Two Words, One Answer.
Trevor Morgan
 Wonderlight $13.98 I really enjoy this CD. We just had Trevor into our church for a live concert and it was great. Definitely an artist worth supporting!  Energy Subsidies: Lessons Learned in Assessing Their Impact and Designing Policy Reforms $65.00 The need to reform energy subsidies was one of the pressing issues highlighted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Many types of subsidy, especially those that encourage the production and use fossil fuel, and other non-renewable forms of energy, are harmful to the environment. They can also have high financial and economic costs, and often bring only few benefits to the people for whom they are intended. Removing, reducing or restructuring such energy subsidies is helpful for the environment and the economy at the same time. Potential social costs in terms of employment in the conventional energy industry or reduced access to energy could be addressed by redirecting the money formerly spent on subsidies to income support, health, environment, education or regional development programmes. Of course, subsidies can have certain positive consequences, particularly where they are aimed at encouraging more-sustainable energy production and use. Temporary support for renewable energy and energy efficient technologies to overcome market barriers, measures to improve poor or rural households' access to modern, commercial forms of energy, for instance, could be positive measures in support of sustainable development. Based on ground-breaking work undertaken by UNEP and the International Energy Agency, this book aims to raise awareness of the actual and potential impacts of energy subsidies and provide guidance to policy-makers on how to design and implement energy subsidy reforms. It provides methodologies for analysing the impact of subsidies and their reform, and reviews experiences with energy subsidies in a number of countries and regions. Drawing on these case studies, it analyses the lessons learned as well as the policy implications, and provides guidance on how to overcome resistance to reform. The book provides an analytical framework which aims to set the scene for the detailed discussion of energy subsidy issues at the country level. It considers how subsidies are defined, how they can be measured, how big they are and how their effects can be assessed. A more detail discussion of methodological approaches to the assessment of the economic, environmental and social effects of subsidies and their reform is contained in the Annex.  The Education of Jaime Sommers $1.99 Warning! Spoilers below! The best and worst thing about THE BIONIC WOMAN so far has been Sarah Corvus. Katee Sackhoff has been so astonishing as the first Bionic Woman that when she is on an episode all I do is sit around waiting for her next appearance. When she is onscreen a good show really does become great. The bad thing about this is that she makes everything else on the show, including the lead character, look rather unexciting in contrast. Because Katee is also a fulltime (and more central) character on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, we knew that inevitably we were going to see less Sarah Corvus as the series progressed. So the question is: how did THE BIONIC WOMAN survive its first episode without the first bionic woman? The answer is . . . pretty well. Some have complained about a lack of charisma in Michelle Ryan, but I have really come to like her. I like her blend of vulnerability and confidence. She radiates someone who needs more than what she has emotionally and otherwise, but is strong enough to do without. Anyway, without having to fight Sarah for onscreen dominance she does remarkably well. She does very well in romantic scenes and there are several in this one. Jordan Bridges guest stars as someone who could be an on and off again romantic interest for Jaime. My guess is that not much will happen simply because her life is a tad too complicated for romance. I mean, if you have to hide the fact that half of you is mechanical and you have only five years to live, how is romance gonna happen? Although in the long run I prefer a series to emphasize serial content rather than self-contained episodes, it was nice to see an entire episode devoted to Jaime on a mission. I absolutely do not want to see the show devolve into an adventure-of-the-week series. On shows like SMALLVILLE, it is the ongoing story that draws fans, not the meteor-freak-of-the-week. So I don't want this to become a rule. But we need to see Jaime on some missions to give Jaime's being an operative a feeling of substance. I did have one complaint about the show on aesthetic grounds. Specifically, the fight scenes near the end. One of the rules of fight scenes or musical scenes is that you need a relatively stable camera in order to make the movement intelligible. I hated some of the dance scenes in CHICAGO because there was vastly too much cutting in some of the musical numbers. Similarly, you needs to keep a fairly fixed camera so that a fight scene will be coherent. But in the climatic fight scene the camera was moving nervously all around. To be frank, I was surprised to see this in a David Eick production. He was one of the producers on HERCULES, which featured several score of extended fight scenes. While I personally found most of the show's fight scenes to be rather dull and silly affairs, there is no question that you could at least tell what was going on. But the scenes here were confusing. It will be interesting to see if they correct this in the future. So, all in all, I think the show weathered their first non-Sarah Corvus episode rather well. But I still look forward to her return. |
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