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Though made by the same fine folks who brought you THE MUMMY (1999) and the hideously bad THE MUMMY RETURNS (2001), THE SCORPION KING lives, not so much as a sequel or prequel, but a spin-off.
Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock (come on, with a name like "Dwayne" wouldn't you change it? With a name like that, wouldn't you work out at the gym to repel all the damn bullies?) brings more meat to a role otherwise wasted in THE MUMMY RETURNS. In that flick, his part was small and so unnecessary that in the last half he was silently played by a piss bad computer generated version of himself! A claymation stop motion model would have looked better. Still, the Universal marketing machine advertised the hell out of THE MUMMY RETURNS with "The Rock as The Scorpion King!"
So pretty much we've got two movies advertised for the price of one. So how does THE SCORPION KING stand up to THE MUMMY RETURNS? Well, it's kind of like Star Wars II. When you ask an SW fan if they liked Star Wars II, they pretty much all give the same answer, "Well...it was better than Star Wars I."
High praise indeed!
Of course, Universal's THE MUMMY series will never spawn the kind of fan dedication that the original Star Wars trilogy did. It probably won't even spawn the kind of dedication that the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD trilogy has inspired.
This is why.
What's dissatisfying about the whole MUMMY series is its utter lack of depth. When you leave the theater, there is nothing really fun to talk about. The characters were all vapid and shallow. The bad guys, under the pen of Writer/Director Stephen Sommers (directed the two Mummy movies), are the only interesting characters and this is because of two things:
One, Arnold Vosloo (BURIED ALIVE, DARKMAN II, PROGENY, THE MUMMY) and Steven Brand (BEYOND BEDLAM) were both respected actors of some talent before they took these roles (though you'd never know it by their résumés).
Two, Sommers doesn't like his bad guys to be funny because humor is endearing. Sommers only uses humor to flesh out his good characters. So the bad guys don't spend all their time spouting semi-witty one liners and actually get to ACT.
Still, Stephen Sommers prefers to sacrifice characterization for the quick one liners and punch lines. To be truthful, these moments are very funny. But when that's all there is, the movie begins to drift. Even standup comics know that there must be moments in their act where they "give a little bit" of themselves so that the audience can relate to them as a real person instead of a cartoon. Stephen is currently in the heady glow of having several hit movies in a row, and I like the guy and his work, to a point. But each movie he writes is becoming, more and more, a parody of itself.
Thankfully, under the direction of Chuck Russell (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3, THE BLOB [1988], THE MASK, ERASER, BLESS THE CHILD), THE SCORPION KING becomes something better than just an endless string of one liners pretending to be a story.
In a nutshell, Mathayus (Dwayne) is a wandering warrior. Possibly a mercenary, but that's never made clear and it's not really necessary to the storyline. Unlike Conan the B., there is no rich history concerning Mathayus: He just lives his life and does his thing.
During his wanderings, Mathayus meets up with a comical sidekick (played by veteran comical sidekick, Grant Heslov: DANTE'S PEAK, ENEMY OF THE STATE) named Arpid (rhymes with "stupid" and about as funny). Then Mathayus gets his nose out of joint during an altercation with some soldiers of the Evil King Memnon (Steven Brand). Memnon wants to unite all the warring kingdoms under him so that the fighting will stop.
I'm not sure why this is an evil plan. Yes Memnon wants to be top dog of the new rule - but hey - since he is the one who is going to all the trouble, why not? Still, he's evil anyway... Because!
You can tell he's evil because he has a British accent. Okay, moving on. He's also in love with a beautiful Asian Sorceress with the ethnic-leaping, no-brainer name of Cassandra (Kelly Hu: X2: X-MEN UNITED). She despises Memnon. He may or may not have killed someone or other and he's old enough to be her Dad or something and like, besides he's just..."Ew! Gross!"
So anyway, The Rock comes along, kicks a black guy's ass, and everyone falls in line. Except Memnon, who has his own agenda.
Memnon also kicked the ass of said black guy, Balthazar (played by veteran, "led around by white people" sidekick Michael Clarke Duncan: THE GREEN MILE, PLANET OF THE APES [2001]), but Mem' didn't win any loyalty for his trouble. So since Mathayus (name sounds ancient enough), with Balthazar (sounds ancient enough) by his side, with the traitorous Cassandra (ancient enough) on the side and working from the inside to overthrow the evil Memnon (enough!), the outcome of the battle is a given.
Still, Merry Mishaps occur anyway just to fill up the rest of the movie.
In RETURN OF THE MUMMY, Malthayus was The Scorpion King and evil to boot. In this flick he's a good guy fighting an evil guy who is far less evil than The Scorpion King who was a... ah... aw forget it! It was brief fun, good for a rent, I paid too much for the theater version, I'd never buy it, you can be my guest. Am I done with this review yet? I think so.
Two Shriek Girls.
E.C. McMullen Jr. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
|Feo Amante's Horror Home Page, Feo Amante's Horror Thriller, and feoamante.com are owned and
Copyright 1997 - 2018 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
All images and text belong to E.C.McMullen Jr. unless otherwise noted.
All fiction stories belong to their individual authors.


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I participated in a facebook like you back, blog hop today and now facebook wants me to confirm my identity.
There are only 2 ways
They show you pictures of your friends and you have to name them
I can't do that because I don't know my peeps names on there
You can add your cell phone number, receive a text with a code, enter the code.
I tried to do that but my cell phone number is already affiliated with my personal fb page.
It won't even let me add a different phone number. I was going to put my kids cell phone number.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Facebook Page Verification. Anyone have to do this?
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subset: commoncrawl


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Like us on Facebook!
Production facilities
In manufacturing, it is important not only to air-condition the processes and products, but also to create a good indoor climate for the employees, which is also in line with all regulations. The requirements of such applications are very high and can be very specific. Many production halls are very large and tall, in other production facilities harmful substances must be safely removed, then again high thermal loads need to be led out etc.. Customized air conditioning not only increases employee motivation and performance, but also has a positive impact on the production quality and resilience of the production machines.


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Pedal The Parkway
August 13, 2020 - 08:00 amAugust 13, 2020 - 01:00 pmMay 4, 2019, 8am - 1pm
Colonial Parkway
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Williamsburg, VA 23185United States Colonial Parkway - Jamestown to Williamsburg Williamsburg 23185
- Individual: $FREE
Enjoy a car-free Colonial Parkway! Ride, walk, or run the Colonial Parkway between Williamsburg and Jamestown.
The Colonial National Historical Park closes the eight-mile section of the Colonial Parkway to motor vehicles for cyclists, runners and walkers of all ages to enjoy.
Non-competitive, start at your own time, go at your own pace, and ride as much (or as little) as you like.
Open to all, this event is great for young families, special needs athletes too.
A rest stop is available mid-way at Archers Hope overlooking the James River.
This event is free and open to the public but does have on-sight registration


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Red Rock Escape is nestled in the majestic red rocks of Uptown Sedona within walking distance to shops, restaurants and beautiful hiking trails. This fully furnished private home, owned by Jon and Nancy, is decorated in Southwestern décor and sleeps 6-8. It also features a private entrance guest house perfect for one or two. Red Rock Escape is the ideal accommodation for those seeking a peaceful and quiet stay with easy access to lots of amenities.
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Quantitative Thinking
This type of thinking involves a focus on "Numbers". Quantitative thinking is important because it represents the questions of:
"What is the Action Plan for today?",
"What is going to be the costs for running our business today?".
"What is today's bottom line profit going to be?"
Qualitative Thinking
This way of thinking is all about "Ideas". Qualitative thinking is important because it represents the questions of:
"How are we going to improve tomorrow's business?"
"How can we continue to grow our business in an environment that is constantly evolving?"
The Tug of War


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More and more people tend to be more conscious of their health nowadays. From daily exercise routines, to eating organic foods, such as fruits and vegetables, taking daily supplements and seeing the doctors regularly, people have become more aware of the importance of taking good care of their overall health.
Optimum health must be one of our priorities because when something is wrong with our body, we will not be able to go to work, attend important events, spend quality and fun time with our family and friends and do the things that we love! So having good health means we'll live a comfortable life free of worries and anxieties.
Fun time with the family at Pagudpod, Ilocos Sur
When we talk about overall health, this encompasses having a set of healthy pearly whites, too. If one wants holistic care, healthy gums and teeth must be included in the list. This is the reason why seeing a dentist periodically is recommended. Bear in mind that oral hygiene is vital for every person, especially to those who frequently talk to people face to face, like sales representatives, teachers, bank personnel , and others.
Most of the time, we think that brushing our teeth 3 times a day is all we need to have healthy teeth and gums, but our dentist will advise us to do more than that, such as fluoride treatment and schedule us for teeth cleaning procedure, among others. They will also recommend techniques and practices to achieve good oral hygiene to promote oral health so that our teeth and gums look and feel clean and avoid gingivitis (inflammation of gums that can lead to bleeding, especially during tooth brushing and flossing); instead we will have pinkish gums that don't bleed when brushing and flossing.
My family's overall health is my topmost priority. Hence, I ensure to follow our doctor and dentist's advises when it comes to our well-being.
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Fishy Folks, the time is almost upon us. SCOF will be making its first fly fishing show appearance and in honor of this historic event we have, of course, decided to throw a party. The South Holston Fly Fishing Festival will be held on August 13th from 9-6 at Sugar Hollow Park in, Bristol VA. Steve and I will be there sharing our hopes and dreams for SCOF with the huddled masses, that is between sessions of following Kelly Gallop around in a vein attempt to obtain a lock of his mustache hair for my scrapbook. After the show is when the debauchery will officially begin though. We invite all attendees of the show to join us at Judson's farm (we'll give everybody directions at the show) on the river at 7pm for a post show field party. Kegs are being provided by local micro-breweries, low country boil is being provided by us, and the entertainment will be provided by SCOF videographer, Ryan Dunne in the form of interpretive dance to today's top 40 radio…some really weird stuff as far as interpretive dance goes. We are only charging $20.00 for all you can eat and all you can drink (Ryan will be performing for tips), and all proceeds will be going directly to help River's Way with giving underprivileged and special needs kids an opportunity to learn in the outdoors. Tickets will be available at the SCOF booth at the show as well as at the door of the event (Judson's Driveway). We hope to see everyone out for some good food and beer after the show but until then just remember, ain't no South Holston Fly Fishing Festival post party like a SCOF South Holston Fly Fishing Festival Post Party…word.
– Dave


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XEON with 2.4GHz clock speed, 512KB L2cache, 533 MHz FSB
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National Recovery Month 2018 Kick-Off Event
September 6, 2018
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Hubert H. Humphrey Building (Webcast)
On September 6, 2018, SAMHSA's Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use, Elinore F. McCance-Katz, M.D., Ph.D., kicked off Recovery Month 2018 with a panel discussion on the importance of treatment and recovery. Recovery Month seeks to increase awareness and understanding of mental and substance use disorders, and celebrate the individuals living in recovery. Now in its 29th year, the 2018 Recovery Month theme, "Join the Voices for Recovery: Invest in Health, Home, Purpose, and Community," explores how integrated care, a strong community, sense of purpose, and leadership contributes to effective treatments that sustain the recovery of persons with mental and substance use disorders.
Watch SAMHSA's National Recovery Month 2018 Kick-Off Event.
- Captain Chideha Ohuoha, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment – Welcome Remarks
- Elinore F. McCance-Katz, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use – Keynote Remarks
- Arthur Kleinschmidt, Ph.D., Senior Advisor – Moderator
Guest Panel:
- Building Communities of Recovery (BCOR) Program
- Abigail Moore, CEO, San Antonio Council Alcohol and Drug Abuse (SACADA), SAMHSA Grantee
- Vicki Thomas, Recovery Coach (SACADA)
- Recovery After Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) Program
- Katy Rinehimer, MS, Therapist, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, First Episode Psychosis Program
- Brody, a young adult with lived experience
- Building Communities of Recovery (BCOR) Program


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WMS Gaming One of the Biggest Slot Game Producers
WMS Gaming is a manufacturer of slot machines, video lottery terminals and software. These machines are for gambling operations in casinos. The company's main office is in Chicago, Illinois, United States. WMS Gaming is a subsidiary of WMS Industries, which was established in 1943 as the Williams Manufacturing Company.
WMS Gaming entered the slots games development market in 1994, and established a subsidiary, Midway Games, to take over the video game creation. WMS has since become one of the biggest developers of these games in the world. The first game created by WMS was the game 'Reel 'em in', which was a multi line multi coin slot game. This was followed by similar games, such as Jackpot Party and Filthy Rich. WMs Gaming continues to market its gaming machines, and also to advertise its immense range of casino slots games.
The company's video gaming production ultimately proved to be its strength, and after the first few slots games were so successful, WMS Gaming followed these with a number of similar successful games. The gaming industry boomed in the 1990s in America, and additional states permitted casino gambling and video lottery games. Since 1999, WMS Gaming has concentrated on the production of, sale, leasing, licensing and management of the slots games.
By 2001 WMS Gaming introduced its series of participation slots, where the Company licenses or leases the games to the casinos, instead of selling them to the casinos. Subsequent games are very popular, and will be recognised by every player. Games such as The Lord of the Rings, Men in Black, the Wizard of Oz and Star Trek, to name but a few, have since become classics in the gaming world. Some of these games are networked within the casinos, and the player then has a chance to win larger jackpots, depending on the number of machines in the network. This has proved immensely profitable for the Company.
Latest Technology Used In the New Games
Some of WMS Gaming's product designs reflect the changing ideas of the industry. Young players often want new more challenging games, and that is when the Company's machines incorporate surround sound, flat panel display screens and animated full colour 3D images.
In 2010 WMS Gaming began to offer online gambling in the UK, and in 2011 in the United States. In 2012 the Company introduced gaming on mobile devices, and began to expand its online slots offerings. Recently WMS Gaming has acquired the licence from IGT for the Monopoly games, and two exciting new games are being released soon. The WMS platforms are the foundations upon which many of the great new games are built. The technology used in the latest games is always ultra modern, offering many exciting new bonus structures and many new features.
Slots Offer Big Winnings for a Small Investment
Slots games are really the mainstay of any casino, online or live. They are always extremely popular, their very simplicity being a tremendous draw card. Slots are so easy for any gambler to play as they depend more on luck than most of the other casino games, and therefore there are no rules and strategies to master. Despite the variety of exciting games offered by the live casino and the online equivalent, slots have always been, throughout the ages, the favourite of all casino visitors. There is also the lure of immense jackpots waiting for to be won, all for a very small investment.


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Who rules the world? Noam Chomsky's answer in his book of the same title is not surprising: America. Still. Even with its relative decline. The key word here is relative. After WWII, the United States had literally half of the world's wealth. Policy leaders at the time, such as George Kennan knew that this position would inspire envy in the have-nots, and policies were designed to maintain this global dominance at any cost. By the 1970s this number had declined to 25% – still hegemonic for a country that represents only 5% of the global population, but accounts for 50% of its military spending.
What is surprising are the details. America's war for control of "its hemisphere," its "backyard" – Latin America – was really a war with the Catholic Church. I had not realized how powerful and active liberation theology was prior to reading this book. This is very likely what we're seeing with the radicalism of Pope Francis today – a carry over from the days when he church practiced what it preached: advocacy for the poor and the disenfranchised, often at the cost of the lives of priests and Bishops.
Another revelation was the army of secret forces controlled by the Obama administration, the size of the Canadian military. Seal Team Six, which killed Osama Bin Laden was part of this private army of the President, which has conducted operations in 145 countries. So while it's conclusions are unsurprising, his mastery of detail continues to amaze. The depths to which he scour military reports and policy statements give him a grasp of world affairs that eludes even the so-called experts.
Chomsky is the founder of modern linguistics. It's Einstein. And the linguist uses his field's most powerful weapon: sarcasm. Politically, Chomsky is an Anarcho-syndicalist, or as he has confusingly put it: a "Libertarian Socialist" (most who know these terms would call that an oxymoron). Over time, I, like many others, have grudgingly come to respect Chomsky as perhaps the legitimate "world's leading intellectual" – certainly he is the last of a great generation. He also may be the worldʻs most important ignored intellectual. While researching a piece I wrote for Summit magazine on Gore Vidal, I found a clip in which Vidal said that he and Chomsky tried to speak in Harvard Yard, put up flyers, and found them all torn down half an hour later – somehow, 3000 people still showed up. And there is the enigma of his celebrity – the love/hate relationship he has with his supporters and detractors may be precisely the sign of his greatness, or perhaps simply his breadth of thought.
Chomsky shows clearly how the United States controls a "grand area" consisting in part of the entire former British Empire. It does so through proxy leaders, mainly dictators. Ferdinand Marcos's residence in Hawaiʻi (on Tantalus no less), after his ouster with his wife and her 2000 shoes, is only the most local example of how the United States supports democracy "when, and only when, it is in their strategic interest."
So with all this erudition, what are Chomsky's weaknesses? Some would say he's not realistic about US hegemony for one thing. It's simply the reality of global affairs. The New York Review of Books' Kenneth Roth was less taken by Chomsky than was this blogger:
Chomsky's book is not an objective account of the past. It is a polemic designed to awaken Americans from complacency. America, in his view, must be reined in, and he makes the case with verve and self-confident assertion, even if factual details are sometimes selective or scarce.
Yet Who Rules the World? is also an infuriating book because it is so partisan that it leaves the reader convinced not of his insights but of the need to hear the other side. It doesn't help that the book is a collection of previously published essays with no effort to trim the repetitive points that pop up in chapter after chapter. Nor was much attempt made to update earlier chapters in light of later events. The Iranian nuclear accord and the Paris climate deal are mentioned only toward the end of the book, even though the issues of Iran's nuclear program and climate change appear in earlier chapters.
It continues:
Chomsky's preoccupation with American power seems out of date because the limits of American power have become so apparent. When we ask "Who rules the world?" and take account of Syrian atrocities, the emergence of the Islamic State, or the mass displacement of refugees, the answer is less likely to be the American superpower than no one.
But in other ways Chomsky is more realistic even than the realists. For example, Chomsky asserts, in contrast to hard power hardliners, that China (and certainly not India) does not pose any threat to US hegemony even in the medium term – they are simply too poor to threaten US dominance.
Roth, in the end, concludes:
Still, it is useful to read Chomsky because he does undermine the facile if comforting myths that are often used to justify US action abroad—the distinction between, as Chomsky puts it, "what we stand for" and "what we do."
What Chomsky ends up showing is not only that there could be a better world, but that what we have is nearly the worst of all possible worlds and that there are literally layers of improvements that could be made often he argues for the bare minimum as a start.


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We won't compromise these American values: Equality, Justice, Empathy and Science.
We've turned the design for this bestselling tote bag into a magnet.
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WILMINGTON,NC (WWAY) — UNC Wilmington put in a bid to host a first round game of the WNIT. The tournament apparently didn't listen. The Seahawks will begin the WNIT on the road on Thursday, March 17th against the Richmond Spiders in Richmond, Virginia. UNCW head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke said, "It would have been nice to play here in Wilmington, but we have to pay our dues. This is our first time in the WNIT and the first time in post-season. Although we would have loved to have hosted the first round we have to pay our dues and go out on the road the first year."
UNCW enters postseason play with a 23-8 overall mark after its loss to Delaware in the semifinals of the 2011 Virginia 529 College Savings Plan Colonial Athletic Association Women's Basketball Championship on Saturday. The Seahawks established a school record for wins in a season and posted their best finish in the Colonial Athletic Association since joining the league in 1984-85 with a tie for second place. In her first season with the program, Cooper-Dyke was named CAA Coach-of-the-Year while freshman point guard Alisha Andrews was tabbed the circuit's Rookie-of-the-Year.
Richmond begins the WNIT with an 18-11 mark after falling to Charlotte in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 championship.
In its 14th season, the Postseason Women's National Invitation Tournament began as a 16-team event in 1998 and has expanded to its current 64-team format in 2010. The tournament is a single-elimination event with all games played at sites of host schools. Past winners of the event include California, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin.


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The Short Form
"North Country"
Roxane Gay
I rented my new home—a former dry-cleaning business converted into an apartment—over the phone. There are no windows, save for the one in the front door. The apartment, I thought, as I walked from room to room when I moved in, was like a jail cell. I had been sentenced. My new landlady, an octogenarian Italian who ran the dry cleaner's for more than thirty years, gasped when she met me. "You didn't sound like a colored girl on the phone," she said. I said, "I get that a lot."
We read it in Best American Short Stories 2012.
Originally published in Hobart, Issue 12.
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text:
Written off as a dead duck a month ago by sneering Democrats, George W. Bush is back to being his old cocky self, signs of victory all about. As an indication of confidence, the president spoke enthusiastically last week of endorsing "intelligent design," the new code phrase for creationism, as an idea that ought to get a fair hearing in American schools. Once regarded as beyond-the-pale kookery, creationism is now just smart politics. It makes the liberals mad, enthuses the Christian-right base, and radically alters public education by furthering the entrance of religious mysticism into education at the expense of rational thought. A CNN poll claims that three-quarters of the American people think we came from God, not monkeys.
Bush successfully passed an energy bill, which doesn't do much in providing more energy at cheaper costs, but provides a jump start for the nuclear industry and boosts the business of importing liquefied natural gas.
Karl Rove's name has disappeared—at least temporarily—swept away by news of John Roberts's appointment, the London subway attacks, and the Discovery shuttle.
The Roberts appointment to the Supreme Court seems assured. Finding out he helped gays win a lawsuit rattled conservatives while showing the Democratic opposition that he could give the right's most popular enemy a fair shake.
Bush has seemingly converted Capitol Hill's fiscal conservatives into a group of silly teenagers by lavishing them with pork to take home to their constituents, wildly throwing money around with no concern for the deficit. "If you look at fiscal conservatism these days, it's in a sorry state," Arizona Republican congressman Jeff Flake told The Washington Post. "Republicans don't even pretend any more."
Bush is master of the war on terror and the dreamboat of the NRA. We have the London police to thank for the new policy now being introduced that gives cops permission to shoot a suspected terrorist in the head on sight without cause. A suspect could be a person walking slowly down a street like a window shopper but looking at the rooftops instead, or someone wearing a bulky coat in summer, or allowing a cell phone charger to dangle out of her knapsack. Chemical stains on clothes or heavy sweating are other signs of a terrorist. When these signs are observed, and the person fails to heed a cop's warning, she can be shot dead in the head. The Capitol police, who long have had the reputation of being a bunch of armed maniacs, now follow this policy.
Bush's opponents try to edge him toward leaving Iraq with calls for an exit policy. But there are signs that he's already decided to get out. General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters in late July, "I do believe that if the political process continues to go positively, if the developments with the [Iraqi] security forces continue to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to make fairly substantial reductions after these [December] elections, in the spring and summer of next year." In Britain, Tony Blair's government is preparing to withdraw.
There are even signs that Republican dissidents are sheepishly coming home. Ohio GOP senator George Voinovich, who agonized and then opposed John Bolton, and was unhappy when Bush gave him a recess appointment as U.N. ambassador, now seeks to embrace Bolton as a Christian act. The senator is sending Bolton a copy of one of his favorite books, The Heart and Soul of Effective Management, by business consultant James F. Hind. It urges corporate executives to take the Christian way and says things like "The corporate culture of Christ was built around concern and care for others, not himself" and "Power can be good or evil, according to the heart of the person who used it. This is management at its best."
Voinovich was quoted as saying, "I hope that Bolton will read it and put it into practice. I also hope that Bolton will take seriously his role as a public diplomat representing our country."
Bush and 'intelligent design'
Last week, in an interview with Texas reporters, Bush answered a question about "intelligent design" by referring obliquely back to his time as governor, saying, "I felt like both sides ought to be taught." Pressed by a reporter whether both evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Bush indicated yes, adding, "So people can understand what the debate is about." And later, The New York Times reported, he said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
In Dover, Pennsylvania, next month the issue will come to a head in what some are calling "Scopes 2." It's an ACLU court challenge to a school district's decision to require "intelligent design" 's being taught as an alternative to evolution.
As for evolution, Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, argued in an interview last week, "Evolution is extraordinary in that it's the most robust theory in the history of science. It's 150 years old and it extended into a world on a molecular level. Darwin had never heard of DNA, but it is precisely what the theory of evolution would have predicted."
Denied an understanding of evolution, said Henry, "students end up not being able to understand natural phenomena, and if they aren't able to come to conclusions and theories supported by evidence, they're going to be at a fantastic disadvantage in a world where using science is the major basis of competition."
H.L. Mencken referred to William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes monkey trial as a sort of "fundamentalist pope," and that is the way any half-alert school principal will now see Bush. When requesting public funds, the principal should include lessons on "intelligent design" in his curriculum or face political repercussions at the Department of Education and other government agencies.
The Scopes trial was a made-up event to promote the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Townsmen persuaded John Scopes, a high school biology teacher who taught evolution, to stand in a case designed to test the state's law banning the teaching of evolution. At the trial famed lawyer Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and populist, spoke for the state.
As the trial began, the Bible was entered as evidence. Then, in what The New York Times at the time reported as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo Saxon history," Darrow called Bryan, a self-declared student of the Bible, to the stand and proceeded to grill him on the meaning of the scriptures, asking question after question: the size of the fish that swallowed Jonah, the date of the great flood, Joshua making the sun stand still, and the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, among other things. "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" asked Darrow. Which led to this exchange:
Darrow: Have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it had stood still?
Bryan: No.
Q: You have not?
A: No; the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr. Darrow.
Q: I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?
A: No.
Q: Don't you know it would have been converted into a molten mass of matter?
A: You testify to that when you get on the stand, I will give you a chance.
Q: Don't you believe it?
A: I would want to hear expert testimony on that.
Q: You have never investigated that subject?
A: I don't think I have ever had the question asked.
Q: Or ever thought of it?
A: I have been too busy on thinks that I thought were of more importance than that.
"Darrow has lost this case," wrote Mencken at the end of the trial, which gave Bryan a technical victory that was later thrown out. "It was lost long before he came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates."
Additional reporting: Halley Bondy and Natalie Wittlin


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A great chilli should be part of everyone's repetoire. It's easy to make in batches and can be adapted to please the tastebuds of your nearest and dearest. This traffic light chilli is as colourful as it is flavourful and, funnily enough, contains ingredients that resemble traffic lights. As ever, I make way too much and then got creative with using the leftovers to make 'burrizas'. What's a 'burrizza' I hear you cry? Well read on…
Ingredients- serves 4
Glug of vegetable oil
1 large onion- chopped
2 garlic cloves- crushed
1 red and 1 orange pepper- sliced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
3-4 arbol chillies
1 fresh jalapeno- finely chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tins of mixed beans- drained and rinsed
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
400ml vegetable stock
1. Take a large pan and heat a glug of oil over a medium heat. Cook the onion, garlic and peppers until they all begin to soften before adding the herbs, spices and chillies. Cook for a further minute and then add in the tomato puree and cook for an additional minute. I used Mexican arbol chillies which have a real kick and are well worth a try if you haven't before. I pricked the chilli a couple of times to help the flavour infuse.
2. Add the drained beans, tomatoes and stock and bring to a gentle boil before reducing to a simmer. You can then cook this on the hob for an hour or two until the sauce is thick and reduced. This chilli also cooks well in the oven on a low heat for a couple of hours if you prefer.
3. Rescue the chillies before serving so none of your guests have a nasty surprise when they bite into one. Serve with rice or homemade tortilla chips and soured cream. To make tortilla chips simply cut a stack of tortilla wraps in wedges and shallow fry in vegetable oil until golden on both sides.
If you have any leftovers then read on for another way to serve the chilli…
All you need to make a 'burrizza' is tortilla wraps (allow one per person as they are filling), a handful of sliced jalapeno rings, grated cheese and tomato salsa. Simply fill a tortilla with some of the chilli and fold. Pop the folded tortillas in an overproof baking dish so they are nice and snug with the folded side placed on the bottom so they hold together. Spoon over the tomato salsa before topping the wraps with the chilli and cheese. Bake in an oven which is heated to 180c/ 160 fan for around 20 minutes until the chilli is warmed through and the cheese melts.
Why choose between a burrito and pizza when you can have a twist on both?!


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David Foster Wallace News and Resources Since March 97
LARB - David Foster Wallace in the #MeToo Era
Steve Paulson's piece for the LARB is fantastic, David Foster Wallace in the #MeToo Era: A Conversation with Clare Hayes-Brady.
Clare's contributions to the world of Wallace scholarship shine through in this thoughtful interview.
Thank you, Clare
TTBOOK - Rethinking David Foster Wallace
To The Best Of Our Knowledge - Sep 2018 - Rethinking David Foster Wallace, Audio and articles about Wallace. It's the 10th anniversary of his passing. I expect there'll be quite a few things over the next few days.
The Great Concavity - Eps 38 & 39
This podcast continues to impress me in the way it brings so many members of the Wallace community together. Two good eps here:
Ep 38 with Mike Miley, Vice President of the International David Foster Wallace Society
Ep 39 2018 Conference overview with Matt Luter
Episode 38 - Discussing David Foster Wallace with Mike Miley
Episode 39 - 2018 ISU David Foster Wallace Conference Review (feat. Matt Luter)
(Follow the show on twitter @ConcavityShow and subscribe to the podcast here)
DFW 2018 Conference This Week
DFW19, the annual David Foster Wallace Conference at Illinois State University is this week!
Check out the schedule here.
The most exciting part is that anything scheduled in Room A is likely to be live streamed via Facebook. From the schedule:
Room A is our Livestream Room. If you're assigned to this room, you should have the opportunity to stream your presentation to our Facebook page. We've only assigned presenters here who expressed a positive interest, but you are not required to have your presentation recorded.
I'll be tuning in to a few of these (if I can stay awake / get up early enough).
An Important Concavity Show - Episode 37
Episode 37 - Discussing David Foster Wallace with Andrea Laurencell Sheridan & Diego Báez
I got to this episode from back in April way too late. Finally listened to it week ago.
You should too.
This episode's guests from the International David Foster Wallace Society's diversity team, Andrea Laurencell Sheridan and Diego Báez (Some of the team's work here), reveal how deeply and seriously Wallace scholars and readers address problematic aspects of his writing (and personality) without ignoring or making light of it. A compelling episode.
(This is the same ep. I posted about on twitter last week)
Episode 37 - Discussing David Foster Wallace with Andrea Laurencell Sheridan & Diego Báez
(Follow the show on twitter @ConcavityShow and subscribe to the podcast here)
Mary Karr tweets about David Foster Wallace
The topic of much conversation over the weekend has concerned Mary Karr's tweet re: David Foster Wallace. Karr's responses and follow-ups in the twitter thread give more depth and context. Jezebel also ran an article with an overview.
More Articles...
|The Broom of the System
|Girl with Curious Hair
|Signifying Rappers
|Infinite Jest
|Supposedly Fun Thing
|Brief Interviews
|Everything and More
|Oblivion: Stories
|Consider the Lobster
|McCain's Promise
|This is Water
|The Pale King
|Both Flesh and Not
|New to DFW?
|Uncollected DFW
|DFW Bibliography
|Interviews and Audio
|Critical Analysis
|Web Publications
|DFW Archive
|IJ Notes
|Other Pages
|The B.I. Project


text:
What is Probate?
Probate is the process where the court supervises a transfer of a deceased person's assets to the beneficiaries listed in his or her will, if a will was prepared. Before property can be distributed to the heirs of the deceased it must often pass through the Probate Court to make the transfer of these assets legal.
What is Probate?
The Probate Court Process
When a person passes away (the "Decedent") with ownership of valuable assets, the process of transferring those assets can be complicated. The person in charge of the transfer and distribution of assets is called an "executor." The responsibilities of the executor include the following:
- Prove the authenticity of the Will
- Get Approved by the Court to Act on Behalf of the Estate
- Create an inventory of Decedent's Assets
- Determine the Value of Decedent's Assets (Appraisal)
- Pay Decedent's Outstanding Debts/Taxes
- Distribute Assets According to Decedent's Wishes
Probate is a particularly difficult process because of the emotional aspects involved with inventorying, valuing and distributing a loved one's assets. Having an experienced probate attorney to work with can make the process run smoother, and take the uncertainty away.
How Long Does Probate Take?
Probate typically can not be completed in less than six months, and generally should not take more than one year. If the Probate process is to take more than one year, the executor or personal representative must file an estate tax return and provide a status report to the Court. Circumstances that lead to a longer probate process include:
- A Will Contest
- Changing of Executors
- Highly Complex Estate
- Large Number or Value of Estate Assets
- Hard to Find Beneficiaries
In these circumstances, probate can drag on for years, however, the involvement of a qualified probate attorney can often lead to faster solutions.


text: Interesting article about 2 books one by Terry Eagleton and one by Roger Scruton. The article describes how both authors tackle philosophy and religion. Scrotun goes further by discussing music. Actually Scruton's books seems more interesting. Both appear to draw a line between reason and religion. Eagleton argues that secularism put reason to much in the center and pushed religion to the extremes, he seems to take the argument of bring religion from the extremes inwards just to control it. Scruton believes that there is a middle ground. Anyone familiar with these authors? article


text:
- Streetwise
Welcome to the Mind-Numbing Market
- Order Reprints
- Print Article
TO THE LIST OF THINGS THAT INVESTORS WOULD prefer to see less of -- midday press briefings at the Treasury, the nearly redundant reference to "triple-digit" daily Dow moves -- we can add, for lack of a better term, "unprecedentedness."
All the melodramatic talk of the lowest-ever consumer-confidence reading, the greatest increase in the money supply and the highest sustained market-volatility levels in the annals of markets is spreading numbness.
The clustering of so many once-rare "90% days" -- when 90% of stocks and trading volume move in one direction -- has muted the commentary on them. When the Dow industrials jumped 6.7% Thursday after erasing steep losses, it was their largest one-day jump since...Oct. 28. So maybe it's telling that the morning after this huge gain (and 11% intraday reversal), the market story made neither page A1 of The Wall Street Journal nor the front page of the New York Times business section.
Overloading on the extraordinary can make anyone reach for a familiar script, which is what plenty of folks were doing both before and after Thursday to describe what they viewed as a "successful retest" of the Oct. 10 lows. The steep drop slightly below the former midday low and the violent ensuing surge seemed to many quite a textbook addition to the genre. (Don't the test audiences always vote for the happier ending?)
The weight of the evidence suggests that the levels around 840 on the S&P 500 are a plausible, if not yet probable, medium-term trading low. The commonly recited statistics explain why it's plausible. There were many fewer new lows on this visit below 840, and the options market's VIX index made a lower peak, hinting that the selling intensity was weaker.
The calendar helps. Along with the passing of Friday's deadline for banks to ask for government capital, the Nov. 15 cutoff for hedge-fund redemptions and the earnings season, this week's coming options expiration should remove some easy excuses for stocks to keep falling en masse.
One reason it's not clearly probable that this was an ultimate low is, simply, time. No bear market that ever declined this much was finished with its work in 13 months. Do things move faster these days, so that the pain is front-loaded? Maybe. The other problem is the lack of any demonstrated, sustained investment demand for stocks, even at these levels.
Focusing on "key levels" and short-term cues to pluck a bottom is like watching one wave wash up just as far as the prior one as low tide approaches and declaring that this is the lowest ebb -- hardly a reliable method. Yet can it at least be suggested that the larger tidal move to come, from whatever exact low point, is a rise?
Some of the slowest-moving indicators, like money-fund assets as a portion of equity market value, say maybe so. Stocks aren't expensive any more on the bears' favored earnings measure, the past 10 years' average earnings. At the recent lows, fully half of the entire super bull market's gains from the 1982 bottom had been undone. In fact, we've finished one of the worst 10-year periods ever for stocks. The mockery of "buy-and-hold" is starting to rival the "stocks-for-the-long-term" mantra.
And some distinguished investors with at least some gray hair and a right to claim that they got the market pretty right on the way down have been at least warming -- or becoming less cool -- to equities, based on public comments. Aside from Warren Buffett, they include Jeremy Grantham, Jim Grant, Robert Rodriguez and Julian Robertson. They're not calling a bottom, or heralding the end of economic pain, just preparing for an incoming tide.
LAST YEAR, WITH THE MARKET near what would prove its ultimate high, I noted a perverse pattern in which triple-digit- priced stocks were consistently outperforming other issues, a sign of momentum-chasing speculation (Streetwise, May 14, 2007).
We've come nearly full circle, as single-digit midgets abound and stocks are pounded harder once they lose a digit before the decimal place. Ned Davis Research tracks the price of the 25th-lowest-priced stock in the S&P, which tends to mark a low as bear markets culminate, as a marker of speculative juices having been wrung out of investors. It's now around $6, near levels of the 2002 bottom, though not yet the 1974 low -- near when Barron's ran a story pointing to the abundance of sub-$2 stocks that were effectively warrants on the survival of American capitalism.
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


text: The usual suspects: Olmert, Ramon, Barak, Lieberman – top the newly released Israeli corruption index which measures public perception of the government corruption. Livni, the model of honesty, comes out poorly: only 46% of Israelis believe she is honest. The real corruptioners, Peres and Beilin, evaded the top ranks of the corruption index even though they appropriate hundreds of times more money than Olmert. Peres and Beilin, moreover, receive money from the EU, which amounts to high treason, while Olmert is merely involved in shady apartment sales.


text:
You Don't Always Need Wheels
This article presents different approaches to transporting your kayak on land. In many cases, you won't need wheels for your Wavewalk™ kayak, as you'll just drag it from your vehicle to your launching spot, and back. It's not that hard, and it doesn't necessarily damage the kayak, as you can see in this article and video »
But if you must carry your kayak over long stretches of asphalt or concrete pavement, you may want to consider shielding its hulls from excessive abrasion by attaching the lid of a plastic bin to the part of its hulls that come in contact with the pavement. It's an inexpensive, easy, and lightweight solution, and the lid can fold easily, so you can store it in one of the hull tips when you're fishing and paddling.
The drawback of dragging a kayak over long distances is that it's not always as easy as transporting it on wheels.
Kayak anglers have different fishing styles, and they fish in different environments. This fact, as well as logistic issues, affects the way they rig their fishing kayak with wheels (or a single wheel), a kayak trolley, cart or a simple mat.
These are the things you should require from your fishing kayak wheels –
We put this benefit first, because kayak anglers are often enthusiastic about making a perfect kayak trolley, and they tend to overlook the fact that once they reach the water, they'll have to take it with them on board their kayak. Kayak wheels should be lightweight and preferably small in size, so you could easily tuck them in one of the storage compartments in the hull tips, or on top of them.
Solid Construction
You definitely don't want your wheel cart to fall apart while you're on your way from your car to the water, or back.
All-Terrain Capability
Wheels that are too small or too narrow could sink in sand, or in mud. Large diameter wheels perform better on rugged terrain. Wider wheels perform better on soft terrain, such as sand and mud.
Sometimes you may need to pass with your fishing kayak in tight spaces. For example, in the space between two cars in a parking lot, or between big rocks, tree stumps, etc. In such cases, being able to control your fishing kayak on wheels is important.
Easy and Effective Attachment
Attaching the wheels to your fishing kayak, as well as detaching them should be quick and easy, and the attachment system should hold the kayak in place without letting it slide or twist. You definitely don't want to waste time and energy on complicated systems for attaching your kayak to your wheel cart, and you don't want to have to reattach the kayak on your way to the beach or from it.
Stability and Control
Unlike other kayaks, Wavewalk™ kayaks feature two handles on each end. Each pair of handles allow you to drive the kayak as a wheelbarrow, and benefit from good stability and control over it even if it's outfitted with a single wheels attached between the hulls. having said that, the more fishing and camping gear you carry in your kayak, the more it becomes heavy, and this could make it harder to stabilize and control. This is when a two-wheel solution is better than one wheel.


text:
|How to grow Cucumber
How to grow Cucumber
Method of Plant and Take care
Soil prepare : Plough soil to sun about 7-15 days. Should cover farmyard manure 6-12 ton/Ha and support under grave by fertilizer 15-15-15 ratio 6-12 ton/ha and cover land pot by plastic to control soil humidity and decrease insect.
Planting : Should planting by use trellises and at least plant distance about 50-
Do not plant closed effect to low productive because nutrient not enough.
To Fertilizer
Harvesting : maturity occurs 35 days after sowing but late in rainy and winter.
Disease and insect : Cucumber of Advance brand is tolerance to disease, but find Downy mildew symptom use chemical example Mancozeb, Carbendazim, Curset M-8 or Rhidomil MZ.
Insect : Thrips use Carbosulfan, Pronyl, Dicarzol or Abamactin select one of them. Not use chemical continue over 2 time effect to resist drug action.
Suggestion : Main factor to plant cucumber for achievement are
1. To enough soil fertilizer because soil had loss nutrient when harvesting.
2. To water always because the most content of cucumber plant is water.
3. Leaf fertilizer and micro nutrient. Should use always to support cucumber plant.
4. Protection of disease and insect. Should spray before disease spread out.


text:
This is one of the things I'll be busy with next week: The New Media Literacies Conference at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. It takes place next Friday, April 20th 1:00 pm – 7:30 pm, and there are still tickets left. The conference includes an AMAZing line-up of speakers (that I feel very lucky to be presenting alongside), a bunch of workshops and activities, spaces/installation, and a chance to meet some of the really fascinating people involved in the kids' digital media scene. Here's the conference description, cut-and-paste from the official website:
The children and youth of today – and their families, educators and content creators – exist in a drastically evolved media landscape than those of even 10 years ago. It's clear these emerging technologies have outgrown the critical abilities that a more traditional media literacy education can offer, but exactly what are the additional new skills necessary in order to thrive in this interactive, instant-on, internet-enabled, and mobile media ecosphere? The popular TIFF Nexus series, designed to promote cross-sector connections across film, games and new media, returns to explore and engage in these themes through inspirational presentations, creative collaboration, demonstrations and hands-on learning workshops led by creators and researchers who are committed to enriching the lives of kids, youth and families.A key selling feature of the conference is a keynote by Dr. Nicole Pinkard:
Dr. Pinkard shares insights into the inspirational work she and her collaborators are doing with platforms like the Digital Youth Network and institutions such as the Chicago Public Library (co-founding YOUmedia), to build new media literacy awareness and skills development for children and youth. Following her keynote address, Debbie Gordon, the director of the kidsmediacentre at Centennial College, will engage Dr. Pinkard in conversation.And, in addition to some awesome-sounding sessions and lighting talks by media creators and academics, the conference includes access to various TIFF Kids-associated things, including the digiPlaySpace:
TIFF Nexus ticket-holders can let their imaginations roam free in the TIFF Kids digiPlaySpace by engaging in interactive art installations, learning-centric games, mobile apps, new digital creative tools and hands-on production activities. COME EARLY between 11am and 12:30pm, and be mindful that the doors will be closing at 12:45 to allow time to get to the conference venue.The Industry/Educator rates are $60, Students get in for $30 and full price admission is $99: which gets you into the workshops, the digiPlaySpace, a networking cocktail and a chance to hear wonderful speakers and panelists, such as Jason Krough (zinc Roe), Carly Shuler (Joan Ganz Cooney Centre), Jacob Blackstock (Bitstrips) and Mark Rabo (Gamercamp). Hope to see (some of) you there!


text:
Peak Cheap Oil Update - Part I: The glass is half empty
ASPO-USA Conference Denver 2009 Trip Report and analysis
In October I attended and was a speaker at the annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas in Denver, Colorado. Approximately 500 attendees watched 70 speakers present on the geology, economics, and politics of peak oil. In this two-part report I synthesize what I saw.
For readers who are not familiar with the theory, peak oil refers to the process of total world oil production reaching a peak and then declining on a global scale as occurred in net oil exporting countries, such as the U.S. until the 1970s, the UK until the year 2000, and Norway before 2001.
My own interest in the topic started in the early 1970s when I read the 1972 book on energy and resource limits, Limits to Growth. I majored in Natural Resource Studies at the University of Massachusetts in the early 1980s, and later graduated with a BS in Resource Economics. My first iTulip writing on the topic was Energy and Money in March 2006.
I presented at the ASPO conference on the outcome of inflation versus deflation debate, and participated in a panel on energy and the economy with author Kevin Phillips, Adam Robinson of RBS, and Dave Cohen of ASPO. My presentation is available to ASPO members and to iTulip Select members in Part II.
Before we discuss the controversial issues raised at the conference, we review and update the basics of the peak oil argument.
Peak Oil Primer
Robert Hirsch headed the first presentation I attended. In his "train the trainer" session, the audience got an idea of how ASPO-USA wants its members to represent the organization and its key arguments.
Hirsh is a long time energy industry and government policy heavyweight. His resume include Senior Energy Program Advisor at SAIC on World oil production; Senior Energy Analyst, RAND; Vice President of the Electric Power Research Institute; Vice President and Manager of Research and Technical Services for Atlantic Richfield Co.; Founder and CEO of $50 million/year APTI now owned by BAE Systems; Manager of Exxon's synthetic fuels research laboratory; Manager of Petroleum Exploratory Research at Exxon; Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration; and by Presidential Appointment, Director of fusion research at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and ERDA.
Hirsch wrote a paper in 2008 that quantified how historic declines in world oil supply cause proportionate declines in world GDP. In it he lays out the case for peak oil in a three-scenario framework:"(1) a Best Case where maximum world oil production is followed by a multi-year plateau before the onset of a monatomic decline rate of 2-5% per year; (2) A Middling Case, where world oil production reaches a maximum, after which it drops into a long-term, 2-5% monotonic annual decline; and finally (3) a Worst Case, where the sharp peak of the Middling Case is degraded by oil exporter withholding, leading to world oil shortages growing potentially more rapidly than 2-5% per year, creating the most dire world economic impacts."We selected the following slides from his conference presentation that make the peak oil case.
Hirsch chooses to begin his train the trainer presentation with one of several unintuitive points in the peak oil argument, that oil does not deplete in a linear fashion, like units of inventory picked off a store shelf as consumers buy them. But if the trainer is speaking to a true lay audience, that observation starts us in the middle of the story.
How many readers understand where oil came from or how utterly unique and irreplaceable petroleum liquid fuels are as a transportation energy source? Very few. So we begin the story here.
Gasoline and diesel, distillates of crude oil, are unique as a liquid fuel. The amount of work a gallon of these fuels can do when by volume burned simply defies imagination. Consider the most mundane act of the automobile owner, stopping off at a gasoline station to refuel. A mere ten gallons of gasoline propels a two-ton vehicle hundreds of miles up and down hills at speed in excess of 60 miles per hour. Try pushing your car ten feet on a flat driveway and you will begin to appreciate how much work the gasoline in your tank is doing. The amount of work a liquid fuel can do by volume is referred to as its energy density. Liquid hydrogen, by comparison, has less than one third of the energy density of gasoline. That means that you need three times as much by volume to travel the same distance, assuming both the gasoline and hydrogen powered engines deliver the same number of miles per gallon.
You can pour the gasoline into your tank on a hot summer's day or in winter when the temperature is well below zero. Crude oil can be shipped through pipes over long distances in a wide range of temperatures and climates.
Crude oil, and its distillates, is the one and only substance like this. No other liquid that humans can dig out of the ground, refine, and pour into a tank at any climate on earth even comes close. Every other liquid fuel, such as liquid hydrogen, has to be manufactured out of something else, then compressed, and if stored as a liquid kept at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero. You cannot transport any other fuel through hundreds of miles of pipelines. Crude oil and its distillates can be piped over long distances at a wide range of naturally occurring temperatures, and stored cheaply in unpressurized tanks.
We are using up this unique and irreplaceable liquid fuel source several million times faster than it was created by nature hundreds of millions of years ago. In a little more than two human life spans can we have used up half of all of the oil that took several million human life spans to accumulate.
To compare the ancient rate of oil creation to the modern rate of oil consumption, imagine an abandoned cast iron bathtub resting in a mythical forest. In this forest crude oil drips from the trees. In fact, all of the oil from all of the oil dripping trees hanging over the tub in this magical forest drips into this single iron bathtub.
The oil drips so slowly that it takes 16 years, or five million seconds, to fill the tub.
Each second represents one year of original crude oil creation that happened through biological processes that took place over approximately 500 million years. But rather than trees dripping oil, imagine a flotilla of tiny plants matted the surface of millions of square miles of steamy primordial seas. This floating mass turned a blazing sun, unfiltered by the rich atmosphere we have today, and ocean minerals into trillions of tons of oily plant matter.
As new plants grew on the sunny side of the massive floating mat, old plants died and drifted to the bottom ocean floor. There the oil-soaked material collected and decomposed, forming in pools and crevices as large as lakes. These folded and kneaded as the continents shifted, forming underground caverns filled with oil and gas like so much buried treasure, waiting to be discovered.
The crude oil we burn today is nature's prehistoric bio-fuel.About one hundred years ago, humans figured out a use for the crude oil that seeped to the surface of the ground above oil reservoirs far below. We could use it in internal combustion engines to fuel machines that transport food, goods, and ourselves. But how much oil is there for us to use this way?
Our simple analogy of a rusty iron bathtub full of oil represents the whole of it, all of nature's biofuel collected in one place. In reality crude oil hides all over the planet, like pockets of cheese in gigantic lasagna of rock and salt. But for the convenience of our analogy that displays the difference between the ancient rate of oil accumulation and consumption since the discovery of oil as a fuel for transportation 100 years ago, our mythical oil filled bathtub sits out in the open and above the ground, as easy to drain as water from a tub when you pull the drain plug.
But instead of opening the drain, to model the rate of consumption starting around 1900, drop a cannon ball through the bottom of the tub to make a gaping, gagged hole.
Half the oil that dripped into the tub in five million seconds will be half gone in one second.
If you are 40 years old, that one-second of geologic time is your lifetime so far, plus your parent's lifetime, plus your grandparents' lifetime.
On this point there is absolutely no argument among peak oil believers and skeptics.
No one debates the fact that nature created crude oil and natural gas slowly over millennia.
No one debates the size of the hole in the bottom of the tub. World oil consumption drains the oil out of the earth at the rate of 85 million barrels, or 3,570 million gallons, every day. As more nations demand more oil, the hole in the bottom of the tub keeps getting bigger.
No one seriously argues that humans can replace by manufacture new oil with man made biofuels while also continuing to use it up at a rate that is hundreds of million times faster than it can be created.
One can logically debate whether the world is a fraction of a second before or beyond that half way point, whether the half way point might be extended a half second or so--or what happens when, eventually that half way point is reached, if it has not already.
No more shootin' at the ground and getting bubbling crude.
Today, to get oil you have to go deep. Really, really deep. And there are issues.
Today oil is so hard to find and produce that energy engineers have to invent radical new technologies to find and extract oil from six miles or more below the surface of the earth where pressure heats the oil to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and ordinary pipes melt trying to bring it to the surface. Usually the pressure turns the oil into gas, that is far more expensive to produce, transport, and store.
New technologies also allow engineers to extract petroleum from oil rich rock deposits called shale.
Common sense tells us that oil supplies must be growing dear if engineers can no longer draw oil from giant shallow reservoirs as they could as recently as the 1960s but are now forced to drill miles into the earth's crust to extract oil and squeeze it out of rocks called "shale."
Valid, scientific debate raises the question of whether new exploration and production technologies will extend the production plateau period at the current 85 million barrels per oil consumption rate for a few more years, or even raise production above it.
The peak oil question is, are we 0.95 or 1.1 seconds into draining our tub of oil through the great hole of global oil consumption that took 5 million seconds to fill? Are we two, five, or ten years away from a global oil production decline? What are the implications of decline?
With these basics as background, we move on to the first chart in Robert Hirsh's presentation.
An oil field is not uniform like our mythical tub of oil. It is irregularly shaped.
Think of a milkshake on ice that you drink through a straw. Say there are 20 sips of milkshake in the glass. The first 10 sips are easy. But after the milkshake falls to the level of the top of the ice, the last 10 sips become increasingly difficult with each sip. You are forced to pull the straw up and stick it in again between the ice cubes to get at the remaining milkshake. The rate of milkshake extraction falls. Instead of a steady series of sips each sip takes more time and effort.
When you take the last sips the liquid is next to impossible to get out of the bottom of the glass, but at least you can hold the glass up and see where the remaining milkshake is, and moving the straw around costs you nothing.
When engineers extract the last oil from an oil reservoir, they rely on expensive oil exploration tools, such as satellite imagining and seismic analysis, to "see" the oil. Drilling is highly capital intensive. A single deepwater dry well in Indonesia in 2004 cost $30 million.
The cheap oil is the oil at the top of the reservoir. After that, oil extraction grows more difficult and expensive.
At iTulip we call the phenomenon of the end of cheap oil and its impact on the economy Peak Cheap Oil.
When you hear about oil reserves expressed in big numbers, remember that consumption level—the size of the hole in our tub of oil—determines how long those reserves last. Ten billion barrels sounds infinite, but the world consumes 85 million barrels a day. One 10 billion barrel oil field is only enough oil for 117 days of global consumption at that rate.
The global economy is highly oil supply sensitive. Even small disruptions in supply produce outsized economic consequences.
Just as nations have for decades experienced oil production peaks, plateau, and decline, the world will, inevitably, also experience and oil production peak, plateau, and decline.
Fully 83% of the world's major oil producing countries are past peak production and are in decline. Mexico and Russia are on the watch list.
World oil production appears to have peaked in 2004 and began to plateau in a pattern of peak and plateau that occurred in 54 major oil producing countries so far.
For example, European oil production peaked in 1996 then reached a plateau that continued until 2003. After that production began to decline.
The United Kingdom serves as an example of a more extreme peak oil dynamic on a national basis. North Sea oil production peaked in 2000 and has been in rapid decline ever since. The UK became a net oil importer in 2009.
If world oil production follows the pattern of Europe's oil production peak, the result might look like this.
When, sooner or later, oil production peaks, estimates of the rate of decline of current oil fields globally range from the Cambridge Energy Resource Associates estimate of 4.5% per year to 8% per year by a range of other energy analysts.
To compensate for production declines in existing oil fields, new fields have to be discovered and brought on line. CERA estimates that 3.8 million barrels per day of new oil production must come on line just to maintain the current level of the global oil production plateau.Recall the rule of thumb that ten billion barrels of reserves translates into approximately one million barrels per day of oil production. To produce 3.8 million barrels per day of new oil, as CERA says are needed to maintain the plateau level that began in 2004, the discovery and development of 38 billion barrels of new oil reserves are required. By Hirsh's calculations, that means that over a ten-year period of 5% decline as much oil has to be found and extracted as once existed in all of Saudi Arabia, eight times over. Engineers need to find and mine oil from the earth's crust, and squeeze it out of rocks, at a rate that is equal to the discovery of one Saudi Arabia sized oil deposit every 15 months. Hirsh believes that such an engineering feat is impossible.
Hirsh's assessment is justified by the historical data on oil field discovery. More than 40% of oil production comes from giant oil fields. The rate of discovery of giant fields peaked in the 1960s. While giant fields are still being discovered, the rate of discovery has fallen from over 120 per decade in the 1960s, to 24 per decade of the 1980s, to 9 between 2000 and 2007.
During this fifty year period of declining large oil field discovery, technology for oil exploration vastly improved, with satellite and other tools revealing oil deposits hidden below the land and oceans. As shallow, conventional oil fields deplete at a rate of 5% per year, optimistically, and a new Saudi Arabia sized oil deposit must be discovered and produced every 15 months to compensate for the decline. This new oil must come from a combination of a small number of giant as-yet-undiscovered unconventional oil fields and from a large number of smaller oil deposits.
The question of peak oil production and decline is not an "if" question; it's a "when" question. Has it already begun? If not, when? A minority of oil companies and energy research firms believe that oil production has not or will not soon peak. Most do.
Most oil production studies put the peak of oil production at or around the year 2011.
The evidence is overwhelming that conventional world oil production peaked in 2004 and reached a plateau of 85 million barrels per day. In Part II we analyze presentations given at the conference that make the case for and against the possibility that non-conventional oil—deepwater and shale—can maintain the current production plateau for an extended period. We also look at the distortions in demand and pricing produced by the global recession.
Continuing with Hirsh's presentation, whether the oil plateau ends in a few years or ten, surely the day will come when global oil production declines. What then? Can't we substitute other materials for oil?
Hirsh goes on to explain another fact about hydrocarbons that few of us appreciate, that we rely on them not only for transportation but for many other industrial processes and materials as well.
This chart shows products that we consume and the hydrocarbons that are used to make them. How many of these products can be made with substitutes? At what cost?
If you look around the room you are in, you will be hard pressed to find any that were not either made out of or manufactured using hydrocarbons. The substitutions suggested above do not take higher costs into account.
If hydrocarbons are about to become rare, the most obvious solution to keep them from becoming extinct is to use less for transportation so that we have more left for making products, such as plastics, that can only be manufactured using hydrocarbons.
But how? The current fleet of liquid-fuel-consuming vehicles and generators— hundreds of millions of units—depend on crude oil distillates. If the end of the production plateau is upon us, how can these possibly be converted to run on non-liquid fuels within ten years or less?
Hirsh says that the only practical solutions are: conservation and rationing, wider use of heavy oils, more intensive oil recovery from existing fields, and conversion of natural gas to liquids and coal to liquids.
Yet by Hirsh's calculations, even if all of these methods of oil depletion mitigation are applied, assuming the optimistic 5% median annual global oil production decline rate, the world will still experience an oil shortage of 30% compared to current consumption rates.
Mitigation that reduces demand, the size of the hole in the bottom of the tub of oil, only compensates for a fraction of the decline in production.
By now it should be obvious to readers that oil will not become nearly extinct like the bison on the American plains. The giant hole in the bottom of our bathtub of oil will not remain so large that the second half that collected over 31 million seconds rushes out as quickly as the first half, not in half a second but instead at a slower and slower rate.
Just like the milkshake in the glass of ice, the last five sips will be more and more difficult to find and produce over time. Oil engineers will not be able to locate and extract the oil as fast as before. Yet demand for oil will remain high because our transportation systems depend on oil. The price will rise, and the hole in the bottom of our tub will get smaller.
In economic terms, higher oil prices means that the global economy will shrink.
Hirsh's 2008 analysis of the impact of rising oil prices on economic growth revealed an approximate 1% decline in GDP per 1% decline in the oil supply. The 30% decline in oil supply in ten years following the end of the plateau in oil production at 5% per year, implies a 30% drop in GDP in a decade. During the first three years of The Great Depression, between 1930 and 1934, U.S. GDP declined 24%. Peak Oil implies a per-capita economic decline even more severe than The Great Depression, although the economic decline may be more gradual.
Hirsh states that the trajectory of the economic decline caused by declining oil production is unknowable because of the interaction of the economy and investment in oil exploration and production. Our analysis in early 2009 suggests that the collision of the FIRE Economy and Peak Cheap Oil will produce a series of economic booms and busts. The 30% decline will occur in an oscillation of rising prices, recession, falling demand, rising demand, rising prices, and recession.
Hirsh believes, and the data support his thesis, that global oil production peaked in 2004 and remains on an 85 million barrel per day plateau. The 2008 to 2009 financial and economic crisis curtailed E&P efforts that picked up in 2005, the year after global production peaked. Merrill Lynch recently forecast a production decline of up to 30 million barrels per day by 2015. In Part II we review the detailed forecasts of various presenters. One of those forecasts accounts for the fact of rising oil prices since early 2009 even though enormous inventories of oil and gasoline exist today as a result of the global recession. Peak Cheap Oil will exaggerate the oil boom-bust cycle, and macro-economic cycles as well.
In sum, Hirsh believes that the world is five years into a global oil production plateau and that over the next two- to five-year period oil production will decline. Our view is that as the Peak Cheap Oil process continues, oil prices will rise, but not in a linear fashion. The global economy will experience a series of oil price shock recessions that will cumulatively produce the 30% decline in real GDP that Hirsh expects.
Our Peak Cheap Oil model from early 2009 represents the process in the following stylized chart. It suggests theoretical oil prices for each Peak Cheap Oil boom-bust cycle as well.
To find a critique of Hirsh's work, we looked at several web sites that purport to debunk the peak oil case. We were unable to find any that make a logical, well-documented case.
For example, the third paragraph of the lead article on the blog peakoildebunked.blogspot.com titled "Why Robert Hirsh is Dead Wrong" states:"Here's the fine print, from the Hirsch Report:The blogger writes "conservation plays no role whatsoever in Hirsch's "mitigation". None. Zero." Somehow he missed the phrase "coupled to significant increases in transportation fuel efficiency" that appears in the portion of the Hirsh report that he quotes.Nevertheless, this analysis clearly demonstrates that the key to mitigation of world oil production peaking will be the construction a large number of substitute fuel production facilities, coupled to significant increases in transportation fuel efficiency. The time required to mitigate world oil production peaking is measured on a decade time-scale. Related production facility size is large and capital intensive. (P. 6)"Let's break that down. Note that conservation plays no role whatsoever in Hirsch's "mitigation". None. Zero. His idea of "solving" the peak oil problem is to build horrendously expensive, highly polluting facilities for producing substitute liquid fuel (CTL, GTL, heavy oil) so that everyone can continue driving their current vehicles in a completely business-as-usual fashion."
Every other peak oil-debunking site that we found employed careless analysis, bad math, and generally weak arguments.
Next we explore the model in the context of familiar iTulip concepts: FIRE Economy versus Peak Cheap Oil. The timing of the economic oscillations of Peak Cheap Oil is unpredictable, as is the extent of oil price increases and declines in recessions. In Part II we take a shot at estimates. Short-term factors include excess inventories due to global recession, as we have today, future supply shocks due to under-investment that we expect to see between 2012 and 2015, anti-asset price deflation monetary policy, anti-oil cost push inflation monetary policy, and dollar reserve status changes.
Special Note: It was a pleasure to see many iTulip members at the ASPO conference.
Peak Cheap Oil Update - Part II: The First Peak Cheap Oil Cycle ($ubscription)
ASPO-US Conference Denver 2009 Trip Report and analysis
• Peak Cheap Oil Cycle has displaced the FIRE Economy Bubble Cycle
• Natural Gas Mini-Bubble or
• Why banks want us to believe the U.S. has 100 years of natural gas reserves and
• The U.S. can't fuel a fleet of liquid natural gas (LGN) powered trucks and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 30% as some assert
• Oil prices will spike to above $150 before 2012
In October I spent an hour with reporter who was putting together a package about asset bubbles for syndication. He asked the usual questions, including the status of The Next Bubble in alternative energy and energy infrastructure that I wrote about in Harper's Magazine.
Then I told him, as I did readers here earlier this year, that it appears that we will indeed get a "green" boom largely financed with government money, but it's not likely to develop into a full blown bubble of the kind we saw in technology stocks in the 1990s or in housing from 2002 to 2006. There's no private sector credit Ponzi machine to finance it.
Government can assist in bubble creation with monetary policy, by failing to enforce banking regulations, and by permitting new forms of credit to inflate asset prices the way securitized mortgage debt inflated housing prices, but government cannot create a colorful and exciting private market balloon out of strips of government bond burlap. My reporter appeared crestfallen.
In any case, bursts of high oil prices from the Cheap Oil Cycle will cut future asset bubbles short.
Regrettably, just as the concept of a Bubble Cycle goes mainstream, as I described it four years ago in The Bubble Cycle is Replacing the Business Cycle, the Bubble Cycle is no more.
The grim predictability of asset bubbles will be missed, with their characteristic multi-phase structure of price distortion that is ultimately mean reverting. Our Peak Cheap Oil Cycle model is far more complex and less deterministic. It will remain a work in progress at least until we get through one complete turn of the wheel, to see how monetary and currency policy adapts, but at least we are starting off with a solid, working hypothesis that we have been developing since 2006. Today we give our readers a first look. more... $subscription
iTulip Select: The Investment Thesis for the Next Cycle™
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Hi All,
I would like to change the Open Script JRE version from 1.7 to 1.8 (It's something shown in Tools-Manage EBS forms Automation)
Currently it is showing two Instances of JRE , I would like to point it to the latest version of JAVA. I tried by reinstalling the open script, but it did not solve my issue.
Please suggest me how could I achieve this?
Look under View > Openscript Preferences > in the window that pops up, click the x next to the search field. From the left hand side expand Java > Installed JRE's. At this point you should be able to select the JRE to use


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Fighter-jet contract may be punted beyond next election
The Harper government is in the throes of a mid-mandate housecleaning — and so, not coincidentally, is its tortured military procurement policy. The highest-profile casualty looks to be the Royal Canadian Air Force's long-standing, never-say-die yen for a fleet of 65 F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, a purchase that was "rebooted" by cabinet last winter and now looks a fair bet to be punted beyond the next federal election in 2015.
Avid readers of the procurement file will recall that, last December, after years of bombardment from aviation industry insiders, procurement experts and opposition critics, the Harper government effected a 180-degree reversal and scrapped the sole-source program it had up to that point staunchly defended, guns blazing, against all comers.
Control of the process to replace Canada's aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets was snatched away from "the boys with their toys," that is to say then-defence minister Peter MacKay and the military brass, and handed to a National Fighter Procurement Secretariat, under the aegis of then-public works minister Rona Ambrose. The RCAF was set to work reviewing from scratch all available options for a new Canadian fighter — a list that includes the F-35 as well as Boeing's Super Hornet, Dassault's Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon and Saab's Gripen. A four-member panel of independent reviewers was struck to oversee that work and ensure its impartiality.
Despite this, word in defence circles last spring was that the fix was still in for U.S.-based Lockheed-Martin's F-35, and that all talk of an impartial options review, let alone opening up of the $9-billion acquisition (upwards of $45-billion when all life-cycle cost estimates are included), was mere spin. Reinforcing that view, in early June, Swedish-based Saab withdrew from the review process. Saab was sending a not-so-subtle message: Show us a competition and we'll come to the table. Otherwise, don't waste our time.
Beyond that, there has been quiet speculation in Ottawa for months about a little-noted technical aspect that could make the F-35 vital to U.S. allied strategic planning, and would virtually compel Canadian participation. According to this theory, the F-35 is not so much a jet fighter, as it is a mobile, real-time, global data-gathering network, which relies on each of its component parts.
The strategic need to participate in such a network would explain, according to the theory, why the Conservatives stuck with the platform for so long, despite the attendant headaches. Lockheed-Martin says on its website that "the F-35's communication, sensors and information systems enable it to draw on information from around the world." Details of how that is to work are not public.
Be that as it may, whatever the government's past rationale, the tide appears to have turned. There is now an expectation within defence industry circles that the government intends to either announce a competition for the fighter contract sometime early next year, or defer the matter until after the 2015 election, or a combination of both. If the fix was in, it no longer is.
It is also posited that Canada could eventually choose to stay within the international F-35 consortium to buy a much smaller number of planes than the original 65 — say 20 — and open up the remainder of the contract to international bids, which could mean a mixed fleet. Such a course would allow the Harper government to cover its bases politically, but would also be costly and controversial. Mixed fleets are notoriously expensive to operate, due to the doubling up on maintenance, training, parts and the like.
If a competition is to be announced before the 2015 election, an opportune moment would be early in 2014 — in time for the government to take credit for doing "the right thing" by taxpayers, but not so proximal to the vote as to make it appear opportunistic, or risk its once again becoming an election issue. The idea, in other words, is to take the fighter contract off the table politically, while reasserting the Conservatives' reputation as responsible managers of the public purse.
That has been made possible, industry insiders believe, by commander of the RCAF Lt. Gen. Yvan Blondin's assertion before the Senate defence committee last March 25, that the Air Force's CF-18s are flyable through 2025. Previously the planes' best-before date was deemed to be 2020.
Why the change of heart? The theory making the rounds in Ottawa is two-fold. First, members of the caucus and cabinet are acutely aware that they need good-news stories, or at least the absence of more bad news stories, as they head into the pre-election period. Second, in the context of U.S. President Barack Obama's continuing chilliness towards the Keystone XL Pipeline, there is a new determination at senior levels of the government to put Canadian industrial regional benefits first, and cut the best deal possible, for the best plane, at the best price, with the greatest economic benefit to Canada.
All of which, if true, would appear to be good news. Better late — even very, very late — than never.