Archive for August, 2005

North Carolina running out of gas?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2005

Boy, am I glad that I fixed my bike. Ninety percent of the pipeline capacity for the South-Eastern US is down right now. We’re car-pooling with the TDI for now. Here is the press release from the Gov-man’s office: STATEMENT GIVEN TODAY BY GOV. EASLEY CONCERNING GASOLINE SUPPLY IN NORTH CAROLINA THE TWO MAJOR PIPELINES […]

New Orleans is drowning …

Tuesday, August 30th, 2005

… and the president is on vacation. Maybe he is working on finishing My Pet Goat? Apparently he never read the FEMA reports on the probability of the second most devastating disaster to hit the US during his presidency: In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as […]

Dumb arguments over unintelligent design

Sunday, August 28th, 2005

Creationism is religion and has no place in the classroom. End of story. One problem with scientists is that they want to argue with anyone over anything. So they fall into this trap the creationists set for them to consider “intelligent design” a scientific theory and argue painstakingly over creationism’s scientific merit. However, the “intelligent […]

Pat Robertson bin Laden

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005

Religious so-called leaders calling for terror against other nations? Not exactly an original concept! Does Pat Robertson aspire to be the Christian Osama Bin Laden? In a Aug. 22 broadcast on cable television, the wealthy American televangelist called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of […]

The pope in Deutschland

Thursday, August 18th, 2005

Pope Panzerfaust rolled into Köln today, threw his scull cap into the cheering mob and slid down the handrail of the gangway. No, he did not kiss the ground – he’s doing the ecclesiastical slide! Yeah, he’s now da man! Check out all the young Christians, screaming and fainting, when they catch a glimpse of […]

NC pops the cap

Tuesday, August 16th, 2005

A toast to the efforts of Sean Wilson and Julie Bradford and all supporters of the Pop the Cap effort here in North Carolina. This weekend the NC Governor Mike Easley signed House Bill 392 into law. It is now on the books as S.L. 2005-277 and it raises the cap on alcohol content for […]

The Berlin Wall – August 13, 1961

Saturday, August 13th, 2005

Early in the morning on August 13, 1961, workers began tearing up the cobblestone and asphalt along the sector boundaries across Berlin. They began erecting concrete pillars and barbed-wire barricades, while units of the the Volkspolizei – the People’s Police – kept the angry people in the eastern sector in check with machine guns. The […]

Robots in space

Friday, August 12th, 2005

… are much cheaper than people. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is projected to cost a total of $686 million over 6 years, according to this year’s NASA budget (PDF – see page 320). This is roughly half of a single launch of the space shuttle but the MRO is designed to send back a […]

Das ist alles?

Thursday, August 11th, 2005

Seit 1. August gilt jetzt also die neus Rechtschreibung – fast überall. Da dachte ich mir dass ich mir das mal genauer anschaue muss. Über Jahre war das ja ein Riesentheater und ich war also auf ein paar Überraschungenn gefasst. Die Überraschung war dann allerdings dass die sogenannte “Neue Rechtschreibung” tatsächlich nur eine handvoll Änderungen […]

Return to retirement

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Congratulations to NASA – the space shuttle is back in one piece. Now it’s time to put those big clunkers in a nice museum and charge foreign tourists money to see them (I think that US taxpayers have already paid their admission fees). At an average cost of $1.3 billion per launch, and a total […]