Smoke Day 2008 - 4 week warning

WSM Smoke Day IV - May 24. Food at 5:00. Music at 7:00.

Features for 2008:

More Food. My teammate from the White Men Can't Smoke BBQ Team will be cooking with me. My bill of fare includes beef brisket, pork butt & picnic, baby back ribs, spare ribs, smoked sausage, chicken, and turkey. I don't know what he is cooking.

New Jello Shot Varieties. Mrs. Headless is going to try to one-up her Mojito, Margarita, Pina Colada and Root Beer Float Jello shots.

Better Organization. We promise not to forget to serve the black bean and corn salad this time.

More People. Word is out among more family, friends and neighbors (I'm even inviting my brother this year). The SE Wisconsin Roadfood.com Eating Team is coming.

Environmentally Conscious. Large volumes of ethanol (in the non-denatured form) will be consumed.

Famous Guest(s). One or more of the following will attend:

1. Barack Obama - A campaign stop to roll up his sleeves with bitter small town gun and religion clingers.
2. Prince Fielder - The perfect way to get over that vegetarian fad.
3. Buddy Roadhouse - A stop for barbecue after a day of sampling his fabulous sauces at Sendik's Brookfield.
4. Notable Wisconsin Bloggers. Will I recognize them when they sneak in?
   

Build Your Own Dessert. Mrs. Headless is giving this a try for 2008 with tarts and shortcakes.

Romance. Will we have guests meet and become engaged within 6 months again?

Live Music. My friend Tom is bringing his band over to entertain. IX Lives will be playing an unplugged set, which is still electric, but doesn't include their huge sound system. They'll feature more Zeppelin, Floyd and Petty. A special unannounced opening act, too.

RSVP. By email or in comments.

What I was drinking - Lucid Absinthe

A day late this time. I got a bottle of Absinthe for my birthday and JS-on-dead-tree runs a story about it today. The story features Milwaukee bars serving Absinthe the classic French way:

To serve absinthe, he pours two ounces of the liquor into a glass and positions it under a spigot. He places a slotted spoon on top of the glass and a sugar cube on top of the spoon, then he opens the spigot. Cold water eases over the sugar cube and into the glass, dissolving the cube and sweetening the licorice-tasting liquor and revealing the herb-based alcohol's pale green color.

Absinthe is strong stuff, something like 270 proof with an intense anise flavor, and that hallucinogenic wormwood, too. I am more disposed to have mine in the classic New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac. Robert Hess at DrinkBoy has this description.

The evolution of the recipe for the Sazerac cocktail thus spanned perhaps 30 years or more before settling in on a combination of Rye, bitters, sugar, and Absinthe. This is still the basic recipe that you will find today, the main difference being that an Absinthe substitute is used in place of that now banned ingredient, and the bitters will vary from being straight Peychaud's, to a mixture of Peychaud's and Angostura, to being only Angostura. Bourbon has also replaced Rye as the base spirit in this drink, this reflects the increased popularity of Bourbon over Rye since the repeal of prohibition.

As a cocktail, I find the Sazerac to be a wonderfully contemplative drink. It's complex and interesting layers of different flavors lend itself to drinking in a quiet and dimly lit room, perhaps with the crackle and flicker of a burning fire on the hearth. Some establishments will make this like a normal cocktail, shaken with ice, and strained into a cocktail glass. Myself, I feel that this looses some of the interesting flavors and qualities of the drink. I make mine by taking a pre-chilled old fashioned glass, and using an atomizer squirt in 3 to 4 sprays of Pernod (or some other Absinthe substitute). Without an atomizer, you can simply pour into the glass a bar-spoon of Pernod and roll it around the glass to coat the sides, leaving a small puddle in the bottom of the glass. To this I add a splash of simple syrup, a dash of Peychaud's bitters, and then 2 ounces of Rye Whiskey. You can use a cube of sugar instead of the simple syrup, but I feel that the remaining grit of the sugar is a distraction that doesn't befit this drink. A simple twist of lemon peel is all that is needed for a garnish.

My recipe.

• 1/2 teaspoon Lucid Absinthe
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 3 dashes Peychaud Bitters
• 2 ounces of Whiskey

Swirl Absinthe around old fashioned glass. Add sugar and bitters, muddle well. Fill glass with crushed ice and top with whiskey. I may use brandy next time, as in the original 19th century recipe.

My bottle of Lucid will see many more birthdays if I stick with this recipe.

Packers #1 Pick

I am going on the record. The Packers will pick Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm with their 1st round draft pick in tomorrow's NFL Draft. I have no exceptional insight into the NFL draft, I am just convinced that I'll be asking myself "Did he say Brian Brohn or Ryan Braun?" for at least the next five years.

UPDATE: I'm right even when I am wrong. No first round pick, but the Packers chose Braun with their second 2nd rounder.

Boiling it down

M. Simon put a smile on my face with this one.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with huge breasts who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?"

Bluemound Road Safety - The Obvious Solution

Another reason this state is in major debt. The thinking at the DOT seems to be, "Why spend $10,000, when we can throw $4,000,000 to the road-builders?"

There are traffic safety issues on Bluemound Road in Brookfield, the obvious answer to these bureaucrats is to foul up traffic with more and more concrete. This time in the form of disruptive median barriers.

The simpler, more effective, less disruptive, and less expensive solution is to reduce the speed limit on Bluemound and enforce it. This stretch of roadway is no longer a sleepy country road. A 45 mph speed limit is just too high for the current traffic conditions.

Drop it to a more appropriate 35 miles per hour and the road becomes more safe, not just from the lower traffic speed, but also by drivers using other roads and highways that will now be faster routes for these drivers. The cost for the new speed limit signs is a fraction of the pork being handed to the Governor's political contributors.

p.s. If you are aware of a short-cut to avoid congested traffic, do not go on the radio and blab about it. I'm talking to you, dumbass Belling caller.

(untitled post)

TC Self-Check Time

A timely reminder at Blackfive, one day short of 4 years since I lost my left one.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 2008

Important information about testicular cancer and self-exams

Ok, this is an unusual post. But it's really important because we see quite a few cases of testicular cancer at Landstuhl due to the gender/age group of the patients.

Please help raise awareness about the importance of deployed men doing testicular self-exams.

There's very high awareness for breast cancer and the need for women to carry out self-exams.

However, there's much less awareness about testicular cancer (TC), which is the most common type of cancer affecting guys between the ages of 15 and 35.

Most often, TC is found by men themselves. The thing with being deployed is that you don't want to look like you're playing with yourself in the shower or whatever while checking yourself out. Also, back home, it's often found by wives/girlfriends.

But a monthly self-exam of the testicles is the best way of becoming familiar with your body and thus enabling detection of TC at an early - and highly curable - stage.

Information about self-exams. [http://tcrc.acor.org/tcexam.html]

General information about TC. [http://tcrc.acor.org/index.html]

Important to Know:
- TC has a VERY high cure rate.
- Treatment usually involves removal of the affected testicle and follow up.
- Having one testicle is almost always sufficient to keep everything "working".

Finally, embarrassment is a poor excuse for not having things checked out. If you think there is something wrong or something has changed, get your butt to sick call!

Headless Blogger says, "Check them out! Both of them."

EARTH DAY - GAME OVER, WE WON!

The earliest Earth Day goals have been long met and surpassed. In all areas - air, water, land - pollution has been abated and our environment has become much closer to pristine.

Consider that today's biggest environmental threat is supposedly carbon dioxide. I am old enough to remember when carbon dioxide was a desirable byproduct to environmentalists. In fact, the desire to turn more noxious effluents into CO2 was the reason catalytic converters were invented and mandated decades ago.

Today, Steven Hayward presented his 2008 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, which he prefaces in this column. Hayward notes in the column.

The irony in this year’s political stampede stems from the fact that intense focus on environmental concerns (especially the United States) over the past decade has caused a significant diminution of environmental problems. It’s hard to scare people any more. Air pollution is on its way to being eliminated entirely in the U.S. in about another 20 years. Levels of air pollution have fallen between 25 and 99 percent (depending on which pollutant you measure), with the nation’s worst areas showing the most progress. For example, Los Angeles has gone from having nearly 200 high ozone days in the 1970s to less than 25 days a year today. Many areas of the Los Angeles basin are now smog-free year round.

Water pollution is more stubborn and harder to measure (and is being made worse in the Mississippi River basin by the government’s crazy ethanol mandate), but here too there have been major improvements since the first Earth Day in 1970. The Great Lakes have been cleaned up, with many previously endangered species of birds now thriving. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland doesn’t catch fire any more. The amount of toxic chemicals used in American industry has fallen by 61 percent over the last 20 years, even as industrial output has grown. Forestland in the U.S. has been expanding at a rate of nearly 1 million acres a year over the last generation.

Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World also chronicles the improvements in our environment. Things are better, much better. We are just constantly having the bar raised and the line in the sand moved.

Thinking Globally + Acting Locally = Bad for the Earth

Think Globally, Act Locally, which may be better known as Not in my Backyard, has been a disaster for the environment. For example, buying "green" biofuels can mean cleaner air near your home, but is causing the destruction of the Earth's rainforests and elimination of many rare and unique species.

More broadly, the extremes that the environmental movement has imposed on the U.S. and other developed nations has been a net negative for the planet. They have been successful in their attempts to mandate near zero emissions here, by causing many industries to move elsewhere. These businesses have relocated to places where there is little or no regulation. Pollution can be spewed to the air and water in these far away places in a manner that is beyond comprehension in the U.S., even before the first Earth Day. Out of sight, out of mind may better describe this philosophy.

For the sake of the planet, reasonable environmental standards must be established in the United States, and then remain unchanged. We were there years ago. It is time to roll things back to be within reason.

Take the 'KRM' Train

A challenge to the Ice Age Deniers

14 April 2008

Dear Dr. Pachauri and others associated with IPCC

We are writing to you and others associated with the IPCC position – that man’s CO2 is a driver of global warming and climate change – to ask that you now in view of the evidence retract support from the current IPCC position [as in footnote 1] and admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures or climate change.

If you believe there is evidence of the CO2 driver theory in the available data please present a graph of it.

Read it all here. This was the first I had heard of this letter.

H/T - Power and Control

Too hot for the Wisconsin Sports Bar

Not racist, but a whole lot of racial stereotyping. Typical 1970's stuff. When did everyone get such thin skin?

The whitneygouldification of America continues

A proposed ordinance amendment regulating lawn ornaments will wait for resident input.

The Legislative Committee voted to table discussion on the amendment, which would limit the height of artwork, light posts and lawn ornaments to 30 percent of the house height - measured from the street yard to the peak - with a footprint no greater than 50 square feet.

The rest of the story.

Please Prince, get back on the steeroids - Updated

0 for April. Bonds can't do it without the drugs. Face it, you can't do it without the meat.

It will not lessen your accomplishments or make anyone think less of you if you test positive for steeroids.

Please eat red meat. I'll even do the cooking.

Update: I'm taking full credit for Fielder's change in mojo. Within hours of my post, he blasts his first home run of 2008.

Smoke Day 2008

I'm hoping the snow melts by May 24.

Before the bitter white people speech

Zombietime.com had this great photo essay up before the text of Obama's speech became public. Very funny stuff.

Their later detailed post of pictures from the event is here. See if you can pick me out in the pictures.

More Big Eth

Dad29 reminded me in the comments over here that all my crazy ethanol-to-food cyphering is not that far out of line. I ran into this column recently, which quotes Cornell University scientist David Pimental, a vocal critic of corn-based ethanol use.

Still, Americans are seduced by the idea that there is some "alternative fuel" that will permit them to keep driving giant gas guzzlers while also cutting oil imports. I told Pimental about watching a 110-pound woman emerge from a four-ton SUV that pulled up next to me in a parking lot. He did some quick calculations in his head.

"The tank on that car would hold 30 gallons," he said. "It takes 22 pounds of corn to make one gallon of ethanol, so that's 660 pounds of corn to fill that tank just once."

That's 660 pounds of corn that won't make it into the food chain. Yet Congress grants exemptions to the fuel-economy rules for gas guzzlers set up to run on E-85, a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol. Since ethanol has less energy than gasoline per gallon, the fuel economy on these monsters can drop as low as 8 mpg. If you think we can end our dependence on foreign oil with vehicles that get 8 mpg, then you belong in a mental institution -- or in Congress

Dr. Pimental has published some very controversial research, showing that using ethanol causes more petroleum to be imported, not less, due to the inefficiency of the corn-to-fuel process. I have steered away from Pimental's results, using Big Ethanol's published data instead. I still have found corn-based ethanol to be agriculturally unsustainable and an incredible waste of food for very little benefit.

Little POS cars - Updated

Am I the only one to notice an increase in the number of small cars being driven? My Ultimate Korean Driving Machine is no longer the smallest vehicle on the road.

I think the free market is beginning to respond to $3.50 a gallon gas.

Update: This must be an illusion. The SAE knows that Americans do not care about fuel economy.

Black & White

Can we stop ignoring the obvious now?

That someone who associates with a racist for 20 years and who responds to criticism with racial stereotypes is he himself a racist.


H/T to James T. for putting this in the perspective of a person from the inner city.

H/T-II to Tom McMahon for inspiring me to see everything in terms of blocks and fours.

Under Pressure

This one seems appropriate for me tonight, and not because I've adopted a different lifestyle. Skip to around 2 minutes for the main event.

This explains it

Obama thinks these are typical small town Americans.

Hey Barack, Jackie Broyles and Dunlap are characters played by actors. This is parody. Now make a speech and tell America that these guys fooled you. Then all will be forgiven.

Everyone else, click here to buy Jackie and Dunlap gear.

More than a little projection here

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Just another Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Wright.

Real life food-to-fuel ethanol use

My previous look at ethanol use for a big SUV tank approached the impossibly unrealistic - 560 pounds of corn to reduce the amount of gasoline filling the tank of an SUV by 1.6 gallons. Not very many people drive really huge SUVs, and NOBODY uses E85, especially SUV owners.

Here I take a look at fueling vehicles that are more common and fueled by something much more commonly used than E85.

THE SIMPLE ANSWER

Consider a full-size sedan, minivan or mid-size SUV using E10 fuel. In this case, 15 gallon can be a typical tank fill. Of the 15 gallons of E10 motor fuel, 10 percent, or 1.5 gallons, is ethanol.

Using the updated corn to ethanol conversion from the 2007 Ethanol Fact Book, it takes six-tenths of a bushel to produce that 1.5 gallon of ethanol (1.5 gallon divided by 2.5 gal. per bushel of corn). The 6/10 bushel is 33.6 pounds of corn.

So the simple answer is over 30 pounds of corn are taken off the plate of the proverbial Starving Child in Africa, every time you fill your Camry or Explorer.

STOP HERE - UNLESS YOU ARE A MATH GEEK

Looking deeper into ethanol use, the picture gets worse, in fact, much worse. Due to the energy density of ethanol (.66 the energy of gasoline by volume), 50.9 pounds (33.6 divided by .66) of corn are needed to replace the 1.5 gallons of gasoline displaced by ethanol.

Looking at production efficiencies, the 2007 Ethanol Fact Book now claims that the energy yield from ethanol production is 34% (a huge jump from the 2005 Fact Book, where they admitted only a 6% energy gain). Dividing 1.5 gallon by 1.34, we find that using 15 gallons of E10, only reduces gasoline imports by 1.1 gallons in that tank.

Therefore, the net benefit of using E10 motor fuel is a reduction of 1.1 gallons of gasoline for 50.9 pounds of corn used to make the ethanol. Multiply this by the millions of vehicle fill-ups each day in the U.S., and it is easy to see why food prices are skyrocketing, while oil imports are just barely creeping downward.

OTHER STUFF

Planet Gore gets it. Great posts on Amazon deforestation and the food fallout from ethanol production.

Odd blog

A good example of how global warming speculation quickly becomes accepted fact. This post showed up briefly today at NEI Nuclear Notes, then disappeared. I copied it from my RSS feed reader.

"They Eat People"

from NEI Nuclear Notes by Mark Flanagan

No, not zombies, which as far as we can tell, are not affected by changes in climate, but polar bears. The plight - or not - of the polar bear due to global warming - or not - has tied a "not" around government; it cannot effectively move one way or another because many potent forces have gained enough authority to assert their authority to say they are right - or not - about issues that have far reaching implications - or not.

In 2006, scientists for the United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service, published a document through the USGS called Polar Bear Population Status in the Southern Beaufort Sea. In it, the authors found a marked decrease in the polar bear population in that area. One of its authors, Eric Regehr, went further:

Eric Regehr, a UW Ph.D. candidate in zoology and physiology and United States Geological Survey (USGS) employee, has spent the last two years analyzing polar bear data collected by the Canadian Wildlife Service in Canada's western Hudson Bay.

"These data provide evidence for a direct linkage between reduced sea ice coverage, presumably caused by climate change, and decreased polar bear survival in western Hudson Bay," Regehr says in the current edition of UWyo magazine.

That "presumably" is important, as issues of climate change are likely outside Regehr's domain. Regardless, the Bush administration has hesitated in adding polar bears to the the endangered species list and has hesitated further in explaining why to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

The deadline for a decision on listing Alaska's polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act was Jan. 9. Conservation groups petitioned to list polar bears as threatened more than three years ago because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming, many scientists say.

Boxer said [Interior Secretery Dirk] Kempthorne and other administration officials were "ducking their responsibility to the American people" by delaying a decision on the bears — and then failing to appear at a hearing to explain why.

Note that Regehr's "presumably" is now taken as a given, supported by unnamed "many scientists." Guessing why Kempthorne did not appear might make a fun game but would be pure supposition - someone from Interior will weigh in sooner or later - but it provides an opening for other interested parties to have a say.

Senator John Barasso from Wyoming wrote this for The Hill's congressional blog:

Attempts to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) during an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing is a hijacking of the Endangered Species Act for political purposes. It is not just about the polar bear.

Some claim that global warming is leading to the demise of polar bears. If the polar bear is listed as threatened, anything thought to contribute to global warming could be shut down — even in Wyoming.

We are all concerned about protecting the environment. If the polar bear is listed, the ESA will become a climate change law.

There's more but the central point seems to be that whether the polar bear is threatened or not, declaring it threatened will have unintended consequences: no longer will there be backyard barbeques because a polar bear cub is slipping off an ice ledge.

It's a fairly grotesque warping of the Endangered Species Act, since it is hard to imagine a court using polar bear protection to shut down carbon emitting entities; the economic consequences would be too severe.

Additionally, the EPA has not committed itself to allowing severe economic consequences to follow from efforts to contain emissions - see its refusal to grant California a waiver to allow the state to regulate auto emissions more stringently than the federal government for an example.

EPA may or may not become more activist one way or another - the upcoming elections will doubtless influence its future direction. But for now, Barasso seems stuck - able to accept that the polar bear fits the criteria of an endangered species, unable to act on it due to its implications for the nation's industries and economic well-being.

But all this could be put aside if one paid attention to CNN commentator Glenn Beck, who, talking with (or, on the evidence, at) Senator James Inhofe, said:

They eat people! For the love of Pete, they’re big, angry bears. They eat people. Not that I say we go out and kill all of them, but I mean, it doesn’t seem to be a problem here. Senator, I can’t take the — I can’t take the lies anymore.

So there it is. Interior should leave off the endangered species list any animal that eats people.

Ready for SNOPES: Does ethanol starve the poor?

Claim: The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.

Status: True

Source: TIME article The Clean Energy Scam

Evaluation: It was previously shown for a large SUV:

Fuel tank capacity: 31 to 39 gallons for a 2008 Suburban

Ethanol yield from corn: 2.8 gallons per bushel - found it here, originally sourced from Ethanol.com

Ethanol needed to fill the tank: Let's say 28 gallons* blended with 5 gallons of gasoline to make 33 gallons of E85 for the Flex-Fueled SUV.

Hence, 10 bushels of corn are needed to fill the tank of the Suburban with E85.

A bushel of shelled corn weighs 56 pounds (ear corn is 70 pounds per bushel, but I'm pretty sure that shelled corn is used in the process).

Hence, 560 pounds of corn are needed to fill the Suburban just one time.

Go here for analysis of a car or mid-size SUV.

A more detailed analysis than you need is below

But, I'm not done yet.

The Ethanol industry freely admits that the net yield of ethanol production is a mere 6% increase over the fuel used in the process. Knowing that, we find it takes 26.4 gallons of gasoline AND 560 pounds of corn to produce 28 gallons of ethanol.

In terms of cost - benefit, this comes down to it requiring 560 pounds of corn (The Cost) to reduce the amount of gasoline filling the tank of that SUV by 1.6 gallons (The Benefit). So, taking this inefficiency to account, we are essentially starving 17.5 people when we fill-up that SUV one time.

More fun facts from Big Eth

The Big Ethanol Lobby website (ethanol.org) says the following in their 2007 Ethanol Fact Book

Ethanol production yields many valuable human and animal feed co-products. A bushel of corn used in the fuel ethanol process produces 1.6 pounds of corn oil, 10.9 pounds of high protein feed (distillers dried grains, or DDG), 2.6 pounds of corn meal, and 31.5 pounds of starch that can be converted to beverages or sweeteners, or used to produce 2.5 gallons of ethanol.

First, I notice that Big Eth has revised downward its estimate of ethanol per bushel, from 2.8 to 2.5 gallons.

Next, I can't exactly follow the sentence structure, this statement could mean that we give up 31.5 pounds of starch (The Cost) for 2.5 gallons of ethanol (The Benefit); or it could mean, that it costs 1.6 pounds of corn oil, 10.9 pounds of high protein feed, 2.6 pounds of corn meal, and 31.5 pounds of starch for the benefit of 2.5 gallons of ethanol. I'll let someone who actually passed freshman english to answer that one for me.

*Parenthetically: Those 28 gallons of ethanol in the E85 contain 1/3 less energy than the gasoline it replaces. Therefore, 42 gallons of ethanol must be produced to provide the same power as a full tank of gas. That equates to 840 pounds of corn, or enough to feed a person for a year and one half. But I won't go into that, things are bad enough without the distraction.

Ethanol - worse than I ever imagined

My regular reader knows that I am on a quest to understand the production and economics of ethanol (examples of my analyses are here, here, and here). While reading The Biofuel Scam at the Power and Control blog today, this statement jumped out at me.

The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. What a brilliant idea.

That statement wasn't from the blogger. It was from a TIME article the blogger was critiquing. Could that really be true? Lets find out.

Fuel tank capacity of big SUV: 31 to 39 gallons for a 2008 Suburban

Ethanol yield from corn: 2.8 gallons per bushel - found it here, originally sourced from Ethanol.com

Ethanol needed to fill the tank: Let's say 28 gallons blended with 5 gallons of gasoline to make 33 gallons of E85 for the Flex-Fueled SUV.

Hence, 10 bushels of corn are needed to fill the tank of the Suburban with E85.

A bushel of shelled corn weighs 56 pounds (ear corn is 70 pounds per bushel. Not knowing which form is used for ethanol, I'll use the most favorable value).

Hence, 560 pounds of corn are needed to fill the Suburban one time.

That is simply obscene.


I have more to say on this - IT GETS WORSE - my updates are here and here.

H/T - Just One Minute

Good paying jobs available

This is from a report at NEI Nuclear Notes on opportunities in the nuclear world.

Today the average age of the nation's nuclear workers is about 50. Many will be eligible to start retirement at 55. Within five years, about 35 percent of the specialists who have been running U.S. nuclear plants for the past quarter-century -- about 19,600 people -- are expected to begin a mass retirement.

With the explosion in job opportunity, nuclear professionals are mobile again after years of stagnating in a low-turnover industry.

I am seeing this first hand at the Kewaunee plant's refueling outage. Of the 400 laborers brought onsite for the outage, 80% are first time nuclear workers. These workers get 72 hour work weeks, with many away from their homes for up to 2 months. Somehow the premium dollars make it worthwhile. Bring your union card, they will find work for you.

Capitalism is a wonderful thing.

Illegal immigrants need not apply.

More blood on Jim Doyle's hands

Serial killer in Madison?

Death of UW student called homicide

Police find her body in home off campus

Madison police are investigating the homicide of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student found dead Wednesday afternoon in her off-campus apartment.

Officers responding to a call to check on a resident in a duplex in the 500 block of W. Doty St. just after 1 p.m. found the body of Brittany Sue Zimmermann, said Joel DeSpain, a Police Department spokesman.

Zimmermann, a junior from Marshfield who was majoring in medical microbiology and immunology, lived at the rental unit and attended classes at UW, according to an e-mail from the university.

The cause of death has not been determined, but the Dane County coroner classified the death as a homicide, DeSpain said.

An autopsy was scheduled for today.

Police did not have a suspect in custody late Wednesday, DeSpain said.

There was no evidence Zimmermann was targeted, but police had not determined whether the killing was random, DeSpain said.

My 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student daughter has a 9mm surprise waiting for this bastard if he comes to her off-campus apartment. She will be carrying it when she is out at night, too.

Thanks to the other bastard, Governor Jim Doyle, it is a crime for her to protect her life.

Nota Bene: My wife had just hung up from speaking to my daughter when I first read the tragic news of this girl's death. If I had read about it before the call, both my wife and I would have panicked. Instead, we immediately phoned her and told her to load her pistol. She was instructed to shoot anyone who tried to break into her apartment.

Shaft

Before the Chocolate Jesus, there was the Black Moses.

I love that wah-wah guitar.

The day that football died

She sounds T'rivers to me, but her bio says she's a Yooper.

Groundhog Day

For my first week of 12 hour workdays, I dreaded the 04:25 squawking of my alarm clock. It is just insanely early, and I could barely get focused all day. I began to feel like Bill Murray in the movie. There was just no way to avoid that damn alarm clock. Not only that, but every day seems the same, with all the time at work, there's not much else that I can get done.

Finally this Monday, I woke up bright and chipper, and ready to take on the day. I started doing what Murray did in the movie, I quit fighting it and tried to make everything as good as it could be in these circumstances.

First, in order to get enough sleep, I have a maximum of 3 hours of personal time between getting home and going to bed. So I have to make choices on what I do with that time. I'm trying to exercise when I can, and I cook my meals instead of getting fast food. I am abstaining from alcohol on work nights, the last thing I need is to wake up with my head pounding. Finally, I'm enjoying the challenges of work and trying to make a difference. I am even anxious to get to work to find out what happened on night shift.

But I'm still hoping to wake up and have it be tomorrow.

So sad to see you go

Way too many phony April Fools "I'm leaving" announcements.

See ya.

The world isn't gonna end for the rest of us.

Don't let the door hit ya.

That was so last year.

Bakken Oil Reserve

I did some poking around for more information on the huge oil reserve I noted here. There is information at Wikipedia and also from this promoter of oil futures as investments. From these reports I learned the reserve is estimated to be as much as 10 times the size of Alaska's North Slope Reserve.

However, the real issue is how much oil can be recovered from the Bakken reserve. Due to the geology of the rock the oil is in, recovery estimates range down to as low as 1 percent. A lot of oil, but not enough to end imports.

I'll be waiting for "environmentalists" to start painting North Dakota as a pristine wilderness, more fragile than even the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. That will be one really tough sell, eh.

Bo Ryan - Liberal Fascist

I am now seeing everything in terms of Jonah Goldberg's book, even NCAA basketball.

When I read the following at This Just In, it clicked that Bo Ryan basketball is fascist basketball. His focus is on the team, not the individual; and he doesn't focus his recruiting on finding superstars. His team also plays a physical style some might liken to street-thug fascists. This really jumped out at me when the article quoted the B-ball coach from La Follette High School promoting the Ryan system. How appropriate.

When Ryan’s Platteville teams were dominant, the respect for his tactics rose quickly, and high school coaches from all over the state flocked to watch his practices. Ryan did not have the best talent in the world, but he implemented a system that worked for his players and hammered fundamentals through endless drills. NCAA officials would marvel at his players’ practicing rudimentary tasks like chest passes during the postseason.

“We used to joke that our kids didn’t look the greatest getting off the bus, but they just executed,” said University Wisconsin-Platteville Athletic Director Mark Molesworth, who had to turn down several offers for tickets to the court dedication game.

Now it seems almost the entire state is running Ryan’s so-called swing offense, which is predicated on patience, precision and teamwork.

“The thing about the swing offense is that a lot of high school teams are starting to run it, and it’s almost like a feeder system,” said Reggie Williams, the coach at Madison’s La Follette High School, where the Badgers senior Michael Flowers played. “You have to be a cerebral player and you don’t have to be great one-on-one.”

I take some solice from UW's loss to Davidson when I look at the Badgers in these terms. A victory of the individual (Davidson star Stephen Curry) over the State (Bo's autonotrons) is something any free-market proponent can cheer.

On the other hand, Davidison out-played Wisconsin as a team, because they have better athletes playing as a team. Getting back to the linked article, if Ryan wants to advance his Badgers past the Sweet 16 with any regularity, he will need to upgrade his talent. That isn't going to happen by concentrating his recruiting in and around Wisconsin.

Cover or Original: Take Me to the River

My take on the Vodkapundit's meme, finding cover versions of songs as good, or better, than the originals.



A)





or B)





Cast your preference in comments.

Kegger!

Jump to the 4:00 mark for high production value content.



These kids are pretty awesome. Nothing stronger than root beer.

H/T - Jim Stingl. Really, I mean it. Jim Stingl.

Woohooo!!!!

Bad news for the Saudis.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

Watch oil prices start heading to $40/barrel after the report is released.



H/T - Planet Gore

I Took Five

My god, look at those white guys swing. They're almost like an alien life form. The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five.

I had my day off today. Now it is back to 12-hour days, six per week starting tomorrow. Overtime pay is a beautiful thing.

Dateline Madison

In an unprecedented midnight court session, the Wisconsin Supreme Court met overnight and ruled on the applicability of Wisconsin Statute 11.38(1). In a 4 to 3 ruling, the Court found that the statute, which forbids, absolutely, and without reserve, any corporate contributions to any candidate for office in the State of Wisconsin is not applicable to sitting Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices with last names beginning with the letters "B" or "C."

Asked to comment, Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee leader Thomas Hastings said, "Nothing to see here. Please move along."

Elsewhere, in a surprise move, WEAC, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, announced they will relocate their headquarters from Madison to Scottsdale, AZ. Citing Wisconsin's high taxes and poor business climate, a WEAC spokesperson also noted that the move will put the headquarters nearer to the majority of retired WEAC members and in an area with a pool of better educated workers. The spokesperson also noted that "the weather simply bites here, and we couldn't take it anymore."

H/T - Dad29

Turnblow

A very interesting statistical analysis of Derrick Turnbow's performance as a reliever at Beyond the Box Score.

Last year Turnbow had a BPIP of 0.94 - giving up less than a base per inning - and had a predicted ERA of 2.07, his real ERA wound up at 4.63, a difference of 2.56. With such a relatively low BPIP I looked into his WHIP numbers, regularly 1.32, with men on, and sure enough found an answer. It seems that Turnbow was a shutdown reliever, until someone get on base, then his WHIP rose to 1.80.

Simple enough to manage a reliever like this, just pull him when a man is on base. And do not dare put Turnbow in to "save" another pitcher's mistakes.

The instincts of the fans were correct. As soon as Turnbow gets behind in the pitch count, I cringe. I feel it is inevitable that he is going to collapse. Not I have statistics that back up my gut.

The Bottom Line: Derrick Turnbow deserves the blame for runs scored when the bases are empty. But Manager Ned Yost gets all the blame for runs scored on Derrick with men on base.

Real jazz

A cut above the stuff I put up yesterday.

Why the outrage, Senator?

2. Your date and place of birth and/or those of your minor child or children

Roger L. Simon put up a list of passport application requirements. The only thing that may raise an eyebrow on the list is this.

Senator Obama, have you followed in your father's footsteps here? What is on that line of your application?

Enjoy this Weather Report

Twelve and one-quarter inches of fresh snow. Has it stopped yet?

UPDATE: No, it is still coming down. 13-1/2 inches at 9:00 p.m.

Not even a flake of snow North of Hwy 42 on my trip down I-43. I just missed getting rear-ended by a commercial truck, but the guy who pulled in behind me didn't. That would have made a crappy 125-mile drive home even worse.

Hats off to the Milwaukee County snowplow dispatcher for sending a plow to clear the shoulder for a tow truck near Brown Deer Road. I began to fear being stuck in a Dane County-like blizzard back-up. But with the plows help, the wrecker got through and promptly cleared a spun-out SUV. Feel free to blame Scott Walker.

The most amazing things I may have ever seen

Click here.

Typical white person

Oops. Average White Band.

I can't wait to try this myself

Amazing stuff. Show this to an engineer and shwang - instant wood.



H/T - J-Walk Blog & my friend Greg who emailed the link.

Obama's Grandma. Scott Huggins.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street ...

Tragically, Scott Huggins did not hear Obama's grandmother's one year ago on this date. He may have stopped elsewhere to fill his tank on March 21.

Shattering the dream

Before Obama's race speech*, the controversy was about the content of the words, soul, and character of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Senator Obama. The color of Rev. Wright's skin and his racial background were never an issue in any of the commentary that I heard and read on this subject.

Senator Obama turned that on its head. He lectured Americans for over half an hour, making excuses for Rev. Wright, distancing himself from his Pastor, and pointing a finger at me.

I do not accept Senator Obama's blame for Rev. Wright's statements and racist attitudes. Nor do I accept blame for Senator Obama's racism. I also reject Obama's lies, condescension, and excuses.

It is tragic that after the sacrifices of the many Americans who fought for the civil rights of African-Americans in the 1950's and 60's, that both Barrack Obama and his spiritual leader have rejected Dr. King's words from two score and five years ago.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Senator Obama read these words. Give up your racist attitudes and reject your racist spiritual leader. Then write a new speech.


*I Googled it. The fastest way to find the transcript was to include the words "race speech."

7 Sins - Corporatism

This is too easy, I just wait a couple days and another of The Seven Leftie Sins is in the news. Daily Takes reported yesterday about efforts by Madison leftists (excuse the redundancy) trying to silence or marginalize Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the major lobbyist for business in the state. Corporations are here to be taxed to fund the progressives' pet programs. Otherwise they can go away.

Examples
Jim Doyle - Killing Wisconsin business, one job at a time
"Help defend our jobs from corporate America."
Hatred of Walmart
"Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers ..."

This will get you shunned
"I stopped shopping at the Willy Street Coop, their prices are not competitive with Walmart."
"I interview with GE tomorrow."

Secular-Progressive Exemption
Becoming part of big business is ignored if it is done by leftie leaders. Hillary on the Walmart board. Gore becomes filthy rich due to his insider ties to Google and Apple. Bill cashing in with speeches to corporations worldwide.

Irish Music

The Saw Doctors




See them August 16 & 17 at Irish Fest.

EATAPETA Day

Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day. Details are here.



Yummo.

Career ending move?

I think ol' Larry the Cable Guy just jumped the shark. Thin isn't funny. Part of the Cable Guy's charm, and many of his jokes, had to do with him being kind of chubby.

I can also do without the Fat Larry before picture while watching the news at 08:00. If you have the stomach for it, the video is in the sidebar here.

Chickens roosting

Get ready for $5 a pound chicken.

Pilgrim's Pride makes no secret of why they are closing this chicken processing facility. They're doing it to drive up chicken prices.

Why? Because they cannot afford to sell chicken with the current supply-demand relationship due to high corn prices.

PITTSBURG, Texas, March 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (NYSE: PPC), today announced it will close a chicken processing complex and six of its 13 distribution centers in the United States in response to the crisis facing the U.S. chicken industry from soaring feed-ingredient costs resulting from corn-based ethanol production. These actions are part of a plan to curtail losses amid record-high costs for corn, soybean meal and other feed ingredients and an oversupply of chicken in the United States. The closings, which are expected to begin immediately and will be completed by June, will result in the elimination of approximately 1,100 jobs. Additionally, the Company announced that it is in the process of reviewing other production facilities for potential mix changes, closure and/or consolidation in response to current negative industry fundamentals.

[ ... ]

"Our Company and industry are struggling to cope with unprecedented increases in feed-ingredient costs this year due largely to the U.S. government's ill-advised policy of providing generous federal subsidies to corn-based ethanol blenders," said Clint Rivers, president and chief executive officer. "The cost burden is already enormous, and it's growing even larger. Based on current commodity futures markets, our company's total costs for corn and soybean meal to feed our flocks in fiscal 2008 would be more than $1.3 billion higher than what they were two years ago."

[ ... ]

Mr. Rivers added: "While the decision to close a facility is always very difficult, we believe the actions we are announcing today are absolutely necessary to help bring supply and demand into better balance. That portion of the demand for our products that exists solely at pricing levels below the cost of production is no longer a demand that this industry can continue to supply."

The unintended consequences of corn-based ethanol strikes again.

And again ... at the current $5/bushel, ethanol production costs $1.80/gallon for only the corn. When corn hits $9 a bushel this summer, that goes up to $3.20 per gallon for raw materials. Begging the question, what is driving $4.00 per gallon gasoline - crude oil or corn prices?

H/T - Belling

7 Sins - Patriotism

Thanks to the Reverend Wright, Patriotism is first to be featured. Patriotic is the last thing a Progressive wants to be called. America is wrong - by definition. Just ask Noam.

Examples
"The U.S. of KKK A."
"The first time in my adult life ..."
Attacks on military recruiters
"G** D*** America"
Code Pink

This will get you shunned
"No, I really do support the troops."
"I don't agree with anything he says or does, but President Bush was elected fairly and I support his office."
"Hoorah! I just enlisted in the United States Marines."

Secular-Progressive Exemption
A wink and a nod to any leftie politician trying to appeal to moderate voters. You are forgiven, we know you are only trying to get those hick's votes. "John Kerry, reporting for duty" is a prime example.

7 Sins

I heard these new sins on Monday's Fox & Friends and first thought they came from a left wing political group. Polluting the environment, excessive wealth, creating poverty didn't sound like they came from the Vatican. So I figured this was a list of no-nos from the secular-progressives.

When I finally heard the new seven sins purportedly came from the Vatican, I started my own mental list of what actions would cause someone in Madison to be socially shunned - The Seven Leftie Sins. Obesity, tobacco use, non-diversity started my list. Then I thought of the laws that Doyle has bottled up - concealed carry, voter ID, death penalty. When I was done I had a lot more than seven sins, so I grouped them into seven general categories that any liberal fascist should appreciate.

The Seven Leftie Sins

• Conspicuous consumption
• Pollution
• Christianity
• Corporatism
• Self determination
• Judgmentalism
• Patriotism

When complete, I also realized that for each sin, secular-progressive leaders are exempt from compliance in certain circumstances.

I'll explain my thoughts behind these, including the Clinton-Gore-Obama exemptions, in future posts.

No way.

Too gross to post. But if Mark Steyn can do it, I will too.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Deputies say a woman in western Kansas became stuck on her boyfriend's toilet after sitting on it for two years.

Read the rest here, if you dare. It gets much worse.

Please, please, please ...

Let Spitzer's pal, 7-Diamond Jim Doyle, be Client #10.

Don't believe everything you see on the internet

HT - Texas Hold 'Em

WSM Smoke Day IV

May 24, 2008 - My place.

My Smoke Day III posts are here.

Shark Jumping

Belling jumps the shark.

It was sad to listen to this pitiful performance. A once relevant commentator wailing over an affront to his perceived self importance. He spent 45 minutes of airtime pointing out that the 'most incompetent' PR person in the world does not return his calls.

Free airtime two days in a row discussing an event at this PR person's institution. Who's incompetent now?

March Madness - How to Win

USA Today Weekend had these rules for winning your office pool in last weeks edition.

Rule #1: Don't sweat the office hoops fanatic (he never wins)

Rule #2: Pick one school you've never heard of

Rule #3: When picking an ultimate winner, go with the favorites

Rule #4: When all else fails, pick your favorite mascot

They are full of crap. Here are my rules, good for winning 2 of last 3 pools I played, even without following college ball all season.

Rule #1: Rock, Paper, Scissors. When in doubt - SEC beats ACC. ACC beats Big East. Big East beats SEC.

Rule #2: Upsets are for saps. USA Todays' Rule #2 is asinine. There will be upsets, but you won't pick them. Never, ever, pick anything bigger than a 10 seed over a 7. That rule holds all the way to the final four - 4 over 1 is ok, 6 over 2 is not.

Rule #3: The Big 10 will blow it in the end. Not 100% foolproof, but damned effective when in a pool with a bunch of Cheesehead homers. The odds of that 11th seed Big Ten also-ran going to the final four are nil, but enough of these dopes will pick it to put them out of the money.

Those Hollywood progressives

Performing in blackface was a theatrical convention used by many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel show. Al Jolson was the most famous performer to use blackface and thus is sometimes used as an example of whites propagating racial stereotypes in film. However, Jolson's blackface characters were always the star performers, as opposed to simple minstrel singers. Since leading black performers were unheard of at that time, either on stage or in movies, his blackface character would not actually be considered a stereotype.

"Since leading black performers were unheard of at that time ... "

Ah, how things have changed in America.

HT - James T.

UPDATED:

Hollywood dream presidential candidate.



A Hollywood liberal's dream, the self-satisfaction of voting for a person of color, with none of the guilt of voting for an African-American.

Deconstructed 4-Block

Why I will win the nomination

Barrack

• More elected delegates
• More votes nationally
  
• More states won
• Hope
• Change
• Our turn/our time

Hillary

• More battleground states won
• Momentum
• Obama - NAFTA/Rezko/Other new dirt
• Obama super-delegate buyer's remorse
• Inevitable

Why I can't win the general election

Barrack

• Rezko
• Michelle
• Most liberal U.S. Senator
• Empty suit
• Jimmy Carter redux
  

Hillary

• Tax returns
• Bill
• Blacks leave when nomination stolen
• Bill's pardon records
  
• She's Hillary

"They're like herpes but worse, cuz they talk."

Spoken like a true Bears fan

Who said it?

It's a bittersweet time as we celebrate one of the NFL's greatest all-time players.

What part of Favre retiring is sweet?

Michelle Obama - Islamophobe

Michelle Obama, who often has decried "the fear bomb'' that opponents have used against her husband for his middle name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- said in Canton, Ohio, today that it is happening again and shows why it's so important that he wins election as president.

"They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb," Obama said today of her husband's 2004 Senate race. "We're even hearing [that] now. … 'When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it's different.'"

The senator's wife said that rivals use innuendo to play on fears. "Just as they're saying it now," she said.

Would anyone but an Islamophobe be concerned with that middle name? Michelle must believe in her heart that the name is the fear bomb. I haven't heard it from anyone else.

Come on Michelle, celebrate diversity.

The Obama mole strikes again

Who is this supposed to appeal to?

The Clinton campaign cannot be this racist. Or this stupid.

The original discussion is at Althouse.

Ethanol - Crunching some numbers

Replacing just 10 percent of the nation's gasoline with ethanol requires an area three times the size of Texas for the process to be self-sustaining

I previously addressed some dubious efficiency claims being made by ethanol proponents here and looked at the economics and sustainability of ethanol production here. This post takes a look at the analysis of energy use in ethanol production presented in The Futility of Ethanol essay.

1. Production of ethanol using fossil fuels. The following analysis is presented in The Futility of Ethanol.

Crunching the numbers above, converting just 10% of our gasoline to ethanol will require 14 billion gallons of ethanol, 5.014 billion NEW bushels and 34.4 million NEW acres of Corn, an increase of 48% over our 5 year historical average, requiring an area the size of North Carolina and producing 24 million tons of byproduct.

Remember that little number, the 1.52 GGE. One way to interpret the GGE that the addition of 10% ethanol will result in a 3.4% increase in total gasoline consumption ((0.52/1.52) x 10% =3.4%). Another way is to assume that we must produce 52% more ethanol than the gasoline that it replaces. Now we're talking about 21.3 billion gallons, 7.62 billion NEW bushels and 52.3 million NEW acres, an increase of 76% over our 5 year historical average, or area the size of Kansas and 36.5 million tons of DDG.

This analysis is premised on ethanol replacing 10% of the energy of gasoline to make E10. That is not correct, it replaces 10% of the gas by volume, but not energy. E10 has a Gallon Gas Equivalent (GGE) of 1.035; hence for E10, 140 billion gallons times 1.035 equals 145 billion gallons of E10 to be equivalent to the nation's gasoline use. With 10% of E10 being ethanol, 14.5 billion gallons of ethanol are needed to convert the nation to E10.

Dividing 14.5 billion by 2.8 gallons per corn bushel, results in 5.2 billion bushels of corn. With 145.8 bushels per acre, 35.5 million acres are needed to produce the corn to replace 10% of the United States gasoline used as motor fuels when powered by fossil fuels. Somewhat less than the 52 million acres in the above analysis, but still a big number.

2. Production of ethanol using ethanol. From my previous post.

A 1.06 energy ratio means that you need to use 16.7 gallons of ethanol to produce 17.7 gallons of the product, a net gain of one gallon of ethanol. This can be justified from an energy perspective, but it doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint. There is too much risk and too large of an investment for that small return.

Likewise, you would have to grow 16.7 acres of corn, for a net gain of ethanol equal to the yield from only one acre.

In order to create the energy and corn to produce 1 gallon of ethanol for use as a motor fuel, 17.7 gallons of ethanol must be produced. Therefore, 16.7 times 35.5 million acres, or more than 590 million acres, of corn must be grown to convert 10% of current gasoline to ethanol.

That's 920,000 square miles or an area more than three times the size of Texas! Converting that large of an area solely to ethanol production is not agriculturally sustainable. Especially for only 10% of the U.S. gasoline needs.

The E25 requirement being proposed in the Wisconsin Legislature shows the ignorance of the proponents, as it requires an area 3.5 times the size of Alaska if implemented nationwide and fueled by ethanol. That is approximately 80% of the contiguous United States.

Words to live by

No evidence of recurrent lymphadenopathy nor metastatic disease.

Opening act for TMBG

Oppenheimer