Yes, I’m enjoying myself…

[Quote:]

The dissenting scientists are cited in the U.S. Senate Minority Report, a document being hailed by lawmakers opposed to legislation needed to slow global climate change. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla initially released the report through the office of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where he is the ranking minority member.In this Senate Minority Report, almost 700 individuals with implied scientific credentials are offered as evidence that measures to address climate change are premature, and that further research is needed. Sen. Inhofe has used this report to support the claim that there is an ever-increasing international groundswell of scientific opposition to the position of approximately 2,000 scientists whose work is the basis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Science Report IPCC released in 2007

[..]

After assessing 687 individuals named as “dissenting scientists” in the January 2009 version of the United States Senate Minority Report, the Center for Inquiry’s Credibility Project found that:

• Slightly fewer than 10 percent could be identified as climate scientists.
• Approximately 15 percent published in the recognizable refereed literature on subjects related to climate science.
• Approximately 80 percent clearly had no refereed publication record on climate science at all.
• Approximately 4 percent appeared to favor the current IPCC-2007 consensus and should not have been on the list.

from 12.135433 degrees North, 68.889870 degrees West:

[Quote:]

Senator Tom Coburn is a physician who until recently still went home to Oklahoma to deliver babies. He believes Congress should weigh the dangers of a nationalized health system much more seriously than it has. In the tradition of someone using a 2×4 to win the attention of a mule, yesterday he successfully pressed the Senate Health Committee to approve his idea of requiring Members of Congress themselves to enroll in whatever “public plan” is passed to compete with private insurance companies.

[Quote:]

A group of respected British children’s authors and illustrators will stop visiting schools from the start of the next academic year, in protest at a new government scheme that requires them to register on a database in case they pose a danger to children.

[..]

“This reinforces the culture of suspicion, fear and mistrust that underlies a great deal of present-day society. It teaches children that they should regard every adult as a potential murderer or rapist.”

[Quote:]

It is hard to know what is most objectionable about the database proposed by a government that seems more and more like a dying wasp, determined to sting one last time before it goes.

In essence, I’m being asked to pay £64 to prove that I am not a paedophile. After 30 years writing books, visiting schools, hospitals, prisons, spreading an enthusiasm for culture and literacy, I find this incredibly insulting.

The UK is insane

[Quote:]

40 years ago, three human beings – with the help of many thousands of others – left our planet on a successful journey to our Moon, setting foot on another world for the first time. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than one day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2 1/2 hours – but they were surely historic hours. Scientific experiments were deployed (at least one still in use today), samples were collected, and photographs were taken to document the entire journey. Collected here are 40 images from that journey four decades ago, when, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin: “In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind”. (40 photos total)

35
After lifting off from the Moon, Eagle approaches the Command Module during rendezvous. Astronaut Michael Collins, who remained on board the Command Module for the entire trip, remembers taking this photograph: “Little by little, they grew closer, steady, as if on rails, and I thought ‘What a beautiful sight,’one that had to be recorded. As I reached for my Hasselblad, suddenly the Earth popped up over the horizon, directly behind Eagle. I could not have staged it any better, but the alignment was not of my doing, just a happy coincidence. I suspect a lot of good photography is like that, some serendipitous happenstance beyond the control of the photographer. But at any rate, as I clicked away, I realized that for the first time, in one frame, appeared three billion earthlings, two explorers, and one moon. The photographer, of course, was discreetly out of view.” (quoted with permission from Apollo Through the Eyes of the Astronauts) (NASA) #

[Quote:]

Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, has been asking his followers to pray for Barack Obama’s death and was given the chance to discuss this with Alan Colmes:

Colmes: …you then said, I asked for whom else are you praying in that fashion and you said President Obama. Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?

Drake: Yes. Are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself on some secret service call or FBI most wanted list. Do you think it’s appropriate to say something like that or even pray for something like that?

Drake: I think it’s appropriate to pray for the will of God. I’m not saying anything, what I’m doing is repeating what God is saying, if that puts me on somebodies list then I’ll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: You would like for the president of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around I am asking God to enforce in imprecatory prayers throughout the scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.

[Transcript via C&L]

You read that right — you see, he’s not PRAYING for Obama to die, he’s just repeating what God told him! So it’s like a game of telephone with a make believe outer-space deity, a crazy person, and the crazy persons disciplies! I’m not saying anything, what I’m doing is repeating what God is saying! And strangely enough, given the chance to backtrack on his statements, he refused and managed (if possible) to sound nuttier than before:

“Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk to God,” Drake told syndicated talk-show host Alan Colmes. “God said it, I didn’t. I was just agreeing with God.”

If there’s one thing Jesus taught, it’s that God wants his followers to openly call for the death of people because they disagree on political issues. That, and don’t eat shrimp.

[Quote:]

London – A new, beautifully-designed line of bottled water – this time not from the melting Alps, nor from faraway, clean-water-deprived Fiji, but rather from the contaminated ground near the site of the 1984 Bhopal catastrophe – scared Dow Chemical’s London management team into hiding today.

What most people believe to be true about the catastrophe that befell the Titanic is only the tip of the iceberg.

[Quote:]

Can You Spot a Lobbyist? Who made up the bulk of the audience when Congress began work on health care reform legislation? Lobbyists, according to this photo ID-crowdsourcing project, part of Dollar Politics, a new NPR investigative series. Bill Moyers shines some sunlight too, with Some Choice Words for ‘The Select Few.’

[Quote:]

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook says Obama can’t be president because he hasn’t proven he was born in the United States. Therefore, he refuses to be deployed to Afghanistan.

[Quote:]

Speaking on the Last Word with Matt Cooper earlier today FF TD Niall Collins trotted out that old canard – “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” – in relation to the new data retention bill. Curiously, when asked if he’d be happy to provide us with his mobile phone bills for the last two years and details of his emails for the last year he claimed not to understand the question and refused to do so.

[..]

Update (14.07.09): The chutzpah of FF TDs knows no bounds. According to today’s Independent, at a recent FF meeting backbenchers opposed being required to use a swipe card to track attendance:

The TDs also resented the idea of a swipe card that would keep track of their comings and goings at Leinster House and prevent claims for expenses from absent members…
TDs and senators believe that a pilot scheme for civil servants where their attendance and hours in work would be monitored by a swipe card system will be used to check up on them. And while most privately acknowledge that a few may abuse their expenses and allowance privileges, they resent the idea of a “Big Brother system of electronic supervision”.

[Samuel Alito, January 11, 2006:]

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who’s been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I’ve known and admire very greatly who’ve had disabilities, and I’ve watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn’t think of what it’s doing — the barriers that it puts up to them.

[Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), in his opening statement on the confirmation hearing on Monday for Judge Sonia Sotomayor:]

I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any President who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.

In my view, such a philosophy is disqualifying.

Guess which hypocrite voted, twice, to confirm Alito?

[Quote:]

The G8 didn’t explain what it meant by “developed countries”, but I’ll assume it was referring to the nations listed in Annex 1 of the Kyoto protocol: those that have promised to limit their greenhouse gases by 2012. (If it meant the OECD nations, the results are very similar.) To keep this simple and consistent, I’ll consider just the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, as listed by US Energy Information Administration. It doesn’t publish figures for Monaco and Lichtenstein, but we can forgive that. The 38 remaining Annex 1 countries produce 15bn tonnes of CO2, or 51% of global emissions. Were they to do as the UK proposes, cutting this total by 80% and offsetting half of it, they would have to buy reductions equal to 20% of the world’s total carbon production. This means that other countries would need to cut 42% of their emissions just to absorb our carbon offsets.

But the G8 has also adopted another of the UK’s targets: a global cut of 50% by 2050. Fifty per cent of world production is 14.6bn tonnes. If the Annex 1 countries reduce their emissions by 80% (including offsets), they will trim global output by 12bn tonnes. The other countries must therefore find further cuts of 2.6bn tonnes. Added to the offsets they’ve sold, this means that their total obligation is 8.6bn tonnes, or 60% of their current emissions.

So here’s the outcome. The rich nations, if they follow the UK’s presumed lead, will cut their carbon pollution by 40%. The poorer nations will cut their carbon pollution by 60%.

[Quote:]

Remember all of this — the $700 billion bank bailout, the AIG scandal, dark and scary threats of imminent global meltdown if there wasn’t full-scale capitulation by the citizenry to the immense transfer of public wealth to the private investment banking sector? Such distant, hazy memories: so many exciting celebrity deaths and riveting celebrity resignations ago. If sequences of events like these don’t cause mass citizen outrage, then it’s hard to imagine what will

Go read the entire thing…

[Quote:]

Knowledge of the Bible is in decline in Britain, with fewer than one in 20 people able to name all Ten Commandments and youngsters viewing the Christian holy book as “old-fashioned”, a survey said.

Time for a rewrite, I guess.

1. no1 b4 me. srsly.

2. dnt wrshp pix/idols

3. no omg’s

4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)

5. pos ok – ur m&d r cool

6. dnt kill ppl

7. :-X only w/ m8

8. dnt steal

9. dnt lie re: bf

10. dnt ogle ur bf’s m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl.
ttyl, JHWH.

[Quote:]

Buchanan: Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.

If you guessed that the CIA plan that was too secret to tell Congress involved assassination teams, you can collect your prize now.

World record for being unaware of the Streisand Effect goes to Guinness

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.

Noel Coward (1899 – 1973)

[Quote:]

A group of European publishers has recently released a declaration of principles, the “Hamburg Declaration,” that amounts to a long-winded rant against the Internet for stealing their news. They want the government to step in and fix the situation by force of law.

Most of the statements in the relatively short declaration, which will surely take its place among thousands of other European declarations on intellectual property and other matters that have come out over the past few years, hinge on the idea that “universal access to news” does not equal “free.” In this respect, the publishers want to maintain the democratic ideal of a “fourth estate” that provides news to an informed citizenry, while simultaneously restricting access to that news to those who can pay for it directly.

What sets this declaration apart from the other Hamburg declarations out there, or from the various Geneva declarations or Berlin declarations, is that this one is intended to give the publishers’ favorite solution to the news-stealing problem, the Automated Content Access Protocol, the force of law.

ACAP is a metadata standard that’s a bit like robots.txt—but on illegal steroids that cause anger management issues and can precipitate bouts of violence and heart problems. The standard aims to dictate how search engines and other aggregators handle a publisher’s content by defining usage rights that third parties are supposed to respect. But because search engines have rejected ACAP in favor of their own news metadata solutions, the publishers are asking the EU to step in and mandate it outright

So… should nobody have reported on their declaration? After all, the declaration was the originating news source and nobody else should have access.

[Quote:]

France’s controversial “three-strikes” internet law is getting another do-over. Originally rejected by the country’s National Assembly, revised then declared unconstitutional, the anti-file sharer bill has yet again been revamped and passed for consideration by the French constitutional court.

The new version of the bill, like its predecessors, is intended to temporarily disconnect individuals from the internet if they are accused of online copyright infringement three times.

I think this is the third time they try this. Do the politicians get disconnected if this law fails again?