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cool

I guess someone should tell this guy:

Akerson's GM outlook cautiously bullish

"General Motors Co. is poised to post 12 consecutive quarters of profits and shed remaining government ownership, but Dan Akerson sounds like a CEO who needs more."

ooops what were you saying again? get some new talking points.

Wanxiang has submitted the highest bid, but it has not been approved by the bankruptcy courts. There are a number of senators who are trying to have the buyout blocked because of A123's relationship with the Dept. of Defense. So while it's looking like our tech is heading East, it's not a forgone conclusion.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121209/AUTO01/212090327/1148/rss25

Actually, this article suggests that Romulans were involved. My general grasp of current geopolitics may be rusty, but I suspect that Romulan involvement is never good.

Oh perhaps the deal didnt go through just yet See here

It's odd that I don't see GM and Chrysler being investgated. Or perhaps the EPA itself needs to be investigated...

They have been, and they have been caught. 2001 Dodge Ram, 1 mpg overstatement.

I had a 2002 Dodge Neon that I bought new in 2001. No matter how conservatively I drove it I got 5-6 MPG less than the EPA estimates. I had a dealer check it out and they said that my mileage was typical. The Mazda3 that replaced it got 3MPG better than EPA estimates and the Altima I have now gets 2MPG better.

It's odd that I don't see GM and Chrysler being investgated. Or perhaps the EPA itself needs to be investigated...

They have been, and they have been caught. 2001 Dodge Ram, 1 mpg overstatement.

• Sneak and Peek: https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/sneak-and-peek
• Stop and Frisk http://www.nyclu.org/stopandfrisk
• Warrantless Wiretapping http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/07/federal-appeals-court-says-warrantless-wiretapping-is-legal/
• License Plate Readers http://www.policeone.com/police-products/traffic-enforcement/license-plate-readers/
• Civil Seizure http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20091112/METRO/911120388
• Forfeit without Trial http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/megaupload-judge-recusal/
• Extraordinary Rendition http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/
• Assassination without trial http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?pagewanted=all

Many people are laughing all the way to the morgue.

So, prior to any response, it's not a trade war; China can shut down rare earth exports and that's just fine. Only if there is a response may we invoke the `trade war' boogeyman. Interesting.

The truth is we're already in a trade war and we're getting our asses kicked. Strange new phenomena have appeared as the consequences of China's mercantilism have tripped up political agendas. Domestic interests have begun to fight back.

This particular pendulum has gone as far as it can to one side. It will now swing back and China will never again be able to take the US market for granted. This will occur despite your bleating `trade war.'

"The lack of traffic in the forlorn BlackBerry store, which opened in 2007, also reflects how the smartphone brand has lost its allure with consumers and is in huge trouble in the U.S. market."

  It's lonely at nation's only BlackBerry retail store

Police seize and keep stuff all the time, even without charging anyone. Consider Tenaha, Texas. Or Detroit. But the problem is pervasive.

It's thanks to civil asset forfeiture law that police can keep your stuff, even if they don't charge you with any crime. This isn't news, and it isn't a "conspiracy", as you put it, just (increasingly) common practice among law enforcement.

Just FYI, the ethanol subsidies are no longer being continued. Source

There was a very interesting article in a recent issue of Astronomy. To summarize (from memory)...

Carbon Stars (A particular period in the life of a star where the carbon produced in the core has reached the surface), seem to produce complex hydrocarbons in great numbers. This is suggested by spectrograms of the light produced. Some of these spectrograms seem to indicate that the building blocks of coal and oil (ketones) are being produced as well. The numbers, from memory are around 1 million Earth masses a year.

If the star previous to our sun had a carbon cycle (which i believe from reading this its quite common) then the deposits we are finding could be the remnants of what was deposited on the earth during the formation of it, rather then from organic matter.

If that were to be the case, then this could be the source that this article mentions.

That would mean that hydrocarbon energy could be nearly limitless.

Personally, I always had a hard time beliveing that enough plant matter could die in the same spot and be covered over to create oil fields that would hold millions and millions of barrels of oil. I mean, what plant matter/animal matter could possibly have died under the sea floor in those great #'s?. I can see the amazon rain bason, but there's alot of oil and gas and coal just about everywhere on earth.

The downside to this abundance, would be that everyone would just get SUV's and gas guzzlers and our air would go to shit. But we might just have to have the strength to let that be the reason to use less rather then keep talking about how the sky will fall. But the hydrocarbon family of molecules is a very efficiant energy store, and it just happens to be in the dirt.

Guess it depends upon who paid for the study....

Thomas Gold of Cornell University says oil deposits may not actually be from decaying animal life but from methane left over from the Earth's origin. If that is the case, vast deposits would apparently exist throughout the earth, not just the surface deposits we are using now.

What that says about man's ability to destroy his environment, given a potentially limitless supply of tools, I hate to even think. No idea whether Gold'll be proved correct or not, but it's an interesting counterpoint.

If you think you are running out of oil, Iceland, instead of acting like a silly celebrity thinking the sky is falling, call my friends down in Texas. I am sure they will be happy to sell you some oil from the massive underwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Its so abundant in the Gulf that if you SCUBA dive to the bottom you can see oil leaking from the sea floor all by itself. After that call, give Sting a ring and see where all that money that was donated to his Amazon forest campaigns went because it sure didn't go to the trees (the trees have no wallets or bank accounts...believe it or not).

Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice.

And others tend to disagree. Ever since the oil industry has come into existance there has been dire predictions of oil running out "real soon now," none of which have come true. Most estimates come from provable, recoverable reserves which are not static. New discoveries are made, as are new, cheaper methods to extract oil that was previously thought to be uneconomical.

I'd wager that we'll still be swimming in oil in 30-40 years.

Americans as a majority want prayer in their children's lives.

Yes, just like Americans as a majority picked George W. Bush to be our president. Where did you pull this tidbit from? From my limited perspective, most Americans know what a myth is, or at least a tall tale. If they can't put two and two together, well, Christianity is for them.

If anything, allowing our children to pray together would give them opportunity to learn about each other's faiths.

Oh, yeah. Just wait until that little Hindu or Wiccan gets up in front of the class and says a bunch of stuff that scares the class. Or even more likely, look at that Hindu or Wiccan in the corner afraid to say anything since they've just been told by a third of their class (the ones bad at math) that there is only one true religion, and their's isn't it.

Here's a nice happy loving kids sharing religion link.

Without a higher power laying down the rules, it's every man/woman for him/herself, and that's pretty much where we are right now.

Yea, and who is that talks to that higher power? Last I heard some people decided to use that unquestionable authority to kill, maim and conquer, and all with God's loving blessing. What, you questioning the word of God? Die, sinner!!

There are thousands of books written by saints, scholars, and psychologists about morality. Unfortunately you're not going to find any of those in your school library because they pissed off some athiest.

Yes and who can even guess at the number of texts that were burned since they didn't say that the Earth was the center of the Universe or challenged some other "divine inspiration". Let's go visit some parochial school libraries and see what a wide variety of viewpoints they offer.

We need to know that there is something bigger than us,

And we also need to accept that we can't know its will (at least not to the degreee of accuracy that most religions claim). So we're left with what we got, each other and damn nifty place to meet. I think any answers you need (or would be useful) will be found in that bunch.

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If the music industry is losing sooooo much money to people pirating music, then why do all the big newspapers GIVE AWAY their news stories on their websites?

Ever heard of:
The Detroit News (My hometown rag)
The London Times
The New York Times
USA Today
The L.A. Times
The Boston Globe

The list goes on and on.

It's obvious to me that these newspapers are generating their own revenue by advertising themselves. Music artists have it easy because the LISTENERS do most of the promotions when they rip/encode to MP3!!!

IMHO, this whole napster thing looks like one ingenious publicity stunt to sell MORE records.