First time out on the Meta 6 at a proper bike park.

We knew that -273 nets 2-3th a lap, and that the paint job is worth another half second, but pole position for his 2nd ARCA race was beyond our expectations…great job Nelson and good luck tonight!

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. Pictured above is the west end of the Veil Nebula known technically as NGC 6960 but less formally as the Witch’s Broom Nebula. The expanding debris cloud gains its colors by sweeping up and exciting existing nearby gas. The supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus.

The Orion Nebula is a vast stellar nursery lying about 1350 light-years from Earth.

In March 1993, a tiny remote-controlled robot created by Rudolf Gantenbrink, a German robotics engineer, traveled up airshafts within the Great Pyramid of Giza and relayed to scientists video pictures of a hitherto unknown sealed door within the pyramid. Bauval, a British engineer and writer who has been investigating the pyramids for more than ten years, and Gilbert, a British publishing consultant, use Gantenbrink’s tantalizing discovery as a launching pad for an extended analysis of the purpose of the mysterious airshafts, which lead from the Great Pyramid’s chambers to its exterior, and of the placement of other Fourth Dynasty pyramids. They were sited, the authors argue, to coincide with the key stars of Orion, a constellation that had religious significance for the Egyptians. Bauval and Gilbert claim that the shafts were pointed directly at important stars in Orion–that is, at those stars as they were placed in ancient times. Using astronomical data about stellar movement, they argue that the Orion stars coincide exactly with the pyramids’ positions in approximately 10,400 b.c.–a period the Egyptians called the First Time, when they believed the god Osiris ruled the Earth.

There are three very conspicuous stars in the “belt” of the constellation of Orion that are also called the “Three Kings.”
Like so many other religious and mythological correspondences, the “bright star” and the “three kings” represent motifs that long predate Christianity and are found within Egyptian religion, symbolizing the star Sirius as well as those of the constellation called Orion, along with their relationship to the Egyptian deities Osiris, Isis and Horus.

Ireland ‘among most vulnerable’ to peak oil
HERE’S a conundrum: restarting global economic growth will, by definition, push up energy costs. Rising energy costs will in turn choke off that economic recovery, leading to a fall in energy prices. Try to restart growth again, and the brick wall of energy costs magically reappears. Repeat ad infinitum.It is hard to overstate the extent to which our daily lives are subsidised by cheap, plentiful oil. Every 24 hours, Ireland burns around 200,000 barrels. That’s the daily equivalent of the muscle power of 2.4 million men, each working for a full year.

Our entire way of life depends on abundant, inexpensive oil. This era is now drawing to a close. Five years ago, the Hirsch report published by the US department of energy concluded that the world has “never faced a problem” as difficult as peak oil, adding that: “without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary”. Oil peaking will be, it warned, “abrupt and revolutionary”.

The advent of peak oil is, by definition, the end of decades of relentless economic growth, since this dramatic phase in human history has been entirely predicated on ready access to vast amounts of cheap energy.

The advent of peak oil is, by definition, the end of decades of relentless economic growth, since this dramatic phase in human history has been entirely predicated on ready access to vast amounts of cheap energy.

Quick weekend trip over to the UK.

Oil hit an 18-month high on Thursday, breaking up above previous trading ranges. Crude oil futures touched $85.37 a barrel, their highest level since October 2008.

The economics of peak oil are explicated using three indicative models: linear decline; oscillating decline; and systemic collapse.

Oscillating Decline

In this model, constrained or declining oil production leads to an escalation in oil (plus other energy and food) prices. But economies cannot pay this price for a number of reasons. Firstly, it adds to energy and food price inflation, which are the most non-discretionary purchases. This means discretionary spending declines, from which follows job losses, business closures, and reduced purchasing power. The decline in economic activity leads to a fall in energy demand and a fall in its price. Secondly, for a country that is a net importer of energy, the money sent abroad to pay for energy is lost to the economy unless we export goods of equivalent value. This will drive deflation, cut production, and reduce energy demand and prices. Thirdly, it would increase the trade deficits of a country already struggling with growing indebtedness, and add to the cost of new debt and debt servicing.

Falling and volatile energy prices mean new production is harder to bring on stream, while the marginal cost of new energy rises and credit financing becomes more difficult. It would also mean that the cost of maintaining existing energy infrastructure (gas pipelines, refineries etc) would be higher, so laying the foundations for further reductions in production capability.

In such an energy constrained environment, one would also expect a rise in geo-political risks to supply. This could be bi-lateral arrangements between countries to secure oil (or food), so reducing oil on the open market. It would also increase in the inherent vulnerability to highly asymmetric price/supply shocks from state/

Full .pdf here

First of all, check out this excerpt from this article by Matt Taibbi. The article is about how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression, if you didn’t read the article yet, then you really should. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, then read the last couple of pages, from Bubble#6:

Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it is even collected.

Now, I was on the Reuters website on Friday evening and read that they just passed this bill on cap and trade

From reuters:

At the core of the bill, which is around 1,500 pages long, is a “cap and trade” program designed to achieve the emissions reductions by industry. Under the plan, the government would issue a declining number of pollution permits to companies, which could sell those permits to each other as needed.

C-R-A-Z-Y right?. Like knowing a murder is about to happen and then watching it in slow motion. Dam.

Via Zero Hedge

Just got back from 4 brilliant days in Mallorca at a friends wedding.. Lot of photos coming soon..

I havent skated for years but there is a small park by my work, so a few of us headed there at lunch a couple of times this week. After a few tries I got my boardslides dialed in again which felt great.

How could I possibly ever compete with your Birthday invitation so have done most awfully ugly designed card with desired purpose of letting you shine!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POOOOOOOPER!

♥ Claleee Laleeee xoxoxoxox

Some Great Illustrations
Autumn Whitehurst