fraud was dreamed up by intellectually dishonest scientific professionals coveting government grant money: Was latched on to by politicians and political groups that seek to expand their own influence as well as the size and scope of government and is perpetuated by the ignorant masses who do not have the capacity to refute what Hitler coined the “The Big Lie.”
Billions of dollars in taxes, private donations and political contributions are raised every year to fight the global warming boogieman. This sham has taken many otherwise intelligent and good intentioned people and turned them into quasi-religious zealots on a crusade for a bigger, more intrusive, more powerful world government.
The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
* Al Gore is trying to resurrect his political life with Global Warming Scare Mongering.
* Virgin CEO Richard Branson has pledged $3 Billion to fight global warming.
* Billions of Taxpayer and education dollars are wasted each year in the name of global warming.
* People like to believe in significant anthropogenic global warming because it makes them feel good and lulls them into a sense of intellectually superiority.
When you follow the money and politics, it’s easy to see why this charade of smoke and mirrors is occurring. The “why” of the scam is a thesis in and of itself. However, it’s more important for Global Warming Awareness 2007 to shed the light of truth on the debate to dispel many of the myths surrounding the climate change debate. Grab your popcorn or delicious this for later, because we have a few “incontinent Truths” of our own to cover and this is gonna take a while.Global Warming Awareness 2007, Here comes the Science . . .

GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 1.
The Earth is 1, 2, 5 or 10 degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago.
Truth: At most we’ve had an average 0.6 degree C (and probably closer to 0.3 degree C) increase over the last 100 years.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 2.
“I know Anthropogenic Global Warming is occurring because it’s warmer here in _____. I know it’s warmer, I can feel it.”
Truth: Just because it may be warmer where you are, doesn’t mean that the Earth’s temperature is changing globally; and it certainly does not mean that any climate change is occurring because of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Anecdotal testimonials in a microcosm are not scientifically valid.
As we pointed out, the average global temperature increase has been between 0.3-0.6 degrees over the last hundred years. That works out to 0.003-0.006 degrees per year; a change that is certainly imperceptible without instruments.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 3 CO2 levels and the average Global Temperatures are near all time highs in Earths history.
Truth: We have records of CO2 and temperatures going back *millions* of years, and we presently have some of the lowest CO2 levels in the same amount of time; before now, CO2 levels have been several orders of magnitude higher… all without human intervention. Also, the earth’s temperature was dramatically warmer. Guess what, doomsayers? The earth has natural CO2/temperature cycles and climate science is only just now starting to put some of the bigger pieces of the puzzle together.
Check out Milankovitch Cycles to learn more about these natural cycles.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 4. There is evidence that a rise in CO2 has led to a rise in Global Temperatures throughout millions of years of the Earth’s history.
Truth: Here is the graph of Temperature levels and CO2 Levels.
CO2 vs Temperature
The double graph, reproduced below lists CO2 concentration above temperature: but, if the two graphs were superimposed at sufficient scale, as is customary when comparing such similar curves, changes in temperature would be seen to precede changes in CO2 concentration by 400 to 4,000 years.
Can anyone explain to me why CO2 level rising lags about 800 years behind the temperature rises?
While correlation does not equal causation (contrary to what these global warming shysters would have you believe) the logical conclusion is NOT that higher CO2 Levels cause an increase in Global Temperatures, but rather that global temperature increases cause a rise in CO2 levels. These graphs also show that CO2 in and of itself is incapable of sustaining temperature growth.
If their “CO2 causes significant global warming” theories were correct we should see temperature levels increasing after rising CO2 levels - not the other way around.
It looks more like CO2 is what the planet uses stunt temperature upsurges and cool back off after an interglacial period.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 5 Receding Ice Sheets is proof that anthropogenic Global Warming is occurring.
Truth: Here are some photos showing the shrinking of Glacial Ice Sheets.
They sure look like they are shrinking, don’t they? Problem is, those are pictures of the Glacial Ice Caps on Mars. Yes, they are shrinking, but one could hardly argue it’s because of some US soccer mom driving an SUV. There are no humans on Mars.
Caltech planetary scientists have been keeping a close eye on the dozens of deep, wide pits in the southern martian ice caps. These pits have been growing larger every year, but they never get any deeper.
The scientists believe this means that there is a layer of dry ice that is evaporating off of a thicker layer of water ice. The yearly increases in evaporation may be caused by A global warming trend happening on Mars (Source NASA)
The residual martian south polar cap is changing. The fact that it is changing suggests that Mars may have major, global climate changes that are occurring on the same time scales as Earth’s most recent climate shifts, including the last Ice Age.
If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change.
Yea – like maybe the sun is a little bit hotter and brighter?
So, we know the sun is getting hotter. We know that it is warmer on Mars. It is also warmer on Earth. How does one look at those facts and come up with “I think the Earth is warmer because Jane drives a Hummer”? Get a grip people!
If there is Global Warming on Mars, doesn’t that indicate that a significant portion, if not all, of the 0.3-0.6 degree C increase in the Earth’s average temperature over the last 100 years is being caused by the sun or other cosmic forces that have nothing to do with humans?
Oh and by the way, Earth’s Antarctic Ice sheet is actually growing.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 6
CO2 is the most significant Greenhouse Gas in Earth’s Atmosphere.
Truth: More than 95% of the “Greenhouse Gas” effect comes from water vapor.
Water vapor constitutes Earth’s most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many “facts and figures’ regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC’s, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 7
Only Bible Banging Creationist and big oil lobbyist deny anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing significant global warming.
I am an Atheist leaning agnostic. Evolution is as good as fact in my book; there is no missing link. I don’t own a dime in oil stocks and have never worked for nor received any money from any lobbying group. I’m neither anti-environment nor against renewable energy ideas like Biodiesel or Solar Tower power stations. The world could go 100% solar powered tomorrow and I’d stay just as happy as a pig in shit.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 8
So and so says it’s true so it must be
Truth: Follow the money. In Science there is a saying “No Problem, no funding.”
I’ve read what the Royal Society has published about anthropogenic global warming. It’s an embarrassment: nothing but conjecture, glad-handing, postulates and guesses. Where is the Science?!? Where is the evidence that concretely demonstrates that an X increase in atmospheric CO2 leads to a temperature increase of FunctionX on a planetary scale? Nowhere! Because this type of evidence simply does not exist. All we have are rigged computer models that fail at even the most rudimentary attempts to predict climate or weather changes and “scientists” referencing those models as if they were somehow bastions of truth and authority.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 9 Human caused C02 emissions will cause a temperature increase that will melt the ice caps and flood all coastlines in the next 50-100 years.
I call Bullshit.
When someone can predict the temperature range (high and low) for the 50 largest cites in the world 30 days out to within a half of a degree of accuracy, then maybe I’ll listen to what they have to say about the average global temperature 50 years from now. Until then, we’ll just have to agree to disagree about whether or not these climatologists and meteorologist know what the hell they’re talking about.
You think these scientists can see 100 years into the future? 100 years ago, there was a different environmental concern. People worried that we needed to come up with a solution for all the horse shit from the increase in the number of horse and buggy carriages in major cities. Here are some of the great predictions of the past.
Trying to predict what’s going to happen even this year is an exercise in futility. Remember how 2006 was supposed to be the biggest hurricane season on record? How’d that prediction turn out? Thinking that one can predict 100 years into the future goes beyond the wildest stretches of absurdity into pure insanity. Alas! Fools seem to love giving these psychics their money; nothing I say is going to stop them.
For me, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and buy some nice beachfront property. Why don’t you global warming zealots put your money where your mouth is and buy a nice cabin in the mountains somewhere? Then in 50 years we’ll look at whose property is worth more to see who was right.
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 10
If real we can do something about it
According to NASA, the average global temperature has risen only 0.3-0.6 degrees over the past 100 years. Even if 100% of this warming could be attributed to mankind’s CO2 emissions (which, as we have demonstrated, it cannot), none of the proposed “solutions” would decrease worldwide CO2 levels, none of them would stop or significantly curb this alleged cause of anthropogenic global warming (if it is occurring) and most of these big government “solutions” would dramatically degrade the quality of life for the poorest and most impoverished people on Earth.
Indeed, the risks of handing power over to politicians who clad themselves in the global warming cloak to spread their socialist agendas far out ways any danger associated with anthropogenic global warming or “climate change.”
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Myth Buster 11
Global Warming is bad for the human race.
Truth: The Warming of the earth has coincided with prosperity and development. Periods of frost or cold have caused global famine, periods of stagnation and economic recession. A warmer earth and more CO2 means more plant life, greater farm yields and worldwide prosperity. It’s quite amazing how closely economic cycles have tracked increases and decreases in the average global temperature.
More interesting thoughts on Global Warming include Apocalypse canceled its referenced pdf, and Extra Terrestrials Caused Global Warming.
And before you throw out your ad hak attacks, the one thing I can say for those two intelligent people is that are not chasing Global Warming Funding Dollars or coveting political influence. Can the same be said for whomever you site?
GlobalWarming Awareness2007 Conclusion:
The overwhelming evidence is that manmade CO2 emissions account for only a fraction of the mere 0.3-0.6 degree rise in temperature over the last 100 years – if at all. Even if mankind accounted for all of it (we don’t) and we could accurately predict (we can’t) that mankind would quadruple that temperature increase over the next 100 years (we probably couldn’t even if we wanted to), it would not be cause for concern. History has demonstrated time and time again that a warmer Earth will mean greater prosperity for mankind. So in fact, the best we can hope for is that these doomsday prophets are correct and that we will somehow raise the Earth’s temperature for the sake of our great grandchildren. Unfortunately for them, the bulk of the genuine scientific evidence suggests that these Global Warming charlatans are spouting nothing but hot air.

Welcome

2007-05-05T14:47:00.001-07:00

Nothing interesting to write yet. More will follow on my hobbies and interests