50% of the population believe that the most effective personal transport is to be bought from non domestic manufacturers. Ignoring that most of the large builders have US plants it’s still a pride thing. Hey we’re kind of a democracy so let’s take that as a WIN for not wanting US cars. Doesn’t matter you’re going to pay for them anyway. Not only does Detroit make of the highest depreciating vehicles but it’s been tossing them out with massive incentives which further lower their value.
Doesn’t matter. You’re still going to be paying for them.
We’re giving money to GREAT AMERICAN COMPANIES like GM to make products that the USA doesn’t use for the most part. Thanks EPA .
General Motors is investing $445 million to build an engine plant and upgrade an existing vehicle assembly plant in Thailand. The new 14,492 m2 (156,000 ft2)
facility will be GM’s first diesel engine plant in Southeast Asia and
will provide four-cylinder diesel engines for use by Chevrolet in
Thailand and other global markets and brands.
Finance Or Refi Daily General Moneyhole and for the love of Chrysler what are you doing back , again. Ford has some interesting cars overseas, GM has some neat small diesel powered cars in other markets it’s the USA that won’t let them fill the roads with small efficient cars , or even let them try. Maybe it’s time to let them drive off into the sunset so we can free people up to work on things that we actually want to buy. If there’s not a MASSIVE luxury tax imposed on foreign cars in the near future I will be quite surprised because it’s the only thing that will get people back to the home market.
Detroit desperately needs the help. Many analysts expect all three domestic car companies to face a life-threatening crisis if the U.S. car market, down about 20 percent so far this year, stays in the doldrums. GM and Ford could start to run out of cash by the second half of 2009, a precursor to declaring bankruptcy. Chrysler’s finances are now private, but its sales are down even more than at Ford and GM, and it may be starting to bleed its corporate parent, Cerberus.
The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence.
Gee, Dubya It’s not functioning properly because it’s not been a free market for a very very long time. Markets don’t need a Fannie, Freddie or Fuck this is annoying. He’s basically saying yeah I have principles but they were not practical so let’s abandon them. There’s no confidence as no one has the slightest clue what the rules are. I just wish I was big enough to fail:)
Can this smart man be this stupid? Of course not but he’s hoping you won’t notice that. Which body mandated that loans had to be given to those that couldn’t afford them? This is a man that believes society can be made just by stealing , at the point of a gun, showing concern for his cash cow’s feelings suggests that no it’s not stupidity just, for the want of a less polarizing term , evil.
He said struggling homeowners must be taken care of in any economic recovery plan — and that taxpayers should “not be spending one dime to reward the same Wall Street CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility got us into this mess.
This is a time to look at matters carefully and decide: Do you favor free markets or do you favor the State? Do you think that these failures are failures of the free market or do you think they are failures of the State?
From the newthink dept over at Google a decision that causes me to laugh , hard. A selective ban on video of weapons that are deemed to be of an intimidating nature. That should read personal weapons since I don’t forsee those that glorify the state’s ability to render large areas hostile will be included within this ban. You Tube is becoming just the kind of "damage" that the Internet is great for routing around and not a concern on its own. Does Google ,which owns You Tube , seriously think they can take into account existing social mores for each culture and apply that sanely? So for most of the world no piss taking of the prophet, no info on biological processes and a myriad of changes keeping up with tin pot edicts of the moment. This is not organizing the world’s info it’s recreating it in your own image.
Half the people you meet not only believe in angels but claim to have actually experienced their influence. Nope this is not from a country that burns witches ( I can’t say yet, maybe at this time is safer) or riots because they believe their football game were cursed but from the USA #1 in debt since , well let’s not confuse a stupid population with the current financial crisis , since it was worked out that you can do just about anything here and then pull out an angel to justify your actions.
By now you’ve guessed that we’re not talking about Curtis and his gang but the kind of bright light, flappy flappy harp playing goody two shoes types that schlep around carrying messages from the “Almighty” , whose omni presence doesn’t stretch to a decent two way communication system with his creation apparently, and seemingly are there to give you a push , a warning or whatever help you may need to stay out of harms way. Here’s a fun story I like to relate about a marketing manager at a prior company ( a few back) that crashed her car on the way back to the office after lunch.
Her eyes were closed while driving . There wasn’t a foreign object in there, not squinting from the sun or taken by a sudden bout of narcolepsy but.. they were closed because she was praying. Guess what ? She felt lucky that she was praying as the accident could have been so much worse OTHERWISE! 55% Adults , Voters, Drivers, EEP!
One of the greatest losses of moving to the USA was that of the BBC Radio services. Sadly the BBC is funded by a tax not for using their services but for the gall of operating a TV , Radio or Satellite receiver. Licensing electronic media which is the ONLY practical location were people of limited means could find out what’s up in their society, you know get informed which is what we’re told is crucial to playing the game that is democracy , is a pretty horrible way to behave.
You must pay the $200+ a year to the BBC even if you never use their service. Yet for free I can access this programming over the net. ( odd that but I’m grateful anyway)
I listened to a short series about the placebo effect ,BBC – Radio 4 – Placebo, which goes into depths on just how much ” it’s all in the mind” goes towards reducing the perception of pain, recovery time and general mental well being. Yep sugar pills work , their analogs work ( reiki, reflexology or anything that has a believable story that your culture buys into )
In short
We feel what we expect to find as long as we’re committed to that belief. Reality can be changed by symbols , yep symbols really are for the symbol minded.
Like most things in life, the universe and what’s still being called social media , you can pull up some aphorism from some Greek that’s been dead for over two millenia to anchor your point to. Do no harm isn’t a bad one, and it’s a lot easier to pull off than do no evil yet neither are as compelling , or succinct as Wil Wheaton’s “don’t be a dick” as an almost libertarian reduction of the non aggression principle into the vernacular. (Sadly his writings on politics really don’t ultimately follow this but let’s not get into that)
In short it’s a set of rules for the relationship between creators, promoters and fans around Sci Fi / Fantasy conventions which can be extrapolated to most commercial interactions. E.G Are we customers, consumers, data points or people that want to get things done?
When you have a “voice” for a corporation engaged in social media maybe it’s a good idea to think about the above because the mode of address you choose in 3/4 cases is going to be wrong
Can a corporation really be your friend? Does this construct sound real? X is out buying yummy things his company make , Y is out watching their Movie etc Does this sound remotely like a relationship your engaged in? If it doesn’t it’s for the obvious reason that it ISN’T.
I love dealing with people from companies, hate dealing with company names that have a rotating cast of interchangeable responses that would make Turing dance with glee. I can’t tell them apart from a machine or human either.
Came across this item on the Clean Technica blog which has a practical view of energy that’s sadly lacking on those that oppose it. Hell in the UK when Torness , a nuclear power station, was being built many locals had a sticker that said “nuclear power? No thanks. Atop an image of the sun. I laughed, I still laugh and to this day usually ascribe such glorious ignorance to those that want to save the planet but ONLY within their ideological boundaries on what’s comfy technology wise. In most cases their comfort level is fire , then you have the raw foodies who’ve not even gotten that far but more abuse on that natural crowd later. Natural does not equal good in all, hell most cases. That people post these online rather than using a “natural” rock to stand and engage passers by with leads me to question their commitment to the atavistic tendencies that seem to serve them so well with the diet.
Anyway. Let’s get back to the portable nuclear generators and how fricking handy these will be if we can avoid the people that work at Jiffy Lube ever getting these in for service..
Hyperion Power Generation, for example, is focusing on a heating unit that is small enough to fit on the back of an over-the-road truck that can produce 70 MW of thermal energy constantly for several years. I spoke to the company founder for The Atomic Show Podcast and he explained how his company is establishing the supply chain needed to build 4,000 units that will be able to provide heat for about $3 per million BTU. By comparison, liquified natural gas sold in Japan last week for $20 per million BTU.
Erin was telling me that the “hardest” animal in existence could survive ,exposed, in the vacuum of space. Bullshit I said, the hardest animal is a pig with a flick knife and everybody knows that. Looks like I was wrong.
You’d never guess from looking at these clips that the millimeter-long
tardigrade is the world’s toughest animal, found from deep ocean to
Himalayan mountaintops, able to survive at a single degree above
absolute zero.
Tardigrade (Water Bear)
These things are so cute that there needs to be a plushie made in their honour. I look forward to sharing their DNA soon.
This is to the tech crowd, the geeks e.g the people that should know better.
Nearly
everything I’m seeing from the Pax08 concert has such poor sound /
video that it’s a complete waste of time and energy yet this crap is
getting 4 and 5 stars. Here’s where it bugs me. The crappy sound
and video in a sane world would be “mediated” by the crowd and given
an appropriate rating but it seems that it’s totally broken in the
cases of geek centric clips. Self recognition doesn’t = ****/*****
stars dumb ******/*******
You are today’s equivalent of the
idiots in sports stadiums with their GN14 flashes trying to reach out
all the way to center field. Either drop the money on a reasonable
recorder or just leave it in your pocket.
This line from an article, front page, main story , about the Large Hadron Collider annoys me. Firstly Mainly as it has to justify why research is useful to us which is kinda scary. We’re reading this new SOLELY as a result of our research and understanding about how most of the ‘verse holds together in a tolerably predictable manner. Can they please maybe deal with us all becoming Fannie Mae stock holders? K thx bai.
Beavis and Butthead are often underestimated in terms of being a fountain wisdom but since the subject of this post involves, poops,pukes and other toilet related humor their inclusion is quite appropriate.
How else will most of you have heard about the god that I angered and the terrible revenge suffered at his hands? I’m talking about Sterculious the god of manure , or as you city folks like to call it. Shit. Back to Thursday. I ate lunch at work and about 20 minutes later felt the need to lie down under the desk, not the most useful job saving strategy I know but it’s better than redecorating 3 monitors. After that wave passed wandered to bathroom where part 1 of the hurling started. Left for home. Got in door and then for the next hew hours the curious dance of not knowing which end should be pointed at the toilet began. It’s at this point I think I pissed off Sterculious. The day prior Dobhran had decided that flushing the middle of the toilet roll holder would be a hoot. I decided to let it go that night and see what would happen.
Shit happens.
The next days load totally jammed up the works, so now I am ill, violently on both ends and the once source of happiness is taken out from under me. Had to fix it in my weakened state the last thing one needs is to revisit day old , steeped and happily fermenting, puke. Could not remove the obstruction it’s totally stuck , inaccessible from the top, and on the bottom it can’t make it round the last bend. Toilet was not cheap and I will be trying to save it later. So I pulled a spare toilet from the garage, what doesn’t everyone have one? and we’re back to being functional but ugly.
It’s Erin and my anniversary today too which kinda went down the drain.
This Saturday I attended one of my meetup groups. Actually it’s about the last meetup group I make an effort to attend since it’s really great to hang around with non theists and libertarian types. I don’t play well with other atheists , specially those that align themselves as humanists. Oh hell surely I can’t be against humanists? Well ok, maybe I should have said most of them.
Here’s my objection.
Republican god is mean , insane and listening to his words proves that they are not fit to lead.
Democratic god is nicer, rational and while not the best situation it’s possible to support someone for president that talks with invisible men. This is an inconsistent view for people that claim a reality based view to hold. Oh well I’ll return to that in part 2.
While Hungary was never as hard line as some of the other countries in the Soviet bloc, even trying to get out from under them in the mid 50’s, the conditions were still atrocious in relation to the USA at the time. What follows not an exhaustive list, it’s anecdotal from a guy, Tames Birilov, that was born there and was there, –really- there with a chunk of the wall to prove it at the time it fell down.
, since it was worked out that you can do just about anything here and then pull out an angel to justify your actions.
that’s another story.
