Foamy

Man Made Foam Phenomenon

A 50 foot river of foam runs through China's Guangdong province. Officials say it is caused by a chemical deodorant from a household rubbish tipped into the river. The foam is said to be harmless.

Do you trust China's officials?

Natural Foam Phenomenon

In Scotland, seawater and sand mixed to make foam that invaded the shores. I do not need an official to tell me seawater and sand is harmless.

Voting Romney? Why?

Hello Racist Kitty

Thanks to Mr. Blount at MoonBattery.com I got to see Stephen A. Smith come unhinged over a cartoon of Cam Newton, a black football player, portrayed in a Hello Kitty t-shirt. I couldn't resist being an awful person and make fun of this. I would like to do an extended commentary on his commentary of an editorial cartoon, but I'm going to stick with a few cartoons.

Does Obama have Israel's back?

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Still want one of these?

Second Warning! Environmentalists are coming for your Internet!

I alerted you last week about this with Green Peace. Now the New York times has done a story on how environmentally unfriendly the Internet is and the story is being repeated.

They are coming for your Internet! They are coming for your Capitalism!

The NYT article attacks the Internet based on data centers' power usage. They use a lot of energy and right now energy usage is framed as bad for the environment. To try to add punch to the story a straw man is set up:

A yearlong examination by The New York Times has revealed that this foundation of the information industry is sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness.

Environmental friendliness? I have never heard that about computers! I have read stories of how toxic it is to make computers. How low wages are paid to workers in China to build them and the factories spew out pollution. Throwing away a computer is awful for the environment because of the materials that comprise it, not to mention the Lithium batteries they house.

Environmental friendliness? Don't make me laugh!

Do a search for "internet environment friendly" and see what you get. Articles and posts about the effect of the Internet on the environment. Scads of companies claiming to have green hosting by being more responsible or being solar powered. Articles about how to make your use of the Internet more environmentally friendly. Years before this article people have been working on solving the environmentally unfriendliness of the web.

The article claims that 90% of the energy consumed by data centers is wasted. That is hard to believe that a company that wants to make money would throw it away. However, this is potentially possible if the energy bill is relatively low in comparison to other operating costs. That is something that the article does not cover. What are the energy costs compared to other operating costs?

The article just laments how much energy is wasted. How idle data in old emails or business archives is still powered but not accessed or used. How the energy is wasted. The companies are more concerned with having up time on the servers than energy efficiency. It is so easy to make energy consumption look bad when its cost is not compared or given any relevance to any other operating costs.

The article is puffed up with paragraph after paragraph restating the same problem over and over in different ways. However, the most amusing part of the article is when talking about the diesel generators that the data centers will have as power backup.

To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters.

An example used to illustrate the evil of the energy usage was Amazon. In 2010 they were to be fined $554,476 for the use of diesel generators without a permit. It was bargained down to $261,638. Since then Amazon now has the proper permits.

Did you catch that? Running polluting diesel generators without a permit is awful. Pay the government to get a permit to run diesel generators then everything is honky dory. Did the generators magically become clean because of the permit?

The story tells of research that has been done to make energy usage more efficient but it has not been adopted in general. Some companies are working on the problem though.

No one knows what innovations will be next. This problem, if it is a problem, could be resolved a year from now with a brilliant invention.

What is really needed is a sane energy policy. This story is just a ploy to get people to stop using energy. We instead need a policy to make energy more abundant. Stop shutting down coal plants. Let the KeyStone pipeline go through. We can try wind and solar but only as a supplement, not the solution. We need everything, not the shutting down of sources because they are not culturally popular. Other countries aren't which puts us at a disadvantage.

Heed my warning. This attack on the Internet through energy usage is just another prong in the attack of capitalism! Push back!

History Repeats Its Self

Bush Phone

Whose Phone Is It? #ObamaPhone debunked?

People are real fired up about this #ObamaPhone meme!

Conservatives are having a field day with the comments a woman made because she got an "Obama phone." She is going to vote for Obama and predicts Obama will do more. It illustrates for the conservatives the portion of the population that feed off the government largess at the taxpayers expense, and she shouts it loud and proud.

The liberal blogs are getting upset over the conservatives having a field day with the meme because there is no such thing as an Obama phone. They think the conservatives are stupid for perpetuation the meme.

There is no "Obama phone?" Technically it looks like there is not. The "Obama phone" has quite a history:

1. Communications Act of 1934. President Franklin Roosevelt^[tAW]
2. The Lifeline program started in 1984. President Reagan^[tAW]
3. The Lifeline program expanded in 1996. President Clinton^[tAW]
4. SafeLink started in 2008. President George W. Bush^[E][TP][FC]

The blogs debunking the Obama phone are calling the conservatives racist or stupid. Some are even claiming this is the "Bush Phone" according to the history cited above. They are trying to take a woman gloating about her government swag that will vote for Obama because of it and trying to turn it on the conservatives. Even twitter is trying to squash the meme by posting the Think Progress post about the meme at the top of the hash search for #ObamaPhone.

The conservatives' point is not that there is an "Obama Phone" but that this woman illustrates the awful 47% that can be bought off for her vote on government swag.

In the end, the liberals trying to make fun of conservatives over the Obama phone concept are really making fun of the Obama supporter whom thinks she has an Obama phone. And the conservatives are making fun of her for being proud of her government hand out.

However, do not worry about your tax dollars going to this program. It is funded by a charge on your phone bill called a "Federal Universal Service Charge." This charge is, of course, mandated by the government. So if you do not want to pay for these free phones you simply have to stop owning and paying for your own phone. As long as you pay for your phone, you are paying for hers.

Just to confuse matters a little more, the blog Jammie Wearing Fools points out that there is an Obama Phone website.

#ObamaPhone

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UPDATE: I did my best to transcribe what the Obama supporter said. She is as gravely as Tom Waits and slurs. After listening to her a few more times, I think she is saying:

Everybody in Cleveland, got no money, got Obama phone. Keep Obama in president, you know! He gave us a phone. He gonna do more!

Should I correct this or let this one stand? Oh yeah, I also misspelled Cleveland!

The Awful 47%

#ObamaPhone was trending on twitter today. Was this a new meme to illustrate Obama's incompetence?

No.

This is about a woman bragging about government swag. She's going to vote for Obama because he gave her a phone.

Sound familiar? Just in case you forgot, how about the "Obama is going to pay my mortgage and gas" clip?

Yes. It is that awful 47% Romney can not convince to vote for him. Obama wages class war and urges attacks on the income of the rich. Romney promotes indifference. Attack vs. Indifference. Who's the real awful one?

The Obama phone gal is really making me resent the 47%. Why should I pay taxes? I pay for my phone and everything else. Obviously I pay for her phone and everything else too.

The 53% are not doing enough, though. Especially the rich. Obama supporters will shoot their foot off just to tax the rich. They are so under the spell of class war fare that regardless of their situation they believe they are being screwed by the rich, not the government that takes their money, unless they are of the set that get the Obama phone.

Unions can no longer take its members dues and support political candidates that a member does not want them to support. Unfortunately the government can take your money and buy stuff for other people. As long as a candidate promises free stuff to one set of people while making another pay for it they will get votes. Some of those getting fleeced will actually go for it because they think it is compassionate.

However, government swag is not a gift; it is a set of chains; it is a burden of dependency. This clip of Alan Keyes that I saw at iOwnTheWorld explains it best:

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