"Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds." - Benjamin Disraeli

Posted by: Monty at 04:42 AM | Comments (136)
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I guess the positive out of the above photo is that the kitteh at least knows where to go, unlike the OWS crowd.

Well, this quite likely will kill the SCOAMF hopes for reelection. The End Of Cheap Coffee Is Near! Man oh man, if you thought the OWS protests were bad, wait until people are jonesin' for their coffee. About the only thing worse than that would be a zombie outbreak. Or a mass, simultaneous visit from Aunt Flo.

This threat comes from two sources. The first is the ever-growing demand for coffee all over the world, especially as more countries develop a strong, robust middle class that requires coffee to function.

Second, there have been a number of impacts to the supply of coffee. Weather causes, possibly fueled by overall climate change, have led to lower crop yields. On top of that, there have been outbreaks of new pests and fungi, as well as some very unstable labor issues in coffee-producing companies. The overall effect is that, as Stone notes, “supply has gone down and demand has gone up.”

This is particularly the case because the coffee beans that produce the best flavors are also among the hardest to produce, because they require particular weather systems to reach a productive peak.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:08 PM | Comments (619)
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Below the fold is an excellent old movie on YouTube TV HD, Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Click on full screen. The director, Byron Haskin, was the same guy who directed War of the Worlds and several other things, like Captain Sindbad, my all-time favorite Sindbad (note, spelled with two d's), and From the Earth to the Moon. He also worked on Star Trek, The Menagerie and a couple of other Trek things, I think. He started out in art direction and special effects and cinematography.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars rates a 92% at Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad for a cheapy sci-fi thing from the 60's. You can tell he knew how to get a lot of bang for the buck. Look at what he was able to do with the sets and special effects. For example, near the end, there is "ice" melting very quickly. I have no idea how he did that. I don't even think animal fat melts like that. The snow appears real in every scene but one where they had to bury a monkey. Maybe the other snow was real. I can't really tell. There is an ash fall that is well done. He even went to the trouble of piling the snow and ash in drifts in a very realistic, windblown way in corners and in sheltered areas. All of the spaceship and gadget tech looks great. All the exposed rock and mineral formations are plausible and a little odd--exactly what you'd expect on another world. Nice touch on the way the alien ships flit around in a freaky, unnatural (alien) way.

For the time period and the money? Awesome. The special effects work doesn't make the movie, though; it just enhances it. It doesn't get in the way. It helps in the suspension of disbelief. All that, plus a good story and passable acting makes for a great adventure movie.

I tend to focus on money at times: Could they have done it cheaper, or could they have done it better for the same amount of money? And did that [whatever expensive thing] actually make the movie better? I do the same thing with buildings and architecture. "They could have done the same thing for a lot less money" is the acid-test, kiss of death judgment. Even worse: "I could have done that better for less money."

In that regard, btw, Moon (2009) still blows me away. They made that movie for five million.

And talk of money reminds me of an excellent A&E documentary, Halloween: The Inside Story. It's great because it tells you a lot about making movies in a short time, and because John Carpenter is a very interesting man. You can tell he's a no-bullshit, very practical person. For example, his chief concern regarding the Halloween sequels is whether he gets a check. He also appears to be a man of few words, laconic. Just enough speech to get the job done. He doesn't appear deal in lofty ideas about art; he's more of a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust kind of director. In Halloween, he found ways of using the money available to him in the most efficient way possible. And talk about getting bang for the buck. The movie cost about $300 thousand. It made something like a hundred million.

Really, it's one of the best documentaries I can recall ever having seen. It's tight, well put together, and loaded with information. It's embedded below too.

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Posted by: rdbrewer at 02:02 PM | Comments (336)
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The other day I wrote "imagine the WalkenVoice saying 'There was a tragedy.'"

I was, unconsciously, on to something. A WalkenVoice did say that, and the AP did report a WalkenVoice saying that.

But the AP is stupid. It was a Christopher Walken impressionist calling a sports show (as he does every week), but the AP thought it was real, and also didn't do much to verify if it was real or not.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (307)
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Congrats to Iowa State for pulling off the huge upset over Oklahoma State (2) last night in a double overtime crazy thing. Tough night for the Cowboys, who learned that morning that the OSU girl's basketball head coach Kurt Budke and assistant Miranda Serna were killed in an airplane crash Thursday evening.

Lots more football today, including Nebraska (17) and Michigan (20), USC (1 at Oregon (4), and OU (5) in Waco to take on Baylor (25).

And by "take on" I mean beat the Bears like they owe em money.

The other top 5 games, LSU (1) at Ole Miss, and Alabama (3) vs. Georgia Southern.

Have a good weekend you goofballs, and kind thoughts for the OSU folks.

UPDATE: As noted by the first few commenters, Lee Corso drops an F-bomb on ESPN's College Gameday (video at the link, also warning, for, you know, an F-bomb)

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:02 AM | Comments (171)
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Oh my.

NetJets, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., this week sued the Internal Revenue Service over what it called an "illegal" $643 million tax assessment.

The IRS had determined that NetJets had failed to collect a "ticket tax" from its customers—the same tax that's paid by passengers every time they fly on a commercial flight.

...

"The IRS's assessments in this case improperly extend application of the ticket tax beyond commercial airline and charter passengers, to persons who own the aircraft on which they fly," the company said in the suit.

NetJets also claimed that the IRS hadn't attempted to assess such taxes on rival fractional-jet businesses, placing the company "at a significant disadvantage."

Now on the face of it it seems Buffett's company is right. Why should people who own the jets pay a "ticket tax"? You don't buy a ticket to ride on something that you own.

But "corporate jet owners"? Aren't they the lowest of the low or something? And Buffett is suing to keep their costs down and protect them for unfair taxation?

Oh and remember when Obama wanted to change how evilllll "corporate jet owners" were taxed? Yeah, Buffett opposed that too.

Buffett and his management team have a fiduciary obligation to fight this on behalf of their clients. But the idea that Buffett then will turn around and say other people (presumably including most of these same clients) should be taxed at higher levels to satisfy his moral vanity is an amazing twist of logic.

Hypocrisy thy name is Liberalism (and always has been).

Posted by: DrewM at 07:01 AM | Comments (88)
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Per CNN (story originally found at CycloneFanatic.com)

Actually, the CNN article contains a minor mistake. This cancer was NOT first diagnosed last week. A lab technician actually noticed the spots on an MRI image back in 2002, but didn't relay that information to the Paterno family. The technician told Paterno's doctor, and the doctor called a meeting with hospital administrators a week later and told them that the tech had seen "somehing of a cancerous nature, possibly cancerous horseplay". The doctor's son reportedly told reporters this morning that the whole hospital community is sorry for not telling Paterno about the cancer at the time, but they are convinced that the doctor did nothing wrong because he relayed the information to his superiors per hospital policy. Supposedly, hospital employees and former patients are going to riot tonight and destroy some news vans in solidarity with their beloved doctor.*

(*These statements may or may not be true. I'm still a little woozy from no sleep after that game last night, so I'm not sure what really was said and what I just made up.)

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Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 05:19 AM | Comments (156)
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We've discussed this in the open threads and so forth over the last couple days, and Ace recently posted something tangential here, in case you would like to know more.

Ann Barnhardt, who is apparently an anti-Jihad crusader and blogger at Barnhardt.biz among other places, takes as her vocation the manager of a hedge fund. Citing her lack of faith in the market and specifically the uncertainty introduced by an increasingly-lawless government and regulatory regime, she has voluntarily closed her hedge fund, Barnhardt Capital Management, and gone out of business.

Her resignation (?) letter was posted on Zerohedge. A couple of choice excerpts:
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:07 AM | Comments (111)
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Just got home from Ames a few minutes ago. Great game, probably the best college football game I've ever seen in person. Double overtime, with the ISU defense holding one of the most prolific offenses in college football to 24 points in regulation. The best part of the night was that Iowa State beat a team that I respect so much, with a coach who would be at the top of my "wish list" if ISU were in the market for a coach to replace Paul Rhoads.

With the tragedy that happened last night where OSU lost their women's basketball coach and three other passengers in a small plane crash in Arkansas, football seems like such a trivial pursuit in comparison. Thoughts and prayers go out to the OSU family, who had to deal with a similar plane crash about 10 years ago that decimated their men's basketball program. That's just awful, whether they're coaches, teachers, or just friends and family.

Of course, despite the tragedy.........Iowa State doesn't knock off the #2 team in the country every day, so I'm going to celebrate just a little bit here. Since this is the AoSHQ, I think you know how that celebration is going to unfold. more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 11:02 PM | Comments (40)
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Evenin' fellow morons. So y'all like your guns right? Well, this is pretty funny. Top 10 Reasons Men Prefer Guns Over Women.

#5. A gun doesn't take up a lot of closet space.

8. A gun never complains about the fit of its holster.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (902)
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