Category: Current Affairs
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This morning I began day twelve without electricity and as usual found myself feeling hot, mildly grumpy, anxious and a bit more dispirited by the failure of Center Point Energy to restore power at our corner of the street. After my morning cup of tea (the hot water was obtained from a neighbor’s kitchen last…
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In my home and at the Large Hadron Collider.
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Today is the sixth consecutive day that our house is without electricity. We are minimally functional with borrowed electricity from our neighbors through an extension cord. After six days, I am getting used to it and learning to improvise around the limited access to electricity – a situation which would otherwise have been a debilitating…
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I just spoke briefly with Ruchira a short while ago.While they are currently without power, there’s no structural damage to the home and the water is still on. It may be a few days before Ruchira gets back online, though. She said that it was a very bad storm, the worst that she has ever…
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Those of you who have been paying attention to the news in the past couple of days must already know about Hurricane Ike which is poised to crash somewhere on the Texas coastline within the next twenty four hours or so. Ike is a huge storm that is expected to cut a wide swath and…
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The Hadron Super Collider near Geneva, Switzerland has been in the news recently. Today is D-Day (some think Doom’s Day), the day scientists all over the world will be eagerly waiting to find out what happens when a bunch of accelerated protons are made to collide with each other, resulting in a spectacular smash-up of matter.…
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Too much lipstick on everybody’s brains and the airwaves. (Word origin c. 1880,as per Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary, history going back 5000 years all the way to ancient Egypt) Whether it’s on a pit bull or a pig or a Vice presidential candidate, it has exploded into the news cycle like nothing else, despite the…
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After hurricane Gustav’s glancing blow derailed the Republican convention for a day, the news media and tabloids are all over hurricane Bristol, the real storm which is at the center of this year’s GOP festivities that threatens to expose the hypocrisy of the party’s "Family Values" bigots. Of course, the sanctimonious right wing morality brigade…
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Although the tabloid-style argument over the family shenanigans of the Palins has brought McCain’s VP pick into sharp focus, there’s another side to the much-vaunted abilities of Gov. Palin that you may not know of yet. This is who McCain has nominated for VP: "On March 27, the state House passed House Bill 256, Gov.…
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The barrage of political news of the last several days inevitably brings meteorological metaphors to mind. On the concluding day of the well organized Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 28, Sen Barack Obama breezed through a powerful speech that party faithfuls believe was a breath of fresh air because it managed to disperse…
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Sen John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain traveled to Georgia this week on a humanitarian mission. McCain has taken a tough pro-Georgia position against Russia since the recent eruption of hostilities between the two countries. A few posts down, in answer to Joe’s question about the Russia – Georgia conflict, I expressed my suspicion regarding the possible…
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I don’t know about anyone else but the upcoming presidential election has been looking more and more lackluster to me. Even my good Dem friends and numerous uplifting e-mail messages from the Obama campaign (asking for money) are not lifting my Democratic spirits. Of course, I consider the potential presidency of Sen John McCain an…
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Apropos of my recent post on the reckless decision by a Texas school district, see the the following editorial cartoon by Nick Anderson in today’s Houston Chronicle.
Accidental Blogger 