My divorce is sort of final. We’ve agreed on terms, but the Judge needs to sign off on it. I’ve been living a nomadic lifestyle during this period adding nearly 200k points to my Air France frequent flyer account.
But that’s not really my point here. What is my point is that I am receiving notices for signing up for medicare at a place where I am not resident: other than visiting. My guess is that the data miners get my info since I tend to order things.
It’s annoying that the US doesn’t have strong data protection laws. I am protected by my EU residency, which manages to knock a lot of info out of their marketplace, but not enough.
Anyway, quite frankly, don’t trust the online background check vendors since there is no guarantee their information is correct.
This is a nice classic style which has never gone out of fashion in Bermuda and was once popular outside Bermuda. The look is:
The best quality Bermuda Shorts have a three inch hem, hand sewn, to hang correctly. Bermuda Shorts are garments for all seasons, representing a standard of turnout difficult to surpass in their originality. They are as well constructed as a good pair of trousers, complete with a proper fitted waistband or with belt loops or a self-supporting waistband and a seam in the center back. They are usually pleated for business use but a more informal variety can be unpleated. They usually have one pocket on each side and one on each side of the bottom. They are form-fitting, designed essentially for and can look very good on the slim or medium-built person. (Any with huge waists and bottoms will look far better in lightweight long trousers). Accompanying them are Bermuda hose (imported long – knee-length – socks), plus a white or blue button down imported Oxford or other appropriate short sleeved shirt and conservative Windsor knotted striped or corporate insignia or club or regimental tie, with a single or double breasted navy blue blazer or a sport coat or madras or linen jacket that contrasts with the Bermuda Shorts. The most appropriate shoes are imported loafers with tassels – from the USA – in black or brown, depending on the colour of the shorts – to compliment and complement the Bermuda Dress Shorts.
OK, one thing about real Bermuda shorts: they are expensive compared to most other shorts. Toss in that the best place to get them is in Bermuda (or do a search for Bermuda shorts on eBay or Etsy). But there is a problem with buying them online: the actual size is not what you think it would be if you are buying authentic Bermuda shorts. You will most likely get a size smaller than you expect if you buy authentic Island shorts (e.g.: English Sport Shop, Smiths, Triminghams, or Davidsons).
So, it’s best to go to Bermuda and buy them in person. The best place these days is the English Sport Shop (49 Front Street, Hamilton). There are other branches, around the Island, but the Hamilton store has the best stock. This is the place to get the original Bermuda shorts since they have been making them since 1918. I could do a post on just this store.
The other alternative in Bermuda is TABS (The Authentic Bermuda Shorts), which is the new kid in the business having only been in business since 2014, and opened their store in 2016. They do sell online and have a good selection. Drawback, their shorts are fairly pricey (about 30 bucks more than the English Sport Shop’s). Also, their store is not on Front Street (12 Reid Street, which is up Walker Arcade from the English Sport Shop–they are close to each other).
There are plusses and minuses to English Sport Shop and TABS. I would suggest checking both stores out before buying. The best rule of thumb is that English Sport Shop is the more traditional of the two, TABS is the more contemporary by Bermuda standards. They both make great products. A biggie for TABS is that they are closer to being true in size (ESS’s tend to run a size or two small: e.g, you would want a 38 if you wear a 36 and maybe 34). I like them both and have shorts from both companies (although partial to ESS for its being the “heritage” brand).
There are options if you don’t want to go to Bermuda to buy them. Brooks Brothers, Jos A. Banks, and similar men’s stores are a good bet. Brooks does sell authentic Bermuda shorts, but their price is similar to TABS without the selection of colours. Lands End and LL Bean are also an option, but not as close to the real shorts as Brooks Brothers Bermuda shorts for shorts not sold on Bermuda.
The advantage of buying shorts locally is that you know they will fit.
One other point for buying Bermuda shorts in Bermuda: it’s a whole lot easier to get the socks to go with the outfit. There are some of online retailers that carry them (TABS, The Sock Company UK, and The Great Canadian Sox Company). Vagden, Glendale, and HJ Hall make ribbed, knee high (golf) cuffed socks). [1] Navy blue is a default, but there is a rainbow of colours out there if you want to add some dash to the look.
This is standard dress in Bermuda: OK, the national dress. This look will certainly get you attention if you are not in Bermuda or at a Bermuda function. The bottom line is that this is the look for you if you want to stand out from the crowd and bring some Bermudian charm to your life.
Note:
[1] Vagden, which are sold by the The Great Canadian Sox Company, makes the socks sold by the English Sport Shop. Glendale make very substantial socks.
Solyndra has become known as a boondoggle in the US. If you haven’t heard, it’s the solar power company that got $500 million in Recovery Act loans from the Department of Energy and then went belly up a couple of weeks ago.
Conservatives have been trying to paint this as a big scandal of some kind, despite the fact that: the company had plenty of private investors too, it’s the only DOE loan that has failed so far, and there’s no real evidence that anyone in the White House did anything worse than push OMB to speed up their decision-making process a bit in 2009.
It’s often claimed that the Solyndra loan guarantee was “rushed through” by the Obama Administration for political reasons. In fact, the Solyndra loan guarantee was a multi-year process that the Bush Administration launched in 2007.
You’d never know from the media coverage that:
The Bush team tried to conditionally approve the Solyndra loan just before President Obama took office.
The company’s backers included private investors who had diverse political interests.
The loan comprises just 1.3% of DOE’s overall loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.
The loan guarantee has been attacked as being political in nature because one of the Solyndra investors, Argonaut Venture Capital, is funded by George Kaiser, a man who donated money to the Obama campaign. What critics don’t mention is that one of the earliest and largest investors, Madrone Capital Partners, is funded by the family that started Wal-Mart, the Waltons and the Waltons have donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates over the years.
Climate Progress is publishing this timeline, verified by Department of Energy officials, that shows how the loan guarantee came together under both administrations to set the record straight. In fact, rather than rushing the loan for Solyndra through, the Obama Administration restructured the original Bush-era deal to further protect the taxpayers’ investment:
May 2005: Just as a global silicon shortage begins driving up prices of solar photovoltaics [PV], Solyndra is founded to provide a cost-competitive alternative to silicon-based panels.
July 2005: The Bush Administration signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law, creating the 1703 loan guarantee program.
February 2006 – October 2006: In February, Solyndra raises its first round of venture financing worth $10.6 million from CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. In October, Argonaut Venture Capital, an investment arm of George Kaiser, invests $17 million into Solyndra. Madrone Capital Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family, invests $7 million. Those investments are part of a $78.2 million fund.
Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush Administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.
October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”
November 2008: Silicon prices remain very high on the spot market, making non-silicon based thin film technologies like Solyndra’s very attractive to investors. Solyndra also benefits from having very low installation costs. The company raises $144 million from ten different venture investors, including the Walton-family run Madrone Capital Partners. This brings total private investment to more than $450 million to date.
January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE “without prejudice” because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.
March 2009: The same credit committee approves the strengthened loan application. The deal passes on to DOE’s credit review board. Career staff (not political appointees) within the DOE issue a conditional commitment setting out terms for a guarantee.
June 2009: As more silicon production facilities come online while demand for PV wavers due to the economic slowdown, silicon prices start to drop. Meanwhile, the Chinese begin rapidly scaling domestic manufacturing and set a path toward dramatic, unforeseen cost reductions in PV. Between June of 2009 and August of 2011, PV prices drop more than 50%.
September 2009: Solyndra raises an additional $219 million. Shortly after, the DOE closes a $535 million loan guarantee after six months of due diligence. This is the first loan guarantee issued under the 1703 program. From application to closing, the process took three years – not the 41 days that is sometimes reported. OMB did raise some concerns in August not about the loan itself but how the loan should be “scored.” OMB testified Wednesday that they were comfortable with the final scoring.
January – June 2010: As the price of conventional silicon-based PV continues to fall due to low silicon prices and a glut of solar modules, investors and analysts start questioning Solyndra’s ability to compete in the marketplace. Despite pulling its IPO (as dozens of companies did in 2010), Solyndra raises an additional $175 million from investors.
November 2010: Solyndra closes an older manufacturing facility and concentrates operations at Fab 2, the plant funded by the $535 million loan guarantee. The Fab 2 plant is completed that same month — on time and on budget — employing around 3,000 construction workers during the build-out, just as the DOE projected.
February 2011: Due to a liquidity crisis, investors provide $75 million to help restructure the loan guarantee. The DOE rightly assumed it was better to give Solyndra a fighting chance rather than liquidate the company – which was a going concern – for market value, which would have guaranteed significant losses.
March 2011: Republican Representatives complain that DOE funds are not being spent quickly enough.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI): “despite the Administration’s urgency and haste to pass the bill [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] … billions of dollars have yet to be spent.”
And House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL): “The whole point of the Democrat’s stimulus bill was to spend billions of dollars … most of the money still hasn’t been spent.”
June 2011: Average selling prices for solar modules drop to $1.50 a watt and continue on a pathway to $1 a watt. Solyndra says it has cut costs by 50%, but analysts worry how the company will compete with the dramatic changes in conventional PV.
September 2011: Solyndra closes its manufacturing facility, lays off 1,100 workers and files for bankruptcy. The news is touted as a failure of the Obama Administration and the loan guarantee office. However, as of September 12, the DOE loan programs office closed or issued conditional commitments of $37.8 billion to projects around the country. The $535 million loan is only 1.3% of DOE’s loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.
Meanwhile, after complaining about stimulus funds moving too slowly, Congressmen Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns are now claiming that the Administration was pushing funds out the door too quickly: “In the rush to get stimulus cash out the door, despite repeated claims by the Administration to the contrary, some bets were bad from the beginning.”
What critics fail to mention is that the Solyndra deal is more than three years old, started under the Bush Administration, which tried to conditionally approve the loan right before Obama took office. Rather than “pushing funds out the door too quickly,” the Obama Administration restructured the original loan when it came into office to further protect the taxpayers’ investment.
What actually happened, how it could have been prevented and who’s responsible, are these things are orthogonal to the battle taking place in political circles. That battle has nothing to do with the facts.
For a mix of financial and ideological reasons, U.S. conservative movement activists, operators, and politicos hate clean energy. They don’t believe in climate change, they love fossil fuels and fossil-fuel campaign donations, and they think, or want the U.S. public to think, that clean energy is weak, unreliable, marginal, and dependent on government subsidies. They have been trying to make that case for a long while.
What Solyndra gives them is a symbol, something to use as a stand-in to discredit not just the DOE loan program, but all government support for clean energy and indeed clean energy itself.
Cons understand post-truth politics. They understand that truth is utterly inert in an era when mainstream institutions are viewed with hostility and skepticism, the media is fractured, and there are no shared norms or referees to enforce them. The side that wins is the side that plays to its audience’s existing preconceptions with a simple message repeated over and over and over again in multiple venues.
That’s what is happening now around Solyndra. The right is going after this whole hog, trying to make the name synonymous with clean energy boondoggle. And the left is flailing around, throwing out this fact and that fact with no coherent message. Additionally, the right pretty much has a lock on the US media so that the message that this was yet another Obama and environmentalist failure is repeated over and over.
That works with the Low Information Voters who believe that global warming is a hoax, or in some way a disputed theory. Unfortunately, they are the people who need to be reached with better information rather than fed more of the corporatocratic propaganda.
Tired of the astroturf, corporatocracy apologists? Do you believe in peace, economic justice, human rights and a healthy environment? Then clear your calendar for the 6th, the 7th, the 8th…however long it takes for the Obama Administration to yield to key progressive demands, including immediate withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the other wars. Participants are being asked to sign a pledge to attend at http://october2011.org.
Join together in Washington, D.C., beginning on Oct. 6, 2011.
October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.
That goofy Conwell Alliance vid with all the talk of “the Green Dragon” is making me thirsty–especially since my fav pub when I was young was called “the Green Dragon”. The place had super music!
Anyway, I decided to google up the old haunt, but it has changed owners and names.
Since I realised I am a “green” prior to Christmas, I can say the views presented by the “Christian” conservative groups is total rubbish. Environmentalism is in no way a religion. For that matter, they aren’t Christians either, but that’s a lot of other posts.
The above video was put out by the Cornwall Alliance. The real fear is that true Christians are beginning to wake up to the facts of the Green Movement. The Conwall Alliance has deep ties to the oil industry and the climate science denial machine. The ultimate source of money for many of these groups comes from a few main sources: the Scaife foundations (Carthage, Sarah Scaife, Scaife Family), the Bradley foundation, and the Koch foundations (Charles Koch, David Koch, and Claude R.Lambe). These often fund in apparent coordination with ExxonMobil. Such foundations specialize in providing seed money for what later go on to become self-supporting propaganda operations, that raise money to support themselves as “non-profits” often, or sometimes as outright for profit astroturf businesses.
And I have to agree with Mojo that “Of course, if the environmental movement was actually as strong as the Christian right seems to think it is, we would have quite different politics on this issue.”
And they’d be building their homes on toxic waste sites if we were wrong.
Anyway, I’m glad these people are scared of the truth.
I just received a message from The Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales asking for money. The Centre has been around since 1974 and I’d like to say its the oldest centre for information about green technology. If it’s not the oldest, it is one of the oldest centres, which makes me want to help pass around the hat. Thousands of people visit the Centre from around the world since it was founded. There is quite a difference between the Centre and Doncaster’s Earth Centre was founded in 1999, but went bankrupt in 2004 due to a poor business plan (The Earth Centre was used in the remake of the Survivors and now houses an airsoft centre).
The problem is that environmental issues are slipping down in their importance for the international agenda. The issues of climate change, environmental justice and biodiversity loss are loosing momentum. In Britain we watch with dismay as one environmental public body after another closes. The international climate change negotiations in Mexico in December are shakey. And all the while, across the world, people are suffering the effects of climate change, their homes destroyed and their voices drowned out. The Centre can can adjust and diversify for the long term, but in the short term it faces the looming threat of job losses and shrinking departments, just when the message of sustainability is needed more than ever.
It would be a shame to see the Centre go the way of the Doncaster Earth Centre. So, please consider giving:
There is a sort of smugness that comes from living a green lifestyle, but these are the people who go the extra 10 (100?) kilometres toward “reducing their carbon footprint“. Somehow, they manage to make you feel like you are living an environmentally unfriendly lifestyle because you:
* Don’t go on holiday via astral projection (reducing your Carbon Footprint by not driving a car or, even worse, flying) * boil the water in the electric kettle more than once (these people even have solar powered kettles). * have any non-compact florescent bulbs in your house * your form of transportation has any connection to fossil fuels or electricity (even if it’s electric or a bicycle–rubber on the tyres) * you throw anything into the trash and it isn’t reused in some way. * the food you ate required any energy to raise, transport, or what have you (you should photsyntesise instead of eat). * Don’t get your power from people on bicycles * Even have a carbon footprint for that matter
I think you get the picture.
BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory had an episode that was along this line called The Human Power Station. In this episode they powered a house for an entire day solely through human pedal power: while the unsuspecting family inside went about their normal Sunday routine. The clip below shows what happened when the father used an ELECTRIC SHOWER: malus malorum!
This programme rubbed in how wasteful our lifestyle is (yes, you who double boil that water!) by roasting a chicken with two 60 watt bulbs. Of course, watching 80 people pedal all day to power a house makes the point of how much energy we use. We don’t realise how much literal power is needed to push our appliances. Bang did do this in a manner that was entertaining even if it did make you feel guilty for the incandescent bulbs in the fridge and cooker (do they have compact florescent bulbs (CFLs) for those yet?).
You might be able to download this episode here and it does make for fascinating viewing. Although, there were points when I wanted to roast the presenters on a solar cooker because they made me feel guilty for “wasting energy” by merely existing.
Now, I need to find some people willing to power our houses by bicycle.
Let’s start with my carbon footprint. I have no effing idea what exactly the number is! I assume it’s low since Ilive an environmntally friendly lifestyle. It was small when I estimated it.
I no longer have a car. I’d love to say it was due to various green reasons. In reality, I did that after it was broken into in an allegedly secure garage. Although, various other green reasons (convenience of public transportation, cost of running the thing, the fact that I usually walk, and so on) did factor in to the decision.
I recycle so much that my house feels a bit like Alice’s Restaurant where they “didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time”. Well, I have to, but I am recycling all this paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and whatever else can be recycled.
I haven’t flown in ages, preferring trains to planes. High speed trains are the thing anyway!
I am amazed that people can be scammed about Global Warming:
In the climate field, there are a number of issues which are no longer subject to fundamental debate in the community. The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’. The attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion. To the extent that anyone has said that the scientific debate is over, this is what they are referring to. In answer to colloquial questions like “Is anthropogenic warming real?”, the answer is yes with high confidence.
Anyway, it seems that James Hansen, who heads the earth sciences division of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is critical of so-called “cap and trade” plans that would allow industries to continue burning fossil fuel as long as they offset their excesses by purchasing credits that would go to reducing carbon emissions elsewhere. He says that wouldn’t do the trick. What needs to be done is a shift in the sources of energy production from carbon based (coal and petroleum) to renewable sources. “Energy isn’t the problem, carbon is the problem.”
The science behind climate change isn’t a fad and it isn’t new. You might be surprised that it started back with Joseph Fourier. Of course, some people doubt evolution as well: “It’s just a theory”.
This video is super, but you need to watch it all the way through.
Hey, I’ve supported the Centre for Alternative Technology for nearly 30 years! I am sorry thet The Earth Centre in Doncaster is no longer fucntioning as a similar site. The Earth Centre’s most famous bit was that it appeared in the remade version of the BBC television series Survivors (2008 & 2009). I wish that alternative and ecology education centres were much more common.
Anyway, it seems that a lot of people are dragging their feet on the environmental movement because they are being conned by a highly charged right wing media machine. Contrarians employ such rhetorical devices such as arguing that the “science is settled” (what science is ever settled?). They are pushing public policy solutions that ignore the unsettled parts of the science namely all the uncertainties around the scope and net impact of AGW and downplay the tremendous costs and risks associated with such policies and the highly debatable long term benefits of keeping the environmental status quo.
Anyway, I haven’t been too impressed with the US leadership, in particular, Barack Obama. The British government has been slightly better. For some reason, the right wing fringe elements are not as powerful in the UK as they are in the US (Lord Monckton aside. But the whole world needs to get on board here as the future of the planet is at stake.
. There are other branches, around the Island, but the Hamilton store has the best stock. This is the place to get the original Bermuda shorts since they have been making them since 1918. I could do a post on just this store.
Also, their store is not on Front Street (12 Reid Street, which is up Walker Arcade from the English Sport Shop–they are close to each other).
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