Other news reported by CNN:

• Water is wet
• The Pope is Catholic
• Bears shit in the woods

Container ship deliveries to hit record in July

Deliveries of new containerships will hit a record monthly high of 200,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in July, extending a year long influx of capacity that may stall the recent rise in ocean freight rates, a leading analyst said.

The previous record was set in April 2008 when deliveries totaled 156,000 TEUs, according to Alphaliner, the Paris-based container shipping research consultancy. The surge in new vessels hitting the market in July follows on deliveries totaling 747,000 TEUs in the first half of the year. This will take deliveries for the first seven months to 950,000 TEUs, or 7.3% of the current fleet, according to figures released by Alphaliner.

The new deliveries include a number of ships which had already been completed in 2009, but were mothballed at shipyards. Alphaliner estimates deliveries will reach 1.45 million TEUs in 2010, with slippage and cancellations limited to only a small part of the container ship order book. This represents 11.1% of the world fleet at the beginning of January 2010. The record July deliveries will include at least eight vessels of over 10,000 TEUs, compared to only seven similar sized ships delivered in the first six months of the year.

At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information.

Something typical Fox “News” viewers should consider….

If you don’t know this, you need to know this one thing: The Secretary of State in Missouri is the most anti-life, most obstructionist, most unpleasant, and one of the smartest people in public life in America right now.

She is very, very devious. She does — with a, with a clever hand — she does the devil’s work [inaudible]. It is easy when you see someone who is a terribly unpleasant, you know, nasty, hateful person, you say, “Well the devil’s got a hold of that person.”

This woman, the devil, she’s figured out how to really damage our efforts to do amendments to the Constitution, to do initiatives for other conservative, good government things. I mean, she will, she does everything for one thing in mind: politics of the left, and her own advancement.

And Robin Carnahan, you haven’t heard the last of her, I assure you. She’s going to be running for the United States Senate. And, you know, it’s an amazing thing. But, we have sued her. And have put her on the spot. We’ve litigated against her. Some of it, to be candid, is nuisance. We’re sort of tussled with her to try to keep her honest. To be candid, it doesn’t work on her. Because she doesn’t need to be honest, doesn’t want to be honest. But we’ve done it.

Ed Martin (R- MO), Fired Up! Missouri

1. Someone needs to tell Ed Martin that it’s th 21st century, not the 13th.
2. It says something about Ed Martin that he thinks being “one of the smartest people in public life in America” should be a liability.

Mærsk reactivates laid up container vessels

A.P. Møller-Mærsk has reactivated all six container carriers that have been laid up in Scottish Loch Striven for more than a year. The rates for container transportation have increased and there is now a huge demand for container carriers. Five of the laid up units are B-class vessels, this type is capable of a service speed of 30 knots. The units have now been deployed in various services in the Maersk Line network between the Far East and Europe. The B-class vessels are the Maersk Baltimore, the Maersk Boston, the Maersk Bentonville, the Maersk Brooklyn and the Maersk Beaumont. The latter is one of the three units sold earlier this year to Nordea Sweden and registered in the Swedish ship registry. The sixth container ship carrier laid up in Loch Striven was the Sea-Land Performance, which has now been re-flagged to the Marshall Islands. The vessel will be recycled at the Jiangyin recycling plant in China.

Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life

We, at the World Atheist Conference: “Gods and Politics”, held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:

• We recognize the unlimited right to freedom of conscience, religion and belief, and that freedom to practice one’s religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.
• We submit that public policy should be informed by evidence and reason, not by dogma.
• We assert the need for a society based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. History has shown that the most successful societies are the most secular.
• We assert that the only equitable system of government in a democratic society is based on secularism: state neutrality in matters of religion or belief, favoring none and discriminating against none.
• We assert that private conduct, which respects the rights of others should not be the subject of legal sanction or government concern.
• We affirm the right of believers and non-believers alike to participate in public life and their right to equality of treatment in the democratic process.
• We affirm the right to freedom of expression for all, subject to limitations only as prescribed in international law – laws which all governments should respect and enforce. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion or nonreligious life stances.
• We assert the principle of one law for all, with no special treatment for minority communities, and no jurisdiction for religious courts for the settlement of civil matters or family disputes.
• We reject all discrimination in employment (other than for religious leaders) and the provision of social services on the grounds of race, religion or belief, gender, class, caste or sexual orientation.
• We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status and state grants for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers and those of other faiths. We oppose state funding for faith schools.
• We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge, and in the diversity of religious beliefs. We support the spirit of free inquiry and the teaching of science free from religious interference, and are opposed to indoctrination, religious or otherwise.

Adopted by the conference, Copenhagen, 20 June 2010.

Please circulate this as widely as you can among people and groups who advocate a secular society.

There’s a bit of irony in that religions tend to thrive in a secular society…

Lakes Iron Ore Trade Up 106% in May

Iron ore shipments on the Great Lakes totaled 6.3 million net tons in May, an increase of 16.4% over April, and an increase of 106% compared to a year ago. Shipments were also up 4.6% compared to the month’s five-year average. May loadings at U.S. ports increased 118% compared to a year ago. Shipments from Canadian ports rose 38%.

Year-to-date the Lakes ore trade stands at 15.8 million net tons, an increase of 140% compared to the same point last year. The end-of-May total is also within striking distance of the five-year average for the January-May timeframe. Shipments from U.S. ports are up 162% compared to a year ago. Loadings at Canadian ports are 32% ahead of last year’s pace.

Senator Al Franken Addresses 2010 ACS National Convention (transcript here)

Evergreen plans to purchase 100 new cargo ships amid recovery

Taipei, June 2 (CNA) The chairman of the Evergreen Group, a Taiwan-based shipping conglomerate, has confirmed that its maritime shipping unit will order 100 new ships to modernize its fleet amid the global economic recovery.

“It will take at least 10 years to have the 100 boats built, but the first will be delivered in 2013, ” said Evergreen Group Chairman Chang Yung-fa in an interview with the Chinese-language United Daily News published Wednesday.

Chang said Evergreen Marine Corp., Asia’s second largest container line, hopes to order 32 container ships this year with a capacity of 8,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) each.

The company is thinking of purchasing 10 of the vessels from South Korea and another 12 from Taiwan’s CSBC Corp., Chang said, but their prices have yet to be finalized. The remaining ships may be ordered from either Korean or Japanese shipyards.

The report said that at Chang’s insistence, the new ships will be environmentally friendly and not cost more than US$10,000 per TEU.

The plan, regarded as the world’s largest order for new boats, has drawn the attention of all major shipbuilders, test centers and equipment suppliers around the world, the report said.

Bloomberg News reported last month, when Chang first announced the new order plan, that Evergreen Marine is the only shipping line among the world’s 20 biggest without any new ships on order.