Alganomics is a small algae company in Oak Island, NC. Located on the property of the wastewater treatment plant, the algae is grown in plastic tubes using reuse water from the plant. The operation is still in its experimental stage, like most algae operations around the world. I ache to see this industry take off, but I must be patient.
When I comment on a Pajamas Media I have to copy the comment on my own blog just to insure that it appears somewhere. It likely will not pass "moderation" on PJ Media. The following comment was made on this article about how the U.S. will be the "Saudi Arabia" of oil by 2017.
Deer appear as if they’ve floated in, like cottonwood seeds. How do such creatures with hooves move so silently? These are not the horses for whom your mother demonstrated her love by mounting and riding them for hours on end. They do not whinny or gallop or become spooked by mere treacherous terrain. They arrive without fanfare, minding their business; and when they are startled, they bound into thickets where lumbering horses could not tread, leaving no trace.
There's a political candidate some are calling "Ol' Tool Shed" because of his TV ad showing him sitting in his tool shed. Apparently, he said at one point that he and his friends get together there to discuss conservative values.
Some liberals and I were thinking, we've probably heard in the news what all these values are. Do those folks at the tool shed really sit around rehashing what's in public discourse? How interesting is that?
I wondered if those folks at the tool shed might have their conservative values on trading cards, and trade them like baseball cards. "I'll trade your tax cuts for 10,000 NPR cuts." You know, that kind of thing.
Then the ideas started flying:
"I'll see your Defense of Marriage and raise you One Immigrant Wall."
"I'll see your Prison Lobby and raise you one American Exceptionalism."
"I'll see your Heartland and raise you one Happy Slave."
Anyone else have suggestions?
Oh, here's one: "I'll see your Joe the Plumber and raise you one Bigger Oil Producer than Saudi Arabia in 2017."
I had moved shelves to the new place but left papers and magazines they had once held strewn about the floors in the old place. H-Town and The Prophet wanted to bag the papers.
"I was just going to take them out when some recycling bin or garbage can became free," I said. Tomorrow was to be garbage day, and then I would be able to refill the containers.
They wanted to bag them now to make it easier to take the stuff out. I didn't think this was necessary, but I said okay.
But then leaving the old house tonight, I saw the neighbors' garbage and recycling containers standing at the curb. Did any of them sleep in the front rooms of their houses? Would any hear a slight rattle of cans?
They're all gone. The housemates have gotten their acts together and mostly moved their personal stuff out. I've been detained by excess cleaning of filthy appliances, carpets, trash in the basement, none of which was put there by any present housemates, including myself, but for which, having lived here for 17 years, I feel more responsible.
One friend lent me his paper shredder, but another said it sucks and lent me his as well. The second friend said of the first's, "His makes thick strips. Mine makes thing ones."
Like tagliarini vs. fettucini, I figured. Or Burger King fries vs. home style.
As an afterthought before leaving me to feed the machines, the second friend said that his shredder tends to shut off when it overheats. You can't do anything until it cools off.
So I use the second paper shredder until it overheats. Then I set it aside and use the first one. It also overheats. Then both need to cool. I have 17 years of paper statements to go through, and it's not pretty. I had thought about just burning them, but I wanted to be environmentally conscious and shred them for recycling. Now I'm not so sure. Still, to sit and feed these to a fire would take just as much time, maybe.
The shredder can fills quickly with the fluffy strips. While the shredders cool, I take the can to the recycling bin and dump it in. All that paper pasta is filling the bin fast. I scoop it in my hands and turn it over, as if it were compost needing fresh air. I hold it to my nose and smell something comforting in it. What does it remind me of? It takes me several trips to the bin to finally identify it. It is the same smell as the paper in the Hardy Boys books I loved when life was simple, when I was not getting kicked out of my house with nothing to show for it but the joke of having lived here for 17 years with some 50+ different housemates, all of whom the landlord never knew about, paying dirt cheap rent . . . and after all this time, the joke still feels cut short. I had wanted to stay until I could finally buy a house. Now I simply must move, like commonplace people do.
Seventeen years of statements. This is quite a statement.
You dressed mummies in a second floor bedroom . . .
You took calls in a fundraiser for Hell in the dining room lined in plastic . . .
You wired the living room for heart-popping beats when techno was still technical . . .
You were not too proud to sweat with 20 or so others in our rooms of barren plaster and no AC to watch countless season openers and closers of Star Trek . . . or flicks by Pedro Almodovar or Peter Greenaway or Andrei Tarkovsky.
How much would you pay now to own a piece of your post-college past?
It’s not just a piece we’re talking about. It’s the whole place.
I understand that the Tea Party is a movement desiring small government and low taxes, and that its name references the Boston Tea Party which was a protest against taxation without representation.
But what about the moonshiners? They eschewed not only taxation without representation, but taxation of all kinds. If Tea Partiers are serious, shouldn't they become Moonshine Partiers?
I’ve only heard this word "brownwashing" from Riggs Eckelberry of Origin Oil, and it refers to the absorption, by algae, of the CO2 in smokestack emissions from power plants. The algae uses the CO2 to produce oil which can be harvested and re-used as fuel. So, essentially, brownwashing is carbon recycling.
For some years, I've been explaining liberals and conservatives this way: A liberal is someone who wants to control how much money someone else makes; a conservative is someone who wants to control how much sex someone else has.
I was going to joke that, with all these Middle East protests, soon only Iraq would have a semi-authoritarian regime. The current government there has been cited as one of the most corrupt in the world, but I have been thinking that most Iraqis are tired of upheaval and would need a few years off before engaging in large-scale political activism. And, as if to forestall protests, Maliki said he would not run for prime minister for a third term.
But now there are small protests in Iraq and efforts to make them large protests. So maybe we will see a larger movement. The problem in Iraq is that it is the Middle Eastern country most fractured along ethnic and sectarian divides. Protests there would not take the form of "people vs. government" so much as "people vs. people vs. government," in violent competition to see what group might prevail. We saw this situation already in the civil war that flared prior to the surge, Awakening Councils, and the near purging of Sunnis from Baghdad. And with some of the U.S. military still there, it would be hard for us to maintain the distance stance we have kept from other protests. After all, this is the country that the U.S. had a direct hand in "liberating." Can we allow it to appear to need to be liberated again?
What are kids today supposed to think? If the music they hear is mostly commercial stuff such as the Black Eyed Peas' Hey Mama or Let's Get It Started, where do they think music comes from? They can see that vocals come from the voice, sure. But the instrumental parts? That appears to emanate from the dancing.
We see instruments in some videos, yes. There's a rock band in the background of "Started" and there's a chamber orchestra in "Shut Up." But the sounds we hear are not what come from these instruments, mostly.
And the stars of the videos are never instrumentalists anyway. If they produce sound from anything other than their voices, it's by manipulating a turntable with a record -- which itself is a recording. So, in the music video, which is how we receive recorded music these days, we watch a guy playing a recording. Isn't this like not watching a basketball game, but instead watching a video in which the Lakers are watching a video of themselves, or someone else even, playing basketball?
When do kids these days become inspired to actually play an instrument?
When the choreographer was asking his lead if she masturbates, a more world-weary dancer might have said, "Yeah, I masturbate. Is that why you invited me up here? You just wanted to ask me if I masturbate? Shoot. I could be home masturbating right now."
Representative Gohmert wants to introduce legislation allowing members of Congress to carry concealed weapons to the Capital and around D.C. This is one way to shrink government -- let Congressmen shoot each other.
On the other hand, there is Peter King's move to ban guns within 1000 feet of a government official.
Don't they know that if both laws are passed, they'll need to build a gigantic capital building?
P.S. I'd put this on facebook, but I'm trying not to use violent language in public forums. My public blog, on the other hand, is basically a private forum.
