Author Archives: Frederick Cunningham

Gianforte Issues Stomach-Turning “Apology”

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on May 26, 2017

Mother Jones

Yesterday Greg Gianforte melted down and assaulted a reporter who tried to ask him a question. Today he issued one of the most repugnant apologies I’ve ever heard:

Yesterday, when it might have hurt his election chances, Gianforte went the full Trump: he belligerently denied doing anything wrong and issued a craven statement that basically blamed Ben Jacobs for assaulting Gianforte’s fist with his nose. His supporters all roared their approval. That Jacobs guy had it coming for having the bad manners to ask a question about some breaking news.

Now, when there’s no longer any price for apologizing, he apologizes. That’s squalid enough. But to pretend that he’s manning up is just stomach turning. What a disgusting human being.

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Gianforte Issues Stomach-Turning “Apology”

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John Oliver Tears Into "Self-Serving, Half-Man" Donald Trump and His Response to Khizr Khan

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on August 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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During the Democratic National Convention last week, Khizr Khan, the father of an American soldier who was killed in Iraq, delivered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump, in which he claimed the Republican nominee knew nothing about making sacrifices. Trump responded to the speech by attacking Khan’s wife to insinuate that she was “not allowed” to speak at the convention because of the couple’s religion. Trump also argued that he, like the Khan family, has made plenty of sacrifices by creating “tens of thousands of jobs.”

Trump’s remarks sparked bipartisan condemnation. And on Sunday, John Oliver joined the chorus of widespread criticism of the real estate magnate, or as the Last Week Tonight host called a “damaged, sociopathic narcissist.”

“No, they are absolutely not,” Oliver said after airing the clip of Trump likening his business success to sacrifices. “They are self-serving half truths from a self-serving half-man who has somehow convinced half the country that sacrifice the same thing as success.”

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John Oliver Tears Into "Self-Serving, Half-Man" Donald Trump and His Response to Khizr Khan

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It Doesn’t Matter Which Diet You Choose

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the category of “news you can use,” Emily Oster summarizes a new study that compares weight loss on various diets. After cutting through all the muck, we get the chart on the right. The answer, it turns out, is that all of the diets are about equally effective.

So which one you choose is mostly a matter of preference. If you think you can stick to a low-carb diet, choose one of those. If you like vegetables, choose a veggie-based plan. If you think you can tolerate low fat, go for one of those. What matters isn’t so much the mechanics of the diet, but whether you can stick with it over the long haul.

(If your doctor recommends a particular diet because you suffer from some particular condition, then of course this changes things. And remember, “don’t be an idiot” is always an unvoiced component of all diet and health recommendations.)

As for me, I’m on the three-quarters diet. I do this about once a decade or so and then spend the succeeding decade gaining back the weight I lost. This is my third go-around. As you might guess, it’s a pretty simple diet: eat less food. In particular, I try to eat about three quarters of my usual meals and snacks. I’m finding it much more annoying this time than in the past—partly because I’m working at home, where temptation is ever present, and partly because my motivation and self-discipline have deteriorated over the years. However, the precipitous collapse of my body over the past six months is providing at least some short-term motivation, and yesterday I learned that my sleep apnea is apparently much worse than it was a decade ago. Maybe weight loss will help with that. I hope so, since I had no luck with a CPAP machine back then, and I kind of doubt I’ll have better luck this time around. But we’ll see.

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It Doesn’t Matter Which Diet You Choose

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The U.K. government really, really wants to encourage fracking

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on December 9, 2013

The U.K. government really, really wants to encourage fracking

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Push Europe

Activists are not pleased with the Tory government’s fracking plans.

The past week was a topsy-turvy one for the fracking industry in Europe, where leaders and residents are sharply split over whether frackers should be allowed to tap shale reserves for natural gas.

The U.K. government is so anxious to see fracking companies get to work that it confirmed it will offer big tax breaks to help encourage the sector. The country’s chief finance minister, George Osborne — whimsically dubbed the chancellor of the Exchequer — confirmed during his autumn budget update that the tax breaks would be put in place. He claimed a fracking boom would bring “thousands of jobs” and “billions of pounds of investment.” (Memo to the chancellor: Frackers have been known to lie about these things.)

While North Sea oil drillers pay as much as 81 percent tax to the U.K. government, Osborne told Parliament that taxes for fracking would be set at just 30 percent. (American state governments, by comparison, often pay frackers to help them offset the costs of drilling.) It’s all part of Osborne’s bid to reduce households’ electricity bills by £50, or about $82, a year, partly by reducing power companies’ environmental taxes, known as green levies.

The tax break plan sparked anger when it was first floated back in the summer, touted at the time by Osborne as the “most generous” tax regime for frackers in the world. And last week’s confirmation that the government would move forward brought more of the same. From The Independent:

Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth’s executive director, said: “Yet again the long-term health of our economy has been completely undermined by the Chancellor’s short-sighted determination to keep the nation hooked on dirty and increasingly costly fossil fuels … MPs say they are unjustified — and they could be illegal.” The green group claims that Mr Osborne’s shale gas tax breaks could potentially breach EU law because they may represent “unlawful state aid” — putting shale gas operators in a “more favourable tax position” than the traditional North Sea producers.

Meanwhile, in Romania, anti-fracking protesters and unhappy locals sent Chevron packing after storming an exploratory drilling site. Reuters reported on Saturday:

U.S. oil major Chevron halted exploration works for shale gas in eastern Romania for the second time in two months on Saturday after anti-fracking protesters broke through wire mesh fences around the site.

Thousands of people have rallied across Romania in recent months to protest against government support for shale gas exploration and separate plans to set up Europe’s largest open cast gold mine in a small Carpathian town. …

On Saturday, about 300 riot police were deployed in Pungesti, 340 km (210 miles) northeast of capital Bucharest, to try to prevent an equal number of protesters, mostly local residents, from entering the Chevron site. Some broke through into the site, however.

The activists chanted “Stop Chevron” and held banners saying “No drilling allowed here”. Dozens were detained by police.

A valiant effort, but Chevron was back at work by Sunday.


Source
Dismay for green lobby as fracking is given the go-ahead, The Independent
Chevron halts Romania shale work after protest, Reuters
Chevron resumes shale work in Romania despite protest, Agence France-Presse

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The U.K. government really, really wants to encourage fracking

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Best Coast Showcases Sweet and Sour Indie Rock on "Fade Away"

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on October 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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Best Coast
Fade Away
Jewel City

Bethany Cosentino, the higher-profile half of Best Coast, which also includes multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno, excels at mixing sour and sweet, writing shiny, angst-ridden guitar anthems that she delivers in a sunny, winning voice.

The seven-track EP Fade Away contains some of her most pungent work to date, from the toe-tapping self-analysis of “Who Have I Become?” and “Fear of My Identity” to the wall-of-sound epic “I Wanna Know,” on which she sings, “It’s alarming/How charming you can be,” before concluding, “Now it’s time to say, ‘Baby goodbye.'”

Adapting old-school pop conventions to the indie-rock landscape, Cosentino’s deceptively sophisticated tunes feel like uncensored diary entries writ large.

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Best Coast Showcases Sweet and Sour Indie Rock on "Fade Away"

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Eggs Without Chickens?

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on October 24, 2013

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Eggs Without Chickens?

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"Homeland": The Broadway Musical!

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on September 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Homeland, Showtime’s Emmy-winning drama, returns for its third season on Sunday. While they’re waiting, fans of the series can check out Homeland: The Musical. It’s a small production, blending the show’s war-on-terrorism thrills with jazz-hands theatricality. “Homeland is such a serious show, a big time drama; it was time for a lighthearted spin on it,” says Brendan McMorrow, a producer with Above Average, a NYC-based entertainment platform created by Lorne Michaels‘ Broadway Video. “There was some on-the-fly choreography, some throwback to Bob Fosse moves in there…Carrie Mathison is like something out of Chicago, and we have a little bit of Guys and Dolls thrown in there, for example.”

The musical will not, however, be debuting on Broadway any time soon. The video is a parody—a four-minute promo for a garish and fake musical adaptation. It was posted to this week to the YouTube page of Above Average, which specializes in promoting original comedy shorts. The sketch and lyrics were written and performed by comedian Eliot Glazer, the guy behind “Shit New Yorkers Say.”

Homeland: The Musical was intended as both a loving send-up of the Showtime series and as a riff on Broadway’s addiction to adapting popular on-screen fare—Legally Blonde, Catch Me If You Can, Billy Elliot, The Wedding Singer—to the stage and pumping them full of song, dance, and artificial cheer. Glazer pitched the idea to McMorrow about six months ago, but shelved the idea until the season-three premiere got closer.

In the past month, they booked their cast of Broadway singers and actors and quickly recorded vocals at a Broadway Video facility. Production and editing then took roughly two weeks. (Scenes were shot in the Producers’ Club, a small improv theater in Manhattan.)

McMorrow says that as of this week, there are no plans to extend their short into a full-blown Homeland musical. “Our office sits next to The Book of Mormon playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, though, so we might be in a good position to do that,” he says. Glazer is about as open to the idea. “Could I write a whole Homeland musical? It’s definitely a possibility,” Glazer told Mashable. “It would be very Sondheim, if Sondheim was lobotomized and hadn’t seen a live play since 1988. Sorry, 1978, not ’88.”

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"Homeland": The Broadway Musical!

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Wasted food is a huge climate problem

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on September 16, 2013

Wasted food is a huge climate problem

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Shutterstock

Global warmer.

If wasted food became its own pungent country, it would be the world’s third biggest contributor to climate change.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization had previously determined that roughly one-third of food is wasted around the world. Now it has used those figures to calculate the environmental impacts of farming food that is never eaten, along with the climate-changing effects of the methane that escapes from food as it rots.

The results, published in a new report [PDF], were as nauseating as a grub-infested apple:

Without accounting for [greenhouse gas] emissions from land use change, the carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated to 3.3 Gtonnes of CO2 equivalent: as such, food wastage ranks as the third top emitter after USA and China. Globally, the blue water footprint (i.e. the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is about 250 km3, which is equivalent to the annual water discharge of the Volga River, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva. Finally, produced but uneaten food vainly occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; this represents close to 30 percent of the world’s agricultural land area.

In the West, most of our food waste occurs because we toss out leftovers and unused ingredients — and because stores won’t sell ugly produce. The FAO found that some farmers dump 20 to 40 percent of their harvest because it “doesn’t meet retailer’s cosmetic specifications.” In developing countries, by contrast, most of the wasted food rots somewhere between the field and the market because of insufficient refrigeration and inefficient supply chains.

The FAO estimates that when we throw away more than 1 gigaton of food every year, we are throwing away $750 billion with it — an estimate that doesn’t include wasted seafood and bycatch.

“All of us — farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers — must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in a statement. “We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Wasted food is a huge climate problem

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Obtaining Timber Burning Stoves Assistance

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on August 16, 2013

As a result of the increase in electricity costs, thousands of Americans are depending on lumber burning stoves as different heat sources. However, a lot of people do not recognize how these ranges work and require timber burning stoves suggestions in order to minimize their energy expenses.

There are several various types of wood burning stoves; nonetheless, one of the most well liked kinds are pellet ranges. These ranges enable homeowners a simpler and affordable means to heat their house. You can utilize lumber pellets in wood burning stoves and also fireplaces.One of the primary perks of this kind of stove or fireplace is the capacity to reject your home’s thermostat. With these stoves the room you enter will certainly stay cozy without increasing your energy expenses.

One of the main benefits of this sort of stove or fireplace is the capacity to lower your house’s thermostat. With these stoves the room you enter will certainly stay warm without raising your energy costs.

One negative aspect to making use of timber burning stoves is other living spaces in your home could be cooler than you desire. This typically happens when the residence’s thermostat is situated in the space where the wood burning oven is found. By relocating the thermostat, you could avoid this kind of circumstance.

Wood burning stoves are generally less expensive to run than your standard heating units; however, without the necessary wood burning stoves advice, you could be left with an expensive bill. If your home does not have ample insulation, your heat could be going through your walls, windows and roof. No matter your heating choice, you need to make sure that your home is well insulated.

Most people discover that setting their house’s thermostat on 60 permits the home to remain pleasurable when utilizing a lumber burning oven. This temperature will certainly protect your home’s plumbing system from freezing. In addition, using either a ceiling fan or box supporter will assist distribute the warm air from the wood stove via the remainder of your house.

After reading this guide you may the timber burning stoves suggestions to warm your house using a wood stove as your data backup heat supply.There are numerous various kinds of wood burning stoves; nonetheless, one of the most well liked kinds are pellet stoves. You could use timber pellets in timber burning stoves, as well as fireplaces.

Wood burning ranges are typically less pricey to run compared to your conventional heating devices; nevertheless, without the necessary timber burning stoves insight, you could possibly be left with pricey costs. A lot of home owners set their home’s thermostat at 60 enables the home to stay enjoyable when making use of a timber burning stove.

Anyone wishing advice on wood burning stoves before they buy. Head over to our website for some energy saving tips.

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How To Save Money By Using An Energy Efficient Wood Burning Stove During The Winter

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on August 16, 2013

When winter nights are long and cold, one of the greatest comforts is to cuddle in front of a nice fire. It’s beautiful, and less expensive than using electric heat. However, it’s possible to save even more money by enjoying a fire that’s in an energy efficient wood burning stove. It’s just as attractive as a regular fireplace, and yet it puts out more heat.

There are quite a few different products available, and they are pleasing on the eye even when they’re not in use. If you decide to close the glass doors while the fire is burning, you’ll still see the gorgeous flames. Even when the doors are closed, your house will be efficiently heated.

With a regular fireplace, a lot of the heat you need for yourself is rising up and escaping via the chimney. Then, when it’s time to go to bed, many will leave the damper open because the fire is not completely out. Unfortunately, heat will continue to escape, and cold can also get back inside.

Closing the doors of a wood stove keeps heat inside. The warmth that continues to radiate will make sure the temperatures inside don’t drop severely overnight. Emissions are also kept from drifting through the house.

Another bonus of this system is with regard to saving money and also the environment. Less fuel is needed for an excellent level of heat. When you don’t use as much fuel, there aren’t as many emissions.

An energy efficient wood burning stove makes a lot of sense. The cost to replace your existing fireplace will be offset by the savings that will come with the upgrade. Check the Internet to learn more, and by wintertime, you will be ready to enjoy the comfort of beautiful your new heat source.

Get a summary of the benefits of installing a wood-burning stove in your home and view our energy efficient wood burning stove selection at Energy SavingSpecialists now.

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