Magnum, P.C.: PI rule for computer techs doesn’t benefit public | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
Last year the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring anyone who retrieves data from a computer, analyzes it and makes a report to a customer to have a private investigator’s license. The law is a perfect example of how the Legislature responds to the lobby with little or no thought to the greater public interest.
Ok…I’ll bite. What the hell does this have to do with anyting? The Geek Squad with guns? A PI in every IS department…Texas always has had an interesting set of professional “lawmakers”, but this just gives credence to everything Molly used to say…
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Overnight Thompson’s price per kilowatt-hour went from 11.8 cents with the now-defunct retailer National Power to 31.7 cents with CPL Retail Energy. During the 19 days last month he had to wait before he was switched to a lower priced plan, he ran up a $385 bill.
Top wholesale power rates lead to jolts | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
You have to love a system where the contracted price you pay for power can be manipulated by the producers to drive out competition and screw the customer at one time…
On a number of occasions in recent months, power from Newgulf, operated by Houston-based Suez Energy, has been sold at the highest rate allowed by state law, $2,250 per megawatt-hour, according to data released by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator. That includes June 2, when Thompson was facing his highest rates.
Suez acknowledges the price it bid into the wholesale market was well above where that market typically trades — in the $100 to $200 range on most days.
But the Newgulf plant can only operate for about 800 hours per year because of environmental regulations and needs to recoup its costs in a relatively short period. The bids were only accepted for short periods, too, for a few 15-minute intervals.
And it’s those 15 minute high bids that are manipulating a system that was supposed to save the ratepayers money…You really have to love Enron economics.
Tags: just musings
Ever since Sept. 11, I have been of a contrarian. I never felt that the date had changed anything other than our own misguided perception of our own safety. A perception I did not share then. Now I read that my views are shared by, at least some of, those who study the area in depth.
The threat from Islamic terrorism is no larger now than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. Islamic societies the world over are in turmoil and will continue for years to produce small numbers of dedicated killers, whom we must stop. U.S. and allied intelligence do a good job at that; these efforts, however, will never succeed in neutralizing every terrorist, everywhere.
Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush administration has said since the beginning of the “Global War on Terror”? This administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight — thereby comforting the administration’s preconceptions and policy inclinations.
We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.
Glenn L. Carle - Overstating Our Fears - washingtonpost.com
We can never make America safe from attacks of this nature. If you want to believe otherwise, just spend some time studying the history of terrorism in Israel. Walls, gates, armed soldiers in the streets in a much smaller area than the USA and still they live with the constant knowledge that at any moment the peace can be shattered.
It is not just the Islamic world where terrorism has been used. We have had our own home bred terrorists. We will again. It is a fact we must come to terms with…
Tags: just musings
Yesterday there was an op-ed in the Times that said a lot of what I have been feeling here lately…and said it well…Go read the whole thing…
Thomas L. Friedman - Anxious in America - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.”
If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.
That’s us. We’re at a 34-year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq. We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.
Tags: American Ideals?·politics
The Rural Life - Editorial - Summer’s Night - Editorial - NYTimes.com
The last couple of nights I’ve stood at the edge of the pasture watching the fireflies. They rise from the grass, flickering higher and higher until one of them turns into the blinking lights of a jet flying eastward far above the horizon. I can feel, rather than see, the bats working around the house and in the coves between the trees, feeding on insects that are invisible but fully audible to them.
I have the same type of evenings, the same kind of musings…Why can’t I say it quite that well?
Since I can’t seem to get the words in the right order…go finish the Verlyn’s latest esay at the Times…
I will know when the cherries are ready by their absence.
Tags: just musings·Nature·writers
Looking out the french doors in the kitchen this morning as I read my email and check the news I am amazed at the difference a couple of weeks of hit and miss rain can make.
Everything in view is green again. The grass is growing like it should have been a month ago. From the looks of things, I’ll be making the rounds on the John Deere sometime this weekend if the weather allows. The Fourth was quite wet, thank God. Otherwise, from the sounds of battle last evening, the local volunteers woukd have been out all evening…
If it wasn’t so late in our gardening season it would almost be enough to get me out and starting a garden. Unfortunately, this little greening period won’t last. We are too close to August when the oven that is southeast Texas really kicks into high gear.
The prognosticators are already talking about the first of the seasons tropical systems forming off the coast of Africa. Earliest storm formed there in the half century we’ve had satilites watching what we couldn’t see before. One of the talking heads has already said that early formations out there tend to indicate a busy season…Time will tell.
I am waiting for the younger members of this household to get moving so we can make our weekly run to the local diner for Saturday breakfast…
Tags: just musings
Enjoy the day…But remember the reason we celebrate.
George F. Will - Independence Days - washingtonpost.com
Certain politically charged rhetorical tropes were then society’s common property. Writing shortly before his death, Jefferson affirmed his belief that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” Those words were as stirring then as they had been when one of Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers declared from the scaffold, “I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.”
What de Bolla calls “the intricate history of the nation’s founding document” does not and should not inhibit Americans from asserting the truth that their nation originated on July 4, 1776. They hold that to be a self-evident truth, which means they have decided to believe it, thereby making it a self-validating tradition. So there.
Happy Fourth….Me, I’m for some Texas Barbecue…
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