Politics

This guy is a right-wing extremist, but damn if I don't love what he's trying to do: http://junkscience.com/ When it comes down to it, in terms of the overall shift in the Earth's radiative imbalance CO2 just doesn't do all that much. And even with an immense international effort (which is trying for what are quickly proving to be unobtainable goals) the predicted outcome is almost negligable. Although Bush's motives for rejecting Kyoto are probably more related to cronyism than science, I consider it a good move. When he claims more research is needed he is telling the honest truth: the problem is not well understood, and won't be until we have reliabl…

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-127boundsanta,0,6076874.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines Neighbors leery after Miami Beach resident hangs a bound and blindfolded Santa News partner NBC 6 Posted December 7 2005, 10:30 AM EST MIAMI BEACH -- In one South Florida community, a man's holiday decorations are causing holiday fear for local children instead of creating holiday cheer, news partner NBC 6 reported Wednesday. Residents called police and complained to the city that a house near West 50th Street and Fifth Avenue had a life-sized, blindfolded Santa Claus doll hanging on a tree with its hands tied and its mouth gagged. Some …

Palestinians hit by sonic boom air raids · UN condemns night noise attacks as indiscriminate · Agencies say they cause trauma and miscarriages Chris McGreal in Gaza Thursday November 3, 2005 The Guardian Israel is deploying a terrifying new tactic against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip by letting loose deafening "sound bombs" that cause widespread fear, induce miscarriages and traumatise children. The removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip opened the way for the military to use air force jets to create dozens of sonic booms by breaking the sound barrier at low altitude, sending shockwaves across the territory, often at night. Palesti…

I swear if I hear one more story about a family being kicked out of their expensive hotel rooms or otherwise "re-victimized" I'm gonna barf up a lung. What have these people been DOING for the last few months, aside from sitting around waiting for handout after handout? One idiot on ABC News last night actually had the hutzpa to stand there in her Residence Inn suite (which I paid for) with her children eating dinner behind her (which I paid for), sporting a closet full of new clothing (which I paid for), and scream into the cameras, "They keep saying that we're going to get some help, but it NEVER COMES!" (sigh) That having been said, I know there are some…

On the occasions this month when I go down to the Village during working hours, I've seen the giant inflatable rat that signals a strike. The grad students at NYU are striking for unionization, and an (undergraduate) friend of mine at NYU has told me that the undergrads are being told "not to cross the picket line." I don't have any strong feelings about the unionization (on one hand, workers have the right to collectively bargain, on the other hand, the students are getting a free education). However, I don't think that undergrads trying to go to class really count as scabs. Crossing a picket line before you've patronized the employer is one thing; but the undergr…

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1368518 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/story?id=1364097 - Stock market at a 4-year high, approaching 11,000 mark - Energy prices down 30% (Gas down from avg $3.07 to $2.15) - Inflation under control - Fed may not raise interest rates again - Consumers spending like crazy - New home starts are somehow STILL up and running (and likely to grow more as we begin to rebuild the gulf coast) - 215,000 new jobs in November, back up from only 5-digit gains in Sept/Oct due to Katrina losses - Average hourly earnings up 3.2% (biggest rise since March 2003) - Overall growth at 4.3% (excellent) - Christmas start considered "…

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200511/NAT20051104b.html

Are there any Marxists here? I'm not a Marxist myself, but my parents were born and lived in Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine. After my father passed away from heart problems in 1996, my family moved to Canada. Unlike a lot of the people I talk to about politics, I have had the chance to reflect on modern attitudes and learn from my mom's first-hand experience. I've learned (both from research and my mom) that there's a lot of stupid and completely false myths about "commie Russia": that everyone gets paid the same income, that government picks your job, that everyone is athiest, that all the people are brainwashed, that technology is primitive. My mom's not a M…

This is one of those stories that just makes you shake your head in wonder over the idiocy of people. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/orl-busgps3005nov30,0,267024.story?coll=sfla-news-florida So, in a nutshell, to their credit, the Education Logistics people aren't complaining about GPS (which is a completely passive system) per se. They're complaining about the system used to report the location of the GPS-equipped bus to the central office. Which is based on radio. So what is it that Education Logistics' system uses to report the location of the bus to the central office? Oh no, it's not that horrible radio -- sounds s…

I thought I'd toss this out and see if I can generate a bit of discussion on the sbject. Every so often, you see proposals to put security cameras up in this or that crime-ridden area or an area which has recently had an increase in crime. And the reaction is almost invariably "OMG WTF 1984!!1!!11!". This puzzles me immensely. If I were a politician, and I said "I'll put a policeman on every corner", I'd be hailed as a heroic crusader against crime (Ok, and also asked how I'd pay for it, but let's leave that out for the moment). But I said "I'll put a camera on every corner", I'd be thrown out of office and called a fascist. But what's the difference, really, …

emergence of economic, technological, military Superpower China is important to understand and think about this is a longterm problem (but with immediate present aspects too) http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/11/china-book-reviews.html books are coming out about this and so the New York Review of Books has articles like this http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18437 " Focus on China is overdue. For the last quarter of a century its economy has been growing by over 9 percent a year, increasing eightfold. However, it is not just this long-sustained hyper-growth rate that amazes and alarms the observer. It is the size of the economy which is growing. China's populat…

Find today's news article here... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4450208.stm It's really quite sad there's a lack of interest in the subject, I'm wondering why this trend has grown over the years.

I just came across this, it`s Crazy! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4697461.stm what`s next? "Oh you didn`t Lose, you were just Winningly Challenged". has the world gone MAD!?

Bill Nelson is an extremely popular Democratic Senator from Florida, and is considered a shoe-in for re-election next fall. Any flack he might have received from liberals over this is likely to ring hollow, considering that his Republican opponent is likely to be Katherine "Hanging Chads" Harris. (chuckle) Yet... for some reason... I don't think this story will get the same amount of attention that the Murtha story got. Gee, I wonder why! http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fnelsonnov24,0,618949.story?coll=sfla-news-florida

That's some mighty shady politicking... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/politics/18cnd-mili.html?hp&ex=1132376400&en=521ea30b567c07c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

From Yahoo! News VANCOUVER, Wash. - Rockfall at Mount St. Helens kicked up a dust plume Tuesday that rose above the rim of the volcano's crater, drawing attention in the region. "It's a nice sunny day and we're having the first couple of rockfalls that we've had in a while that are putting little dust plumes over the crater rim," said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Seth Moran at the agency's Cascade Volcano Observatory here, about 50 miles south of the mountain that erupted to deadly effect in May 1980. Seismic activity has continued at low levels, Moran said. The white plume floating above the peak was raising concerns locally. "When rockfal…

Republicans are pursuing policies that will drastically change the global climate in the next century. (Some of) the Republicans are also the only real proponents of intelligent design. What's interesting is that, according to punctuated equilibrium, we should start seeing greatly speeded-up evolution of species very shortly as development and global warming drastically change these species' habitats. Now that's irony!

Ariel Sharon, prime ministe of Israel is resigning his membership of Likud, the biggest political party in Israel today, for those who don't know, its also a party that's pretty right of center. He's going to form a new party that is supposed to attract many new members (which is important becuase in Israel the Parilment {the Kneset} is given to seats by political party membership and size). The new party is going to be a purely centralist party in every aspect. Sharon is urging to push the election date foward, with the hopes of attaining reelection more easily (this is done by dissolving the present Knesset) What does everybody think? Will these measur…

I tried searching but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for so I posted this..... During class Wednesday, a boy started talking to us about Michael Ross, the murderer who wants to die. He killed like 8 girls and even showed the police where all the bodies were. Two of the girls were only 14 and he told the police that one of them begged for her life. He was judged sane during his trial and knew exactly what he was doing. Anyway, the teacher heard us and decided to probe the class on our feelings toward capital punishment and we discussed it again on Friday. The kids in my class wanted to see him die and so did I, and as I listened, I decided I could look a…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501450_pf.html One of the things that I think is interesting about this is that the left is beside itself in being quick to point out that Hagel sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and therefore he is privy to intelligence information, and therefore his position on the Iraq War is extra valuable. And yet, they also seem adamant in telling us that Bush, and ONLY Bush, is responsible for the Iraq War. Apparently the people sitting on the ICs then, who saw the same intelligence and supported the war, that doesn't count! Oh no, it's all BUSH's fault! (chuckle) Gotta love hypocrisy. …

I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in politics. (I guess that in itself is revealing of the sad state of things.) Anyway, this was an editorial in the Saturday Washington Post. It made me smile. Here it is: IF YOU LIVE BY politics, you can die by politics, too. That's the lesson of the school board vote on Tuesday in Dover, Pa. All eight of the board's Republican incumbents were defeated. And all of the defeated incumbents had supported a policy -- the first in the country -- requiring the teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in ninth-grade biology classes. The board had been sued by a group of parents who argued that intelligent-desi…

A small victory for conservationists? http://ogj.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?Section=ONART&C=GenIn&ARTICLE_ID=241235&p=7

This is truly terrible, or rather, as someone had well put it, "a logistical nightmare". Does anyone else feel like this is a repeat of the bombings that took place in Egypt? Deja-vu? Geez...But at least now, the Jordanians are speaking out and protesting against Al-Qaeda. To say that they're pissed would be an understatement. Ugh. I just hope things don't take a turn to even worse events. What are your thoughts on the situation? I put some article links down here about the situation right now in Jordan in case anyone was interested. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051110/ap_on_re_mi_ea/jordan_explosion_68;_ylt=AvNjhXMBqual7iMC8oCRbH1YU.0A;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYw…

I thought McCain was unusually blatant in his anti-Bush bias. Don't get me wrong -- I was glad to see it. Frankly I'm unhappy with myself that I voted for Bush over McCain in the primaries in 2000. If McCain runs against Hillary in 2008 I'm going to have a seriously hard time making that call. I like the guy a lot.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a conference in Tehran called aptly "A World without Zionism" where he said that a Palestinian uprising would wipe Israel off the map. Should be interesting to see where this leads to. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-1845402,00.html