Bosco Rants

Voting Guides - Nov 2008

2008-10-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

Voting guides for 2008/11/04 - progressive leaning:

Calitics - http://www.calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7111
The League of ~~Pissed Off~~ Young Voters PAC - http://theballot.org/2008/sf
San Francisco Bike Coalition - http://www.sfbike.org/?vote08
San Francisco Bay Guardian - http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7257

Staying a Step Ahead of Aging

2008-02-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

Dr. Vonda Wright, a 40-year-old runner, decided to study people who kept training as they got older or began competing in middle age. She wanted to know what happens to them and at what age does performance start to decline.

Their results are surprising, even to many of the researchers themselves. The investigators find that while you will slow down as you age, you may be able to stave off more of the deterioration than you thought. Researchers also report that people can start later in life — one man took up running at 62 and ran his first marathon, a year later, in 3 hours 25 minutes.

It’s a testament to how adaptable the human body is, researchers said, that people can start serious training at an older age and become highly competitive. It also is testament to their findings that some physiological factors needed for a good performance are not much affected by age.

Scientists blame ocean dead zones on climate change

2008-02-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all she saw were signs of death.

Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons, dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At times, the camera's unblinking eye revealed nothing - a barren undersea desert in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.

"We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died."

Poverty Is Poison

2008-02-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

Super Tuesday 2008

2008-02-05T00:52:00.000-08:00

Voting Guides for 2008/02/05:

SF Bicycle Coalition votes YES on Prop A
Speak Out California
San Francisco Bay Guardian
League of Young Voters PAC

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

2008-01-31T18:19:00.000-08:00

Livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation. If Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20% it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to an ultra-efficient Prius.

[...]

A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

Read more...

The Real McDonalds

2007-11-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

Tell it like it is at http://ronaldmchummer.com/

Hair and mushrooms create a recipe for cleaning up oily beaches

2007-11-19T18:13:00.000-08:00

A group of guerrilla volunteers is cleaning oil from San Francisco's beaches using an unorthodox, albeit totally organic, method: human hair and mushrooms.

Using mats made of hair, they are absorbing the droplets of oil that have washed ashore since a cargo ship rammed the base of a Bay Bridge tower last week, spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel.

Hair, which naturally absorbs oil from air and water, acts as a perfect sponge, said Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who provided 1,000 hair mats. They are about the size of a doormat, tightly woven with dark hair, and feel somewhat like an S.O.S pad.

While the mats may not be the obvious choice among hazardous waste experts, they hit San Francisco's green chord: More than 700 volunteers have tried them in recent days. Organizers hope their success will inspire more ecological responses to toxic waste removal.
Read more ...

US Emits 8.2 Tons of CO2 per person

2007-11-19T17:54:00.000-08:00

A study of the world's power stations has shown the extent to which developed countries produce more carbon dioxide per head than emerging economies.

Australians were found to be the world's worst polluters per capita, producing five times as much CO2 from generating power as China.

The US came second with eight tonnes of the greenhouse gas per head - 16 times more than that produced by India.

The US also produced the most CO2 in total, followed by China.

The Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) website is the first global inventory of emissions and looks at 50,000 power stations.

Its data was compiled by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank.

Read more...

Voting 2006

2006-11-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

For once, I'm not going to rant about Fanatican malfeasanse. :-) Several friends have asked me about the voting guides I used for tomorrow's vote, so here they are:

Speak Out California - http://speakoutca.org/now/2006general.php - Jenny sent me this one and it's a quick overview of all the major issues. However, it's lacking details at the city and county level.
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition - http://www.sfbike.org/?vote - there are three recommendations that affected me as a daily bicycle commuter. So I went with them there.
San Francisco Bay Guardian - http://tinyurl.com/steoh - very comprehensive endorsement pages. They include a non-legalese explanation of each candidate and proposition. The downside is that you have to read through a lot of things. We voted via Absentee ballots so we took our time wading through all of it.

This is the first time we voted absentee (though we didn't leave town) and I'm now a big fan. I have the ballots in front of me and can take my time reading through all the cruft. It's leisurely and I feel that I'm voting responsibly and in a well-informed manner. Moreover, I don't have to change my schedule on voting day to go to a polling place. Just note two things:

Your absentee ballot has to arrive by 8:00 PM on voting day. If you haven't mailed it ahead of time, you can hand deliver it to your polling place.
If you're hand delivering for someone else (e.g., spouse, parents, children), they have to sign an extra spot in the back of the envelope that authorizes someone else to deliver for them.

Lastly, PLEASE VOTE. Not only is it your civic responsibility - e.g., driving sober, paying taxes, etc - it's your personal responsibility to yours, your children's, and your community's future.

Caesar and Bush

2006-11-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

A blog commenter compares Julius Caesar and George W. Bush in a comment to this main blog entry: Blame for Iraq Extends Far Beyond the GOP (good read, by the way). In short, the commenter writes:

Julius Caesar was an ambitious, vainglorious, would-be tyrant. George W Bush is a modest and self-deprecating one.

Hee hee.

Gonorrhea Lectim

2006-08-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

This came through the mail recently...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a single bush found in Texas.

Republicans Steal Another $22 Billion

2006-01-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

According to this International Herald Tribune article, the Fanaticans have stolen another $22 Billion from the U.S. public.

To be fair, $22 Billion divided over 220 million taxpayers* comes to only $100 a person - which is chump change when compared to the $2 Trillion [!!!] that the Iraq Debacle (or is that Bush Quagmire) will end up costing the U.S. public.

I know what you're gonna say: the $2 Trillion is worth it. The reasons are summarized in this video from the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC.

[*] The U.S. probably does not have 220 million taxpayers, but this over-estimate makes it easy to do the math in your head.

An Equation for Our Times

2006-01-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

Being passed around via email...

Another Republican Culture of Corruption Episode

2005-11-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

ABC News reports on yet another corrupt Republican:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, pleaded guilty on Monday to felony conspiracy and tax evasion for taking money from a defense contractor in exchange for help in securing Defense Department contracts.

What a surprise! Not. (Related stories from Google)

Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die

2005-11-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

Hey, life now is no different than the early 1850's - ya eat, sleep, work, consume, and die.

Civilization took a definite nose dive when the merchant princes grew ascendant at the expense of the artists and thinkers; when the notion of liberté, égalité, fraternité gave way to "I've got mine; screw you" (an attitude that existed in Voltaire's day, too, you might recall, with unfortunate results for the blue bloods). In the Big Picture, the dead white guys -- Rousseau, Thoreau, Mill -- cared a lot more about your well-being than the live ones like Gates or Jobs or Ellison ever will.

Though for what it's worth, at least Gates Sr has spoken out for the Estate Tax: Dozens of the Wealthy Join to Fight Estate Tax Repeal (more search results).

Out of a Bad Spy Novel

2005-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

From an Op-Ed column in the Washington Post about the secret American jail in other countries:

Our ideals are the heart and soul of this nation. We are not an ancient nation united by language or blood. Our ideals, rather than ethnicity or even territory, hold us together and make us a nation. When we betray those ideals, we weaken America.

In other words, giving up our ideals to fight the terrorists just hands the victory to them.

Here's a cached copy if the original article expires.

Our Brilliant Prezidunt

2005-10-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

I'm astounded how out of touch our brilliant prezidunt is:

I had an interesting opportunity to go see some research and development being done on solar energy. I'm convinced, someday in the relative near future we'll be able to have units on our houses that will be able to power electronics within our houses, and hopefully, with excess energy, be able to feed them back in the system. That's possible. We're not there yet, but it's coming.

This is just embarrassing. Reminds me of his dad being amazed at a supermarket price scanner. A gadfly on the AEZ mailing list comments:

He's just misunderestimating the advancementization of solarifying that stuff to make that other stuff.

The full text of his speech is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051004-1.html (I'm not going to dignify it by a live link).

Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to hit the U.S.

2005-10-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, the reality is not as funny as the photo.

Fanaticans

2005-08-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

Shorthand for:

Fanatic Right Wing Republicans

Advantages of another Bush presidency

2005-07-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Guerrilla Girls Broad Band lists some of the advantages of another Bush presidency:

Trading the tedium of college for the adventure of the battlefield.
Enjoying global warming through the sunroof of your SUV.
Being assured adoption will be easier with contraception unavailable and abortion illegal.
Having more public housing options - behind bars.
Learning to "do-it-yourself" as our alien workforce is deported.
Being titillated by government agents penetrating your intimate data.
Basking in the glow of US world dominance in WMDs.
Not being confused by opposing views in the media.
Leaving something of significance to your children - the deficit.
Knowing your passionate gay sex life will not be dulled by the sanctity of marriage.
Getting a rush as yet another developing country is selected for liberation.
Not having to suffer through Evolutionary Biology - now we know God the Father created the Universe.

Replace "terrorists" with "my moronic and callous foreign policies"

2005-06-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

Dumb Life of Roots quotes Cindy Sheehan's appearance on Larry King:

The thing that struck me when I was watching that vacuous man giving his hollow speech was the fact that he could have always replaced the word "terrorists" with the phrase: "my moronic and callous foreign policies."

For example, when he said that terrorists spread death and destruction on the streets of Baghdad and kill innocent people, he could have just as easily said: "My moronic and callous foreign policies spread death and destruction on the streets of Baghdad and kill innocent people."

When he said that we need to stop terrorists from toppling governments in the region, he could have just as easily said: "We need to stop my moronic and callous foreign policies from toppling governments in the region."

People have characterized the speech-lite in many ways, but if I had to pick a few words to describe it, I would say: "Hypocritical, manipulative, condescending, meaningless drivel."

There ain't no fucking WMD

2005-01-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

US Ends Fruitless Iraq Weapons Hunt
White House Says Iraq Weapons Search Over; Evidence That Bush Used in Argument for War Not Found

The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday.

Read more of this ABC News article, or other related articles.

This reminds me of a joke I heard in grammar school. A woman is looking for broccoli in a supermarket. Not finding any, she approaches a stockboy and asks him whether he has any broccoli. "Sorry ma'am, we won't have broccoli until next week." Unconvinced, she goes looking for broccoli again, and not find any (no surprise), she approaches the stockboy again. "Like I said last time ma'am, we don't have any broccoli right now and won't have any until next week." Undeterred by what she didn't want to hear, she goes looking for broccoli, and not finding any, approaches the same stockboy a third time to inquire. The stockboy says: "Look ma'am, can you spell 'cat' as in catfish"?

Woman: Sure, C-A-T.
Stockboy: And can you spell 'dog', as in dogwood?
Woman: Of course, D-O-G.
Stockboy: So, can you spell 'fuck', as in broccoli?
Woman (perplexed): But there isn't any 'fuck' in broccoli!
Stockboy: That's what I've been trying to tell you. There ain't no fucking broccoli.

PS: In case anyone has forgotten what the Bushies said about WMD, this Seattle Post Intelligencer article will jostle our memory.

Leave No Trees Behind

2004-12-23T12:34:00.000-08:00

"Managers of the nation's 155 national forests will have more discretion to approve logging and other commercial projects without lengthy environmental reviews under a new Bush administration initiative."

Read more about it in

Or use this Google search phrase:

national forest lengthy environmental reviews

U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-Sufficiency

2004-12-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

Another Screw-the-Poor move by the right wing extremists

An email alert from TrueMajority:

It turns out that while the number of the world's people who go hungry is rising for the first time in years, the Bush administration can find no better way to reduce spending than to cut $600 million from global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

That belt-tightening of $600 million doesn't make much of a dent in a federal discretionary budget of $965 BILLION (it's 0.0001 percent), but in the developing world it's emergency food to prevent the starvation of millions, and long-term agricultural development to help people feed even more people themselves.

Read more about it in the New York Times. If that article has expired, use this archive.

Bush won't "negotiate with himself"

2004-12-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

Now I understand why Dubya won't negotiate with anyone, he can't even negotiate with himself.

This UK Reuters story explains it all: Bush won't "negotiate with himself".

Pictures we have aren't the ones we want

2004-12-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

"I wish every newspaper in America could have run the New England Journal of Medicine photos next to Rumsfeld's mug shot on the day he shot off his mouth. It would have ruined some breakfasts, yes. But when our soldiers are dying horrible deaths and surviving unspeakable wounds, the least we can do is bear witness." -- Joan Ryan, San Francisco Chronicle

New England Journal of Medicine's photo essay: Caring for the Wounded in Iraq (not for the squeamish)
Related article in NEJM: Casualties of War — Military Care for the Wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan
Rest of Joan Ryan's SF Chronicle article

Economy not the only Challange [sic] for Dubya

2004-12-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

While he's gutting Social Security, Dubya does it again:

A comment on the second link: "It fits right in with Bush’s faith based budgeting process. He can’t add, he can’t spell, but it don’t matter because the Rapture is just around the corner anyway…"

We got the Wine & Cheese!!!

2004-12-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

Passed on from my friend Shea regarding Nov 2nd:

Not to worry. With the Blue States in hand, the Democrats have firm control of 80% of the world's fresh water, over 90% of our pineapples and lettuce, 93% of the artichoke production, 95% of America's export-quality wines, 90% of all cheese production, most of the US' low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy League and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, CalTech and MIT. We can live simply but well.

The Red States, on the other hand, now have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care cost spike), 92% of all US mosquitoes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. A high price to pay for controlling the presidency.

Sorry Everybody

2004-11-11T16:35:00.000-08:00

Some of us — hopefully most of us — are trying to understand and appreciate the effect our recent election will have on you, the citizens of the rest of the world. As our so-called leaders redouble their efforts to screw you over, please remember that some of us — hopefully most of us — are truly, truly sorry. And we'll say we're sorry, even on the behalf of the ones who aren't.

(More on http://www.sorryeverybody.com/)

People can always be Sheep

2004-11-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Nazi leader Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert's book 'Nuremberg Diary.'

Read more about it on Snopes.

And yet it melts

2004-11-02T18:08:00.000-08:00

Some people still think the world is flat. Others firmly believe that the sun rotates around the earth. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, they cling to their opinions based on the naive realism... (remainder of the Guardian article)

Bush Receives Endorsement From Iran

2004-10-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests... (rest of this news article or other similar ones)

True conservatives would back Kerry

2004-09-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

True conservatives would back Kerry

The right should recoil from Bush's war without end

September 21, 2004 – If they were true to their principles, moderate Republicans and consistent conservatives would be supporting John Kerry. Instead, their acquiescence to the reckless whims of George W. Bush marks a descent into that political abyss of opportunism where partisanship is everything and principle nothing.

How else to explain their cynical support for this shallow adventurer, a phony lightweight who has bled the Treasury dry while incompetently squandering the lives of young Americans in a needless imperial campaign? If Al Gore had been knighted president by the Supreme Court and overseen this mess instead of Dubya, the rational remnant of the Republican Party would be rightly calling for his head.

Instead, a century's worth of conservative ideals are tossed out the window for political expediency. Soaring budget deficits suddenly don't matter, and not a tear is shed for the wasted surplus accumulated during Bill Clinton's tenure. Despite two huge tax cuts for the super-rich, Bush turns out to be a big believer in that old GOP boogeyman, Big Government. An equal-opportunity spendthrift, he throws billions into the sinkhole of Iraq as easily as he doles out corporate handouts.

(Read the rest of this article in Common Dreams. The original LA Times article requires registration.)

Bush's Accurate Case for War

2004-06-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

Let's alter history just a little bit, and imagine that President Bush had given us an accurate case for war in Iraq...

``We must remove Saddam Hussein from power, although his only known threat to the United States is that he hates us. While we know that Hussein possessed and used weapons of mass destruction in the past, we have no evidence that he has them today or that he's making more. But he hasn't proved that he doesn't have them, and this constitutes an urgent threat to America.

``So we must act now, because Hussein, who had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, might choose to give the WMDs that he doesn't have to Osama bin Laden, with whom he has never collaborated.

``That's why I've decided to shift the bulk of our military resources away from catching bin Laden, who has already attacked us and vows to do so again, so that we can pursue a man who hasn't attacked us and almost certainly can't, based on the remote possibility that he'll give aid to bin Laden, who no longer is my top priority...

(read the rest of this Miami Herald article in Common Dreams)

Changing All the Rules

2004-04-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

The Bush administration, the big power companies and the undoing of 30 years of clean-air policy...

Read the archived version of Bruce Barcott's April 4, 2004 New York Times Magazine article.

I'm glad I live within a mile of the Pacific Ocean (which cleanses the air), and I don't have kids (their asthma bills will blow away any tax cuts from Dubya). My condolences to those of you who live east of me and/or are breeding.