The March S&P/Case-Shiller index showed a 3.3 percent year-over-year decline.
Still, that’s better than the 14.4 percent drop, not slip, for the top 20 markets. Charlotte was the only gainer; Denver, Portland and Seattle fell about the same amount as Dallas.
Meanwhile, the continued price slippage is hurting not just home builders, but a variety of related businesses such as glass companies.
Weeks to accept foreign aid after a cyclone smashes your country? Check. Immediate decision to keep Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest? Check.
Myanmar’s military junta has extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. Don’t forget John McCain’s former lobbyist connections to these folks.
Cyclone Nargis’ aftermath raised international hopes she would be released; instead, the military stepped up security around her place.
If being the mouthpiece for fundamentalists with “Expelled” wasn’t enough, he now is channeling Dick Cheney with a “let’s drill for oil everywhere” op-ed.
An overview of one of Texas' top tourist attractions, especially at a time like Memorial Day. I went on past Caprock Canyons and out to Palo Duro this weekend.
And more, from on the Lighthouse/Castle trail:
Looks great, indeed. But, on the ground?
It’s been three or four years since my previous trip to Palo Duro, one of the crown jewels of the Texas State Park system.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t get treated that way.
The water fountains at various restrooms that were broken at my last visit? Still broken.
The high-water crossings of the river? Most of them are at least partially blocked right now.
This is one of the top signs of why the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department needs to get 100 percent of the gun sales tax money.
For more on the modern history of the canyon, in its larger ecoregion, and how it just missed out on being made a national park (possibly including Caprock Canyons as well), read Dan Flores’ “Caprock Canyonlands,” “The Natural Wes.t” or “Horizontal Yellow”, all five-starred by me on Amazon.
In a word? Peak Oil. (Yes, two words.)
Who’s saying it? Robert Hirsch, senior advisor for Science Applications International Corporation. You don’t get much more into the military-industrial complex than SAIC.
And, Hirsch says it’s coming SOON:
“It could happen within a matter of months. It could happen within a matter of a few years. But it’s essentially certain that we are at the maximum of world oil production. And after that, we’ll go into decline, and when there’s much less oil available, then, of course, the price of oil is going to increase dramatically.”
As gas prices break $4/gallon in most the country, take note than on May 26, 1908, the British discovered oil in Iran, the first payout in the Middle East.
Of course, Iran also, over the past 2,500 years, has given the West:
• Crucifixion (no, the Romans didn’t invent it);
• Heaven/hell and apocalyptic dualism (the Bridge of Peril from Monty Python’s “The Holy Grain” comes from the Zoroastrian Last Judgment);
• Pasta (no, not the Chinese, though that’s where Marco Polo first had it).
Well, one out of three isn’t bad.
It’s about time charities got a good looking-at , anyway, in my opinion.
At the state government level, since Texas doesn’t have state property taxes, this doesn’t have statewide fallout. But, it could certainly have local fallout if the state starts doing whats’ happening elsewhere.
Here’s the bottom line:
Almost 88 percent of overall nonprofit revenues in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, came from fees for services, sales and sources other than charitable contributions, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Nonprofit health care providers, day care centers and retirement homes, among others, are often difficult to distinguish from their tax-paying competitors.
So far, so good, as NASA appears to have nailed, the landing of the Phoenix, which will explore the Martian Arctic.
Phoenix is designed to dig down directly to the level of water in the Martian Arctic soil and explore for signs of life.
Instruments on the spacecraft include a small oven that will heat the scooped-up dirt and ice to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Analyzing the vapors will provide information on the minerals, and that will, in turn, provide clues about whether the ice ever melted and whether this region was habitable. The mission is to last three months, with the possibility of a two-month extension.
Hypocrisy
Is what makes the world go round;
It sure isn’t love.
Unless by “love”
You mean physical urges and drives
Better called “lust.”
“Under judgment”
Is the literal Greek word
As it is today.
Under social judgment
With its inner, internalized world,
As the Cynics knew.
The great majority
Fold and buckle at such pressure
And cannot stand.
Whether as a whole,
Or some smaller social group, tribe or cohort
Even voluntary,
The lash is stong;
The majoritarian whip
Rules many.
If you but accept that,
You can be idealistic
And still detached.
Major department store Dillard’s, not upper-level but certainly on the higher side of mid-level department stores, saw its year-over-year first-quarter net earnings
fall 94 percent.
The recession’s effects are clearly not just going to be limited to lower income levels.
I agree that, as we all know, this has been the neocons’ clusterfuck. I strongly disagree with Michael Schwartz, though, that the rest of the world has any obligation to get involved.
Morally? To riff on Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn, neither the EU nor the Arab League “broke” Iraq. We did.
Realpolitik? Iraq ain’t that big on China’s radar screen other than to watch us waste money and help out their soft power drive here and in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia? Green light to do biz as usual in Chechnya. EU? They want to keep a 10-foot-pole distance between Euro foreign policy and ours.
No navy and 1/145 the military budget of the U.S.? Not nearly the same threat as the Soviet Union; if Schmuck Talk Express™ actually thinks that, he’s getting more unhinged by the day, no matter what his doctors say.
Here’s the latest from DeSmog Blog on clean slightly less dirty coal.
Nickel version: Big Coal is trotting out the less dirty coal hucksterism in West Virginia. And they’re laying it on thick:
We believe that technology within the next 10 to 15 years will be developed and tested so that we will be able to produce near-zero emission-free electricity from coal.
The inside of your and my elbow literally supplies the grease, and some of the bacteria whose cells on our bodies outnumber “human” cells by 10-1,
make the healthy skin.
Why would an “intelligent designer” need to go to such length?
You know the answer.
Toyota will build a new
$192 million battery plant in Japan for nickel-hydride batteries.
And, it’s supposed to be eyeing a 2010 date to start work on a lithium-ion battery plant. I imagine Toyota has been doing it’s own quiet, close-to-the-vest lithium-ion research.
Meanwhile, Wired continues to show some sort of anti-green bias by calling Prius a “niche” market; this after 500,000 have been sold in North America. Is the Ford Extinction a “niche market”?
