I just returned from a 10 day trip to Bangladesh.
Hair dyed red is a sign that the person has made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Martyred Intellectuals Memorial: a memorial to the 200 professors, poets, artists, and teachers that Pakistan took out and shot in an effort to weaken the infant Bangladesh nation toward the end of the 1971 Bangladeshi War for Independence.
A Ph.D. macroevolution student from the University of Bristol wrote an interesting post highlighting an outlandish claim made by the new Creation Museum: the T. Rex ate coconuts. There is only one problem: the museum is not open yet, her facts don’t line up with reality, and it appears likely she invented the entire tale.
She claims museum guides tell guests that the T. Rex ate coconuts as justification for large teeth in the herbivore, pre-fall environment. Unfortunately, the Creation Museum doesn’t have guides–it’s a self-guided museum. Furthermore, coconut-eating T. Rex’s have never been a part of AiG’s models or speculations.
The post says that an exhibit features Adam and Eve swimming in a river with giant reptiles, but the only exhibit with Adam and Eve has no reptiles.
Though certainly not a central issue or indeed one that has bearing upon the veracity of the post, the inclusion of a spelling error by “The World’s Best Scientists, The Internet’s Smartest Readers” (the blog’s tagline) adds more humor to a situation already packed with it.
The whole point of the post was to make fun of Creationists and ends by positing that AiG personnel are smoking too much “green herb”. This is all highly ironic in light of evolutionist attempts to portray creationists as uneducated, unscientific hacks who are careless with the facts, use disproven theories, and are dogmatic. This post is somewhat ineffectual in fulfilling that goal in light of its own false nature, careless use of “facts”, fairy-tale nature, and downright blind faith approach.
I was just watching the ABC Nightline debate between two atheists and Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Something one of the atheists said caught my attention. He said snakes were obviously not part of a perfect creation of God’s because they have legs. Now apparently he meant that snakes have receptacles for legs or remnants of legs, because I have never seen a snake with legs. However, the Bible tells us that God cursed snakes and made them crawl on their bellies. That infers that they used to have legs. Back when Genesis was written, they didn’t have that scientific knowledge about snakes. But they did know what God had told them. So, yet again we see science proving the Bible and validating its truth, even in the details. “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
So the LORD God said to the snake, “Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all the wild or domestic animals. You will crawl on your belly. You will be the lowest of animals as long as you live.
(Genesis 3:14 GW)
I was writing a paper today, and was groping for words. So I Alt-Tabbed to my thesaurus (Microsoft Encarta Dictionary) and punched in “thought”. I then Alt-Tabbed back to ooWriter and changed “thought” to “reflection”. On further reflection, I thought, “Surely there’s a thesaurus add-on, plugin, or extension for OpenOffice.” I searched high and low and finally through much Googling and scrounging through OpenOffice’s rather poorly designed site and series of wikis I finally discovered a thesaurus add-on. The download link didn’t work. So I Googled the file name and found a mirror. Then I went to the install instructions which told me to use the Open Office “Install new dictionaries wizard”. I opened this up which re-downloaded the thesaurus (as well as two other dictionaries) and installed them. So, all that to say, if you want a thesaurus in OpenOffice, do this:
Go to File–>Wizards–>Install New Dictionaries…
Follow the instructions.
To use the Thesaurus, put your cursor on a word and hit Ctrl-F7. Or go to Tools–>Language–>Thesaurus. Somehow I prefer Ctrl-F7.
Memo to OpenOffice team: It probably shouldn’t take a computer programmer an hour to install a thesaurus.
Stoltz just wrote a very good post about gas prices and oil company profits. Definitely well thought out and worth a read.
Update: I have mirrored the article below because Stoltz has Xanga lock enabled.
Are Gasoline Prices Too High?
by Stoltz13I understand the feeling that some have about having to pay more for fuel. Paying more for an essential item is never fun especially with limited finances. Because most of us would like to use that money for less essential items, like that vaction that keeps getting pushed back or a replacement for your weary desktop computer. Many see increasing prices as an issue of corporate greed, but I can’t help but see the issue from a different perspective. I hope my following points will help add some clarity to the real issue and some real ways to lower the price at the pump:
1) Gasoline is a commodity and prices are determined by market factors like supply and demand. Prices rise when demand is high, supply is low, or both demand is high and supply is low. With the steady rise of gasoline usage worldwide, the demand for gasoline is at an all time high and thus prices at the pump are also at an all time high and will likely remain high.
Crude oil commodity prices determine approximately 50% of the cost of fuel at the pump, so in order to reduce that cost you might be better off petitioning OPEC to increase output (not likely to happen), or lobby the government to allow more offshore drilling or in Anwar (more likely to work).
2) Gasoline production requires more than drilling a hole in the ground and raking in profits. Supplying the world with fuel is a logistical giant that requires a tremendously massive investment. Tons of money is spent for exploration, refining, marketing and distribution. Marketing and distribution costs make up approximately 10% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, refining costs and profits about 20%.
Since cost for exploration and distribution are linked to factors that are more difficult to control and every company is in buisness to make a profit, one realistic way to help reduce fuel prices at the pump would be to increase refining capacity. Due to environmental concerns and strict government regulation, new refineries haven’t been built in this country for many years and what that means is the current capacity is limited, thus supply is lower than demand, and therefore fuel prices are higher.
3) A whopping 19% of pump price is from federal and state taxes! Easy solution: demand that the government eliminate those taxes and you will save four or five dollars every fill up. Source of statistics: http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasolinepricesprimer/eia1_2005primerM.html
Certainly the petroleum industry is profitable and ExxonMobil’s 36 billion dollar profits in 2005 may seem obsene to most of us. But consider the following:
“Exxon’s profit margins are below-average compared with others that have triggered no outcry. Exxon’s first-quarter profit margin was 9.4%, meaning it kept 9.4 cents of every $1 in revenue. Microsoft kept 27.3 cents of every $1 in revenue in its most recent quarter; General Electric, 11.4 cents and McDonald’s, 12.3 cents. In fact, Exxon is below the 11-cent average of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies, says analyst Howard Silverblatt.” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-04-27-xom_x.htm
So in actuality, when compared to the averages of other corporations, Exxon’s profits per dollar are actually uncommonly low. Furthermore, the government’s profit off the same gallon are twice as much as Exxon! When you consider that the big five oil companies supply “178 million gallons” of gasoline a day and “65 billion (billion with a “b”) gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel each year,” it is entirely concievable that one company supplying such a valuable commodity is making 36 billion dollars profit.
While I hope that profit is being put to good use (developing more efficient production technique, enlarging capacity and exploring new sources of fuel), I do not begrudge a buisness for wanting to be profitable. In fact, I believe any corporation so critical to our survival should be profitable, because the opposite possibility could be catastrophic to our economy.
A helpful link explaining gasoline production costs: http://money.howstuffworks.com/gas-price.htm
So while myself also being a financially strapped college student I do verily understand the frustration of having to pay 20-30 dollars per fill up, I also comprehend the complexity of this issue. Yes, gasoline prices have risen constantly in recent years, but until recently gasoline prices were lower adjusted for inflation than they were in 1980: http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm So in reality, gasoline prices are finally catching up to inflating prices in all other parts of the economy. And unfortunately, the likelihood of the price of any good going down is very low whether it be toilet paper, frosted flakes or college tuition; Gasoline is no exception.
Complaining about the cost of gasoline or blaming evil corporations, while possibly being a good stress reliever, does absolutely nothing to decrease the price of fuel. Two immediately effective ways to lower prices: reduce government profit by petitioning the government to cut the 20% tax on gasoline, or lobby for measures that will increase production (like increased offshore drilling or drilling in Alaska, or eliminating the bottlenecks in refinery capacity) But the surest way to spend less at the pump is to simply buy less gasoline. And that end can be accomplished various ways: sell that oh so cool SUV and buy a Geo Metro, drive less, take the bus or join the Amish (which you might be disappointed when you find that hay and grain prices also increase with time). Good luck!
In the spirit of “New York Times Snapshot” from The Corner. (hat tip: Ed Driscoll)
“I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything. And to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.”
-Charles Darwin
“If a watch proves the existence of a watchmaker but the universe does not prove the existence of a great Architect, then I consent to be called a fool.”
-Voltaire
