The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster
Gun murders in the U.S. are down 39% since 1993, according to a new Justice Department report. Crimes with guns are down by an even bigger 70%. Gun murders totaled 11,101 in 2011. That was a decline of 7,152 from the 1993 total of 18,253 in 1993. Does that mean anything other than the population is getting older?
Forbes.com pegged the overall effective tax rates of the Big Three oil and gas firms at 41.5% to 48.3%, depending on the company. These rates were the highest among the 25 top taxpaying companies (in terms of dollar amounts) that Forbes surveyed. The most profitable part of the oil and gas sector — drilling and exploration — stood at an 11.4% margin as of April 29.
More than three dozen other categories — such as brewers (15.2%), personal computers (20.7%) and periodical publishing (21.4%) — were ranked as more profitable.
There are 47 new or revised taxes in the ACA.
From The Difficult March To Democracy Department: Human Rights Watch reports that a video appears to show Khalid al-Hamad, aka Abbu Sakkar, cutting out the heart and liver of a dead Syrian government soldier and then biting from the heart while insulting members of the ruling Alawite sect. Abu Sakkar is the founder of the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, a group of about 60 rebel fighters battling to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. I really hope we are supporting that guy.
Gutenberg wanted to recreate the writings of the scribes and produced volumes identical to those the scribes had copied and illuminated for a millennium. Therefore, Gutenberg designed and manufactured 290 different and ornate typefaces of varying sizes for his Bible.
By about 1454 he had built six presses. Since each page contained approximately 2,750 characters, and at least two sides of a folio had to be set at anyone point, Gutenberg needed approximately 100,000 bits of cast type to keep the day-to-day process running smoothly. 40 vellum copies consumed about 3,200 calf hides. This was a labor intensive project, too. So, eventually, he went broke.
But his work was of very
high quality and very readable. With large type, forty-two-line page,
and wide margins, a Gutenberg Bible could be easily read without
spectacles. These volumes soon became so treasured that an amazing 49 of
the original 180 survive today, four of which are complete vellum
copies.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, gave a speech to the KKK in Silver Lake, N.J. in 1926.
Frédéric Brochet, who is a researcher with the oenology faculty of the University of Bordeaux, recently asked some experts to describe two wines that appeared by their labels to be a distinguished grand-cru classe and a cheap table wine -- actually, Brochet had refilled both bottles with a third, mid-level wine -- and found his subjects mightily impressed by the supposed grand cru and dismissive of the same wine when it was in the vin ordinaire bottle.
In another test he asked wine drinkers to describe what appeared to be a white wine and a red wine. They were in fact two glasses of the same white wine, one of which had been colored red with flavorless and odorless dye. The comments about the 'red' wine used what people in the trade call red-wine descriptors. 'It is a well known psychological phenomenon -- you taste what you're expecting to taste,' Brochet said in the Times. 'They were expecting to taste a red wine and so they did. About two or three per cent of people detect the white wine flavour, but invariably they have little experience of wine culture. Connoisseurs tend to fail to do so. The more training they have, the more mistakes they make because they are influenced by the color of the wine.'
Some have used this to their advantage; in China, nouveau-riche status-seekers are spending small fortunes on counterfeit Bordeaux. And they are probably pleased with their purchases.
According to Census Bureau data, 66.2 percent of eligible African-American voters turned out to cast a ballot in the 2012 election, compared to 64.1 percent of eligible Caucasian voters, the first time on record that blacks have surpassed whites in voter turnout rate.
"Guccifer," the hacker responsible for leaking Bush's book, appears to have leaked the opening chapters of Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell's newest novel. Guccifer has previously targeted political types.
The cost of developing a single new medicine has grown more than 10-fold, to $1.5 billion. On average, each new drug spends 15 years in development. And only two in 10 successfully commercialized medicines ever earn a return on investment.
A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed more than 4 in 10 Americans didn't know the Affordable Health Care Act was still law or was being implemented. About half feel they don't have enough information about the law to know how it will affect them.
“I’ve always said Kim Clijsters is my favorite player, so it’s kind of weird,” Sloane Stephens said in an interview recently, debunking the story that her idol has always been Serena Williams, whom she actively dislikes. It's awkward when you have to live outside of the narrative.
SolarCity is suing the government for more of its subsidies. Department of Treasury Section 1603 data shows that SolarCity received 27 awards across 15 states amounting to $95.6 million in cash from a long-standing tax credit for renewable-energy investment turned into a direct grant in the stimulus bill. SolarCity has applied for approximately $325 million in these stimulus grants, according to the SEC filing.
Who is....Andrew Kehoe from Bath, Michigan?
Prior to 2006, the rate of colony loss for bees during a winter was 10%. But something has changed. Bee colony collapses averaged 30% from 2006 to 2012. But this past winter was even worse. Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the rate of colony collapse hit 50% this winter. Prior to 2006, when colony collapse disorder, or CCD, was first identified, commercial beekeepers could expect to lose about 1 in 10 hives over a winter.
About one-third of the nation's
crops are pollinated by honeybees, producing up to $30 billion worth of
food and beverages annually, said a report by the federal Department of
Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and a host of
scientists and beekeepers
In addition to apples, Pennsylvania crops dependent on commercial honeybee pollination include pumpkins, raspberries, squash, watermelon and cucumbers. The shortage of natural bee pollination has resulted in beekeepers following the bloom from south to north, to provide pollination for many different crops, just as the combine harvesters follow the wheat harvest from Texas to Manitoba.
In addition to apples, Pennsylvania crops dependent on commercial honeybee pollination include pumpkins, raspberries, squash, watermelon and cucumbers. The shortage of natural bee pollination has resulted in beekeepers following the bloom from south to north, to provide pollination for many different crops, just as the combine harvesters follow the wheat harvest from Texas to Manitoba.
411 Billion dollars were distributed in 2007 under TARP; so far $414 Billion has been returned.
Unable to afford soaring charges, almost a fifth of people in Briton have given up going to their dentist. There has been a surge in sales of dental kits at pharmacies including chemicals to whiten teeth. Up to a third of adults no longer have an NHS dentist, according to the latest figures. Since a new NHS contract was introduced in 2006, the number of crowns, bridges and dentures being fitted has fallen dramatically as dentists feel they are no longer paid enough for time-consuming procedures.
Demand for natural gas in 2014 is projected by the EIA to be slightly lower than it was in 2012 as coal moves back toward a 40% of the generation market and natural gas falls to about 27%. And the displacement of gasoline and diesel by natural gas will be meaningless until the federal and state government accelerates the fueling infrastructure so that businesses and families can be assured that a CNG vehicle that they buy can be refueled at least within their home state. T. Boone Pickins who is CNG's main supporter --and investor in CLNE--says the federal government has no interest in solving this for the next year at least.
Golden Oldies:
The British General Sir Charles James Napier was confronted with the local Hindu practice of Sati, the custom of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre. When Hindu priests complained to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities, Napier replied:
"Be
it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile.
But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang
them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore
erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed.
Let us all act according to national customs." (Wiki)
Tesla reported $11.2 million in income including:
$10.7 million in nonrecurring gains from reversing derivative liability;
$68.0 million in nonrecurring ZEV credits; and
$6.4 million in nonrecurring foreign currency benefits.
On
the surface, that looks pretty bad. This company is constantly under
attack by guys who hate the support by the government and the price of
the car, especially the cost-benefit. But the Tesla Motors Model S is
the first car to
achieve a score as high as 99 out of 100 in detailed testing from
Consumer
Reports since 2007. The publication bought a car anonymously in January
and went
through the Tesla experience from start to finish with hardly any
hitches while
being thoroughly impressed by performance (like a "Porsche") and energy
efficiency. And the stock is just flying. Bloomberg recently compared it
to Apple.
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit because it is a seed-bearing structure growing from the flowering part of a plant. In Nix vs. Heddon, however, The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled the Tariff Act in dispute used the ordinary meaning of the words "fruit" and "vegetable" – where a tomato is classified as a vegetable – not the technical botanical meaning. So, in spite of scientific opinion, the government says the tomato is a vegetable. One wonders at the government's isolated silliness.
The Kewaunee, Wisconsin nuclear plant ran well from its first day of operation in 1974 to May 7, 2013, when it was permanently shutdown. There were no maintenance questions, no accidents. The reason is probably cost. Kewaunee is small, just 556 megawatts, and isolated so it could not share costs with other nukes. But competitive pricing is having an impact, especially influenced by gas prices that plunged below $2 in April 2012 before doubling to more than $4--still very low--in April 2013. It may not be typical, but it is startling.
AAAAAANNNNNDDDDdddddd............. a graph:
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