“Not to be outdone, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Toronto Centre MP Bob Rae walked the parade route alongside a Liberal float, from which a drag queen in a lime green dress swivelled her hips.”
Long-Term Budget Outlook
Federal Debt Held by the Public Under CBO’s Two Budget Scenarios (As a percentage of GDP)
From the Congressional Budget Office;
Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path—meaning that federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario. Unless tax revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits and accumulating debt. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress income growth in the United States.”
PDF
WaPo offers the understatement of the decade: “Like his predecessors, Mr. Obama is aware of this issue. Like them, he has promised a plan to deal with it. And like them, he has not come up with anything credible yet. It’s time for that to change.”
Who Is This “John Galt”?
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
Tim Hortons to fold U.S. business into Canadian entity
The company has filed a notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stating that it wants to reorganize itself as a “Canadian public company” in order to take advantage of decreasing Canadian corporate tax rates.
The reorganization would regroup the company’s U.S. and Canadian business units under a single entity incorporated under Canada’s federal company statute, the Canada Business Corporations Act.
Good News
Tim Hudak, the new PC leader in Ontario;
“For too long, individual rights have been trampled and ignored by an increasingly dysfunctional Human Rights bureaucracy. The McGuinty government’s system has advanced nuisance claims and denied justice and legitimate complaints, costing individuals and businesses thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs and clogging the system.”
Stephen Taylor has a line up of Youtube interviews from the convention.
Sotomayer For Supremes
The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.
The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.
California: Not Broke Enough!
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Business Week, June 26th – California regulators expanded a state car-scrapping program Friday to provide incentives of as much as $4,000 to motorists who surrender high-polluting vehicles and replace them with cleaner cars..
Associated Press, June 26th – State Controller John Chiang said he will have to start issuing IOUs as soon as Thursday without a budget revision because California will lack enough incoming tax revenue to meet all its payment obligations..
h/t Mike, in the comments.
Coal Eating Bugs
Craig Venter, the controversial American scientist who helped decode the human genome, has announced the discovery of ancient bacteria that can turn coal into methane, suggesting they may help to solve the world’s energy crisis.
The bugs, discovered a mile underground by one of Venter’s microbial prospecting teams, are said to have unique enzymes that can break down coal. Venter said he was already working with BP on how to exploit the find.
Venter even suggested the discovery could open up the world’s coalfields to an entirely new form of mining, where coal is infected with the bacteria, allowing methane to be harvested “without even digging up the coal”.
Venter, speaking at the recent La Jolla research and innovation summit, in La Jolla, California, told an audience of researchers and technology investors how he had harvested 20m new genes by analysing the DNA of micro-organisms collected underwater or deep underground.
He said: “We have found a huge number of microbes a mile or so deep in the earth. In fact, there is more diversity under the surface of the earth than in the ocean. It is absolutely stunning.
h/t Ed S.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performing the first movement, Allegro Non Molto, of Summer ¤ (5:53), concerto #2 in G minor from Antonio Vivaldi‘s The Four Seasons, with our old friend Herbert von Karajan conducting and playing harpsichord. And hold on to your hats, folks, because in a few weeks we’ll be getting into the second movement of summer.
 |
 |
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Solving the Energy Crisis
… one chicken at a time:
It’s always risky to count your chickens before they’re hatched, but it looks like a go for a plan to raise egg-producing hens in a suburban Moncton neighbourhood.
The Greater Moncton District Planning Commission has granted a local group a one-year temporary permit to run an urban experimental farm. The project, sponsored by Post Carbon Greater Moncton, will involve the keeping of up to four hens within the city boundaries. The group hatched the plan as a response to concerns that rising oil prices will one day force people to return to being more involved in their food production.
Is having your own hens laying eggs all it’s cracked up to be? Will the quiet hamlet (or is that omelette?) of Sunny Acres West (or is that Sunny Side Up Acres?) ever be the same? What’s the best way to run a hen-house without running off half-cocked?
That’s what the folks of the local post carbon group hope to find out through a careful study. This is not simply a “let the chicks fall where they may” approach to the issue of farm animals and humans co-existing in an urban setting, but rather something that will be carefully monitored.
… keeping reading about “food sovereignty”.
Y2Kyoto: Reduce Your Newsprint Footprint
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Google News – search news for “climate change”
Conservation Halton – “I Can Change Climate Change”
h/t Shaken
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our regular Saturday night show, here, courtesy of a related reference from the always gracious and delightful Mr. David Thompson, is Wolff performing Eurythmics‘ Sweet Dreams ¤ (5:05), episode eight of his A Boy and His Tuba series. Nota bene: there is no pre-recorded audio in this video, and the entire sequence is live without edit. Oh yeah? Well I’d like to see you do that by yourself with a tuba and a bank of envelope filters and sequencers, honey.
Like I always say, what a species! You make it, we’ll break it: Guaranteed.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
SDA Play Safe Reminder
Don’t leave your toys on the stairs.
(link fixed)
SDA Late Nite Radio ~ Special Edition
 Dr. Shapiro |
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. As you know, there has been a bit of an ongoing debate here at SDA regarding the applicability of classical thermodynamics and its entropy model to microscopic systems and to open systems, and regarding the information-theoretic nature of reality. This afternoon, for your delectation and pursuant to our distinguished lecture, documentary & interview series, we have a new paper by Dillenschneider and Lutz arguing that Maxwell’s Demon can exist in nanoscale systems, a short video showing visualizations of the molecular-scale machines involved in replicating DNA, extracting RNA, and synthesizing proteins, and a longer video by Dr. Lucy Shapiro on The Systems Architecture of a Bacterial Cell Cycle.
The key thing keep in mind here is that the assumptions upon which classical thermodynamics is based (macroscopic-scale closed systems) mean that classical thermodynamics cannot be used to draw conclusions about the microscopic-scale behaviour of the molecular machines involved in the phenomenon known as life, and that, therefore, it is not necessarily the case that life is subject to the second law of thermodynamics or equivalent. Please note that the debate here is not about whether or not god created and/or controls thermodynamics and/or life, the debate here is about the relationship between thermodynamics, the microscopic machines that implement life, and the question of information as the fundamental metaphysical reality. Also, please note that this is not Reader Tips, our regular Reader Tips entry will appear tonight as scheduled.
Rare Earth Mineral?
Yep … it’s a gem alright.
David Akin Calls It A “Surprising” Error
Which is curious, to say the least. It’s Jane Taber, after all.
h/t Orville
The Road To Hell
Michael Yon is back in Afghanistan.
You Don’t Mess With ACORN
Let this be a lesson to you, wayward Democrats.
Mine That Bird Overhead
From the May 2nd Kentucky Derby – amazing stuff.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is Mr. Buddy Greco performing that old Rogers and Hart standard, The Lady Is A Tramp ¤ (2:55).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.