What A Piece Of Crap!

Hi!

Go here and write some recipe reviews, it's great! If you're looking for inspiration, here's one I wrote:

what a piece of crap!

This recipe sucks! This criminal load of empty calories will have your kids bloated and dateless in no-time. A sure cure to keep your daughter from getting pregnant.

beers bears and bees

Ok the Kern river rules. We went just outside of Kernville (some say "coincidence?") and it was fantastic. We were invited by another couple we've only hung out with a couple of times, but who are friends of friends, so it was worth the risk of high weirdness. They have a bunch of friends they like to camp (drink) with.

The river was fantastic and on saturday we stole Perry's air mattress after he passed out (at about 2 in the afternoon) and four of us attempted to ride it down the river. We were mildly successful for about 5 minutes, but we didn't realize that shortly downstream from our camp was a particularly ugly stretch of river. When we hit it we all fell off of the mattress and i was with Mike who managed to get to the side of the river and was attempting to get out. He saw me eyeing up a slightly less vicious little water alleyway and said "you don't want to go down there" and advised me to get over to where he was. So I headed over to him. When I got there he had already been swept off by the current. Followed shortly by me. There were several attempts to halt my downstream travel that ended in "fuck it" type moments where you expected imminent head cracks or worse. As of now I can only remember the last two. At one point there was a very large boulder that everything flowed to the left around. the water was slightly less frenetic there and I managed to hug a boulder next to it. The water pulled me off of that one and I grabbed a slightly smaller rock. This was followed by a smaller one and finally i was holding on to a fist sized stone that was wedged between some other larger rocks (I had to hold on to it and push down on it to keep it wedged in there.) Of course that didn't last long and I went through another washing machine and ended up at the top of a particulary nasty drop that i DID NOT want to go down. Unfortunately (as the brits say) there wasn't much for it. I was wedged at the top of it holding the river back. There was a sizeable sheet of water flowing over my head, as if I was just another rock in the river. i sat there for a bit thinking "well, I can probably stay here for a while, but I'm not going anywhere but down there" so i gave in and took the last plunge. I came out of it surprisingly uninjured. The other guys were all more banged up than me. Turns out, Mike got trapped underneath a rock and figured himself for dead. With the force of the river ther's no way you could expect to get yourself from under the rock - he said he was getting banged around under it for a bit - then got pushed through and it opened on the other side! He went through the falls UNDERNEATH the rocks!

Anyway the next day we got tubes and went upstream from our camp and had an excellent time riding down the river.

We didn't see any bears but there was an excessive bee population. They constantly hovered around and you had no choice but to become comfortable with them or, at least, reasonably so.

USA! USA! USA!

Man, I wish we had a decent health care. That is one of the number one issues if not the number one issue to me. I was listening to a radio show recently where a proponent of health care reform was outlining just how difficult it would be to change the situation around. We'd have to do it in little pieces at a time and every single one would be like pulling teeth. It's just totally enraging.


Listen to this Australian:

AND we don't have a bill of rights either...

Funny that most people consider our democracy to be better than America's in terms of representing the people. Our gun crime rates are WAY lower per head, in fact I think all crime is way lower (probably because we have real welfare, health and education accessable to all). In fact, in many ways, before the neo-liberal reforms of the past few decades Australia was probably only suceeded by war-time britain in representing an ideal socialist state married with real democracy.

...

America is a ghetto compared to Australia. I recently had medical problems, and with no insurance I saw a doctor about 10 times, got xrays, blood tests etc. etc. Didn't hand over a dime, no waiting in line, it just all worked... for free. I don't think you americans understand this. Got my university degree via a government loan which I pay back with no interest once I start earning over a certain threshhold. So it was free too until I get a job with it that earns a reasonable amount. If I never get that job, I don't have to pay it back. And if I can't find a job I get a reasonable set of benefits, straight away none of this 6 months before benefits stuff you americans have. And on top of this our economy is arguably stronger than that of America's.

...

This is why you should vote back in the democrats and get a real healthcare system. Your health, edcuation and welfare systems are the laughing stock of the western world. It was once said if you want to know the essence of a country you should look at how it treats it's poor.


I'm speechless.

Except: "No waiting in line..." oh yeah and one of these: (>_<) !!!

Petroeuro Petrodollar

So I guess I had heard of this before and it made sense, but somehow crossing a discussion of it today made me say to myself "Why didn't I pay more attention to this idea before?"

In any case, here's the proposed scenario (somewhat simplified):

1. In the beginning, OPEC mandates that only US Dollars can be used to trade for oil.
2. This has hepled to maintain a superior US economy (among other things).
3. Iraq begins to trade Oil for Euros.
4. We bomb the crap out of them.
5. No one ever trades oil for anything but dollars ever again.

This link has a lot of details, plus some great history, but since it's very long, here's a few excerpts:

World trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy. The world's interlinked economies no longer trade to capture a comparative advantage; they compete in exports to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign debts and to accumulate dollar reserves to sustain the exchange value of their domestic currencies. To prevent speculative and manipulative attacks on their currencies, the world's central banks must acquire and hold dollar reserves in corresponding amounts to their currencies in circulation. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold. This creates a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world's central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves, making it stronger. This phenomenon is known as dollar hegemony, which is created by the geopolitically constructed peculiarity that critical commodities, most notably oil, are denominated in dollars. Everyone accepts dollars because dollars can buy oil. The recycling of petro-dollars is the price the US has extracted from oil-producing countries for US tolerance of the oil-exporting cartel since 1973.

---

In a major challenge to "dollar hegemony," in October 2000 the government of Iraq discontinued using the dollar for its reserves and international transactions, in favor of the euro. The value of the euro relative to the dollar was declining at the time, and commentators predicted that the move would be costly, because of the dollar's use in international oil trade. Between 2001 and February 2003 almost all of Iraq's oil exports were paid for in euros, amounting to approximately $30 billion. Over the same period, the value of the euro relative to the dollar increased by 30%.

Shortly after the Iraqi move, Jordan set in motion a bilateral trade arrangement with Iraq, also transacted in euros. By August 2002 Iran had converted more than half of its foreign exchange reserve fund to euros, and China had begun exchanging some of its reserve fund from dollars to euros. In the same period Russia's Central Bank doubled its euro holdings to 20% of $48 billion. Speaking to a Spanish Finance Ministry conference in 2002, senior Iranian oil official Javad Yarjani remarked that "It is quite possible that as bilateral trade increases between the Middle East and the European Union, it could be feasible to price oil in euros. This would foster further ties between these trading blocs by increasing commercial exchange, and by helping attract much-needed European investment in the Middle East."

It's about time

Seriously,

Stop F'ing around.

Yes this is a short post, but I'm very busy here at work.

This country is insane

Help! Help! The terrorists are everywhere!!!!

Save me Mr. Bush!!! Terror alert red!!!!

Oh my god! Are you a terrorist!?!? Don't come near me! Stay away! What? What's that you're writing? Over there! A terrorist! Get 'em quick! Before he divides in half and takes over the bodies of the other passengers with his body-snatcher terrorist powers!!

Can you beleive the crap the other passengers went through over this shit? If I was on that plane I would follow the reporting passenger out to the parking lot and slap his face. Or at least key his car. Perhaps some harsh words would be more appropriate. Well, I would at least shoot him a dirty look. Man, he'd be sorry then!