Re: US Tax Dollars Hard At Work...

[Russell Chapman]

Gary Nunn wrote:
U.S. Air Force Worried About German (Golf) Bunkers

"Contractors must be certified to renovate golf course bunkers," it
said. 
I dunno - I reckon an F15E could do a pretty good job of it with no 
prior training in golf course design.

Seems to me that the military should be leaping at every possible chance 
to keep their personnel occupied and happy at this point.

Cheers
Russell C.


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A Wrinkle in Time - TONIGHT

[John D. Giorgis]

For those of you on the West Coast, ABC is showing a movie rendition of the
Madeline L'Engle classic a "Wrinkle in Time" tonight

I believe it has already been shown in Europe. no word on other
locations

JDG - Figured I'd add a rare science fiction topic to the mix
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   "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, 
   it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03

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Re: A Wrinkle in Time - TONIGHT

[William T Goodall]

On 11 May 2004, at 1:50 am, John D. Giorgis wrote:

For those of you on the West Coast, ABC is showing a movie rendition 
of the
Madeline L'Engle classic a "Wrinkle in Time" tonight

I believe it has already been shown in Europe. no word on other
locations
JDG - Figured I'd add a rare science fiction topic to the mix
I finally caught up with the film 'The Lathe of Heaven', based on Le 
Guin's novel, on the UK SciFi channel tonight when I noticed it was on 
after Enterprise on Sky One and Smallville on E4.

I haven't read the book for a couple of decades or so but I didn't 
think the film followed it very closely. Probably. Lisa Bonet as a 
tattooed lawyer/waitress was interesting. The Apple Cinema Displays 
standing in for futuristic flat-panel TVs indicated the budget...

Not to mention the costume design...

--
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
'The true sausage buff will sooner or later want his own meat
grinder.' -- Jack Schmidling
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PHOTOS SHOW AMERICAN SOLDIERS HAVING SEX WITH ONE ANOTHER

[Robert Seeberger]

Pentagon possesses three disks of photos, one of which includes some
brief video clips. Many of the photos are redundant, and some have
little to do with Iraqi detainees but show sex between U.S.
soldiers... Pentagon officials prevailed at least temporarily in their
insistence that the administration not immediately release the images,
which include the forced masturbation of a detainee...

Breaking news..more to come..

xponent
Moral Breakdown Maru
rob


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Just For Fun - Some Odd Pictures...

[Travis Edmunds]

http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Odd_Pics.html

I was occupied for at least 20 mins!!

-Travis "some pics are actually interesting" Edmunds

_
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN Premium. Get 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines

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The last step of any journey...

[Medievalbk]

.may be the first step where you have to scrape something off of your 
shoe.

Watching it right now.

William Taylor
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US Tax Dollars Hard At Work...

[Gary Nunn]

U.S. Air Force Worried About German (Golf) Bunkers

May 10, 9:50 am ET 

BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force needs to fix its bunkers at the
Spangdahlem base in Germany -- because they are not up to U.S. Golf
Association standards. 

The base in the Eifel mountains, home to the air force's 53rd fighter
squadron, boasts a nine-hole golf course for its 12,000 staff and their
dependents. 

But work to expand the air field has left the course in a sorry state, a
spokeswoman said. "It's not up to par," she said. 

A tender published by the air force this week asks for the course to be
upgraded by May 31 so it can be "rated for handicap purposes." 

"Contractors must be certified to renovate golf course bunkers," it
said. 


http://tinyurl.com/32ykj


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Re: US Tax Dollars Hard At Work...

[Damon Agretto]

The horror! The thought that US soldiers should have ANY form of
entertainment...

Damon.

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Re: What America Does with its Hegemony

[Dan Minette]

- Original Message - 
From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: What America Does with its Hegemony



> I don't agree with Andrew completely.  For instance the pre-emptive
strike
> by Israel in the Seven Day War was justified.


> It becomes more obvious every day however, that the invasion of Iraq was
> unjustified, ill advised and poorly executed (not withstanding the
> effectiveness of the military whose initial performance was exemplary.)

OK, you put brackets on your opinion, which I appreciate.  But, let me
explore it further.  Was our intervention in Bosnia acceptable?  Should we
have stopped the genocide in Rwanda?  Our hands are full, but should
somebody stop what's going on in Sudan?  What about my position.  If
Hussein was sill killing people by the tens of thousands per year after we
had a success in Afghanistan, and the sanctions were working no better,
would it have been justified?

The lack of preparation by the Bush administration clearly was a factor in
my believing the war in Iraq was unwise.  But, I don't think there is
anything inherently wrong with overturning a genocidal dictator.

Dan M.


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More opinions from the military

[Dan Minette]

At

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11227-2004May8.html

there is an interesting article that contains the following section:


Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne
Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that
at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still
winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he
said, "I think strategically, we are."

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic
planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with
that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war
characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have
coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an
interview Friday.

"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who
is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on
active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort
of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later,
thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't
understand the war we're in."


There are a few things worth noting here.  First of all, these are not
small fry, a two star general and the first director of strategic planning.
Second, in the present environment, these men must realize that they are
risking their careers to speak out.  Rumsfeld does not tolerate public
dissention in the ranks.

These are the first Iraq/Viet Nam comparisons that I've seen from senior
military figures.  There are a couple of conclusions that can be drawn from
this.

1) There is still a strong feeling of professionalism in the armed forces.
They are resistant to group think.

2) Things are much more serious than the Bush administration admits.

Dan M.


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A Fable

[The Fool]

<>

A Fable
by Stirling Newberry 


Stirling Newberry is an advisor to the Jim Newberry campaign. The
opinions expressed here are his own.

Prolog

When, after the Second World War, one young Jewish reporter wanted to
know who was responsible for the genocides that we now call the
Holocaust.

I

First he went and found a person who found Jews to send to the death
camps. 

"Where you guilty?"

"No. I just painted stars on windows."

"Painted stars on windows, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who took them away."

And so he did.

II

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just knocked on doors and called to the people inside."

"Knocked on doors, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people took them to the trains."

And so he did.


III

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just walked with people to the train station."

"Walked with people to the train station, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who ran the trains."

And so he did.

IV

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just ran the trains."

"Ran the trains, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who decided who was to live, and who
was to die."

And so he did.

V

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I directed traffic, I pointed left, and I pointed right."

"Pointed left and right, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who ran the death chambers."

And so he did.

VI

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just turned knobs."

"Turned knobs, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who filled the gas."

And so he did.

VII

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just filled containers."

"Filled containers, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. Go to the people who buried the dead."

And so he did.

VIII

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I just buried the dead."

"Buried the dead, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. You should go to the political leaders."

And so he did.

IX

"Were you guilty?"

"No. I was just doing my duty."

"Your duty, that is all?"

"Yes, that is all. There would have been no trouble, if it had not been
for the pictures. You should write that down."

And so he did.

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Re: What America Does with its Hegemony

[Doug Pensinger]

Dan wrote:

OK, you put brackets on your opinion, which I appreciate.  But, let me
explore it further.  Was our intervention in Bosnia acceptable?  Should 
we
have stopped the genocide in Rwanda?  Our hands are full, but should
somebody stop what's going on in Sudan?  What about my position.  If
Hussein was sill killing people by the tens of thousands per year after 
we had a success in Afghanistan, and the sanctions were working no 
better,
would it have been justified?

The lack of preparation by the Bush administration clearly was a factor 
in my believing the war in Iraq was unwise.  But, I don't think there is
anything inherently wrong with overturning a genocidal dictator.
I think the world needs a mechanism to deal with these crisis.  This would 
obviously require the cooperation of many disparate nations and after the 
current debacle is more of a pipe dream than ever.  What Bush has tried to 
do is to tell the world how things are going to be and I think that the 
lesson we are learning is that no matter how powerful we are, we're not 
going to get the Middle East or any other region of the world to tow the 
line based on our say so.

Our action in Bosnia was the culmination of a problem that had festered in 
eastern Europe for a decade or so.  It wasn't just the 'cleansing' that 
was taking place at the time that prompted the action, but the fact that a 
series of atrocities had occurred over the years and it became obvious 
that the cycle of violence had to be ended.

Rwanda is probably the most persuasive argument for a policing mechanism.  
There is very little political interest in these poor African nations and 
just as importantly there is little interest in the press.  The AIDS 
epidemic is a festering wound and our lack of decisiveness to combat it is 
going to come back to bite us.  Big time.  So yes, we should have taken 
action in Rwanda and I think that if Clinton had tried to he could have 
made a huge difference there.  Its a black mark on his record, and no one 
knows it more than he does.

Iraq was (and remains) a much more difficult problem.  In basing our 
economy around oil we have accorded an importance to the nations of the 
Middle East that they would never have achieved otherwise. One of Bush's 
big mistakes, IMO, was to reverse the trend towards trying to develop 
alternatives to the oil that fuels this exaggerated importance.  You might 
recall a post that JDG made about how we are much less vulnerable to 
inflation as the result of a fuel shortage than we were in the late '70s, 
reason being we are _less_ dependant on that fuel.  But with the emergence 
of China as a consumer nation and the maturing of other populous nations 
such as India, the demand for fossil fuels is rising quickly, and the 
importance of the Middle East - the relevance of the Middle East is 
rapidly rising.

What does this have to do with the invasion of Iraq?  Everything.  No 
matter how desperate the condition of the people in Iraq, any intervention 
there had to be approached with the utmost delicacy.  Our motivations, 
even with the best of intentions, are automatically suspect by the Iraqis, 
by all Arab/Middle East nations and indeed by the entire world community.  
That's why it was even more important to line up an air-tight coalition 
prior to intervention for humanitarian purposes.

Of course, despite the smoke and mirrors thrown up by the supporters of 
the invasion after the fact, the stated reason for the invasion was not 
humanitarian in nature.  So the question really goes back to did Iraq pose 
a threat to us and in retrospect, they did not.

--
Doug
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Something else to worry about . . .

[Ronn!Blankenship]

<>

Chaos theory
A terrorist attack on presidential candidates could throw the US into 
unprecedented political turmoil. So why do so few people want to talk about it?

By Charlie Savage  |  May 9, 2004

WORST-CASE SCENARIO number one: It's the night before Election Day. Across 
America, voters turn on their televisions hoping to catch the final hours 
of the presidential campaign and instead hear the awful news. In 
coordinated attacks, terrorists have killed their favored candidates for 
both president and vice president. Now what?

Worst-case scenario number two: It's the day after Election Day and voters 
have clearly chosen the next president. Across America, local party members 
are making plans to travel to their state capitals and cast their usually 
ceremonial Electoral College votes when both members of the winning ticket 
are assassinated. What happens next?

The answer in both cases -- and several equally unpleasant variants: Nobody 
knows.

In recent weeks FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary 
Tom Ridge, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have all warned 
that they expect Al Qaeda to try to time a strike inside the United States 
with the upcoming presidential election. Since the March bombings in 
Madrid, speculation about the impact of an attack on the outcome of the 
November election has become something of a whispered brain-teaser in 
Washington. And late last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill 
that would provide for quick special elections in the event that 100 or 
more of its members are killed in a catastrophic event.

A small but growing group of constitutional scholars, election specialists, 
and lawmakers argue that we need to extend that sober conversation to 
include the almost unspeakable: a direct attack on the candidates themselves.

Thanks to gaps in election rules, they say, the double assassination of a 
presidential ticket just before Election Day would create chaos, with 
voters unsure who they were actually voting for. If terrorists killed the 
winners just afterward, the Electoral College would be left without any 
clear directive. Either scenario could lead to a crisis of democratic 
legitimacy that would make the 2000 Florida recount pale in comparison.

So far, warnings about this problem have been largely ignored by national 
leaders. Neither Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie nor 
Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe would agree to talk about how 
their party would handle the death or incapacitation of both their 
nominees. A spokeswoman for Gillespie explained that he simply found the 
topic too "morbid" to discuss.

But the attacks in Madrid and the still mysterious shooting of the 
incumbent president of Taiwan on the eve of that country's election, some 
say, show that we can no longer ignore the problem.

"This is an accident waiting to happen," said Yale constitutional law 
professor Akil Amar. "How close to complete meltdown do we have to get 
before we start taking this seriously? Spain and Taiwan were wakeup calls. 
Two incidents in election week, and they happened within seven days of each 
other. It could happen here. It has happened here."

. . .

Amar has been thinking and writing about this problem for a decade, since 
he was recruited in 1994 by the late Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of 
Illinois, to study how deaths could create gaps in the scheme of 
presidential succession. As he told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on 
the Constitution, the window of vulnerability around the election was "a 
time-bomb ticking away in our Constitution." He offered suggestions for 
correcting these "major glitches," but his testimony was received with 
polite inaction.

Amar tried again in writings and testimony after the election-eve deaths of 
Democratic Senate candidates Mel Carnahan of Missouri in 2000 and Paul 
Wellstone of Minnesota in 2002. But "otherwise really sensible" people, he 
said, continue to "act as though there was no problem" because the topic of 
dead leaders is taboo.

The issue gained new prominence after Sept. 11, 2001. In the months after 
the attacks, the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise 
Institute set up a bipartisan panel, co-chaired by former Clinton and 
Carter White House counsel Lloyd Cutler and former Republican senator Alan 
Simpson of Wyoming, to study the problem of ensuring continuity of 
leadership in the wake of a terrorist attempt to decapitate the government.

The commission's first two proposals have dealt with the problems of 
quickly reconstituting Congress after a catastrophic blow and dealing with 
the truncated succession line on Inauguration Day -- when an attack on the 
dais could take out the first four people in line for the presidency before 
a new cabinet has been sworn in to continue the line. (Their suggestions: 
Amend the Constitution to allow govern

'liberal' media bias: Marches

[The Fool]

<>

Women's March Coverage Hard to Find on Television News 

May 3, 2004 

On Sunday, April 25, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets
of Washington, D.C. to demonstrate for women's reproductive rights. Crowd
estimates ranged from 500,000 to 1.15 million, but it was clear that the
March for Women's Lives was one of the largest demonstrations in the
capital's history-- and perhaps the largest ever. One might have
expected, then, to see extensive coverage on national television-- but a
look at both network and cable news during the days surrounding the march
turned up remarkably few reports.

A Nexis search of the week surrounding the women's march found a total of
eight stories from the broadcast networks (not counting incidental
mentions of the march): ABC, CBS, and NBC all ran two stories the day of
the march; CBS also ran two stories the next morning.*  CNN, as a 24-hour
cable news outlet, gave more extensive coverage to the event, running
several reports on Sunday. But even CNN failed to treat the march as the
historic occasion that it was, running just a small handful of brief
march-related stories on Saturday and Monday.

Other cable news outlets focused not on the march itself but on abortion
opponents, a few hundred of whom held a counter-protest at the march. Of
three Fox News stories found on Nexis related to the march, two focused
on anti-abortion activists (Special Report with Brit Hume, Hannity &
Colmes, 4/22/04). Special Report examined anti-abortion opposition to the
National Education Association's endorsement of the march-- a story that
MSNBC also covered in that network’s only march report found in the Nexis
database. (Fox and MSNBC do not transcribe their news coverage as
thoroughly as CNN does, so the amount of coverage on the three cable
channels cannot be compared.)

To put the women's march coverage in perspective, FAIR conducted a
similar Nexis search of the week surrounding the Promise Keepers march in
1997. The Promise Keepers, an evangelical men's organization that has
been widely accused of promoting misogyny and homophobia, drew an
estimated 480,000-750,000 demonstrators to Washington-- roughly
three-quarters the size of the women's march. Despite its somewhat
smaller size, the Promise Keepers received much more media attention:
Stories began appearing on network news three days before the march and
continued for two days afterward, with a total of 26 stories between the
three broadcast networks-- more than three times the coverage the
networks devoted to the women's march. Was the Promise Keepers march
three times more newsworthy than the March for Women's Lives?

Why such little coverage? Women's issues routinely get short shrift in
the media, and during this election year, news outlets found even more
reason to discount women's voices. NBC Nightly News reporter Jeannie Ohm
asked (4/25/04), "But just how big a factor will abortion rights have in
the November election?... Political analysts say it's the economy and
jobs, war in Iraq, homeland security and health care that will have more
of an impact with undecided voters." CNN correspondent Elaine Quijano
sounded a similar note (4/25/04): "This election year, each group hopes
to spark renewed interest, enough to have an impact at the ballot box.
But political analysts say more than three decades after Roe v. Wade,
most voters have already made up their minds."

A record-breaking number of people-- mostly women-- marched on Washington
to demonstrate their commitment to women's rights and their
dissatisfaction with Bush's record on women's issues. By minimizing
coverage of the event and reducing women's rights to a low-ranking
concern in the presidential horse race, television news stifled critical
public dialogue on women's rights and health, and relegated women and
their concerns to the sidelines.

Update:
<>

A May 3 FAIR Action Alert encouraged readers to contact the broadcast
networks about the scant coverage given to the April 25 March for Women's
Lives in Washington, D.C. CBS sent this response to FAIR activists: 




On April 25, The Evening News did two pieces on the march, therefore
devoting a major portion of The Evening News that night to the march.
CBS's other news programs also devoted time to covering the historic
event. 




The Action Alert counted CBS Evening News's April 25 coverage as a single
segment, although it involved reports by two separate correspondents
joined by an anchor segue. (ABC's coverage of the march involved a
similar double segment.) If you separate all double segments, CBS News
had four stories on the March for Women's Lives, and the three broadcast
networks together had eight. 

But applying the same standards to the Promise Keepers rally of 1997,
whi

RE: Darwin's Radio

[Miller, Jeffrey]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Sharkey
> Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 04:57 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Darwin's Radio
> 
> 
> 
> I read this Killer B book on the train this week, and I was 
> wondering what you all thought of it. 
> 
> I thought it was also fairly predictable.

Agreed.  I also felt like any of the 3 or 4 distinct plot lines would've worked as 
their own story, but as it was, I had trouble getting interested in any of them (or 
being able to tell major characters apart - a sure sign of a problem!)

While I was duly impressed at the amount of scientific information, I wish Bear was an 
author who was less interested in impressing us with the amount of research he did.

If I read one more passage set in/about Seattle.. give it up, you live in the NW, you 
like it, ok, get over it ^_^

I tried to read Darwin's Children (the 2nd book) but was unable to finish it.  Just 
more of the same, turned up to 11.

-k- 
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Marcial Angell's perspectives on "me too" drugs

[ChadCooper]

 
Marcial Angell's perspectives on "me too" drugs.  

The former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia
Angell is currently a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical
School. She disputes the pharmaceutical companies' argument that they need a
high profit margin to fund the research and development of new medicines. In
fact, she says, the industry piggybacks off publicly funded research at the
National Institutes of Health and other academic institutions. She also
argues that most of the companies' profits are not derived from new drugs,
but rather from "me too" drugs, or imitations of drugs already on the
market. This interview was conducted on Nov. 26, 2002.
=After a period where health care costs flattened, they're going up sharply.
Why is the pharmaceutical sector [of health care costs] rising the fastest?

There are a couple of reasons. One [is] price inflation. The price for the
top-selling drugs now averages about $100 for a month's prescription of that
drug. It's well over $1,000 a year. The price per drug is increasing about
three times the rate of inflation. So one is just prices.
 
The other is, through advertising and PR and marketing, consumers are being
switched or preferentially led to take newly patented high-price drugs
rather than generic drugs that might be just as effective. So the kinds of
drugs that are being used are the high-priced drugs.

Third is just the increased volume of use. More people are taking more
drugs. This too is a part of promotion and marketing. For all of life's
discontents, according to the pharmaceutical industry, there is a drug and
you should take it. Then for the side effects of that drug, then there's
another drug, and so on. So we're all taking more drugs, and more expensive
drugs.
 
=Who's most affected by this price inflation and increased drug costs?

The sick and the helpless are those who are most affected by this price
inflation. That is, if you have good insurance that would pay for a
prescription drug benefit -- and fewer and fewer of us do have such
insurance -- but if you do have that insurance, the HMO through which you
have the insurance will bargain for price discounts from the drug companies,
get them somewhat cheaper -- in fact, a lot cheaper. You will have to pay
less in out-of-pocket contributions. 

But for those who are not well insured for prescription drug costs, they're
pretty much left on their own. These are mainly Medicare recipients who have
no supplementary insurance. Medicare, through historical accident, really,
does not pay for outpatient prescription drugs. So Medicare recipients have
to pay out of pocket, unless they have supplemental insurance. 

Not only do they have to pay out of pocket, but they're likely to be taking
more drugs. So if you just look at the price of one of the top selling drugs
-- $1200 per year -- and you look at older patients and seniors, who may be
taking five or six of these drugs, you can see that they're up to many
thousands a year. These are the most vulnerable people. They pay twice as
much for drugs, on average, as will insured younger people who get their
drugs through HMOs.
 
=People who are covered have no idea what drugs actually cost. Seniors are
one of the few groups who actually know the market price.

That's right. They're the ones who are complaining the loudest, and they
should. The rest of us are still, to some extent, cushioned from the
realities of this incredible price gouging that's going on by the
pharmaceutical industry. We're still cushioned to some extent, but that is
going to be less and less. We're going to see our insurers paying just a
defined contribution, and we will have to make up the rest, or dropping
prescription drug benefits altogether. So we too will find out about this
very shortly.

=Some seniors in border states notice that drugs are cheaper in Canada, and
they actually go and get them. What does that tell us about the two systems?

Well, the United States is the only advanced country that permits the
pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear,
whatever it wants. The other advanced countries in Europe and Canada have
some form of price control, either mandatory volume discounts or some way of
limiting price. So on average, Canada spends half of what we spend for the
exact same drugs. Half. 

So if you live on a border state and you can make a bus trip to Canada and
have a prescription, you can -- particularly if you're a senior citizen who
has to pay for drugs out of pocket, and have to take a lot of them -- you
can do very well by taking that bus trip to Canada.
 
=One argument [is that] he Canadians don't invent the drugs. They're
parasitic on our R&D. It's unfair.

In fact, the pharmaceutical industry is what's parasitic on publicly funded
research. The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a
research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be
further from the tr

Those responsible for the abuses...

[Erik Reuter]

Bush said today:

  "Those responsible for these abuses have caused harm that goes well
  beyond the walls of a prison. It has given some an excuse to question
  our cause and to cast doubt on our motives," Mr. Bush said.

  With Mr. Rumsfeld at his side, Mr. Bush said the cabinet officer was
  "courageously leading our nation in our war against terror. ... You
  are a strong secretary of defense and our nation owes you a debt of
  gratitude."

I am sickened by Bush-I-can-do-no-wrong implying that the majority of
the blame does not rest squarely on his and Rumsfeld's shoulders. It
seems those most responsible are going to get off scot-free from this
travesty.


-- 
Erik Reuter   http://www.erikreuter.net/
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"It's not my problem"

[The Fool]

Long.
<>
...
"It's not my problem"
Rwanda

"It's not my problem"

Bosnia

"It's not my problem"

Somalia

"It's not my problem"

Myanmar

"It's not my problem"

North Korea

"It's not my problem"

Sudan

"It's not my problem!"


Perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, victims: we can be clear about
three of these categories. The bystander, however, is the fulcrum. If
there are enough notable exceptions, then protest reaches a critical
mass. We don't usually think of history as being shaped by silence, but,
as English philosopher Edmund Burke said, `The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'

"Well... It's not my problem"

-
Shrub 04:
Don't Switch Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse

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Re: Hi! - Not The Fool

[The Fool]

Not Me.  Infi.net was sold by earthlink.

--
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Hi! :-)
Date: Sunday, May 09, 2004 12:15 PM

Looking forward for a response  :P

pass:  80513
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--

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Re: New Material Grabs More Solar Energy

[Ronn!Blankenship]

At 05:08 PM 5/9/04, David Hobby wrote:
Julia Thompson wrote:

...
> > > I don't think that is true anymore. You can see solar cells in
> > > applications out on the street these days. A good example is the
> > > "School Zone" flashers (Hush Ronn! ) where using a solar panel to
> > > charge a battery is almost universal around here.
> >
> > Satellites, flashers, what's the difference?  If it takes too
> > long an extension cord to get power to it, the device should
> > make its own.
>
> But some of the flashers I see (and I imagine that at least some of the
> flashers Rob sees) are in spots where it wouldn't be that big a deal to
> run a power line underground to them.  I mean, they're 20 feet from
> actual traffic lights, some of them, and *those* are being powered off
> the grid.  And the ones that aren't that close to actual traffic lights,
> I still don't think it would be that big a deal to power them off the
> grid -- but there they are, with solar cells on the top.
>
> So maybe the tech is improving to where it's economically viable to put
> solar cells on other things.
What do you mean, "not that big a deal to run a power line
underground"?  I need some lights by the front walk, does anybody
want to come over with a shovel and help dig a trench for the
conduit?
...
...
...
Right.  I thought not.  So they're going to be solar
powered.  A city has better digging equipment, but also pays
more than I do in employment costs, so I bet it comes out
about the same.


Isn't that what prisoners doing community service are for?





(BTW, ;-) )

That's The Sound Of The Men Maru

-- Ronn!  :)


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Re: Darwin's Radio

[Ronn!Blankenship]

At 08:47 PM 5/9/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


I was really disappointed. If one more person takes poor *Chuck's* name in 
vain
like this I think I am going to *throw up*.


Pun intended?



How Much Wood Could A Woodchuck Upchuck If A Woodchuck Had The 24-Hour 
Stomach Bug Maru

-- Ronn!  :)


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Re: Darwin's Radio

[Julia Thompson]

"Ronn!Blankenship" wrote:
> 
> At 08:47 PM 5/9/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> >
> >I was really disappointed. If one more person takes poor *Chuck's* name in
> >vain
> >like this I think I am going to *throw up*.
> 
> Pun intended?
> 
> How Much Wood Could A Woodchuck Upchuck If A Woodchuck Had The 24-Hour
> Stomach Bug Maru

He'd Upchuck All The Wood That A Woodchuck Could If A Woodchuck Had The
24-Hour Stomach Bug.

Julia
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Re: floating homes and businesses....

[Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten]

Gary Nunn wrote:

I ran across an interesting article about some homes being built in the
Netherlands that will float in a flood. I did a search and found quite a
few articles. I really wanted to find a webpage for the company that is
building these homes. It sounds like an awesome idea, especially for the
flood prone areas. I would say that this will be one of the few, if not
the only, long term urban development plan for areas like New Orleans
that are on the coast and below sea level where one good storm surge
could cause considerable flooding.
If anyone knows of, or runs across, the webpage of the manufacturer of
these house, please pass it along. I am specifically interested in how
they did the electrical and plumbing work as well as the general design.
The only REAL problem I think would be debris hitting the home as it is
floating.
Gary

floating homes
http://tinyurl.com/2j4xk
http://tinyurl.com/22nd5

floating greenhouses
http://tinyurl.com/322jj
An independent assessment of flooding in the UK
http://tinyurl.com/ywsc4
Google search
http://tinyurl.com/2bxwx
 

In Dutch they are called "waterwoningen". The project mentioned in 
Maasbommel is this one,

http://www.goudenkust.nl/rustveilig5.htm Unfortunatly in Dutch. Let me 
know if you need help with translation.

They were building a number of vacation homes along the coast. The 
uniqueness of the concept was that normally these buildings are on a 
solid and not a floating support and only when there is a flood they 
become a floating home. As for floating homes in particular that's a 
very well established concept in The Netherlands. I remember something 
about the ones in Maasbommel in the news a couple of years back. 
Something to do with environmental concerns because of the location they 
wanted to build them in. Not sure. You can apply at the website for more 
info. The architects for the project are factor architecten in Arnhem 
http://www.ingburoarnhem.com/factor/projecten/recreatie/29921.htm

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more.

Sonja
GCU: Service
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