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Otherwise, when you spend long periods of time in public, there is no reason to have one on you.

Tell that to the 71-year-old man in Florida who stopped an armed robbery because he was carrying. Or the 57-year-old grandmother who fought back against two armed carjackers. Yep, no reason at all. Because it won't do any good.

Nah, it's all a scam by Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) to boost profits. I've been a shareholder for 30+ years. I live in Marietta. What they have done is to effectively double the price of electricity across the state to fund building the reactors rather than taking out a loan to build them. It's bait-and-switch. Once they have the money to build the reactors, the prices will never go down. They will have X years to build the reactors and in the mean time will come up with a number of excuses as to why our electricity prices didn't go down. Inflation, cost to operate, environmental regulations, you name it, any "reason" that they can come up with to pad their salaries and options. I'm a little guilty myself; their dividends aren't bad...

I'm looking for a direct quote from last fall from a Georgia Power rep (Jeff Wilson?) talking about how they have all sorts of hydro power, but I can't find it after a half-hour of scouring the Internets. Link's probably dead anyway. That's what I get for not printing. An article came out where there was a report from Georgia Power or Southern Company, generated by them where the company found itself as a huge polluter. A spokesperson from Georgia Power/Southern Company totally downplayed the report and dismissed it going so far as to say that they have lots of renewable power deployed. There was a quote "from the horse's mouth" IIRC about how there was so much power generated (50MW? installed IIRC) at Lake Sinclair. If you lived around the area and ONLY if you lived around the area and actually paid very close attention talking to workers, you would know that the guy was lying through his teeth. They aren't generating ANY power there because there isn't enough water now to even be run through the turbines. Installed capacity != realized capacity. If anyone can find this article, please post it. It was probably from the AJC or Athens or Milledgeville press.

Here's one that I dug out of my email on Georgia Power's water usage.

Another on coal ash pollution.

We have two of the world's top ten dirtiest power plants in operation RIGHT HERE IN GEORGIA!!! One of these (Cartersville) powers Atlanta, so I can't complain too much. :)
Source
Go to Milledgeville and behold the brown afternoon/evening skies. Been like this for longer than I've been around. They may actually be closing that plant because they're too cheap to install scrubbers.

There is such thing as clean coal or at least "cleaner" coal. And I'm just as much for nuclear as the next guy, but that's not what this is about.

Just another move by Southern Company to increase profits. Nothing else.

(See post)

Nah, it's all a scam by Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) to boost profits. I've been a shareholder for 30+ years. I live in Marietta. What they have done is to effectively double the price of electricity across the state to fund building the reactors rather than taking out a loan to build them. It's bait-and-switch. Once they have the money to build the reactors, the prices will never go down. They will have X years to build the reactors and in the mean time will come up with a number of excuses as to why our electricity prices didn't go down. Inflation, cost to operate, environmental regulations, you name it, any "reason" that they can come up with to pad their salaries and options. I'm a little guilty myself; their dividends aren't bad...

I'm looking for a direct quote from last fall from a Georgia Power rep (Jeff Wilson?) talking about how they have all sorts of hydro power, but I can't find it after a half-hour of scouring the Internets. Link's probably dead anyway. That's what I get for not printing. An article came out where there was a report from Georgia Power or Southern Company, generated by them where the company found itself as a huge polluter. A spokesperson from Georgia Power/Southern Company totally downplayed the report and dismissed it going so far as to say that they have lots of renewable power deployed. There was a quote "from the horse's mouth" IIRC about how there was so much power generated (50MW? installed IIRC) at Lake Sinclair. If you lived around the area and ONLY if you lived around the area and actually paid very close attention talking to workers, you would know that the guy was lying through his teeth. They aren't generating ANY power there because there isn't enough water now to even be run through the turbines. Installed capacity != realized capacity. If anyone can find this article, please post it. It was probably from the AJC or Athens or Milledgeville press.

Here's one that I dug out of my email on Georgia Power's water usage.

Another on coal ash pollution.

We have two of the world's top ten dirtiest power plants in operation RIGHT HERE IN GEORGIA!!! One of these (Cartersville) powers Atlanta, so I can't complain too much. :)
Source
Go to Milledgeville and behold the brown afternoon/evening skies. Been like this for longer than I've been around. They may actually be closing that plant because they're too cheap to install scrubbers.

There is such thing as clean coal or at least "cleaner" coal. And I'm just as much for nuclear as the next guy, but that's not what this is about.

Just another move by Southern Company to increase profits. Nothing else.

(See post)

Nah, it's all a scam by Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) to boost profits. I've been a shareholder for 30+ years. I live in Marietta. What they have done is to effectively double the price of electricity across the state to fund building the reactors rather than taking out a loan to build them. It's bait-and-switch. Once they have the money to build the reactors, the prices will never go down. They will have X years to build the reactors and in the mean time will come up with a number of excuses as to why our electricity prices didn't go down. Inflation, cost to operate, environmental regulations, you name it, any "reason" that they can come up with to pad their salaries and options. I'm a little guilty myself; their dividends aren't bad...

I'm looking for a direct quote from last fall from a Georgia Power rep (Jeff Wilson?) talking about how they have all sorts of hydro power, but I can't find it after a half-hour of scouring the Internets. Link's probably dead anyway. That's what I get for not printing. An article came out where there was a report from Georgia Power or Southern Company, generated by them where the company found itself as a huge polluter. A spokesperson from Georgia Power/Southern Company totally downplayed the report and dismissed it going so far as to say that they have lots of renewable power deployed. There was a quote "from the horse's mouth" IIRC about how there was so much power generated (50MW? installed IIRC) at Lake Sinclair. If you lived around the area and ONLY if you lived around the area and actually paid very close attention talking to workers, you would know that the guy was lying through his teeth. They aren't generating ANY power there because there isn't enough water now to even be run through the turbines. Installed capacity != realized capacity. If anyone can find this article, please post it. It was probably from the AJC or Athens or Milledgeville press.

Here's one that I dug out of my email on Georgia Power's water usage.

Another on coal ash pollution.

We have two of the world's top ten dirtiest power plants in operation RIGHT HERE IN GEORGIA!!! One of these (Cartersville) powers Atlanta, so I can't complain too much. :)
Source
Go to Milledgeville and behold the brown afternoon/evening skies. Been like this for longer than I've been around. They may actually be closing that plant because they're too cheap to install scrubbers.

There is such thing as clean coal or at least "cleaner" coal. And I'm just as much for nuclear as the next guy, but that's not what this is about.

Just another move by Southern Company to increase profits. Nothing else.

Nah, it's all a scam by Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) to boost profits. I've been a shareholder for 30+ years. I live in Marietta. What they have done is to effectively double the price of electricity across the state to fund building the reactors rather than taking out a loan to build them. It's bait-and-switch. Once they have the money to build the reactors, the prices will never go down. They will have X years to build the reactors and in the mean time will come up with a number of excuses as to why our electricity prices didn't go down. Inflation, cost to operate, environmental regulations, you name it, any "reason" that they can come up with to pad their salaries and options. I'm a little guilty myself; their dividends aren't bad...

I'm looking for a direct quote from last fall from a Georgia Power rep (Jeff Wilson?) talking about how they have all sorts of hydro power, but I can't find it after a half-hour of scouring the Internets. Link's probably dead anyway. That's what I get for not printing. An article came out where there was a report from Georgia Power or Southern Company, generated by them where the company found itself as a huge polluter. A spokesperson from Georgia Power/Southern Company totally downplayed the report and dismissed it going so far as to say that they have lots of renewable power deployed. There was a quote "from the horse's mouth" IIRC about how there was so much power generated (50MW? installed IIRC) at Lake Sinclair. If you lived around the area and ONLY if you lived around the area and actually paid very close attention talking to workers, you would know that the guy was lying through his teeth. They aren't generating ANY power there because there isn't enough water now to even be run through the turbines. Installed capacity != realized capacity. If anyone can find this article, please post it. It was probably from the AJC or Athens or Milledgeville press.

Here's one that I dug out of my email on Georgia Power's water usage.

Another on coal ash pollution.

We have two of the world's top ten dirtiest power plants in operation RIGHT HERE IN GEORGIA!!! One of these (Cartersville) powers Atlanta, so I can't complain too much. :)
Source
Go to Milledgeville and behold the brown afternoon/evening skies. Been like this for longer than I've been around. They may actually be closing that plant because they're too cheap to install scrubbers.

There is such thing as clean coal or at least "cleaner" coal. And I'm just as much for nuclear as the next guy, but that's not what this is about.

Just another move by Southern Company to increase profits. Nothing else.

I'm sure they're the exception to the rule, and that they only print hard line journalism. Lets compare the top stories on the web sites:

11th hour: Free Concert in Front of the Terminal Station (wtf is a terminal station?), an article I notice to be written by the editor in chief. Nice.

Macon Telegraph (nice, up-to-date name there, jesus you need to move to a new town): Story about a running gunfight, story about a corrupt judge, story about declining state revenue.

Yea, I see what you mean. I know where I'd go if I actually wanted news.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32082
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060531-6949 .html
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/business/14707951.h tm
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/8923
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20 060531084202128

Want some more? I dare say they are easy to find.

As a smart person working for a newpaper, I'd like to say, kiss my ass. You'd be hard pressed to find another industry that has more interesting data handling issues than a newspaper. We've got financial data, image data, text data (which is stored in a version tracking system similar to, but more extensive than, CVS), and massive archiving which is seperate from and connected to all of the above.

And all of this data has to be able to transition from pure digital to paper through a conversion and optimization process that requires raster processing and laser lithography like a goddamn microchip fabrication plant. You've got disaster recovery and stress like you wouldn't believe.

That being said, I have to agree with Rob. Interesting that he picked a KR paper. Knight Ridder has a terrible online presence...It's not done by individual papers either, it's all done on the corporate level. Check the websites: Charlotte, Philaphelphia, Biloxi, Macon...Notice anything? One size fits all.

The reason Knight Ridder is a bad example is because they don't take the web seriously in the least. They don't spend any money on it, and they don't let their individual papers do it themselves. Until they make more of an effort, they're not going to grow their web readership or their web presence. That's just common sense.

Missed closing quote = dead link in my previous post. The Philadelphia Inquirer (in Comcast's hometown) originated the story (registration-free link thru sister paper).

No login needed, just a quick edit of the url.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/lo cal/states/california/the_valley/11665968.htm

Substitute macon.com for any Knight Ridder paper's native domain name in the url. For brevity and a longer-lived link, also trim the path between the paper's name and .htm

http://www.macon.com/mld/mercurynews/11665968.htm

The Macon Telgraph doesn't require registration yet; all KR papers share article number namespace.

According to this article LEDs are being used for their buggies. The allure seems to be the relative safety compared to hot halogens and being energy efficient.

Before I rant, Google news turned up what I think is a much nicer artilc in the Macon Telegraph called "Johnny's not reading." by Ed Corson.

The title is in reference to the 1955 report by Rudolph Franz Flesch called "Why Johnny Can't Read" that plasted the whole language movement. Their has sence the dawn of history been dabates about the best way to learn to read, but I wnat to write for a few lines about my experence learning to read in the 80's and why I don't enjoy reading.

My lack of reading for pleasure did indeed start with my schoolong, but it wasn't how I learned to read but what and why. This is slashdot so I'll be blunt. The reading list in schools sucked. Of the 60 some odd books I read in school, I enjoyed no more then a handful. If "Harry Potter" had been part my reading class I might have actually "gotten into" reading.

Unfortunatly, the reading list was -- and is -- a political hot potato that if created more for it's apeal to the PC Culture Cops then the interest of 10 year olds. Most of the stuff I read was in the class room because the author "Brought a unique cultural perspective" reather then an engaging story.

Even when the liturature might have been enjoyable, reading it for class was not. comprehension tests meant that I read with an eye for content details, not naritive apeal. By the time I was in 6th grade, I would reread every paragraph at least once to make sure I could pass the test. This was never an enjoyable way to read, but it was what the system wanted.

Now days, I read a great deal. Two news papers, this and many other websites, technical manuals, and academic tomes, comprimize a good chunk of my time. I read because I want or need the information on the page, but I almost never consider reading something because its fun. That was not an aspect of reading I found until I was a senior in high school, and not because of the Shakespear I was reading in my english class.

Just incase you were wondering, the books I read in shcool that I enjoyed: Huckelberry Fin, Where the Red Fern Grows, The White Mountians, and Island of the Blue Dolphin.

Lets do something dramitic and put engaging book on the book list and drop the high stakes testing. Reading will never be the same.

JFMILLER

The link doesn't bring up an article. But you can't really compare Mars and Earth. Completely different atmospheres, soils, etc. Evaporation, the water going subterranean, etc. could explain Mars. A complete shift in Earth's atmosphere within the last few thousand years would be highly noticeable to us. I don't think that the "once" NASA is referring to means a few thousand years ago. It's probably more like millions of years ago. So no, I don't think that Mars' situation could explain the disappearance of a lot of water within the last few thousand years. I have no problems believing that a catastrophic flood hit the area of Mesopotamia. I do have some problems believing that it was world wide. I don't know of any similar stories from the Indus River region, China, or the ancient America's that correspond. Then again, scientists are exploring cities off the coasts of Cuba and other Caribbean islands that are under 2000 ft of water.
Sunken City (Reuters)
We'll just have to wait and see what we find.

Woah, woah, woah, woah!

Okay, I didn't support the war on Iraq for many reasons, but to claim that Saddam's not a bad guy is just simply ludicrous revisionist history.
Put down the agitprop and step away from the soapbox.

Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party has done several horrible things that have been well-documented. His regime has a history of torture, oppression, and genocide. The Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, and the Shiites have all suffered greatly at his regime's hands for helping us in the Gulf War and for standing up for their own rights. My mother works with an Iraqi Kurd who fled with her husband to America after her husbands brothers were tortured and killed and had their bodies returned to them in mutilated condition because the two of them were reporters trying to expose the abuses of the regime to the international community. Whole towns of Kurds were killed with chemical weapons for their aid of the UN forces in the Gulf War.

Then you have the draining of Iraq's wetlands as punishment to the Marsh Arabs. An entire ecosystem and economic infrastructure has been utterly destroyed, leaving many of the Marsh Arabs without a means of sustenance and without a home. This is in addition to the usual panorama of torture, kidnapping, and execution that faced many dissidents in Iraq.

Oh, and in case all of this doesn't convince you, how about the senseless, retaliatory destruction of the economic lifeblood of Kuwait that poisoned thousands? You know, the blackening of the skies which was visible from space? Then, there's the man's sweetheart sons who reveal how good of a man he was as a father. How about the horrible life story of a man who was forced to act as a body double for Uday?

I don't think that all necessarily justified us getting involved when we have made a policy of ignoring or supporting many other brutal regimes -- especially when close friends of certain of our administration stand to profit mightily -- but saying that there's no evidence that Saddam's a bad guy is farsical. As to his popularity, Saddam didn't just get 90%+ of the vote. He got 100% of the vote on a ballot where he was the ONLY candidate listed. No candidate gets that kind of support in any healthy democracy, and we are right to question anyone who does.

I live in warner robins, in houston county GA. There has been a lot of talk recently Macon Telegraph about Intel comming into the county and providing an 802.16 WiMax network that would cover the entire county of 110,000 people and 376 sq miles. Thats quite a bit bigger than 6.8 sq mi. Now granted that this is in the planning stage and that Intel is planning on using a different protocal than the standard 802.11a/b/g. We will have to wait and see if it works out.

Just as Bill is pitching the strengths of Windows security to the japanese
government.

Would submit it as a story myself, but /. has too much on MS already IMHO.

Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle was shown in panel one holding a roll of duct tape and asking something to the effect of, "How the hell is duct tape going to help us?"

In frame two, the Republican elephant is holding the roll of duct tape, and Daschle is excitedly mumbling something through a duct-taped mouth.

I laughed. I laughed hard.