One of the more bizarre complaints in Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack was with regard to $140 million in the stimulus package towards volcano monitoring. Andrea Thompson explains just what that funding goes to.
The $140 million to which Jindal referred is actually for a number of projects conducted by the United States Geological Survey, including volcano monitoring. This monitoring is aimed at helping geologists understand the inner workings of volcanoes as well as providing warnings of impending eruptions, in the United States and in active areas around the world where U.S. military bases are located.
Most of the money from the stimulus bill earmarked for monitoring (only about a tenth of the total going to the USGS) will go to modernizing existing monitoring equipment, including switching from analog to digital and installing GPS networks that can measure ground movements, said John Eichelberger, program coordinator for the USGS’s Volcano Hazards Program. Much of the expense of this technology comes from the manpower required to make and install it, he added.
“Ultimately most of this creates jobs or saves jobs that would have been lost” to recent budget shortfalls Eichelberger told LiveScience.
[...]
The USGS has issued several warnings over the past 10 years, though predicting the timing and size of eruptions remains a difficult task.
Volcano monitoring likely saved many lives - and significant money - in the case of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines (where the United States had military bases at the time), according to the USGS.
The cataclysmic eruption lasted more than 10 hours and sent a cloud of ash as high as 22 miles into the air that grew to more than 300 miles across.
The USGS spent less than $1.5 million monitoring the volcano and was able to warn of the impending eruption, which allowed authorities to evacuate residents, as well as aircraft and other equipment from U.S. bases there.
The USGS estimates that the efforts saved thousands of lives and prevented property losses of at least $250 million (considered a conservative figure).
That seems like a genuine public good to me–something for which there really isn’t an existing private market to provide. And if the money is spent upgrading custom equipment so that the USGS can do its job better, it seems like that’s a legitimate stimulus, as well.
Last week, I mentioned that I was sure that Hosea was going to take second or third place. So yeah, perhaps I was not quite right there. In fact, when I talked this over with my wife, we both mentioned that he started performing much better once Leah was out of the picture, so maybe that’s what it was.
Of course, like many great victories, Hosea’s was in part because of the failure of his rivals. Stefan’s decision to freeze his fresh fish as well as his decision to make what looked to me like a dessert you’d get at a candy store in the mall pretty much finished him–he was just too inconsistent, and has been for the past few episodes.
I really was rooting for Carla to win, and I think she could have, too–had she trusted her instincts and ignored Casey. She didn’t, though, and her decision to Casey was, without a doubt, the reason why Carla lost. Still, this is Top Chef, and part of being Top Chef is being in charge and not letting your sous-chefs run the menu. The fact that Carla couldn’t maintain leadership in her circumstances points to another reason why she probably lost.
And so, Hosea, the slow but steady tortoise of the race, ends up winning. All in all, it wasn’t a bad season.
I’ve been trying to avoid watching the myriad number of clips that are out there now, preferring instead to wait until the actual movie. But I couldn’t resist watching this clip:
That is just an amazing sequence. Fans of the book know that that clip is pretty much verbatim, both in action and in pictures, what was in the book. I think things are looking up in terms of how good Watchmen will be.
“Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”
Today is Ash Wednesday, which is usually a little-remarked upon holiday, and that’s a shame. For most folks, Ash Wednesday mostly just symbolizes the beginning of their Lenten fast to “give up” something that they like. But Ash Wednesday is really about more than that–it’s about contemplating one’s mortality. Hence the Latin above, which is part of the traditional Catholic Ash Wednesday rite. Translated, it says simply, “Remember Man, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”
Once a year, it’s good to take time out and remember that. We are all going to die one day. Which is what makes life worth living in the first place.
“Torture is for sadists and thugs. It’s like getting groceries with a flamethrower. It doesn’t work, and it makes a mess.”
– Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) in Burn Notice
I have to say that I really enjoyed the first part of the Top Chef season five finale. The Quickfire Challenge was brilliant. Or at least I mostly thought so because I’ve been a huge fan of Jeff “Dr. Chase” McInnis’s refined approach to food this entire season of Top Chef. Jeff’s problem throughout the whole season, really, was trying to do too much instead of just focusing on making one fine dish. Well, during the Quickfire he learned his lesson and pulled of a delicious looking crawfish dish.
The win gave him a chance to compete in the Elimination Challenge–with the caveat that he had to WIN in order to go to the finale. Still, I was excited. I’m not a big Hosea fan, nor do I much care for Fabio. I’ve been a Stefan booster for most of the season, but his overconfidence has turned into laziness (something that never would have happened to Season 3’s Hung, for instance). Carla, though, has grown on me, and I was looking forward to seeing both Carla and Dr. Chase in the finale.
Alas, it was not to be. Although Jeff’s great looking dishes earned no criticism and his cocktail was the highlight of the night, it just didn’t have the heart of Carla’s dishes. Watching the episode, that made sense to me. It was clear the judge’s liked Jeff’s dishes (they mentioned that he was definitely in the top three), but they didn’t rave about them the way they did Carla’s oyster stew or Hosea’s mighty fine looking gumbo. So, basically Stefan lucked out in that Jeff wasn’t quite good enough.
I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I’m not sad to see Fabio go. He’s definitely a charming fella, but he’s been on the bottom more than once and he seems to be pretty damn inconsistent from a technique perspective.
When it comes down to next week’s finale, I’m pretty sure that Hosea’s already got a guaranteed second or third place. He’s not going to win. It comes down to whether Carla can maintain the streak she’s on or whether Stefan sets aside his pride and starts cooking with some hunger again. If he can ditch the attitude and laziness, the prize is going to Stefan. That’s just pretty much all there is too it. But if he’s too cocky or lazy, it’s going to be Carla all the way.
It’s a sad thing that, after seven years of trying, Erroll Tyler has to file suit against the City of Boston just to exercise his right to open a business.
Erroll Tyler has been trying for seven years to open his small business in the Boston-area. Today, he took a major step toward that goal by teaming up with the Institute for Justice (IJ), the nation’s leading legal advocate for the rights of entrepreneurs, to file a major federal lawsuit against the City of Boston.
The aspiring entrepreneur’s dream is to launch Nautical Tours, a cutting-edge amphibious vehicle tour service based in Cambridge, Mass. But, like countless cities across the country, Boston appears to be using its licensing power to protect existing businesses from honest competition by denying others their basic right to earn a living.
“It should not take seven years and a team of lawyers to open a small business,” said Jeff Rowes, a staff attorney at IJ. “We’re in a ‘Yes We Can’ era, but Boston still has a ‘No You Can’t’ government.”
The Institute For Justice (my favorite gang of lawyers in the world) has a great track record breaking down unfair and restrictive licensing laws, so I wish them the best of luck in winning this one. Here’s a video they’ve put together on the case:
I live in Kansas, so I’m particularly steamed about the latest economic news, that the State of Kansas is suspending tax refunds.
Even worse than that, or at least just as bad, the State is also suspending pay for employees.
Income tax refunds and state employee paychecks could be late after Republican leaders and the Democratic governor clashed Monday over how to solve a cash-flow problem.
Payments to Medicaid providers and schools also could be delayed.
“We are out of cash, in essence,” state budget director Duane Goossen said.
I remarked to my wife a few weeks ago that I would be smart to change my status on my W-4 so that we part with less money for fear we won’t get a return. It appears my fears were well founded.
The main culprit here is withholding. Witholding is the brilliant government strategy to take people’s money before they can even get their hands on it themselves. And because of this, people are less opposed to the taxes they pay, because it’s phantom money; they never know they earned it.
On the other side, if people had to pay one lump sum to the government every year, if they had to write a single check for ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars or more, they would be much more interested in where their money went and much more opposed to this ridiculous era of government spending.
This financial crisis is just beginning. Already California and now Kansas are hanging on to other people’s money in an unprecedented way. More states, and probably the Federal Government will follow.
This is the perfect opportunity for fiscal conservatives and libertarians alike to rally around a single idea and change the way government does business from now on:
A Colorado Jury acquitted a man accused of “illegal gambling” for running poker games in his bar on the grounds that poker is a game of skill.
The national Poker Players Alliance helped Raley, a software consultant, mount his defense, paying for an expert witness to testify that poker is a game of skill, not chance.
Under Colorado law, illegal gambling “means risking any money, credit, deposit, or other thing of value for gain contingent in whole or in part upon lot, chance, the operation of a gambling device, or the happening or outcome of an event, including a sporting event, over which the person taking a risk has no control, but does not include bona fide contests of skill.”
The PPA’s expert, professor Robert Hannum of the University of Denver, testified that poker isn’t dependent primarily on chance but on each player’s skill. Hannum is a professor of statistics and is the author of the book “Practical Casino Math.”
Hannum said there are many factors that go into how a player plays a game of poker, and few of them are based on chance.
“There are a lot of facets to the skill, in terms of knowing the math and the odds, reading the people, trying to glean what other players’ hole cards might be. But it’s all expressed in the decision they make in how much money, if any, they are willing to invest,” Hannum said.
He noted that a skilled poker player will beat an unskilled one “consistently and probably convincingly,” but that true games of chance require no skill.
Makes sense to me. Anyone who’s played poker long enough knows that while luck definitely plays a role, it’s skill that wins out over the long term.
I have to say that I really enjoyed the first part of the Top Chef season five finale. The Quickfire Challenge was brilliant. Or at least I mostly thought so because I’ve been a huge fan of Jeff “Dr. Chase” McInnis’s refined approach to food this entire season of Top Chef. Jeff’s problem throughout the whole season, really, was trying to do too much instead of just focusing on making one fine dish. Well, during the Quickfire he learned his lesson and pulled of a delicious looking crawfish dish.