A Coin Can Save Your Life

Physics Geek

My brother is a physicist, but not this bad.



Although a time machine would be cool.

Why Blogging Is Not Life Fufilling

One of the blogs I linked to due to the CINRAM H2B issue was dailydixie.com. This was a soft leftist blog about politics in the Great State of Alabama. The proprietor has quit blogging and left a variety of reasons in his last post. I can agree with him, most blogs which includes this one, are vanity blogs. I could care less if one or a hundred people read my postings. It doesn't cost me anything but time. Nobody has introduced me yet as a blogger, though, if I reach that point without making moolah then I probably would quit too.

Wallowing in Nostalgia

I graduated in 1984. Enough said.

Arsenal Youth Triumphant

As he has in the past Arsene Wenger fielded a team of his youth in the Carling Cup. They crushed Sheffield United 6-0 with a team that ended the game playing nine teenagers. Vila, the Mexican stand out, scored a hat trick. If this kind of play continues the future of Arsenal competitiveness seems assures.

Raiders Lose

The Raiders lost 24-23 on the final play of the game. I guess give them points for having a lead until the last play of the game, but still another loss. Very disappointing as it is similar to all the losses over the last three years. Some momentum for the next game depending on injuries. Also we might see Lane fired by the next game as well. Not really a good move in my idea.

Arsenal Win, In First for Now

Arsenal beat Bolton 3-1 at home and temporarily are in first place depending on the result of Chelsea playing Man U. Chelsea will have to win to stay in first. Arsenal played very well yesterday at times completely dominating the game and putting endless pressure on Bolton. They have had few wins at Bolton the last few years, so this is doubly satisfying.

Update: Chelsea and Man U drew so Arsenal is in first place by a point.

Alabama Cotinues, Auburn Struggles

Alabama started fast and never looked back in stomping Arkansas 49-14, while Auburn failed to hold off LSU losing 26-21. Auburn will now have a struggle to win a National Championship with a loss. Tennessee's season is over after a very bad outing against Florida. All is good with the world of College Football right now.

Liberal Media Bias

John McCain released an ad saying that disgraced Fannie Mae head Franklin Raines was one of Barack Obama's advisers. Both Obama and Raines deny this today. McCain used a report in the Washington Post to support this claim. See Hot Air on how the Post's own media reporter agrees with Obama, countering the reporting of his own employer. The reporter on the other hand, Jonathan Weisman, said this today in his online chat:

"Arlington, Va.: On Raines having "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." That from a Washington Post profile of Franklin Raines, published on July 16, 2008. Do you know if The Post plans a correction? Or does The Post stand by its story?

washingtonpost.com: McCain Charges Obama with Taking Advice from Raines (washingtonpost.com, Sept. 17)

Jonathan Weisman: OK, folks, there are still a ton of questions, but we're out of time. I do want to answer this. In a sit-down interview, Frank Raines told a Post reporter the Obama campaign had called him for advice on housing. After that story came out, a followup by me appeared the next day and an editorial was published, no one called us to ask for a correction or to express any problems, not Raines, not the Obama campaign. Now that McCain is using it in an ad, suddenly, two months later, we're told the story was wrong.

Uh uh, folks, you don't get to correct stories that suddenly are inconvenient."

So who are you going to believe?

Middle School Football

Airport Twittering

I was poking around seeing who was following my DefenseProcurementNews.com twitter and found that a bunch of airports tweet updates. Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) might be worth following if you fly anywhere in the US. They had this recent classic tweet:

ALERT! 9:59AM CDT: AMERICAN AIR FLT CANCELLATIONS LIKELY TO TOTALLY SCREW ANYBODY HEADING THRU DFW. SORRY, THIS ISN'T EXACTLY NEWS.. 09:59 AM April 10, 2008 from web

Like it said if you fly through DFW you expect AA delays and cancellations.

US Defense Industrial Base

If you don't know I also blog at DefenseProcurementNews.com about the defense industry in which I work. This article from AmericanEconomicAlert.com does raise an interesting issue of relying on overseas contractors to build equipment and provide services for the US military. Since WW II Canada, Australia and British companies have pretty much been treated as if they were US. Now the US, for a variety of reasons related to industrial base, competition and fiscal strains, rely on companies from many European and South West Asian countries. Often there is only one company left in the US that can do the work, so for competition purposes a European one bids. The US economy may not be able to support the amount of work, or be poorly placed to do so. It is certainly possible to build up the US industrial base but it most likely would require US taxpayer investment, like in WW II.

Alabama Sky

Raiders!!

Imagine that, the Raiders beat up on a lousy team by letting Darren McFadden do what he does best. Hopefully the rumors of Lane Kiffen being fired won't happen. They can win several games this way and JaMarcus will get better. Especially if they can find some good receivers.

Oh yeah, KC just stinks.

Oil Panic in the 1920's

In "The Wages of Destruction", Tooze discusses that IG Farben invested heavily in synthetic oil production in the early 1920's as it was believed that the world was running out of oil. By the end of the decade large discoveries had been made in Texas, Venezuela and Mexico that offset the declining production in Europe and Eastern America. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Anyway, IG Farben did OK as Hitler and his economic minions forced the coal industry to subsidize synthetic oil production as a path to war.