Charlie in front of the control room
We're BeatricePut it this way: if our financial system is so high-strung, so manic-depressive, that low rates for a few years can inflate a monstrous bubble, while a few discouraging words from high officials can send them into a tailspin, this doesn’t make the case that policy must walk on eggshells, forgoing any attempt to fight prolonged unemployment. Instead, it makes the case for much, much stronger financial regulation.I would only add that one of the metrics that should be used in financial regulation is proportion of GDP. There must be a conscious effort by regulators to keep the financial industry from becoming the tail that wags the dog of our economy.
Tracks vs wheels
What doesn’t work is the Stryker in Afghanistan, says Scales. The 5th Stryker Brigade, operating in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar area, has taken heavy casualties, losing some 21 of the eight-wheeled vehicles and two dozen soldiers killed. “The vehicles have proven to be too thinly armored to survive the very large explosive power of Taliban IEDs and too immobile to maneuver off road to avoid them,” Scales writes.I would also add that, for a given envelope, tracked vehicles are more space efficient, since the wheels on something like a Stryker are large, have significant travel, and the front (and sometimes rear) wheels sweep out a larger volume as an artifact of their pivoting to steer. (see picture)
“The lesson of contemporary wars is that IEDs can best be defeated by designing a vehicle capable of avoiding them,” he writes, in other words a vehicle that can go off road across rough terrain so that it isn’t limited to predictable routes. That means the future GCV must be tracked. It must also be quiet enough to be somewhat stealthy, Scales argues, which would imply a rubberized band track.This is an area that I worked on extensively on the FCS-RMV, since, as a recovery vehicle, it would have to perform field repair, and from this perspective, band track, basically a continuous rubber band is a complete disaster.
Soon to hit 250 MPH?Sikorsky expects to exceed 250 kt. with its X2 Technology coaxial-rotor compound helicopter demonstrator early in the year, resetting speed expectations for rotorcraft that have been stuck at around 150 kt. for decades.The ability to auto-rotate in an emergency is a big plus too.
A modern reinterpretation of Sikorsky’s XH-59A Advancing Blade Concept (ABC) testbed, which reached 238 kt. in the 1970s, the X2 combines fly-by-wire control, integrated engine/rotor/propulsor system, variable-speed rotor, high-lift/drag rigid blades and active vibration control to realize the speed potential of a coaxial rotor while retaining the hover agility of a helicopter.
Launching the MICLIC
Proposed Mi-46The Ministry of Defence may be forced to halve its order for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) at the next Strategic Defence Review, according to a report in the Guardian.It's really not surprising.
The UK had ordered 140 of the aircraft for use by the RAF and on the Royal Navy's proposed new carriers, but the newspaper reports that "a consensus has emerged" that the number of fighters ordered is unsustainable. Delays and cost increases on the JSF programme are said to mean the MoD could be looking to order just 70 of the fighters.
Harrier and Tornado squadrons may also suffer further cuts, the report says, identifying a "huge shift" in spending that is being considered for the Strategic Defence Review following the next general election.
Blah, blah, blah!The upgraded R-77 is both heavier and longer than the basic missile. It weighs 190 kg. (418 lb.) rather than 175 kg., and is 3.71 meters (12.17 ft.), rather than 3.6 meters, in length, according to company data.It also looks like they may be moving away from the unique lattice fins, so as to improve range, at the cost of a slight loss of agility, and the need for larger actuators to move these surfaces.
The increased range is at least in part due to improved aerodynamics. A company executive says the radome shape has been refined, while a “boat-tail” configuration has been introduced at the rear to help drag reduction. Adapting the missile to fly lofted trajectories would also increase the maximum launch range. The executive adds that the active radar seeker has been improved. The manufacture of the RVV-SD seeker is believed to still be Istok.
A further development of the basic R-77 design, previously associated with the Article 180 designation, is also underway, though manufacturer TRV remains unwilling to discuss the program. It is likely that the missile’s signature lattice fins have been replaced with a conventional design, with further range improvements included. This is possibly based on the introduction of a dual-, rather than a single-pulse, solid-rocket motor.With a weight of 190 kg, as opposed to the 152 kg, physics would seem to dictate that it would have superior range and terminal energy to the AIM-120 AMRAAM, even with the "egg crate" fins.
According to this report, the Brazilian President's first choice, the Dassault Rafale, is actually ranked 3rd:Brazil's F-X2 fighter programme could be the subject of further delays, after a summary of the air force's 30,000-page evaluation report was leaked to one of the country's leading newspapers.I think that part of this is higher level diplomacy, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva believing that closer relations with France are more important than those with Sweden (that's a no-brainer), and his belief that allying with Dassault will provide more opportunities to the Brazilian aerospace industry.
The Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported that the air force's F-X2 procurement programme committee has ranked Saab's Gripen NG as its first-choice candidate for the deal, initially for 36 aircraft, due to its lowest acquisition and operating costs. It is followed closely by Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Block II.
Moreover, NAVAIR estimates the total of 680 short take-off and vertical landing F-35Bs and carrier-variant F-35Cs, ordered by the US Marine Corps and USN, respectively, will cost $30,700 to fly each hour. This compares to $18,900 for the Boeing AV-8B Harrier II and Boeing F/A-18A-D, the aircraft types the Joint Strike Fighter will replace.Note that this is competing against an F/A-18 with 2 engines, and roughly the same level of installed thrust and weight.
Although NAVAIR projects the F-35 will fly 12% fewer flight hours than the AV-8B and F/A-18A-D fleets, the agency expects the modern aircraft to cost as much as about 25% more to operate at peak rates, the briefing says.
The unexpected cost increases mean the F-35 "will have a significant impact on naval aviation affordability", the NAVAIR document concludes.
That is, it, Goldman, has a legal duty to not take advantage of the people to whom it acts as a fiduciary. It also has that duty because of the way it presents itself to the world -- with all of its leaders' talk about the Goldman Sachs "culture". They don't present that culture as the value system of Louis "Lepkele" Buchalter of Murder, Incorporated or of Meyer Lansky or Bugsy Segal or The Purple Gang. They sell the company as a prestige house with solid, client-driven values. If they act to betray that trust, it's illegal.Either something is profoundly wrong with the universe, or Matt Taibbi and I are wrong about the squid.
The Phone Company*Last month, NTIA gave Great Works internet in Maine $24.5 million toward a fiber optic network. The grant is a classic public/private partnership for a middle mile project that includes, among others the University of Maine.While this money would improve access and service for everyone, it would make it easier for companies to compete against Farpoint, the incumbent, so they are fighting this tooth and nail, because their service has been so unbelievably horrible that they know that they will hemorrhage customers if anything near free and fair.
Fairpoint, Maine's primary rural LEC, has objected to this “undue competition with the private sector.” This would be funny, given how Fairpoint has become the poster child for the failure of the private sector to deliver on its big promises to rural communities. But Fairpoint's talking points have ended up in legislation filed by Maine State Senator Lisa Marrache (D-Waterville) and Maine State Rep. Stacey Fitts (R-Pittsfield). Despite the fact that middle mile build out will help companies like Fairpoint (while also helping their competitors), we get the usual ideologically-driven nonsense about how the public sector ought to know its place and leave the driving to the all-knowing and super-efficient firms like Fairpoint — assuming Maine's rural residents like the prospect of waiting for a bankrupt company [Yes, literally. Farpoint went Chapter 11] to satisfy its creditors and bring them broadband.
Sure, we’re all plugged in and online 24/7. But fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department.Umm ………… Hello?!?!?!?
The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting proposals for initiatives that would attract teens to careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with an emphasis on computing. According to the Computer Research Association, computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006.
The agency doesn’t offer specifics on what kinds of activities might boost computing’s appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling.Like that will work: Ignore the poor pay and benefits, and the fact that your barista at Starbucks® used to be in IT, but after he got laid off the last time, he couldn't find another job, because he only knows C++, not C#, because being a computer programmer or an engineer is just so f%$#ing cool.
You cannot caricature Sally Quinn. Don't even try. It simply can't be done. No matter how hard you try to exaggerate her preening self-regard and utter frivolity, she comes right along and shows herself to be worse than you could possibly imagine.She is a failed newspaper reporter (see above), a failed TV reporter, I saw her on the CBS Morning News in the 1970s, and a failed novelist, and is now a serial party girl and hostess.
Quinn -- who gained fame when The Washington Post was forced to retract her false claim that Jimmy Carter's national security adviser unzipped his fly during an interview -- makes the extraordinary claim in her January 26 column that Carter lost his re-election campaign due to his failure to attend Washington dinner parties. Not only that -- according to Quinn, Ted Kennedy ran against Carter because of it:…
The Jury deliberated only 37 minutes before convicting him of 1st degree murder, which means that they basically voted to convict while waiting to get into the jury room:In a trial that never became the referendum on abortion that some abortion foes wanted, Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old airport shuttle driver, was convicted today of murdering George Tiller, one the nation's few physicians who performed late-term abortions.This guy needs to be prosecuted under federal statutes too, and locked up under the most severe restrictions possible at the SuperMax until he breaks, and gives up his accomplices, because it's clear that they wound him up, and pointed him at tiller.
The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for only 37 minutes. Roeder faces life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder.
Roeder also was convicted on two counts of aggravated assault for threatening to shoot church ushers Keith Martin and Gary Hoepner as he fled Reformation Lutheran Church after murdering Tiller.
Here is a decent quality pictureI can hardly think of anything more calculated to solidify the view that Wall Street doesn’t have to play by the rules that apply to everyone else.We have had reports of a number of Senators, including Barbara Boxer, who now appears to have a contentious reelection bid ahead of her.
My continuing question about this shoe-throwing business is in what culture, exactly, is it not the case that throwing a shoe at a guy giving a speech is a sign of contempt? I recall going as far back as when shoes were thrown at Iyad Allawi media types calmly explaining that this is an insult “in Arab culture.” But is the message really so unclear that we needed to break out our handy-dandy Arab cultural translation manual for? I think one thing that makes the shoe-toss such an effective gesture of protest against figures in the global news is that the message is loud, clear, and unambiguous to an audience from any culture. You’re talking to an audience, I’m in the audience throwing a shoe at you—it’s disrespectful.You see, young Yglesias, the press is, or believes that their audience is, full of racists, and so they feel the need to describe the behaviors of brown people as if they were tour guides on safari.
What do the authors of the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?You see the phrase, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do I see?" is just so similar to, "that would in effect overturn the imperialist system, and that would depend on creating, as Mao saw, self-reliant economies, not liable to exploitation."
Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.
In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."
Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.
Drink when he says "Some on the left..."100 proof Slivovitz. Pray for me.
The double-barreled victory is the first voter-approved statewide income tax increase since the 1930s. Other states, facing similar budget woes, are watching the outcome closely because Oregon, after all, is a state that capped property taxes and locked a surplus tax rebate program into the constitution.People in Oregon, which has a vociferous anti-tax streak in the electorate, have realized that if you want services, you have to pay for them.
The last time voters approved a tax increase was 2002, when they agreed to bump up tobacco taxes to help pay for the Oregon Health Plan. Voters rejected income tax increases twice in recent years.
The authors of the report, entitled “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use,” used US Department of Agriculture data to look at America’s three largest genetically engineered crops – soybeans, corn, and cotton. They found that the amount of herbicides used on them has increased from 1996 to 2008 by approximately 7 or 8 percent, with a particularly sharp increase from 2005 on.So, you have a new technology, one that rewards the over-use of herbicides in the short term, and in the long term, you end up creating resistant weeds.
In particular, the amount of Roundup that is used on genetically engineered crops has multiplied several times during the time period, says the report’s main author, Charles Benbrook, who's the chief scientist at the Organic Center.
“This big increase in herbicide is driven largely by the emergence of Roundup-resistant weeds,” Dr. Benbrook says. But “industry is still saying to the public that genetic engineering [has] reduced herbicide use.
"As long as I have served ... I've never seen, as my uncle once said, the Constitution stood on its head as they've done. This is the first time every single solitary decisions has required 60 senators," he said at a Florida fundraiser, according to the pool report. “No democracy has survived needing a super majority."The author of the story seems to think that this is an attempt to create a groundswell for using reconciliation to fix healthcare, but I think that Biden might be suggesting something even more radical.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D[INO]-AR) will oppose Dem efforts to move health care legislation through Congress using budget reconciliation, hurting Dems' chances for using the controversial parliamentary maneuver to pass a reform bill.By "We", of xourse, she means "her", and she does not want a process that diminishes her ability to f%$# with people's lives, because she wants someone kissing her ass.
"I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes," Lincoln said in a statement on Tuesday. "I have successfully fought for transparency throughout Senate deliberations on health care, and I will continue to do so."
"I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans. We have worked too long and too hard on this reform effort - we need to get it right," she said.
I am writing to ask you to vote against reappointing Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Additionally, I am requesting that you support a filibuster of his nomination.I followed up with a phone call to both offices.
While I believe that he is a very talented economist, I believe that his outlook, and his prior performance, make him unsuited for continued service in this position.
First, and most importantly, he has made it clear that he will not move on unemployment if it means moving away from a 2% inflation target by the Federal Reserve.
His statements saying that his goal was to preserve, "the anchoring of inflation expectations," is simply dangerous and wrong in the midst of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
By expressly stating that he will choose to ignore the 2nd mission of the Federal, the maintenance of full employment, he has shown himself to be ideologically unsuited to the post.
Given that unemployment is at 10% by the U-3 measure, or 17.3% by the more representative U-6 measure, and there is little if any indication that there will be significant improvement in the jobless rate this year, this is short sighted and destructive.
Additionally, his fierce opposition to reforms of the financial system, particularly his opposition to the Financial Consumer Protection Agency (FCPA) shows that he is out of touch with the need to protect consumers from predatory institutions marketing dishonest financial instruments.
His suggestion that the Federal Reserve would fulfill this role, when it had that role pre-crisis, and refused to act on credible evidence of fraud and deception, is simply nonsense.
This is further compounded by his position on transparency at the Federal Reserve, where he is clearly stonewalling every effort for investigators to understand the nature of the financial meltdown of 2008.
The unwillingness to come clean on the failures that might have happened at the Federal Reserve Board and the regional banks means that there will be no meaningful disclosure, and without disclosure, no lessons will be learned, and this cycle will be repeated, particularly given his record of being an enthusiastic cheerleader for the housing bubble, and the associated dodgy mortgage bubble, before they popped.
The primary argument for his reappointment is that if he is not reappointed, it will somehow shake the financial markets, and trigger another disaster.
This analysis assumes two things:If there are lessons to be learned from Alan Greenspan's disastrous tenure, it is that the "Greenspan Put", where the expectation of bailout created moral hazard that led to reckless behavior, and that the "Rock Star" Fed Chair is to be avoided at all cost.
- That he has been thoroughly captured by Wall Street, and so the large investment banks are demanding that he kept to serve their interests, and not those of the people.
- That he is simply indispensable, and as Charles de Gaulle said, "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
Or maybe Crawford, TX, and Bush's pig farm.GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals."I know Southerners of all stripes, and whether they are young or old, or conservative or liberal, they are generally very offended by what they see as the insinuation that Southerners are somehow stupid as a people.
Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.
In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.
Jewish teen’s prayers spark airliner scareYou know, the guy wearing Tefillin is among the people least likely to be an Islamic bomber.
Flight is diverted after religious item is mistaken for a bomb, police say
updated 9:18 a.m. ET, Fri., Jan. 22, 2010
PHILADELPHIA - A Jewish teenager trying to pray on a New York-to-Kentucky flight caused a scare Thursday when he pulled out a set of small boxes containing holy scrolls, leading the captain to divert the flight to Philadelphia, where the commuter plane was greeted by police, bomb-sniffing dogs and federal agents.
The 17-year-old on US Airways Express Flight 3079 was using tefillin, a set of small boxes containing biblical passages that are attached to leather straps, Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore said.
………I do not think that he is a terrorist, but I do think that Mr. Cunningham is a slime, not because he's using the small print to make money from, and avoid debt, that is, after all, the game, but because he went and used things like student loans in his attempts to juice his credit score [go to the full article] in an attempt to become wealthy without really working.
He [Craig Cunningham of Northeast Dallas ] leans forward to lift some paperwork out of a plastic tub on the coffee table. The phone rings, and he answers with a soft voice. It's just a friend, and soon he hangs up. He's waiting for a particular type of phone call—one from a representative of a debt collection agency or a credit card company, whom he'll try to ensnare like a Venus fly trap. It's not unlikely that Cunningham's next call will be from a bill collector, since he's between jobs—except for being in the Army Reserve—and owes $100,000 in debts.
While most Americans with unpaid bills dread the collector's call, Cunningham sees them as lucrative opportunities. Many collection and credit card companies, intentionally or not, violate little-known consumer rights laws, and Cunningham's favorite pastime is catching them doing so and then suing them. In fact, it's a profitable side job.
Call it ironic, but the only house on the block that appears to be the foreclosed end to some sad financial story is in fact the home of one of the debt collection industry's emerging and persistent threats. Cunningham calls himself a private attorney general—someone who files private lawsuits in the public interest. Debt collectors call him a credit terrorist.
………
He's right about that point: All those people who scream about how the small print, and the rule of law, matter for the small debtor, seem to think that it's somehow evil to expect large debtor and their agents.
CMI has countersued Cunningham, and even asked the court for a protective order from Cunningham: "Plaintiff Craig Cunningham (herein "Plaintiff") has filed suit against a business, Credit Management, LP (herein "CMI"), and twenty-seven (27) of its employees in their individual capacities," reads the motion for a protective order filed in Northern District of Texas in December 2009. "Defendants move for a protective order to protect Defendants from the annoyance, oppression, undue burden and expense of objecting and responding to improper, repetitive and irrelevant discovery requests."
In December, Cunningham was called in for a six-hour deposition, the longest he's ever sat through, at which the lawyers printed out pages of his online comments to accuse him of acting like a lawyer. Plus, CMI insists that they didn't violate any laws and that Cunningham is acting in bad faith. Although the company already offered Cunningham money to settle the case, Cunningham refused, asking for much more than the "industry standard," as Cunningham calls it, of $3,500.
"If they don't pay a bunch of money, if they don't feel pain, they will not change," he says.
A big win in his case against CMI could go a long way toward clearing Cunningham's debts—if he ever chose to pay them, that is.
"I took outsize risks, and I got burned," he says. "When myself and some other fellow small investors were losing their assets, nobody cared."
Up until now, everything was about making easy money for Cunningham. Now, it's about justice—or at least what he sees as justice.
Trijicon, the gunsight maker that has imprinted Bible verse numbers on its scopes, has announced that it will no longer imprint the verses on the sides of scopes intended for the U.S. military, and will also provide clients with the kits to remove the Bible verse numbers from existing scopes.There now, that wasn't so hard, was it.
An ABC News report earlier this week revealed that the Michigan-based company, which has a contract to provide up to 800,000 scopes to the U.S. military, prints references to New Testament chapters and verses in code next to the model numbers of its scopes. The scopes are used by the U.S. Marine Corps and Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by U.S. allies in those countries, and for the training of Afghan and Iraqi troops.
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A member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and a fan of Bernie who thinks Neoliberal (DLC/New Dem) trickle down conomics sucks.Mechanical Engineer with a background in defense, electronics packaging, medical & food equipment, transportation, and manufacturing.
In my spare time (Hah!), I am the developer of the Firefox addon, bbCode for Web Extensions (bbCodeWebEx).
I have two cats, a black cat, and a gray and white long hair cat, who keep me on my toes. (Because he keeps attacking my feet)
I am a Jew and a Zionist, who is married to a woman with exquisitely bad taste in men, and I have two remarkable children with her.
