hipparchia's blog

The Ixtoc I oil spill disaster - which went on for months, I remind you - was eventually thought to have dumped about 3.5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. That's 147,000,000 gallons.

According to the widget that PBS has put up - now with video! [although nothing's playing at the moment] - the Deepwater Horizon disaster has, as of the time of this post, dumped somewhere between 36,500,000 gallons and 148,000,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Read below the fold...

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign --Albert Einstein

Ok, so it looks like we've got a ways to go here at chez hipparchia before we catch up with the inventor of the internet...

Read below the fold...

Update: Thank you to all the new, and returning, volunteers! I'll have something for you soon.

Two rounds of recruiting netted 9 or 10 volunteers, two 3 of whom turned out to be, I'm convinced, pros. Those two 3 have finished, and have done beautiful work too, but the rest of us are still slogging through ours.

So the question is: Do we need more volunteers? Are y'all as bogged down as I am? Have you, perhaps, come to hate the very sound of your speaker's voice? Read below the fold...

Tar balls believed to be from Cheney's Katrina The Well From Hell the Deepwater Horizon blowout have been reported washing up on Dauphin Island AL, a bird sanctuary [at least it used to be one], and all the world is watching.

h/t Bryan Read below the fold...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures Read below the fold...

This post is going to be short [so I can get back to work], bereft of photos [because I didn't find any good ones], and rambling off topic [because].

During the Great Depression, millions and millions were out of work, and so FDR put people back to work. Pretty darn simple, huh?

And though a lot of jobs were "important" -- like building up more of the nation's infrastructure [did you know that Saturday is National Train Day?] -- many of them were [and still are] derided as make-work. Read below the fold...

Below the lolcat, you'll find:

1. Template
2. Notes
3. mp3 files
4. Any more volunteers? 1 or 2 more would be nice We have enough for now, but I might ask for more help later in the week, or next week

see more Lolcats and funny pictures Read below the fold...

Transcription is a boring and arduous task, and if you farm it out to professionals they quite rightly charge you an awful lot of hamster kibble, so we're looking for two kinds of people: volunteers and sponsors.

If you want to volunteer to transcribe all or part of a session, don't worry about perfection. I'm an ace proofreader and if you're willing to take on the drudgery of the initial tyeping :-) I'll happily go over it and make it prettier. Read below the fold...

So, somebody tell me again why it is that the American Exceptionalism definition of "fast internet" is slightly faster than dial-up, and 4 times as expensive.

Read below the fold...

CCC-built cabin in Bastrop State Park, via Sarah

How do people not know this stuff? she asks, speaking of the WPA.

That's an easy one to answer. It was 70+ years ago, and we have a President who is basically going around mis/disinforming people about it to boot. Read below the fold...

By now everybody's heard about Arizona's new Papieren, bitte! law. What to do?

First we need to laugh the Arizona state government off the face of the planet. Need some inspiration? Check out these political cartoonists.

Don't go there. The Grand Canyon alone gets ~5 million visitors every year. That's a fair amount of tourism for a state that has just under 7 million people.

Let's say you already promised the kids a trip to the Grand Canyon this year and can't bear to disappoint them. There's always The Skywalk, and it's on tribal land, and therefore not subject to the state of Arizona's legislative imbecility. Read below the fold...

Eggs, Smoke Bombs And Punches Fly As Ukranian Lawmakers Debate

And they're not. Not in any of the ways we usually think of killers: Ted Bundy, Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, drug kingpins, mob enforcers, or barroom brawlers gone out of control.

They are, however, de facto members of the Let Them Eat Catfood And Die class, whether they intended to be or not.

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[If you want full, as in 100%, employment, then the deficit birds -- both hawks and doves -- need to be stopped. What we're doing here really is important. --lambert]

What lambert said [in comments] --

I know that times aren't so good, and many of you have already helped send me to the Teach-In (for which I am very grateful).

That said, the legacy parties and tout de Versailles are hell bent on cutting Medicare and Social Security ("entitlement reform") -- whether the deficit hawks, who are in favor a "slitting the throat" approach, or the deficit doves, who are in favor of the "slow bleed" approach.

Read below the fold...

Yes, those are boxes of those organizing cube thingies that she's sitting on, and yes, it's 2.5 years later and the organizing cube thingies are still in their original boxes.

Read below the fold...