I was reminded that today is the anniversary of John Wayne’s passing. Denise over at the Ten Ring has a nice little post up regarding her feelings.I would have liked to find a little Sgt. Stryker to post for you. Instead a little movie magic in a Coors commercial.

And in case you missed it earlier, go take a look at this post of mine.

We miss you Duke.

Hey there is a new contest going on.  Pretty cool one.  Go check it out here.  Take a look and vote for your favorite blogger.  I didn’t make the list (no surprise there).  Maybe I’ll get the lucky voter win.

Go vote.

Ok time for a general rant here.  This caught my eye this morning and there are just so many things that drive me nuts in these few sentances.

Children Shot by Stray Bullets While Playing in Baby Pool

BALTIMORE —  Police say two small children were injured Monday after being struck by stray bullets from a nearby shooting while wading in a baby pool in West Baltimore, WBAL-TV reported.

Neighbors told WBAL-TV that the toddlers were playing in the wading pool outside an apartment at about 10 p.m. when they were hit.

The children, ages 2 and 3, were taken to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. The injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, police said

One child was shot in the torso and the other in the leg, according to authorities. Police have made no arrests.

Witnesses told WBAL-TV that the shooting was up the street, away from where the children were playing, and that as many as 11 shots were fired.

1.  Let’s start with “Shot by stray bullets…”.  You might be struck by stray bullets but shot?  Shooting is a deliberate aimed action.  Very misleading.  Ok, that is an understatement.  How about… Who the FRACK came up with this frelling headline.  It is bogus and antagonistic.

2.  A 2 and 3 year old outside playing at 2200?  WTF?  Where are the parents?  Who let’s their three year old stay up that late?  How does a 3 year old stay up that late?  My 3 yr old is snoozing my 2030 and that is if I keep her awake that long.  Come on folks 3 yr olds need like 12 hrs of sleep everyday, and they should not be raised to be nocturnal.

3.  Who the FRACK let’s their kids play outside during a gun fight even if it is up the block.

4.  “One child was shot in the torso…”  Come on, the child was struck by a ricochet, or wild round there was no aiming involved.  While it is not stated here, my guess would be that the strike was either glancing, non-penetrating or shallow penetrating.

There are just so many things that are wrong with this story and the way that it is reported it drives me nuts.  This is a fantastic illustration of what a significant portion of our society has become.  From the shallow editorialized reporting, to the interesting parenting approach that is reported, not to mention the gun fight through the street.  How do we adjust this nation’s core values?

Did you know that, the United States has vast oil and gas resources onshore and offshore that are currently illegal to develop and therefore inaccessible. U.S. law prohibits the development of approximately 38 billion barrels of undeveloped oil resources (19 billion barrels onshore and 18.92 billion offshore).

U.S. law prohibits the development of approximately 180 trillion cubic feet of undeveloped natural gas resources (94.5 trillion cubic feet onshore and 85.7 trillion cubic feet offshore).

I don’t know but it seems to me that these resources would go along way to providing us with the time necessary to develop and stabilize commercially viable alternative energy sources.  Whether that be hydrogen, tidal, geothermal, wind, nuclear, solar, or other.

BTW, even though I have done some work in the ethanol industry I think it is pretty clear that using food for fuel is not really a viable alternative.

Over at Flopping Aces, the team has a nice summary of the current energy (Gasoline) situation.  I cannot find fault with any of their points.  If this country had taken action at any point in the last 8-10 years we would not be in our current situation.  I have been saying this to anyone that will listen for the last 4 or 5 years.

Face it, there are a lot of new approaches to the way that we use petroleum, and petroleum products.  It is a finite resource, and a lot of treasure is being spent to find alternatives.  It will take a significant amount of time for those alternatives to be commercially viable, meet government safety standards, and then have the infrastructure built to service them.  Take hydrogen as an example.  Huge potential, tough to make commercially viable.  Right now it takes more energy to produce Hydrogen than it produces (at lot like ethanol).  Once the technology to use Hydrogen is incorporated into available vehicles, it has to be produced.  New “refineries” will be necessary to produce the fuel.  Then all the gasoline terminals will need to either be switched over to Hydrogen or new terminals constructed.  Tanker trucks will need to be designed and produced to distribute the fuel from the terminals to the newly designed and built fuel stations.  Then consumers will need to be trained to use the fueling stations.  Alternatively you could look at liquid hydrogen pipelines from the production facility to storage to retail fueling stations.   I don’t know about you but, I would be a bit aprehensive of a hydrogen pipeline running beneath the streets in my neighborhood, although as a culture we seem to be pretty comfortable with NG pipelines so maybe I am over reacting.

In any case go read this post at flopping aces.  Here is a quick taste…

A study by the Rand Corporation estimates the sedimentary rock in the corner where Utah borders Colorado and Wyoming holds about 800 billion barrels. That’s three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.

Go read the rest.

Ok a little background since the clip leaves it out… The two folks in the video don’t know each other, they were pulled from the audience at random to support this skit.