Actually the only train with wifi that I took in Europe was in the UK, and the speeds were even workable. Actually the Thaly's train might have had it as well, but I think it had an expensive hourly rate attached to it.

you are the media you consume.

I would have gone with leaky coax in the gantries, personally.  I'm dubious about the doppler claim: yes, they go fast, but the doppler shift is at worst 4e-7, which is surely smaller than the tolerances in the crystals.

It would be a good exercise for you to pick some favorite sites, download the power curves for a few selected turbines, see how much annual energy they produce at 100m hub height (you'll want that), and then figure the revenue stream.

You might be surprised at what you find.

Skennah Kowa

I don't do a lot (read any) 3D or heavy graphics stuff, and it's plenty powerful enough for Aperture.

NYT: Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.'s on terms that seem too good to be true...

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government's tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

"What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter," said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. "The United States is not only not saving nuts, it's eating the ones left over from the last winter."

WaPo: As stock ownership rises in Congress, experts warn of potential ethics concerns

Growing investments on Capitol Hill, such as those in the medical-device industry, raise questions about appearances of conflict. Even if lawmakers have done nothing wrong, ethics specialists said, such apparent conflicts are troubling because it is often impossible to know whether the lawmaker is acting in the interest of citizens or their own portfolios. On Wall Street and in federal agencies, the suggestion of a conflict is often the basis for an investigation.

The uncertainty created about lawmakers' motivation undermines confidence in Congress and the political process, the specialists say. More than half of all lawmakers own stock. In the House, the number of lawmakers trading stock jumped from 91 in 2001 to 259 today, according to academic researchers and the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. That includes 68 lawmakers who, as of the beginning of 2008, individually owned more than $100,000 in stock, not including mutual funds.

If only the White House could see that!  My suggestion: replace Summers with Simon Johnson and ask him who to appoint as Treasury Secretary AND Fed Chairman.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

I recall your statements on this, esp. wrt gold.  Jesse notes that JPM has a 130 million ounce naked short on silver. That is over half of estimated annual production. Of course, the US Treasury has no silver, perhaps not much gold either. There are those who suspect that much of what is at Ft. Knox is gold plated tungsten, which has the same density. A small drill could determine that, depending on who was "randomly" selecting the bars for assay. But that whole scenario is improbable in the extreme. (The assay or the gold plated tungsten? Readers choice.  :-)  )

Were JPM to have to cover their short with physical silver, it would only cost them a couple of $billion at todays price.  But should that need arise, the price would be likely to soar. Armand Hammer made a quite tidy sum for the Occidental Headquarters unit, (normally an expense item), by buying a bunch of out of the money puts on silver when the Hunts had tried to corner the market and drove the price to >$40/oz in the early eighties.  I wonder if out of the money calls on silver would do the same today?

It is my understanding that a large short position on a market usually depresses the price of that item, until and unless short sellers are forced to unwind their position. And while most of the gold ever mined is still in someone's possession, that is not the case for silver, which has industrial uses that result in it being dispersed in economically unrecoverable amounts. Peak silver?

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

then by all means, s'lainte.

Skennah Kowa

Haven't tasted the Persia yet, but can't imagine it compares to the value of the Fayard for so little money. (Based on the one it tasted, perhaps it does.)

Merci for the website, never looked.

Skennah Kowa

Wow.  i like to be kissed when i have sax.
you will get your money.

Somehow, SNL still, after 30 years, represents freedom of speech in amurka, even it it's too late.

Skennah Kowa