I'm blocked as well! Thanks for the graphic. I am proudly displaying it even as I type.

I guess it's because of my NC-17 rating!

good afternoon dark wraith:

thank you for the beautiful graphic. it will be posted with great pride. i'm looking more and more to the rez in the northeastern mountains. self contained ecosphere and all. a century and a half of neglect by the government may turn out to be the single best favor they ever did for us (except of course for the court rulings that permitted casino gambling but i digress)

And don't forget that the Feds didn't bother to check for black gold under some of that rez land.

You could provide a valuable service then if you were to launch "Naked Economics"-thus providing some efficient one-stop-shopping to the ambivalent.

Wow petty little Zelleblog is blocked. And yet I am such an ardent defender of currency manipulatists! Feh! ((shaking fist))

I'm blocked too-heaven knows why. Of course I do have a link here, and I use the G__ word a lot....My brother went to an international AIDS conference in China many years ago...the Chinese claimed to have 0 cases of HIV since they had 0 gays in the country. They were hosting the conference out of international brotherhood or something, not because AIDs was a problem, you see.

My brother's stories about trying to buy souvenier condoms was hysterical...

Very few, Mr. Goat.

Interesting, isn't it?

Wonder how many of the Google owned Blogger hosted blogs aren't being blocked....

Good ESP Mr. Wraith.

(Damn! couldn't figure out how to save the edit, so deleted it and reposted)

That was very weird.

The Dark Wraith wasn't quite sure exactly what happened there.

Mr. Goat and The Wraith have taken shortcut surfing to a whole new level. Have either of you ever met yourself coming back from somewhere you wanted to go?

My site is blocked today, but I wouldn't be surprised if that suddenly changed overnight.

good morning dark wraith:

the "black gold" analogy has bearing here in arizona too. not like the choctaw or the cherokee nations which discovered oil to prompt their very own economic booms. out here the black gold comes in the form of coal. easy to get to, simply rip open a huge hole, coal. there is a place called "black mesa" which, like sinai, is a holy place to several of the southwestern nations. mr. peabody has been wanting to bulldoze it for a long time, being as it's almost pure anthricite possessing a low sulpher content. what they hadn't counted on was the combined opposition from the navajo, hopi and apache nations. but now with the coal state senators starting to rumble about "coal to liquid" processes as a way to keep the cars (but most importantly the tanks and hummers) running the assaults on black mesa will continue.

economics question:

while the military is driving trucks, bradleys, strykers, tanks, and hummers, to say nothing of flying helicopters, jets and driving destroyers and other liquid fuel vessels would measures taken by the civilian population to reduce consumption have much impact on the demand? or would the military and the chinese simply snap up every drop conserved?

Minstrel Boy,
Interesting point about Military use of petrol products.

Anyone have any idea how much gas the Military uses or for that fact the Government issued cars we have to support?

And what's the total consumption of fuel used for aviation?

Maybe before they start throwing stones at us they should check their own.

good morning dw.

"Over a period of time, such information consumers cannot help but become painfully aware that their leaders are nothing more than a cabal of lying, brutish thugs Hell-bent on wrecking other countries while systematically repressing the rights of the citizens. Awareness is, of course, only a first step; afterward comes the ugly part: rebellion or surrender." right on brother! to the ramparts!

oh. you mean china.

our own government has no need of firewalls when so many of the populace have no interest in reality. i suspect that some of our leaders like their subjects to be distracted by naked bodies.

Father Tyme - 6/23/07 @ at 08:46:48

Military fuel consumption, via Tom Dispatch:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. [...]

Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed "in theater," there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone -- soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an "expeditionary" army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon's war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.

And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon's total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems -- virtually all powered by oil -- the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world's leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD's daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day.

Iraq to Seek Chinese Help to Reinvigorate Oil Industry:

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is coming to Beijing with a delegation that includes his oil minister, is expected to ask Bering to revive a $1.2 billion oil exploration deal it established with Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule. Plagued by sabotage and theft amid the country's escalating violence, Iraq's oil fields have failed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to return to production levels before the war. Meanwhile, China needs more oil to help sustain rising car-ownership rates and economic growth that have made the country the world's No. 2 oil consumer, after the U.S.

The downsides of coal-to-fuel:

* High costs. The technology has been around for almost a century but has never been economically practical.

* Water consumption. The conversion process requires vast amounts of water, at least 5 gallons for every gallon of fuel produced, according to the Energy Department. Particularly in Western states, where much of the nation's coal can be found, fresh water is in short supply.

* Global warming. Between the emissions from the conversion plants and the emissions from tailpipes, coal fuels produce more than twice the greenhouse gases as does refining oil into gasoline and burning it, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The five myths of the transition towards biofuels:

1. Biofuels are clean and protect the environment

2. Biofuels do not cause deforestation

3. Biofuels allow for rural development

4. Biofuels do not cause starvation

5. Biofuels of "the second generation" are within reach

Moody Blue,
Thanks for the info. Somehow I don't feel so bad if I'd happen to be tooling around in my 69 GTO Muscle Car getting 6 miles to the gallon. Too bad I got rid of it years ago.
Is it any wonder Big Oil loves them some Dick? (Cheeney)

Does screaming do any good?

Good afternoon, Minstrel Boy.

I have been trying to find which post it was where I actually wrote about the large quantities of fuel the U.S. military was consuming for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Truth of the matter is that I don't recall how much detail I went into, but I remember at the time being quite surprised by the usage levels. I do know that most of the gasoline is being acquired from places right in the region. If I remember correctly, the pro-Western Gulf nations are pretty much the gas stations of choice. Although Iraq, itself, has refining capability, and at least some of what's operational is now producing military grade feuls (e.g., jet fuel) and distillates (e.g., diesel), there is nowhere near enough online refining capacity (at least there wasn't when I was looking into this issue) to satisfy the thirst of a modern war machine like that of the U.S.

I need to look around some more to see if I can find that post to know what it was I actually wrote.

The Dark Wraith needs to get on the project of putting together a comprehensive index of everything he's written here.

good afternoon dark wraith:

i seem to remember your talking about that very thing and listing those numbers, it might have been in the "hydrocarbon battlefields" postings. it just seems to me that aside from personal budget concerns that even a concerted effort on the part of private citizens would have a minimal impact on the demand in the marketplace while we have a highly mechanized military fighting two wars and the increasing demand of both china and india. . .

was just wonderin' that's all. i'm getting ready to head out on the road for a few. . .6 cities/10 days. . .way too much time in the airport at the idiot mercies of TSA. . .

off topic but WTF?

have you been privy to the goings on at shakesville? there has been a big DOS attack on her site. . .she might be able to use your help (or your capacity for focused revenge)

Good afternoon, Minstrel Boy.

Send me an e-mail message about where you're going to be; I might be able to stop in if you're not too far away from my neck of the woods.

And on the subject of private conservation versus public use of fuels, you are right on the money. I haven't said too much about this, but to me quite a bit of this fuel efficiency and alternative fuels talk these days is relatively meaningless. An industrialized, militarized world such as the one we have is not going to leave fossil fuels behind until it is in the interest of the public sectors of the involved nations and powerful interests to do so. Everything that will be done in the short term will be for show, except for what's going to be done that will hurt the poor far, far more than it will even be noticed by the wealthy. But that's the same old story as always.

Now, as far as the denial of service attack is concerned, what's happening is criminal, but it's being done with relatively little risk of being caught. A major site that was exposing spammers got attacked so viciously that the Webhost had to order the owner of the site to go elsewhere for hosting. Until the FBI and international policing organizations get serious about what's going on, it will continue pretty much unabated. The cats doing this aren't just the nerdy weasels most people think: the thugs using the tools are, but the ones providing them are considerably more dangerous that almost anyone imagines.

Yes, there are things that can be done. My experience is that wars like that can be costly to everyone involved; and the worst part is that the only ones the law enforcement people are going to do anything to are the good guys, since it's the good guys who are out in the open and not the dangerous ones.

Again, it's the same old story as always.

The Dark Wraith finds re-runs rather tedious.

sounds like NBA rules. the suns retaliate to a vicious cheap shot on stevie nash and san antonio wins the series. . .

ain't no justice i tells ya.

I think I would like a list of what is NOT blocked, since even my insignificant little website IS....cause damn, what do they really do, block entire domains, perhaps?

It's more than just domains, Labrys; the firewall is blocking servers and networks. It looks like they're also using blogrolls and aggregators to create shells of denial. Whether or not The Great Firewall of China is checking every entry gate to which a Chinese surfer might have access, I know that just about everything in the domain blogspot.com is blocked, and there's even a site that allows people in China, India, and Pakistan to see these sites by using a "reverse proxy" to get them through.

Remember that there are well over a billion Websites, and probably now close to a hundred million sites that would qualify as "Weblogs." Even if the Chinese were filtering out 95% of these, a Chinese Websurfer would have access to an incomprehensibly large number of places to go; and if the filters were worth their salt, no place the surfer could go would have much in the way of reference to a site the surfer couldn't. That would make it look to the user as if nothing were wrong because no place he or she would think of going would be blocked, and no forbidden place would ever be mentioned.

We need to keep that lesson in mind when we think about information even we see. Every once in a great while, we are exposed to information that is completely "off the wall" in the sense that, well, we just don't see this kind of stuff, and 99.9% of the people have never even heard of such nonsense. That means it's just a lie, and it's all conspiracy theory lunacy that only kooks talk about.

Try, for example, to tell someone who's not a deeply well-informed progressive blogger about the giant concentration camp that's being built right here in the continental United States. Who's going to believe that kind of silliness? Who among the normal people has ever even heard of it?

The Chinese aren't the only ones whose world is shaped by the character of the filters through which news and information flows.

The Dark Wraith finds that at once both depressing and liberating.

Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.

It said my site was blocked. I'm betting if I was still back with Blogger it wouldn't be. Of course, there would be all sorts of other exciting things happening...I think my new spinning friends in Mongolia will have to make do with my occasional mailings of baby socks, hats and other things.

Moody Blues, thank you for pointing that out. Our new embrace of coal as "the new oil" really bothers me. The pollution is part of that, but only a part. People just seem really excited about having the One Thing replaced by Another One Thing, instead of several smaller, different things. Oh, and conservation. But who'd ever bother with that?

DW,
Ya know, Richard Lewis used to be my hero, but you're giving him a run for the money.
Cheer up. Paris is just about out.

Grr.

Considering how far afield the discussion has gotten from the original topic, I'm going to post some advice I just got in my e-mail, in lieu of waiting for an open thread...
HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK:

1. Open a new folder on your computer.

2. Name it "George W. Bush."

3. Send it to the trash.

4. Empty the trash.

5. Your PC will ask you, "Do you really want to get
rid of "George W. Bush?"

6. Firmly Click "Yes."

7. Feel better.

P.S. Tomorrow we'll do Dick Cheney...

Wild Clover,
I tried that, now mi conpuer is in therpy. Evreething wus ok untilll I treid to crate a follder called "George W. Bush" then it seeeemmd to loosose it.
Gott a apoyntmment wwith a digital sschrinkk taday!
Ggegtttinggng wwuurrrseee!
Ddunt onet ta eeevn think aboot Chheeeny!!!

Try, for example, to tell someone who's not a deeply well-informed progressive blogger about the giant concentration camp that's being built right here in the continental United States. Who's going to believe that kind of silliness? Who among the normal people has ever even heard of it?

The "normal" Germans during WWII didn't really know about the camps there, either.

Greetings Dark Wraith,
The net of Chinese censorship is cast widely indeed

A thoroughly obscure Message Board (granted, one whose principal focus is politics) that I frequent has a long-time poster who is currently in China for business reasons, and the difficulties he has had posting on said MB have been quite instructive

It would seem that the Great Firewall (like it's namesake) is not completely effective, however, the difficulties in bypassing that edifice are likely enough to discourage all but the most determined. Most Chinese citizens probably won't bother - which is undoubtedly the intention of the Chinese government

The combination of extremely limited news sources and a crushing workload will probably suffice to keep most Chinese who have access to the Internet in line.

Same as it does in the US....

Ok DW,
We know you don't have anything better to do than sit around and drink coffee. (smirk smirk!) Some of us can't wait for your next installment of "The Days of Our Lives".
When's the next class? Got my check ready for the Dark Wraith Institute for the Politically Entranced (DWIPE U.) . I want a front seat.

P.S. Any guest speakers planned?
P.P.S. It might be the heat causing my mental malady.

Forgive my silence, Father Tyme.

I got somewhat overwhelmed with homework and exams, but that's about over with. Besides, last night and this morning got me in the mood to start ranting again: first some weird-ass Leftist starts using the word "satanic" in the comment thread for one of my YouTube video lectures, then some Right-winger hops some spittle at me over at BlondeSense. The net result is that I'm feeling very fragile right now. I figure all the bad karma explains why my current fundraiser for these operations is going down in flames like the Hindenburg.

I think the only way I'm going to feel perky again is maybe if I enshrine some of the comment exchanges in a post here this evening, perhaps along with some extended roaring about the Democrats and their utter inability to even so much as slow down this runaway train of destruction to the Republic.

If at all possible, however, I shall refrain from any mention of Paris Hilton and her new, million-dollar interview deal, mainly because I think the veins in my neck would pop out through my nose and do a breakdance if I were to broach the subject of that whole tart-on-stilts subject.

The Dark Wraith probably needs to have a couple pots of coffee to calm his nerves after all the nonsense that's been going on in the news lately.
[And I assure you that I shall avoid any further invective about plucked ducks, given that I'm trying to keep this lounge on the more high-class side.].

I think the only way I'm going to feel perky again is...

to go watch a movie.
Blade Runner at 25: Why the Sci-Fi F/X Are Still Unsurpassed

O, yeah.