It ain't just L'Oreal

Via: delux_vivens


Funny what you'll get used to without noticing.




See, not even Michelle Obama is beautiful enough. Mainstream mags have got to lighten up her skin so that she looks like a fucking circus clown. Cause no matter how beautiful that woman's skin is? Its too dark. Too black. Lighter and brighter, that's the ticket! Can't have no dark-skin-toned Black woman on our magazines now, no matter that she is an intelligent, accomplished woman who just might be the next First Lady of the US of A. And of course if Michelle Obama can't cut it, what in the world makes us think that Serena Williams will cut it? One of tennis' biggest stars? Check, but still too dark to put in our magazines. Got to lighten her up. And as for Jennifer Hudson? Well she gets it both ways. She is too dark and wayyyy to fat to be photographed properly on her cd. I mean people! Those uppity people may get ideas, here. They might actually think that white skin isn't the ideal. That black people of all shades are actually be beautiful That fat people as beautiful. Can't have that, now can we?

More Van Jones!

TPM interviews Van Jones at the Netroots Nation Convention

Van Jones: At the Netroots Nation

He starts at about 20 minutes if you want to skip the San Francisco mayor and The award to the BagNewNotes blogger.

In which the Faux News Network twist themselves into pretzels:

Apparently, according Sean Hannity, John McCain cheating on his first wife (who had a serious car accident which broke bones and left her scarred and unable to walk properly, to say nothing of needing several severa surgeries) is ok because he was a POW, while John Edwards cannot be trusted for cheating on his wife (who had cancer). (Even though McCain is running for Pres. and Edwards is retired.) Oh, and apparently there's a difference between John Edwards with his $400 haircut and his 20,000 square foot house, and McCain. (Master Hannity did not mention McCain $520 shoes, nor did he mention that fact the McCains own about 8 homes.) But, well. As we all know, its okay, if you are a Republican. *headdesk*

good question...

IS China Really worse than other OLympic Hosts?

I can totally agree that China has an awful human rights records; that what is happening in Tibet is horrible; that Beijing (and many other parts of China) are staggeringly polluted.
But here’s the thing: what Olympic host country hasn’t done terrible things that they should be held to account for? Hell, it’s often the chance to host the Olympics that motivates state violence. So why is China the only one getting called out?
Seriously, I’m not just crying wolf. In December ‘07, European organisation the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions released the report “Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights.”


...


An ‘07 article in the Guardian discusses the report in more detail, stating that

In every city it examined, the Olympic games - accidentally or deliberately - have become a catalyst for mass evictions and impoverishment…The games have become a licence for land grabs…
Barcelona’s Olympics, in 1992…[were] used to cleanse the city. Roma communities were evicted and dispersed. The council produced a plan to “clean the streets of beggars, prostitutes, street sellers and swindlers” and “annoying passers-by”. Some 400 poor and homeless people were subjected to “control and supervision”.

We hear the same story in the US.

Even before the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta was one of the most segregated cities in the US. But the games gave the clique of white developers who ran them the excuse to engineer a new ethnic cleansing programme. Without any democratic process they demolished large housing projects (whose inhabitants were mostly African-American) and replaced them with shiny middle-class homes; about 30,000 families were evicted. They issued “quality of life ordinances”, which criminalised people who begged or slept rough. The police were given pre-printed arrest citations bearing the words “African-American, Male, Homeless”…In the year before the games they arrested 9,000 homeless people.

More

Funny how we ignore things based on which country does them, don't you think?

Not much of a folk person but...

Ani di Franco32 Flavors (From Not a Pretty Girl)

squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I'm beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I've lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there's many who've turned out their porch lights
just so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
til I'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying past

I'm not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I'm not saying that I'm a saint
I just don't want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said

Via: What Tami Said

And now for some electronica: Ashbury Heights

Don't seem to be able to find an official video, but this song is righteousness...

Ashbury Heights-Derrick Is A Strange Machine

Then again, I am very likely to love the songs that aren't the singles:

Ashbury Heights - Bare Your Teeth

Ashbury heights - Waste our love

LOVE the guy's voice!

WOOOT!!!!

Two Large Solar Plants Planned in California

Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale.
The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.
The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the new plants, which will use photovoltaic technology to turn sunlight directly into electricity, to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and solar thermal plants, which use the sun’s heat to boil water.


...

Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said Ms. Zerwer, the spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric. But they will be competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal plants, which are equipped with mirrors that use the sun’s heat to boil water into steam. And prices will fall, she predicted.

More

A start. And then we can start making them better.



With Energy in Focus, Heat Pumps Win Fans

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Gerard Maloney works to install a heat pump system in a home in North Bend, Wash. By tapping geothermal warmth, heat pumps can save homeowners and businesses on heating bills.

Like other energy alternatives, ground-source heat pumps have won new admirers as energy costs have skyrocketed.

The pumps, also called geothermal heat pumps, use the relatively constant temperature just below the earth’s surface — six feet below, in many cases — to draw warm air into a building in winter and remove warm air in summer. Advocates say the systems can save building owners 25 percent to 65 percent on energy costs while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Around the nation, owners of the small businesses that constitute most of the $2.5 billion ground-source heat pump industry report that demand for their systems and services has surged.

“We started as many jobs by April of 2008 as we had done in all of 2007,” said Bruce Wollaber, president of Comfort Engineered Systems in Nolensville, Tenn., a designer and installer of heat pump systems. Bill Beattie, co-owner of Rockford Geothermal in Rockford, Ill., said, “If we stay on track, we’re probably going to grow by about 40 percent this year.”

All this comes with some growing pains for the industry, which has its sights set on capturing 30 percent of the heating and air-conditioning market by 2030. System manufacturers have a backlog of orders, installers say. Trained workers are increasingly difficult to come by. Still, said Jim Bose, executive director of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association, an industry and advocacy group, “it’s not a pipe dream. It can be done.”

The systems use a network of water-filled pipes laid either horizontally (6 feet under) or vertically (often 200 to 300 feet down), that attach to a heat exchanger.

The technology can be used almost anywhere, on any type of building. “We’ve got them all the way from Texas to the Arctic Circle,” said Mr. Bose, a professor of engineering technology at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

And even without financial incentives from the government or energy utilities, says John Shonder of the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, “ground-source heat pumps have the lowest life-cycle costs in several cost studies that I’ve done” of heating and air-conditioning systems. (For details on incentives, see www.dsireusa.org.)

The systems pay for themselves in three to eight years, depending on “location and energy prices,” Mr. Shonder said.

In fact, heat pump systems may offer the greatest savings to the owners of commercial buildings, says John W. Lund, director of the Geo-Heat Center at the Oregon Institute of Technology. “For commercial buildings, where you have a fairly large heating and cooling load, the payback period could be two to three years.” More

Images by Stuart Isett, who blogs here<A href="http://www.isett.com</a>