The Lookout (Yahoo! "News") pleads:
Please send a photograph of yourself in front of your home holding a sign with: how much your home was worth when you bought it its current value. Let us know where you live, when you purchased your home, the number of members in your household and how your mortgage has affected your life. What decisions have you made as a result of your purchasing and paying for your home?
I'll pass, Yahoo, but I doubt it will make a noticeable dent in your response rate. There's no shortage of people who think the whine is an excellent coping mechanism.
Besides, if you want another tear-jerker series, you can come around and take your own gawddam pictures.
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 24, 2012
Living on the south side of a big lake sometimes has charm enough to make up for the tourist hordes. A stiff wind across the bay gives Camp J a current temperature of 76 against the official government reading of 87. May it so blow through the next two days -- a period of duelling weather prophecies.
One official gummint "point" forecast says the heat will subside Thursday. The other one predicts 90-plus until Friday. Gee, it really surprises a guy when his government disagrees with itself.
(I live on the border between two NWS forecast offices, and they're always bickering between themselves about the cusp forecast.)
One official gummint "point" forecast says the heat will subside Thursday. The other one predicts 90-plus until Friday. Gee, it really surprises a guy when his government disagrees with itself.
(I live on the border between two NWS forecast offices, and they're always bickering between themselves about the cusp forecast.)
Jul 23, 2012
Housekeeping
Joel has moved, and I just got around to fixing up the sidebar here to reflect his new blog address. It's still named The Ultimate Answer to Kings.
Why we're broke, except for Utah
If Utaht you saw the national MasterCard go a little more over limit recently, you were right.
It somehow came to the attention of the National Science Foundation that things can get a little dry in Deseret. Nice catch, and a perfectly good reason to shovel an extra $20 million in "research" money to the considerable spawn of Joseph Smith. Utah tax-troughers are giddy with the intellectual challenge. For instance:
"Most of Utah's precipitation falls as snow. As a result, the project will focus on how changing mountain snowpack affects water supplies for the state's growing communities, officials said."
We anxiously await the results of this research, and I submit that we'll all need Valium to cope with the shock of learning that when it snows more in the mountains, Utah gets more water. Another $20 million might extend our knowledge to undertanding that less snow produces less water.
Please notice the words "focus" in the quotation above and "specifically" in this one:
"It will look specifically at watersheds, infrastructure and technology."
if we parse it out we face a single-minded concentration -- which is the meaning of "focus" in this context -- on mountain snow and equally laser-like aiming at "watersheds, infrastructure, and technology."
A definition or three adds clarity:
--Watersheds: Every gawddam valley and divide in the state, from the beautiful Bear River to the tiniest dry wash down south in the multiwife kingdoms.
--Infrastructure: Farms, roads, power plants, bus stations. buildings, airports, ski lifts, temples, brine shrimp warehouses, railroads, visitors centers.
--Technology: Everything with a 110--volt AC connection and/or a battery. Such an an iPod to message Orrin Hatch that $20 million may not be enough to "focus" on and "look specifically" at all that stuff, so send more money and if you do we might vote for you again.
---
it's a jobs program for a few academics, government "public information" specialists, assorted bureaucrats, and journalists who turn a pretty good buck uncritically passing along thin rewrites of federal, state, and local government gobbledygook headed, "For Immediate Release!"
But, on second thought, perhaps I err. After all, we have the governor's explanation that it is, ta-da, a public/private partnership.
Gov. Gary Herbert said. "This public-private collaboration among so many educational, industry and government partners in tackling a key factor in long-term economic growth and quality of life is another example of our state's can-do approach."
If you want to interpret that as a promise the swag will be divvied up among all varieties of looters, why, I guess I sure won't editorialize against you.
It somehow came to the attention of the National Science Foundation that things can get a little dry in Deseret. Nice catch, and a perfectly good reason to shovel an extra $20 million in "research" money to the considerable spawn of Joseph Smith. Utah tax-troughers are giddy with the intellectual challenge. For instance:
"Most of Utah's precipitation falls as snow. As a result, the project will focus on how changing mountain snowpack affects water supplies for the state's growing communities, officials said."
We anxiously await the results of this research, and I submit that we'll all need Valium to cope with the shock of learning that when it snows more in the mountains, Utah gets more water. Another $20 million might extend our knowledge to undertanding that less snow produces less water.
Please notice the words "focus" in the quotation above and "specifically" in this one:
"It will look specifically at watersheds, infrastructure and technology."
if we parse it out we face a single-minded concentration -- which is the meaning of "focus" in this context -- on mountain snow and equally laser-like aiming at "watersheds, infrastructure, and technology."
A definition or three adds clarity:
--Watersheds: Every gawddam valley and divide in the state, from the beautiful Bear River to the tiniest dry wash down south in the multiwife kingdoms.
--Infrastructure: Farms, roads, power plants, bus stations. buildings, airports, ski lifts, temples, brine shrimp warehouses, railroads, visitors centers.
--Technology: Everything with a 110--volt AC connection and/or a battery. Such an an iPod to message Orrin Hatch that $20 million may not be enough to "focus" on and "look specifically" at all that stuff, so send more money and if you do we might vote for you again.
---
it's a jobs program for a few academics, government "public information" specialists, assorted bureaucrats, and journalists who turn a pretty good buck uncritically passing along thin rewrites of federal, state, and local government gobbledygook headed, "For Immediate Release!"
But, on second thought, perhaps I err. After all, we have the governor's explanation that it is, ta-da, a public/private partnership.
Gov. Gary Herbert said. "This public-private collaboration among so many educational, industry and government partners in tackling a key factor in long-term economic growth and quality of life is another example of our state's can-do approach."
If you want to interpret that as a promise the swag will be divvied up among all varieties of looters, why, I guess I sure won't editorialize against you.
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