There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.
…
According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.
Tagged: world RSS
- “How Star Wars Changed the World,” A map of Star Wars and its affects on the world.
- An amazing audio-article from the New Yorker on auto-tune.
- via BJ’s thoughts, it seems Record-Rama was purchased for $3,000,000 after all.
- McCain’s voicemail to Palin. (Don’t dress too sluty.)
- Not sure who this was from: The Enron Document Explorer.
via Coudal-
I spent most of my time in Shiga prefecture when I stayed in Japan.via Coudal
- Paris Hilton Porn-rescramble:
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Dean Massalsky
Amazing. Hey, I had the veggie stacker, and it was AWESOME.
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Tim
Good stuff. He touches on a lot of the same things as Michael Pollan, one of my favorite food writers. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” was a fantastic book. “In Defense of Food” was good, too.
I’ve been wanting to read some Wendell Berry for some time now, but haven’t gotten around to it.
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Djuna
I have been thinking a lot about ways to help the world because I just launched a blog on the topic. There are a lot of external actions you can take like recycling, not buying plastics, using less gas, etc. that certainly help the world. However, I think the first step is going green in your own mind. You put it nicely when you said “more we” and “less me.” As long as we are just thinking about ourselves we won’t have the motivation to make the changes the world at large needs. When we start thinking from a we perspective we see that all of our actions are interconnected and throwing that plastic bottle in the trash instead of the recycling becomes more significant.
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jeremy
http://www.taproot.org is an amazing organization, and they are definitely in need of designers and web folks.
- Dean’s back. A man, with witt and character to be reckoned.
- Joe has a nice set of Captioning Sucks! banners up on flickr.
- I can now create a google on top of google – if I wanted to. Related, “cloud computing” is really popping onto the radar.
- BMW 520d Beats a Prius in Efficiency:
“…on a 545-mile London-Geneva run, when a diesel-powered BMW 5-series posted better MPG stats than a petrol-based Toyota Prius hybrid. The BMW 520d with a 2.0-liter diesel engine and regenerative braking posted an impressive 41.9 mpg – about 0.9 mpg better than a full hybrid Prius. The difference may not seem huge. But given that the Prius weighs about 500 lb less, BMW’s fuel economy lead was significant enough to raise new questions about which drivetrain technologies are more envir [via motoringfile]
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Japan sings Turkey’s national anthem:
$400 Per Gallon
Noël Jackson @
Wrapup, “How Star Wars Changed the World” Edition
Noël Jackson @
Goodbye Hana
Noël Jackson @
Taken with a Canon G9
From some notes scribbled at the pool:
The sound of ocean waves hits you the moment you open the door. Like a wash of relaxation and solitude you soon realize that you are indeed being bathed in not just sonics but lifewaves of a very different kind of energy.
You go to bed, partly from exhaustion, but mostly from the hypnosis of the visual and sonic landscape that you have been drenched in.
Your first day begins in a bath of pure happiness. It was the first time you awoke rested in years – years! You grasp for a clock, yet realize that they have been removed from the room. Your watch, resting in the bottom of your carry on bag reads 8. You are awake and rested at 8am. (What has gotten into me?)
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Leaving wasn’t painful, as I knew that I would go home with the one I came to relax with: my new and wonderful wife.
Sue Jeffries is discussing. 
Mark Bittman: What’s wrong with what we eat
Noël Jackson @
Tim, and 
Dean Massalsky are discussing. 
TOMS Shoes Help Keep Feet Soled
Noël Jackson @
TOMS makes life more comfortable through its ultra lightweight design and the company’s commitment to match every pair purchased with a donated pair to a child in need. There are no complicated formulas, it’s simple…you buy a pair of TOMS and the company gives a pair to a child on your behalf.
How excellent! Buy a cool pair of shoes and help put a pair on someone else’s feet. They’re a great deal too!
I’m ordering two pairs, cause I just can’t decide between all the rad patterns.
[via Dean (who does not blog)]
less “me,” more “we”
Noël Jackson @
I wrote this a month or so ago, and never published it.
We live in amazing times. Just amazing.
The internet has blessed us all with the power to communicate with each other. It took a while, but we finally realized that the internet doesn’t have to be all about cats and animated gifs. Even though, those are still two very popular topics.
Not just geeks are on the net anymore, either. I just learned, Kanye West has a blog… and it’s probably actually HIM blogging on it! Not to mention he has a Vimeo account (“suck on that Flickr,” says Vimeo founder j/k)! BTW, Kottke, who I rubbed the wrong way many years back, alerted me to all this, on his unimaginably popular blog.
After watching this video, how can you not love the internet?
We’ve finally learned that there is more to life than “me” and that the “we” is what makes the world go round.
The internet does have a heart. It enables us to do some really amazing things.
Recently, along with Coudal Partners, 37Signals, Metafilter, Happy Cog, Iconfactory, Core77, Daring Fireball, Emma, Business Brickyard, and skinnyCorp, I got to help kids benefit from your filthy gambling habit. My design studio eight6 donated $1000 to buy some books for kids, by matching your donations.
I’ve always been unnaturally excited to help others. Being able to do that through my work, is gratifying. eight6 is heavily focused on helping the world and it will always be a core part of who I am and what my company represents. It sounds “deep,” and kind of corny. But it’s pretty simple. We build and design things (usually websites), using design to clarify communication and in return, help make good things happen.
In the next few months I’m going to be launching a program to help loving geeks help the world become a better place, just by doing what they do. Sounds interesting? I think it is. It will be an experiment, but an interesting and, hopefully, a fruitful one.
Donate a $1
Noël Jackson @
Even just a $1 is helpful. Donate through Amazon.com for the Myanamar tragedy.
Jeff’s MINI lives in a cave.
Noël Jackson @
My friend Jeff lives in Japan. He’s one of my best friends and I miss him every day. That’s besides the point: His MINI lives in a cave – 2nd level to be exact:
Sue Jeffries 11:09 pm on 6 Aug 2008 Permalink
That last sentence, WOW. Almost leaves me speechless, key being almost. It is so refreshing & heartwarming to see two people so obviously in love and happy to proclaim it. Your wedding vows were so touching & tear inducing & I was so happy to be there to hear them in person. There is no pretense with you two, you don’t say/write sentences like these without meaning every word, and that is just damn cool. I think if your pixel pushing doesn’t work out, you should consider writing greeting cards for those less word gifted than you.