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steve2470
steve2470's Journal
steve2470's Journal
July 29, 2014
The UK is full of heavy drinkers with bad eating habits who are ignorant, intolerant and too nationalistic – so it’s just as well that we are also very polite.
It might sound like a stereotypical list of national traits, but these are the views of more than 5,000 young adults from five different countries who were asked to give their opinion on modern Britain by the British Council.
Its report As Others See Us, published today, shows that the UK is struggling to overcome certain long-held negative perceptions about its poor weather and cuisine, which are viewed as its least attractive features. Culture and history are seen as its best qualities, with its best-known cultural icons cited as Shakespeare, the Queen, and David Beckham.
Worryingly, it seems that the UK is right to be worried about its binge-drinking culture and the loutish behaviour with which it is associated. Asked to name British people’s worst characteristics, 27 per cent of those surveyed ticked “drink too much alcohol” – a figure which rose to 34 per cent if the person had actually visited the UK and experienced the drinking culture first hand.
more at link
Boozy, ignorant, intolerant, but very polite – Britain as others see us
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boozy-ignorant-intolerant-but-very-polite--britain-as-others-see-us-9633967.htmlThe UK is full of heavy drinkers with bad eating habits who are ignorant, intolerant and too nationalistic – so it’s just as well that we are also very polite.
It might sound like a stereotypical list of national traits, but these are the views of more than 5,000 young adults from five different countries who were asked to give their opinion on modern Britain by the British Council.
Its report As Others See Us, published today, shows that the UK is struggling to overcome certain long-held negative perceptions about its poor weather and cuisine, which are viewed as its least attractive features. Culture and history are seen as its best qualities, with its best-known cultural icons cited as Shakespeare, the Queen, and David Beckham.
Worryingly, it seems that the UK is right to be worried about its binge-drinking culture and the loutish behaviour with which it is associated. Asked to name British people’s worst characteristics, 27 per cent of those surveyed ticked “drink too much alcohol” – a figure which rose to 34 per cent if the person had actually visited the UK and experienced the drinking culture first hand.
more at link
July 29, 2014
Yes, the money is good, but....fracking...ugh.
Welcome to Williston, North Dakota: America's new gold rush city
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jul/28/-sp-welcome-williston-north-dakota-america-new-gold-rush-cityAs well, most of the thousands who have so far flocked to this region are earning good money, either through direct oil-industry employment or working in supporting services. The average annual wage in Williston and surrounding Williams County in the final quarter of 2013 was $77,636, or 41% higher than the US national average.
Yes, the money is good, but....fracking...ugh.
July 29, 2014
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/places/simon-willis/cartophilia
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, July/August 2014
This map marks both a scientific and an imaginative revolution. When it was published in 1977 by Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, two oceanographers at Columbia University, there had never before been a map of the entire ocean floor. Here, for the first time, was our planet’s hidden majority. It was as if the plug had been pulled and the water drained out, transforming the blank seascape into a complex landscape of plains and peaks, escarpments and bluffs. Here was the full extent of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, the mightiest mountain range on Earth, its 40,000-mile length making molehills out of more familiar mountains. You can see its serpentine curl through the Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope to the Horn of Africa and on through the Southern Ocean, up to 1,000 miles wide and two miles high.
Tharp and Heezen began mapping the individual ocean floors in 1952, but found obstacles in their way. The big one was invisibility: when it comes to mapping the ocean floor, the sea gets in the way of seeing. The second obstacle was limited data. Tharp, who drew the maps, started with the North Atlantic, working from information gleaned on sounding expeditions. Ships travelling across the Atlantic with sonar would fire sound through the sea, working out its depth from the time it took for the echo to be detected. But Tharp had only six complete tracks across the ocean from which to figure out the topography of the whole thing—“six ribbons of light”, as she described them.
As she began analysing the data she noticed something strange, a discovery that would change our understanding of our planet. There was a crack running along the top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Nobody had ever spotted it, but it appeared to be huge—in places wider than the Grand Canyon. Heezen, at first disbelieving, became convinced when it turned out the crack coincided with a string of earthquakes. Tharp’s discovery helped turn a theory then regarded as nonsense into a fundamental fact: continental drift. The sea floor was being pushed up and apart.
“It was a giant paradigm shift,” says Robin Bell, a professor of geophysics at Columbia today. “These mountains now had a reason for being there. That’s the magic place where you in London and I in upstate New York are getting farther apart every day at the rate our fingernails grow. That’s the place where new Earth crust is being made.” It was a leap towards explaining why the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa fit so snugly together, and why Bermuda is older than the Azores. “It wasn't just random down there,” Bell says. “There was a story.”
The first map of the (Ocean) depths
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/places/simon-willis/cartophilia
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, July/August 2014
This map marks both a scientific and an imaginative revolution. When it was published in 1977 by Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, two oceanographers at Columbia University, there had never before been a map of the entire ocean floor. Here, for the first time, was our planet’s hidden majority. It was as if the plug had been pulled and the water drained out, transforming the blank seascape into a complex landscape of plains and peaks, escarpments and bluffs. Here was the full extent of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, the mightiest mountain range on Earth, its 40,000-mile length making molehills out of more familiar mountains. You can see its serpentine curl through the Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope to the Horn of Africa and on through the Southern Ocean, up to 1,000 miles wide and two miles high.
Tharp and Heezen began mapping the individual ocean floors in 1952, but found obstacles in their way. The big one was invisibility: when it comes to mapping the ocean floor, the sea gets in the way of seeing. The second obstacle was limited data. Tharp, who drew the maps, started with the North Atlantic, working from information gleaned on sounding expeditions. Ships travelling across the Atlantic with sonar would fire sound through the sea, working out its depth from the time it took for the echo to be detected. But Tharp had only six complete tracks across the ocean from which to figure out the topography of the whole thing—“six ribbons of light”, as she described them.
As she began analysing the data she noticed something strange, a discovery that would change our understanding of our planet. There was a crack running along the top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Nobody had ever spotted it, but it appeared to be huge—in places wider than the Grand Canyon. Heezen, at first disbelieving, became convinced when it turned out the crack coincided with a string of earthquakes. Tharp’s discovery helped turn a theory then regarded as nonsense into a fundamental fact: continental drift. The sea floor was being pushed up and apart.
“It was a giant paradigm shift,” says Robin Bell, a professor of geophysics at Columbia today. “These mountains now had a reason for being there. That’s the magic place where you in London and I in upstate New York are getting farther apart every day at the rate our fingernails grow. That’s the place where new Earth crust is being made.” It was a leap towards explaining why the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa fit so snugly together, and why Bermuda is older than the Azores. “It wasn't just random down there,” Bell says. “There was a story.”
July 29, 2014
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 9.7 37.3W Movement W at 20 mph
Wind 35 MPH
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 12.7N 212E Movement NW at 5 mph
Wind 60 MPH
Last Updated 7/28/2014, 8:00:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 9.1 163.2W Movement W at 10 mph
Wind 30 MPH
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 7.2 174.4W Movement W at 10 mph
Wind 25 MPH
Atlantic: Invest 93L moves W; Pacific: TS Halong moves NW, Invest 91C & Invest 92C, TS Hernan WNW
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 9.7 37.3W Movement W at 20 mph
Wind 35 MPH
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 12.7N 212E Movement NW at 5 mph
Wind 60 MPH
Last Updated 7/28/2014, 8:00:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 9.1 163.2W Movement W at 10 mph
Wind 30 MPH
Last Updated 7/29/2014, 2:00:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time)
Location 7.2 174.4W Movement W at 10 mph
Wind 25 MPH
July 29, 2014
Good AM fellow Loungers, 79.3 F/26.3 C here, clear skies, muggy as hell....
Ah, life in Florida in the summer 
Hope your day goes well !
July 28, 2014
Of the many unusual moments recounted in Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter’s new book The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 this one has to be one of the strangest. As the authors explain in a piece for The Washington Post’s appropriately-named PostEverything blog, President Richard Nixon was apparently fascinated by the mating habits of panda bears after his famous trip to China.
Shortly after his trip, China decided to gift a male and female panda to the National Zoo. But when Nixon leaked this news to The Washington Star’s foreign editor Crosby Noyes, he expressed some concerns about how they would learn to mate without the example of others pandas to observe.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, followed by the full audio:
Nixon: Yeah. Oh, yes! Now, as a matter of fact, let me tell you an interesting thing about—that you must know, you can only use on your own if you want, but not on comment. I was just talking to Bob Haldeman who talked to his Chinese hosts, and this question of mating is very interesting. These are—This is a male and a female.
Richard Nixon Was Apparently Obsessed with Panda Sex
http://www.mediaite.com/online/richard-nixon-was-apparently-obsessed-with-panda-sex/Of the many unusual moments recounted in Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter’s new book The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 this one has to be one of the strangest. As the authors explain in a piece for The Washington Post’s appropriately-named PostEverything blog, President Richard Nixon was apparently fascinated by the mating habits of panda bears after his famous trip to China.
Shortly after his trip, China decided to gift a male and female panda to the National Zoo. But when Nixon leaked this news to The Washington Star’s foreign editor Crosby Noyes, he expressed some concerns about how they would learn to mate without the example of others pandas to observe.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, followed by the full audio:
Nixon: Yeah. Oh, yes! Now, as a matter of fact, let me tell you an interesting thing about—that you must know, you can only use on your own if you want, but not on comment. I was just talking to Bob Haldeman who talked to his Chinese hosts, and this question of mating is very interesting. These are—This is a male and a female.
July 28, 2014
question about Facebook button
When I click the FB button on a post, it gives me an option of posting more text to my Facebook, but then....nothing happens whatsoever. No post to my own FB, no nothing.
Browser problem ? I've used Chrome, Opera, FF, and IE.
July 28, 2014
A Republican candidate is facing questions about a Facebook comment where, in a discussion about the poor, he stated, “No one has the guts to just let them wither and die.”
Valparaiso resident John Johnston, who is challenging State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-10th, said Tuesday that he was speaking in hyperbole, and he later clarified that no thoughtful society would let people go hungry.
“I was not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Johnston said. “I saw the opportunity to say something. I think a lot of the poor have no way out, and there’s no motivation to improve your position. It’s like training a child, either you enable them or force them out at some point.”
The discussion thread appeared on the Mad Mac page, which pokes fun at Northwest Indiana politics.
What a lying POS. He was speaking his true feelings.
eta: We need to put this on Twitter and Facebook, make it go viral !
GOP House candidate defends 'wither and die' comment about poor
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/gop-house-candidate-defends-wither-and-die-comment-about-poor/wed-07232014-1021pmA Republican candidate is facing questions about a Facebook comment where, in a discussion about the poor, he stated, “No one has the guts to just let them wither and die.”
Valparaiso resident John Johnston, who is challenging State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-10th, said Tuesday that he was speaking in hyperbole, and he later clarified that no thoughtful society would let people go hungry.
“I was not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Johnston said. “I saw the opportunity to say something. I think a lot of the poor have no way out, and there’s no motivation to improve your position. It’s like training a child, either you enable them or force them out at some point.”
The discussion thread appeared on the Mad Mac page, which pokes fun at Northwest Indiana politics.
What a lying POS. He was speaking his true feelings.
eta: We need to put this on Twitter and Facebook, make it go viral !
July 28, 2014
reaction about fracking in UK, please
I posted a story in GD about UK fracking, but no response so far.
Here is the story:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28513036
Thank you kindly for your input.
Steve
July 28, 2014
Dollar Tree, Inc. to Acquire Family Dollar Stores, Inc. to Create North America's....
Dollar Tree, Inc. to Acquire Family Dollar Stores, Inc. to Create North America's Leading Discount Retailer
(yes the actual headline)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/nyt4a52 (real url is gigantic)
Will Operate More Than 13,000 Stores Across 48 States and Five Canadian Provinces, with Annual Sales Exceeding $18 Billion
Will Continue to Operate and Grow Both the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar Brands, Offering Fixed- and Multi-Price Point Formats to Provide Consumers Greater Value, Convenience and Choice
Expected to Achieve an Estimated $300 Million in Annual Run Rate Synergies by the End of the Third Year Post-Closing
Estimated to be Accretive to Cash EPS within the First Year Post-Closing
more at link
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