Dependable Erection

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Drill, baby, drill!

The US Coast Guard says five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from a well beneath where a rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico last week.

Rear Admiral Mary Landry said 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day were now thought to be gushing into the sea 50 miles (80km) off Louisiana's coast.

A third leak had also been discovered at the site, Adm Landry said.

One fire-fighting expert told the BBC the disaster might become the "biggest oil spill in the world".

. . .

"The Exxon Valdez [tanker disaster off Alaska in 1989] is going to pale [into insignificance] in comparison to this as it goes on."


BBC.

And Obama decided it was OK to drill off the Virginia coast? Why? Because it might get Republicans in the Senate to vote for some of his initiatives?

Not smart.

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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Puppy update

I made a cryptic post last week about the most difficult thing i'd ever have to do. Some of you realized i was talking about the puppy who, for whatever reason, was not able to adjust to his role as a member of the household.

We had no luck finding a rescue or a no-kill shelter with space for him, and i've been going day-to-day with him in a boarding situation hoping for a reprieve.

His call from the governor came this afternoon.

In fact, two different calls, from two different governors. So now, i have another decision to make, but this one is much less stressful than the other.

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Well, then . . .

This is probably going to be the most difficult thing i've ever done.


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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I don't care who you are, that's funny

Obama lies about going to kid's soccer match?
To recap: Corben claimed there were no soccer games at the field. There were. Corben claimed the field is in a high crime area. It isn't. And Corben suggested that nobody from the press saw Obama at the game. They did.

Of course this is all laughably ridiculous, and nobody with an iota of common sense or journalistic responsibility would pick this up - which is what made it a great fit for Rush Limbaugh on his show yesterday

Seriously, that's the best they've got?

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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Deep thought

If Bart Simpson (I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything.) is your moral compass, perhaps your values need some recalibrating.

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Thursday, April 08, 2010

Another reason to love Duke

I'm pleased to say that Duke U has responded positively to our request and will be working with us to restore our sign and hopefully help us take steps to prevent a reoccurrence in the future.

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Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Another reason to hate Duke

I'm 54 years old, and i'm still not quite sure what it is i do best in this world. I know there's a couple of things i suck at besides blogging. One of them is asking people for money, which is why i'm especially proud of the fundraising effort i led to raise the $1500 we used to build this sign at one of the gateways to our neighborhood.

It was bad enough when the copper letters D U K E K A disappeared a couple of years ago. (The P & the R were removed several days later either by a copycat or by someone wishing to distract attention from who might have committed the vandalism.) I heard second hand that they'd been spotted at a certain frat house on a certain nearby campus, but since the authorities at the campus declined to actually look for the letters, we let it slide, and remade the sign with gold paint.

This latest low class act of vandalism is just, well, stupid and tasteless.

Our neighborhood shares a name with the University, but that's about it. We're not one of the partner neighborhoods, we're too far from campus to have hardly any students living in our neighborhood, we never see any Duke students come by to volunteer at any of our cleanups or other events. But it sure looks like the Dookies know where we are, doesn't it? Wonder if whoever did this knows, or cares, that a Durham native and Duke alum designed and built this sign, based on a design originally drawn by the late Grace Richardson?

Wonder if anyone from Duke is going to be willing to pony up to repair this damage?

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Little known municipal laws

Was looking something up in the Durham City Code earlier and stumbled upon this. Gotta say, we've got some pretty good laws on the books in Durham. Wonder whose responsibility it is to have this one enforced:
Sec. 26-121. Duty of seller of goods, etc., of such nature that purchases throw containers, etc., on sidewalks and streets.
It shall be unlawful for any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such nature that the purchasers thereof throw the containers or wrappers of such goods, wares or merchandise or portions of the goods, wares or merchandise themselves on the sidewalks, streets or other public ways of the city to allow such containers, wrappers or portions of such goods, wares or merchandise, or any part thereof, to remain thereon. Any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such a nature shall also keep his or her premises clean and free from such containers or wrappers or portions of goods, wares and merchandise, so that the same will not be blown or otherwise transferred to the streets, sidewalks or other public ways.
(Code 1964, § 9-56; Code 1982, § 10-107)

What that means is that if you own, say, a McDonald's or other fast food franchise, and any of your stuff is packaged such that people might throw it out on the streets, it's your responsibility to see that it gets picked up.

But as Mrs. D has pointed out on numerous occasions, nowhere is picking up other people's trash as much a part of the social calendar as it is in Durham. So as long as we have all of these volunteers willing to pick up other people's trash, we can have all the fancy laws to make our elected officials feel good as possible, and they don't have to worry about how to actually, you know, enforce them.

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Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Comcast

I will clearly never make my fortune on the internet, but this can't be good news.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

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Deep thought

There are going to be a lot of acorns this fall.

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Thursday, April 01, 2010

I could get behind that

Friend of the blog JS sent this out via several area listservs last night:
In Durham WE HAVE a BIAS for ACTION when it comes to equal opportunity for our children, Teachers and their Schools:

We are a group asking for a $20 donation from 2,000 Durham citizens so every elementary school in Durham is able to have a garden classroom. We believe that all children deserve an equal opportunity to have a quality education and good health which will be enhanced by hands-on work and school programming related to their garden. We also believe that what one public school has, so should all the others.

Lets do it now, not talk about it for a year.

NEEM, a non-profit sustainable urban agriculture organization and a project of the Preservation Committee of the Neighborhood PRIDE Alliance, in partnership with Neighborhood Improvement Services, Duke University and our other partners have six school gardens scheduled and fully or partially funded. Funding is in place for Kitchen Garden Classroom Curriculum development along with membership at Bull City Forward, – a working space dedicated to helping high impact ideas get to scale. This is a call to action by us to you to fund the rest.


Donate here if you're so moved.

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Bill Bell

Did the Mayor really use the city's new reverse 911 system to remind people to fill out their census forms?

I didn't get a call, but other people seem to have.

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I don't get it

There are a number of apparently sane people in my town who think that having to show a driver's license while operating a motor vehicle on a public road represents the first step of encroaching tyranny, but don't seem to have anything to say when the government wants to decide who can get married to whom, or to intervene in private medical decisions between people, families, and doctors.

I'm sure there's a word for these armchair patriots, but i can't for the life of me think of it.

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