The last bastion of desperate statists.

Awesome!

On that show and others like it, *everything* on this planet is a result of meddling by visitors from outer space. Every ridiculous claim proffered, like George Washington cross the Delaware on the advice of some little green man, or that Bigfoot is an on-going genetic experiment by aliens, is preceded by the phrase "Ancient Astronaut theorists believe that...".

Big stink on that one.

" Because fuck banks, we can get more votes from people who don't like paying bills and want free cars."

Well, this is Slashdot, so this is about right for lots of people here.

They will be pilloried for not helping the poor, at best, or be brought up on charges of racism (equal opportunity lending) at worst (no matter how unfounded or what race the borrowers might actually be).

In the John Waters-esque sector of northwest Baltimore — equal parts kitschy, sketchy, artsy and weird — Gerry Mak and Sarah Magida sauntered through a small ethnic market stocked with Japanese eggplant, mint chutney and fresh turmeric. After gathering ingredients for that evening’s dinner, they walked to the cash register and awaited their moments of truth.

“I have $80 bucks left!” Magida said. “I’m so happy!”

“I have $12,” Mak said with a frown.

The two friends weren’t tabulating the cash in their wallets but what remained of the monthly allotment on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program debit cards, the official new term for what are still known colloquially as food stamps.

Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding — and her usual gigs — to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she’s used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.

“I’m eating better than I ever have before,” she told me. “Even with food stamps, it’s not like I’m living large, but it helps.”

Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.

“I’m sort of a foodie, and I’m not going to do the ‘living off ramen’ thing,” he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he’d prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. “I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it’s great that you can get anything.”

Far too many times this will be the claim. No matter what color the borrower and lender might be.

From Delta.com:

Funding for the FAA expired on July 23. At that time, Delta stopped collecting several taxes imposed on ticket sales, including a 7.5 percent tax on the base ticket price, a $3.70 segment tax and facilities taxes on international travel and travel to and from Alaska and Hawaii.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has advised that travelers who paid for tickets on or before July 22, 2011, for travel beginning on or after July 23 and prior to the reinstatement of FAA funding, may be entitled to a refund of those taxes.

OTOH, Congress *retroactively* reinstated the tax about 2 weeks after it expired (Aug. 5, 2011, with collections resuming Aug 8, 2011), so the airlines probably had a good reason to keep the fare+tax cost the same even when the tax portion temporarily went to $0.

All in all, a poor example of "the market doesn't work to lower prices".

And that situation lasted about 3-5 days before informed customers demanded that they stop jacking fares...consumers knew the tax expired and knew the carriers were screwing them. Since some carriers broke down immediately or quickly, eventually all stopped. Competition did that, and did it in short order, albeit not instantaneously.

*every* *damn* *thing* can be traced back to alien visitors. Because puny humans could never have accomplished anything without them.

They never answer my question of who setup the ancient astronauts? If they could evolve to their functional status as spacefaring beings, couldn't humans (eventually)? Otherwise, is it ancient astronauts all the way down.

My wife cannot seem to walk away from those shows! Even though she doesn't believe them.

The Oconee Nuclear station built a pumped storage facility nearby so that the nuke could be leveled, with excess power generation used to pump and peak load met by the hydro station.

The Bad Creek Hydroelectric Station is a 1,065-megawatt pumped-storage facility located in Oconee County, eight miles north of Salem, S.C. The four-unit station began generating electricity in 1991, and is the largest hydroelectric station on the Duke Energy system. It is named for the two streams, Bad Creek and West Bad Creek, which were dammed to create the Bad Creek reservoir.

The Bad Creek facility utilizes two reservoirs (or lakes) to generate electricity: an upper reservoir and a lower reservoir. Water stored in an upper lake is released into underground power tunnels. The water rushes down the tunnels, driving huge turbines, which are underground at the base of a dam. The spinning turbines are connected to large generators, which produce the electricity. The water then flows through draft tubes into a lower lake.

A pumped-storage hydroelectric station uses the same water over and over again, making more efficient use of water resources. When demand for electricity is low, operators can refill the lake, as if they were “recharging” a battery. Using power from other generating stations, the generators act as electric motors spinning the huge turbines backward. This pumps water back up the power tunnels into the upper lake. Water is generally pumped back to the upper reservoir at night and on weekends.

I press the button at the cross walk and wait for the little man to light up saying it's OK to cross.

And I still--on an almost weekly basis--get run over by people coasting up trying to make a right-on-red without actually a) stopping or b) checking for pedestrians standing right in front of them.

"If it saves the life of an imbecile who can't trouble to buckle up it MAY be worthwhile"

Aren't we just keeping them in the gene pool and overall adding to the eventual enfeeblement of the species re intelligence?

Seems to me that we need to have a lot less of this saving of the lives of imbeciles. E.g. Forest Service is increasingly having to mount rescue operation to save idiots who climb part way up a mountain wearing a t-shirt, jeans and loafers and no equipment except a cell phone.

The CDC says that approximately 90,000 people die each year as a result of acquiring an infection while in a hospital. Almost all of those deaths could be avoided if doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff would simply wash their hands and use hand sanitizers regularly and properly.

That is, regular hand washing in hospitals could save about twice as many people as Obamacare's supposed ubiquity for about $1T less. Recall that during the run-up to Obamacare there was the proclamation that "45 thousand people die every year because they don’t have health insurance".

This number comes from a Harvard study, so it is pronounced with great reverence and seldom questioned or considered. The study is widely available on the internet, and I suggest you read it. While reading it consider the point-of-view of one of the authors: according to the NIH website "Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler helped found Physicians for a National Health Program, a not-for-profit organization for physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals who advocate a national health insurance program." Of course, the number quoted is the highest number in the study, and comes about only when using criteria suggested by the Urban Institute. The lower end of the estimated range is 27424, or a just about 50% less, albeit this covers only ages 25-64. Ignoring the Urban Institutes guidelines, the number provided is 35327 deaths annually for the non-elderly (ages 18-64), compared to the larger number 44789.