Originally, the IRS sent me a letter to tell me to look forward to receiving my stimulus rebate 3 days earlier. Now it is a few weeks later and I’m still waiting. Fortunately, the IRS must have realized both that it is botching some of the rebates and that they should have a handy “Where’s My Stimulus Payment?” page. And, let me tell ya, it’s super handy. So where is my rebate?
There is a delay in processing your Stimulus payment.
… as if I hadn’t already noticed.
Last Saturday at 8PM the world celebrated/marked Earth Hour. But, judging from load data from the United States, you either weren’t aware of the event or you completely ignored it. My boss asked this afternoon if we had noticed any major load drops during Earth Hour. We didn’t. We looked. Then we looked some more. And we still didn’t. At least, not for the markets we monitor (those markets include the Midwest, Northeast, and the areas in between).
After looking at the data, I did a quick Google search to see what people were saying about the event.
Some are taking Earth Hour and climate change very seriously.
Tonight at 8 p.m., I’ll be joining the (hopefully) millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off my lights for an hour.
One hour of one day out of one year. That’s some very, very serious action being taken.
Other writer/bloggers are clearly doing what writer/bloggers do… writing based on half-assed, non-supported assumptions.
There’s no denying it’s an idea that has caught on. Millions of people around the world turned off their lights for Earth Hour on Saturday night, following the lead set by Sydney last year. Darkness fell across Canada, Fiji and Denmark, in Dublin and big US cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
The author, I guess is technically correct. The sun did set on those big US cities. But if that was the author’s point, then they’re clearly trying to mislead. Or they’re just guessing.
And others, of course are also taking climate change and emissions very seriously; they unplugged… and started to burn stuff.
At 10 minutes before 8pm, sp and I dutifully went around shutting down computers (yes, we have more than one. He’s a programmer, duh), switching off appliances and all other equipment, turning out lamps and unplugging all power cables. It gets embarrassing when you realise that it might just take that long, because in your day-to-day life you are using that many items which draw electricity.
Then we fetched our candles, trimmed the wicks, lit them with a sense of ritual and appropriate gravitas, before placing them at various strategic points. I’m all for turning out the lights but really, there’s no need for fractures and concussions.
IN OTHER NEWS, Congress brought in leaders from Big Oil. I tried to avoid reading about it because I knew it would accomplish nothing other than give a few Congressmen a couple extra points in the polls.
I did like this sub-headline from CNN:
Lawmakers criticize industry for taking tax breaks amid record-high prices while underinvesting in renewable resources.
Goddamn. I can’t even begin to imagine why a company would take tax breaks available to them. The nerve of those guys…
And just why aren’t those bastards investing in alternatives?
Exxon has long said it is in the business of oil, and that it prefers to leave renewable energy up to the renewable energy companies.
Can you believe that shit? The nerve of a private company… not willing to spend billions of dollars to pursue it is absolutely not interested in.
Crooks and Liars directs us to a point made by Elizabeth Edwards
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: “Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy.”
Edwards lodged her criticism of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s proposal Saturday at the annual meeting of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists.
Under McCain’s plan, insurance companies “wouldn’t have to cover preexisting conditions like melanoma and breast cancer,” she said.
Certainly there is room for vigorous debate about what should and should not be covered. But no one the post, nor did any of the comments I perused note the other obvious point: why the fuck should a government health policy cover 2 people who are dirty, stinking rich?
Interesting, John McCain’s net worth is listed on his Wikipedia page, but John Edwards’s is not.
I had suspected that my recent travels without my ID weren’t too unique. Lending credence to that suspicion is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle from October 2004. Here’s a piece:
Three days later, when it was time to fly home from Las Vegas, I got to the airport three hours early. It was a good thing, too, because the security line snaked and folded back on itself, like a line at Disneyland. Stretched out fully, it must have been 200 or 300 yards long. Before I even got in line, I had to present my expired ID and tale of woe to a TSA employee.
“OK, sir, you’re going to have to go get in that line over there,” he said, pointing at a second security checkpoint, one with only one other person in line. He was directing me to the first-class line.
I showed the TSA agent my boarding pass with the not-quite scarlet letters “SSSS” on it; he pulled me aside for what I expected would be yet another full Monty. But all his colleague did was give me a perfunctory wanding. There was no pat-down, and no one opened my luggage.
Nor did anyone punch my boarding card. “Oh, that’s just a California thing,” said a gate agent when I asked her about it. “We don’t do that here.”
Well, that was about the fastest I’ve scooted through security, anywhere, since Sept. 11. But it didn’t leave me feeling confident about the thorough and consistent application of the TSA screening rules. When I got home, I called the local TSA office.
Or, as the title of the article and my experience suggest, “Rules are rules for air security — except when they’re not.”
Other assorted material on the web indicates that some people try to fly without ID as a kind of sport. Or, I should say, that they try to fly without showing ID. I can’t say that I recommend that. Although I am interested in learning more about how to get to go through the shortest security line.
