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Generation X oil and gas industry workers are in danger of burning out due to a combination of increasingly few mid-career professionals working in oil and gas, family commitments and an ever-increasing workload connected to an expanding energy sector, according to a senior member of the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Taking part in the Offshore Europe 2013 conference’s final keynote session, Steve Walker – Head of Strategic Inventions for the HSE’s Energy Division – said: "We [know] there’s not enough of Generation X and yet they are extremely valuable, so I think there's a real danger of the...

The Economist ominously reports: The struggle to digest the swollen generation of ageing baby-boomers threatens to strangle economic growth. As the nature and scale of the problem become clear, a showdown between the generations may be inevitable. The statistics are frightening: The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an...

Born in 1970, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is the first generation X’er to be on a national ticket. Since the 1990’s my fellow generation Xer’s have been an often overlooked group of individuals compared to the older and much larger generation of baby boomers and the World War II generation. We’ve been called slackers, baby busters, cynical, skeptical, angry and indifferent among other descriptions. However, is this really the case now? Forty percent of generation X’ers are from families whose parents divorced. Many became known as “latch key children.” The Bergen County Record reported in 1995: More than...

He's 90 years old and sounds like a tea party member to me!

Meryl Streep is in talks to reteam with her "Mamma Mia!" director Phyllida Lloyd for "Thatcher," a biopic of the controversial and long-governing former British prime minister. Jim Broadbent is in talks to play Margaret Thatcher's husband, Denis, for the pic, which is being produced by Pathe and Film4. The film is set in 1982 and tracks Thatcher as she tries to save her career in the 17 days preceding the 1982 Falklands War. The 2 1/2-month war was a turning point for the prime minister, who, after the victory, saw her approval ratings double and went on to win...

It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness. The Secretary of State’s remarks yesterday in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President Reagan but also by the United States in confronting the Soviet Empire....

Link only, due to Wired's copyright complaints. Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday MachineI'm posting this without any text, because I think it's important. The "Doomsday" machine is apparently real, and still operational. Read the article for more details.

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Area Junior High School Students November 14, 1988 The President. You know, this is a real treat for me -- having you here and to have, in a little while, the chance to answer some of your questions. Let me also offer a special hello to those of you who are watching on C-SPAN and -- or the Instructional Television Network. Thank you for inviting us into your home or your school today. This marks the beginning of American Education Week, and I'm particularly pleased to be talking to American students in this, the first in...

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board is said to be considering removing former president Ronald Reagan’s name from the City’s airport. “National monuments should reflect an accurate picture of a society’s character and core values,” said Board Chairman H.R. Crawford. “Reagan symbolized a kind of ‘cowboy individualism’ that ran counter to the mainstream of American history. His political ascendancy was an aberration, a detour, so to speak, on the nation’s road to greater social consciousness. We shouldn’t be exaggerating that detour by having the City’s airport named after him.” Crawford suggested that “if we have to personalize it, LBJ or...

Compact discs weren't always impromptu drink coasters. Once, in the not-so-distant past, they played music, contained pictures, and let people play video games with tacked-on FMV sequences. And today, the venerable CD turned 30. Happy birthday! 1979-2009.Thirty years. Pretty amazing that it's been that long since those crazy Dutchmen at Philips spun the technology off of laser discs as part of an optical digital audio disc demo in Eindhoven.Of course, the CD didn't immediately take off right then and there. It needed a little help from Sony, which worked with Philips to get the format standardized. The standard they named...

We’re Not Gen-X, We’re Gen-Reagan This is for everyone who was raised to believe that our young lives would soon end in a nuclear war, of mutually assured destruction, quivering under our school desks with President Reagan to thank for making the pink and gray tile on our classroom floors the last thing we would ever see. This is for those of us raised in the post-graduate, post-doctorate suburbs where Volkswagens and Volvos taught us that we “can’t hug our children with nuclear arms” and that “war is not healthy for children and other living things.” This is for the...

A little entertainment for a Friday: Click here for the video.

Obama preached to his flock yesterday and what he said would surprise many people with a little knowledge of history (a class Obama clearly flunked). He said that the Soviet Union collapsed because we negotiated with them.....stop laughing, let me finish.....and that Iran really isn't that big of a threat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew5qP2oPdtQOk, history lesson. The USSR collapsed because their economy collapsed. That collapsed because they tried to keep up with Reagan and the defense build up along with the "star wars" program. Then he goes on to say Iran and the US have common interests? Is he freakin insane? We neither...

The 25 recordings added Wednesday to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress: 1. The first trans-Atlantic broadcast (March 14, 1925) 2. "Allons a Lafayette," Joseph Falcon (1928) 3. "Casta Diva," from Bellini's "Norma"; Rosa Ponselle, accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Giulio Setti. (recorded December 31, 1928, and January 30, 1929) 4. "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again," Thomas A. Dorsey (1934) 5. "Sweet Lorraine," Art Tatum (February 22, 1940) 6. Fibber's Closet Opens for the First Time, "Fibber McGee and Molly" radio program (March 4, 1940) 7. Wings Over Jordan,...

Good evening. This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you. During the past 3 years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the Government, our Nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects...

Twenty years ago this very day, President Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union. On the morning of October 12, 1986, it seemed as if the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were on the brink of sweeping reductions in their nuclear arsenal. President Reagan's refusal to abandon SDI caused the talks to collapse. This locked the Soviets into continuing an arms race that they could not afford, could not win, and could not abandon, dooming their empire to eventual collapse. The results of the SDI program President Reagan refused to abandon could well save our lives from North Korean aggression.

Some Kind of Republican Was John Hughes really in favor of teen rebellion? By Michael Weiss Posted Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006, at 4:36 PM ET As far as adult teen whisperers go, John Hughes has enjoyed a remarkable staying power. Anyone who grew up in the '80s—or just caught the decade on reruns on rainy Saturday-afternoon television—can probably remember high school as much for its unique misery as for the Breakfast Club references it evokes. Hughes was in his 30s when he became successful, and he managed to make teen cinema intentionally funny and less condescending toward its core audience,...

-snip- Liberals pretend the Reagan years--in contrast to the Bush years--were a golden idyll of collaboration between congressional Democrats and a not-so-conservative president. When Reagan died in 2004, John Kerry recalled having admired his political skills and liked him personally. "I had quite a few meetings with him," Mr. Kerry told reporters. "I met with Reagan a lot more than I've met with this president." -snip-

"Conservatism youth" was once considered an oxymoron. The British Social Attitudes Survey published in 2004 demonstrated that young Brits born around the time of Margaret Thatcher's conservative term as prime minister are personally conservative. They side with their parents on many issues, causing the Guardian to declare that "the age of teenage rebellion is over" in its Dec. 7, 2004, issue. The British press calls them "Thatcher's Children." "Thatcher's Children" was coined to describe England's economically conservative young people. The Adam Smith Institute polled British youth that were between the ages of 16 and 21 at the turn of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Don't let his age fool you. The youngest member of Congress says he thinks he has Capitol Hill all figured out, though he's been on the job only 10 months. "This place is a much more sophisticated junior high school," 30-year-old Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said recently in an interview. "There are the nice guys that everybody likes, the jocks, the geeks, the bullies - they're all here. It's a representative democracy." It's easy to imagine where McHenry fits in this analogy. The freshman lawmaker, whose birthday was Saturday, would be the kid brother, the one eager...