Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Weird

Want A Good Laugh?

24 Comments

Al Gore for president.

Please, please, please, please.

[Via Jim Treacher, who tweets an appropriate reaction]

[Update a while later]

Aaaaannnnnddd…let the campaign slogans begin:

He’s Fat, Restive, and Red-Faced

In Your Heart You Know He’s A Rabid Lunatic

Environmentalism In The Pursuit Of Billions In Carbon Offsets Is No Vice

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, this one is good, too: “Release America’s 2nd Chakra”

What America needs — a crazed-sex-poodle-in-Chief.

[Evening update]

My spam filter caught a comment. I have the email address, but I won’t publish it (I don’t know whether it’s valid or not, but it probably is, being a Gmail address). I’m not going to approve it, but I thought it might edify my readers as to what kind of creature supports the former vice president and mindlessly vilifies his critics. I would also note that it is very unusual in both its lack of intelligence and its foul language, compared to the vast majority of comments here. And I will state the name it used — J_star, since it willingly put it in the form, and every commenter’s stated name is published here.

GO suck a f***ing c**k you f***ing useless piece of s**t.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Biofuels

44 Comments

This looks like a pretty big breakthrough:

Just how fast are Rice’s single-celled chemical factories? On a cell-per-cell basis, the bacteria produced the butanol, a biofuel that can be substituted for gasoline in most engines, about 10 times faster than any previously reported organism.

“That’s really not even a fair comparison because the other organisms used an expensive, enriched feedstock, and we used the cheapest thing you can imagine, just glucose and mineral salts,” said Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and lead co-author of the Nature study.

Gonzalez’s laboratory is in a race with hundreds of labs around the world to find green methods for producing chemicals like butanol that have historically come from petroleum.

“We call these ‘drop-in’ fuels and chemicals, because their structure and properties are very similar, sometimes identical, to petroleum-based products,” he said. “That means they can be ‘dropped in,’ or substituted, for products that are produced today by the petrochemical industry.”

I wonder what the catch is, if any?

[Update a while later]

The man-made miracle of oil from sand. And as Glenn Reynolds points out, it’s “ethical oil,” not “conflict oil.” And we’re a lot farther from “peak oil” than many want to think.

Stories like this make baby Algore, their lord and savior, weep bitter tears.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

I Love The Smell Of Fear In The Morning

14 Comments

The Dems are starting to get worried about their presidential prospects next year. They should be. But here’s the myth that will apparently never die:

Some Democrats are even feeling “snookered” that Obama fooled them with his brilliant 2008 campaign…

There was no “brilliant 2008 campaign.” They ran the only campaign they knew how to run, because they had a cipher on which everyone could project their fantasies. Given the level of Bush fatigue, how awful the McCain campaign was, and his response to the midst of the bank meltdown, any Democrat would have likely won. I hope that they continue to nurture this myth, though, because it will result in many mistakes in the campaign next year from hubris (including keeping people like Plouffe and Axelrod, who mistook their own luck for brilliance).

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Music To My Ears

31 Comments

Al Gore is ranting in frustration that no one buys his climate BS any more.

[Mid-morning update]

Climate skepticism isn’t a fringe phenomenon:

CC. To what extent did you feel like you were standing alone in resisting the man-made climate change theory back in the 1990s?

“It was difficult. I knew that many of my colleagues at the Association of State Climatologists agreed with me. But many of them wouldn’t say anything because they were worried about losing their jobs or just plain having their professional lives made difficult. Frankly there’s a lot more money supporting the other side. Things would be easier if you just go along with them.”

CC. “You’d say that now there’s a lot more money supporting the man-made climate change side of the issue than there is on the side of the skeptics?

“Oh yes, it’s been that way for a long time.”

Yes, though you’d never hear it above the din of the screams about oil money.

[Update late morning]

Climate Depot responds to Gore’s rant.

[Bumped]