alancfrancis

"In 2007, with oil at $82 and gas nearing $3, Congress finally approved the first big increase in..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:11:52 +0100

“In 2007, with oil at $82 and gas nearing $3, Congress finally approved the first big increase in fuel-efficiency standards in 32 years, requiring the fleet average to reach 35 m.p.g. by 2020. That will save one million barrels a day by 2020, but onetime CAFE opponents like Mr. Castle now say they wish that Congress had acted sooner. Since the 1980s, fuel efficiency has flatlined at 24 m.p.g., while vehicle weight has jumped more than 25 percent and horsepower has nearly doubled. In Europe, on the other hand, fuel efficiency currently stands at 44 m.p.g. and is slated to hit 48 m.p.g. by 2012.”

- American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot - NYTimes.com

"Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Democrat from Detroit who chairs the House Energy and..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:08:14 +0100

“Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Democrat from Detroit who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argues — as he did more than a decade ago — that tightening CAFE standards unfairly penalizes domestic automakers while rewarding foreign rivals who make more small cars.
Mr. Dingell, who has defended the automakers fiercely during his 52 years on Capitol Hill, decided to support the stronger CAFE standards last year. But he does not apologize for his longtime stance. “The American auto industry has sold the cars people wanted,” he says. “You’re going to blame the auto industry for that or the American consumer? He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe.”
A much more effective approach would be to simply raise taxes on gasoline, Mr. Dingell says, because higher prices are the easiest way to change buying habits. Some Europeans agree with this, noting that policy changes engineered through taxation can alter consumer choices without impeding economic growth.
Consumers overseas might not like higher taxes on gasoline, but they’ve adapted, says Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, the European energy giant. “A society can work, can function and can grow even at higher fuel prices,” he says. “It’s a way of life — you get used to it.”
In Mr. van der Veer’s native Holland, for example, gasoline sells for more than $10 a gallon, with $5.57 of that going to taxes. Even in Britain, which has substantial North Sea production, gasoline sells for $8.71 a gallon.”

- American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot - NYTimes.com

"Home to only 4 percent of the world’s population, the nation slurps up about a quarter of the..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:04:02 +0100

“Home to only 4 percent of the world’s population, the nation slurps up about a quarter of the planet’s oil — and Americans’ daily use is nearly twice the combined consumption of the Chinese and Indians, according to an annual energy survey published by BP, the British oil giant.”

- American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot - NYTimes.com

"Adobe® Reader® 9 is out. It’s now almost half as fast as Foxit Reader. It lets you embed Flash in..."

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:04:00 +0100

“Adobe® Reader® 9 is out. It’s now almost half as fast as Foxit Reader. It lets you embed Flash in PDF and embed PDF in Flash. Adobe supports both kinds of music, country and western. They’ve also “conveniently” bundled Adobe® AIR™ for no apparent reason and added synergistic integration with their cloud, which claims it doesn’t support my browser and then requires both Javascript and Flash to sign up for an Adobe® ID, the use of which is governed by this draconian service agreement, which is a PDF.”

- Adobe 9 [dive into mark]

"Their version of our mission is to go [on a course] for umpty-x thousands of dollars, so they can..."

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:54:00 +0100

“

Their version of our mission is to go [on a course] for umpty-x thousands of dollars, so they can claim they were “certified”. One two-day blowjob and they’re set for life. Sure, it tastes like salted raw egg-whites, but afterwards you’re *Agile*.

Kids. “Agile” is for people who don’t have the balls for “XP”. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but lookit, agile always was a word provided by marketeers, bereft of any commitment beyond what could be sold. It always fucking was.

”

- Mike Hill : XP Prophet

Direct link to Wonderland Movie. (3 minutes), possibly NSFW, depending on your W

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:37:19 +0100

Direct link to Wonderland Movie. (3 minutes), possibly NSFW, depending on your W

"Filmed by Nick Knight and with a soundtrack of Professor Helen Storey intoning scientific formulae..."

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:34:48 +0100

“Filmed by Nick Knight and with a soundtrack of Professor Helen Storey intoning scientific formulae as fitting backdrop, this filmic finale to the ‘Wonderland’ project documents the aquatic aerobics of Helen’s collection in the last stage of its life. With the clothes literally peeling from her body as the remarkable biodegradable polymers react against their submerged state, watch as model Alice Dellal twists and turns through her underwater ballet and Helen’s creations ultimately surrender to their watery grave.”

- SHOWstudio - WONDERLAND

Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:39:00 +0100

Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words

Poetry in Motion

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:23:03 +0100

Poetry in Motion

"You can teach any girl technical literacy just by putting her in a good school with no boys. Get..."

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:07:34 +0100

“You can teach any girl technical literacy just by putting her in a good school with no boys. Get little girls pair-programming with each other from an early age and the geek culture will mean nothing to them; they’ll eat it for breakfast like a stack of pancakes. The hard part is making that solution universal.”

- Giles Bowkett: Female Programmers

"Also, obviously, this kind of situation never happens with me; whenever a female programmer asks me..."

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:04:12 +0100

“Also, obviously, this kind of situation never happens with me; whenever a female programmer asks me for advice, I interact with perfect fairness, and it’s a non-issue with me anyway, because I’m better than every other programmer on the planet, male or female, so this problem could never happen with me in the first place. But I’m a special case. For other, lesser beings - mortals and Java programmers, for instance - this type of thing happens all the freaking time.”

- Giles Bowkett is channelling Mike Hill

"I’d previously requested Cision scrub me from their lists, and [NAME OF PERSON] said “I will remove..."

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:23:57 +0100

“I’d previously requested Cision scrub me from their lists, and [NAME OF PERSON] said “I will remove your listing immediately” (5/14/2008). I have no reason to think he/she was anything but honest in this regard.”

- kung fu grippe You should hit this url to help Merlin be heard by Cision

"P: OK. Jerusalem. One of the questions I wanted to ask you about Jerusalem, is there going to be one..."

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:53:28 +0100

“

P: OK. Jerusalem. One of the questions I wanted to ask you about Jerusalem, is there going to be one of these intractable, impenetrable first chapters like with Voice of the Fire?
AM: Now, I did deliberately put the Hob’s Hog chapter in Voice of the Fire. I have been asked since why I did that. The only thing I could think of was, to keep out scum.

…

The second section [of Jerusalem] reads like, well, I’ve described it as reading like a savage hallucinating Enid Blyton. It’s because there’s a gang of ghost children that are the main characters, and even though there are very adult things happening all around them, there’s something about having a group of children that makes it into an Enid Blyton story, even though the background of the story and everything that’s happening is completely mental.

”

- Pádraig Ó Méalóid interviews Alan Moore

"I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now..."

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:04:02 +0100

“I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you’re telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes.”

- Penny Arcade! - The Flavor Factor

B3 PRO THEREMIN DEMO AND MINI CONCERT (via ThomasGrillo)

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:02:48 +0100

B3 PRO THEREMIN DEMO AND MINI CONCERT (via ThomasGrillo)

"Always say hello and thank you to security — maintain the concentration to see that they’re people..."

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:31:38 +0100

“Always say hello and thank you to security — maintain the concentration to see that they’re people who do a job rather than faceless extensions of The Man. Never roll over, but never be anything less than reasoned and kind. Remember: you’re going somewhere interesting and they’re not. I’ve been doing longhaul flights for fifteen years now, I’ve flown from London to Australia and back again, and I always, always lose an hour to just staring out the window. Being ten miles up will never lose its magic for me.”

- Warren Ellis » Countdown To An Early Grave

"Code to Test Ratio: 1:1.4 (RSpec)."

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:41:16 +0100

“Code to Test Ratio: 1:1.4 (RSpec).”

- Software as a Service Rails Kit | Rails Kits this kind of info should be listed on the ‘features’ page of every bit of software I buy

"Instead, because this is Apple, I’ll invoke the words of the inimitable Fake Marshall McLuhan in his..."

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:29:33 +0100

“

Instead, because this is Apple, I’ll invoke the words of the inimitable Fake Marshall McLuhan in his Twitter a few days back: Stop asking ‘Is this a good or bad thing?’ and start asking ‘What’s going on?’

And because this is Apple, I’ll do the work of a true apologist and extrapolate the aphorism a step further: Stop asking ‘Is this a good or bad thing?’ and start asking ‘Why is this awesome?’

”

- lonelysandwich - Why Me?

The Mountain Goats - Sax Rohmer #1 (via 4ADRecords)

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:55:58 +0100

The Mountain Goats - Sax Rohmer #1 (via 4ADRecords)

"Imagine, if you will, how this would have been handled were these folks of Arab extraction or..."

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:44:21 +0100

“Imagine, if you will, how this would have been handled were these folks of Arab extraction or believers in radical Islamist ideology instead of your garden-variety far-right American ideology. CNN would have the cameras and reporters there, NBC would host an hour discussing the threat, and Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs’ Chuck Johnson would bouncing around the walls of their rubber rooms even more frenetically than usual amid shouts of “Jihad!!!!” Some of the worst damage inflicted by the events of 9/11 was the wreckage to the public’s already limited understanding of the nature of terrorism. Because ever since then, terrorism has been about Scary Brown Foreign People — despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of terrorist attacks planned and carried out on American soil are by white Americans. Oklahoma City was virtually erased from the public consciousness as an act of terrorism. Since 9/11 — in addition to the anthrax killer, who promptly vanished from public consciousness once it was determined the perpetrator was a domestic terrorist — we’ve had people arrested for planning cyanide bomb attacks, destroying abortion clinics, plotting the deaths of liberal leaders, and a variety of other would-be terrorist plots. And they received ZERO attention from the national press and the cable-TV talkers.”

- Firedoglake » FDL Late Nite: The Media Don’t Care About The Other Kind Of Terrorists