Fogy \Fo”gy\, n.; pl. Fogies.
A dull old fellow; a person behind the times, over-conservative, or slow; — usually preceded by old.
[Written also fogie and fogey.] [Colloq.]

Yesterday, we decide to take the family to see a movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks. (Well, what can you say when you’ve got a nearly 5 year old involved in the decision?) We head to Daly City to one of the bazillion screen multiplexes for a 5pm showing, it’s pouring down rain, there are long lines, and of course, I choose poorly when selecting a line. Sometimes, there’s a reason that line is shorter…

In front of me are 3 teenage girls interacting with perhaps a 17 year-old boy at the window. It’s unclear what is happening, but it’s not selling tickets and it’s also not obviously teenage girl/boy interactions, there seems to be a communication/decision problem. I’ve sent the family out of the weather while I impatiently wait for the deal to be transacted. It seems like it takes forever, I’m sure it wasn’t any more than 5 minutes, but in wind and driving rain, it feels longer.

Finally, it’s my turn and I ask for two adult and one child for the Chipmunks. While I thought the communication problem was with the gaggle of girls, it soon becomes apparent it’s the counter guy, I have to repeat my request a half dozen times to make myself understood, ultimately resorting bending down and shouting through the money exchange window (his speaker/microphone combo must have been broken.) Then he announces the price is $28.25 and I have my moment.

I shout through the window “you’ve got to be kidding…it can’t be that much.” He imperfectly and impatiently explains to me that each adult is $10.25 and the child is $7.75. Guess we’ve been going to matinees (and indeed, I thought this would be for 5pm – NOT!) So I paid the money and stewed awhile then finally forgot about it and enjoyed my family, but not the movie so much. My daughter liked it and that’s what counts. I’ve never really felt like an “old fogy” before, but I certainly got a taste of it last night! Maybe I’m more of a curmudgeon? Don’t know, but it was an uncomfortable feeling…

Here’s a joke, an oldie but a goodie.

Q: How do you know when President Bush is lying?

A: When his lips are moving.

The problem is, it isn’t a joke. After Clinton and his “is” situation lying about blowjobs, you’d think the nation would be wise to a serial liar in the office. But apparently not, take a look at this data from The War Card Project (a link my brother sent me):

This independent media study project has amassed a database of statements from the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war. I guess that we’re all wrapped up in finding the next Presidential leadership team, but the findings from this report makes me wonder in all seriousness if key players in the Bush Administration will escape prosecution when this is all said and done. Think I’m over stating the case? Read this:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

Read more…

Back to the title of this entry, where’s the outrage? It’s clear in retrospect that the public was a victim of a deliberately misleading public relations campaign leading the nation to this interminable war that is bleeding our nation by taking the lives of our servicemen and dragging us into bankruptcy. To a certain extent, post 9/11 I believe the nation wanted to give the Administration the benefit of the doubt and to demonstrate unity in the face of a threat to our nation that showed once, spectacularly, that it has teeth. That set the stage for the deception. But now, with all we know, shouldn’t we all be outraged?

Perhaps the problem we have now, being simply overwhelmed by media messages is also the answer. The War Card Project has done an admirable job in using the archives of this massive media assault to examine the role and message of the politicians as well as the mainstream media outlets complicit in accepting the stories at face value rather than investigating the claims. Finally, we, the public at large bear responsibility for not holding our representatives in government accountable.

After seeing this information presented, it calls into question every assertion made by our leadership. Is Iran really doing what they claim? That recent incident with the attack boats in the Persian Gulf smells staged and spun. It makes you wonder why we haven’t taken a hard line with the “rogue” nations who do have nuclear weapons, exactly why haven’t we invaded North Korea? I don’t know the answers to these questions but I do know that our government in its present form with its present leadership and congressional composition is neither trustworthy nor acts in the best interest of the nation.

Maybe the outrage is irrelevant now. The horse, as they say, is out of the barn. But I still think that the results of this project clearly and unequivocally show that we’ve been duped, one might even say it’s the smoking gun for “high crimes and misdemeanors” or even treason.

What do you think? Are you outraged?

This morning it’s being reported widely that Microsoft has offered $44.6B to purchase Yahoo, a 62% premium over Yahoo’s closing price yesterday. Yahoo, a leading destination site for web surfers for over a decade has been struggling in recent years with the ascendancy of Google in particular. Yahoo maintains a strong brand and is the #1 (reported by Alexa) website based on reach per day in the world – in other words, huge numbers of eyeballs. Microsoft is working diligently to diversify and while it has made some progress on the Internet front with MSN et al, it still languishes behind the leaders. Should this deal be consummated, the resulting entity would be a force to be reckoned with if the integration goes well.

It’s big, it’s expensive, and it’s been a persistent rumor over the last few years. We’ll see how it shakes out, generally, I’m not a fan of the mega-deal, they’re too big to integrate quickly and often there is a cultural mismatch that denies the natural synergies to be realized.

We’ve written several times about Chena Hot Springs in Alaska and the small-scale (400kw) geothermal electricity project going on there. Recently, Popular Mechanics called on the resort and wrote a great article about how the geothermal system works for HVAC in extreme temperatures and is used in horticulture. Chena is not just a resort, it’s an innovation ecosystem around the uses of geothermal resource. The images below are part of the story, there’s much, much more content there, we encourage you to visit and read the whole story.