Nineoverpar

Ok, this is really amazing.  Here is a graph that shows the increase in carbon emissions from the entire world, those countries that signed Kyoto, the countries that didn't sign and then just the US.  Hmmm. . . how can that be?  . . . Oh, now I remember. . . Its because they don't really care about cutting emissions.

Source: http://www.pacificresearch.org/docLib/20080401_08_Enviro_Index.pdf 

One thing I’ve always found annoying is the fact that “press releases” or articles on global warming largely ignore any of the positive effect of global warming and only focus on the worst case scenario (fire and brimstone falling from the sky) scenarios.  While those worst case scenarios warrant attention, focusing on them exclusively exposes bias.  Why not look at the whole picture?  Because the good news doesn’t match the “sky is falling” template which captures a reader’s attention.  Come on, tell the truth.  Which of these headlines would you be more likely to read:

•  Arctic resists warming
• Migratory animals most at risk from warming: U.N.
• Global warming destroys Africa 

What about those parts of the world that benefit from global warming.  Note that in the first story it mentions the fact that the slight warming of the arctic is actually good for certain species (and harmful to others), but you certainly don’t see anything like that in the other stories.  Nope. . . GW is nothing but bad news for the world. . . and it’s all Bush and the republican’s fault. J

Experts Revise Theory on Origin of Garden Gnomes

 Just saw this interesting news story about how an election has thrown the middle-east into disarray.  An interesting quote:

The militant al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Fatah, issued a statement threatening to "liquidate" the faction's leaders if they changed their minds and joined a Hamas-led administration.

So the military wing of Fatah is threatening to kill their leaders if they don't get their inflexible way. Hmmm. . .

Hamas, Fatah Battle over Election News

 Check the bottom item in today's "Best of the Web at OpinionJournal.com:

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

Eeeeeeeewwwwwwww. . .

 Just saw this interesting post about an analysis of the liberal psyche.   It seems to hold true today when you think of the anti-war crowd and the "anything Bush is for, I'm against" crowd. 

Dr. Helen: Liberalism as Socially Motivated Cognition

 

Research on the psychology of radical activists helps us to understand this mismatch between Chomsky's ideas and his personal style. In the 1970s, Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter administered Thematic Apperception Tests to a large sample of "new left" radicals (Roots of Radicalism, 1982). They found that activists were characterized by weakened self-esteem, injured narcissism and paranoid tendencies. They were preoccupied with power and attracted to radical ideologies that offered clear and unambiguous answers to their questions. All of these traits can be found in the work of Chomsky and other anti-imperialist intellectuals.

After reading the article, I think we have a new type of  poitical operative:  the Reactionary power-hungry paranoid narcisists.  Or you can use the short version. . . liberal weenie

 Here is an interesting story analyzing the lead-up to the riots in France and elsewhere in Europe.  You can't accept fire into your heart without getting burned.  This does bring up the point that the vitriolic and hateful rhetoric on the left may have consequences down the line.

Intifada a la francaise

 

In June, 2004, a huge demonstration was staged in Paris to protest the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a brief visit to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Posters depicted Bush as the world's worst terrorist. By my first-hand observation, roughly one-third of the marchers came from hard-left parties and organizations: communists, socialists and ecologists, labour unions and wilted flower people. Another third were militant Muslims, many of them with checkered kaffiyehs. The other third were raunchy nihilists high on drugs and beer, marching with pitbulls and Rottweilers, calling for death and destruction. They painted graffiti on lowered store shutters and bus stop shelters, promising "a Paris comme a Falluja la guerilla vaincra" (In Paris as in Falluja, guerrilla warfare will triumph).

The same media that are now tallying up the number of cars torched and lecturing Sarkozy on the virtues of tolerance didn't seem much put out by such displays. The hard words were aimed at Bush, after all -- so the hatred expressed was seen as unremarkable, even admirable.

In the same way, much of France ignored the cries of "death to the Jews" that went up in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that began in 2000, and which eventually blended in with the anti-war demonstrations of 2003. Incendiary, sometimes bloodthirsty slogans against Israel and the United States became commonplace.

For five years, resentful French Muslims have been fed a steady diet of romanticized violence -- jihad-intifada in Israel, jihad-insurgency in Iraq, jihad-insurgency in Afghanistan. When they started firebombing synagogues and beating up Jews in the fall of 2000, the media dutifully reported that these thugs were products of the "frustration" felt in regard to the treatments of Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia. France's own government was full of hectoring words for the Americans, after all. The protesters were very much on message.

 

 So, if you want to know what I'm working on lately, here it is.  Below is a post I put on the MSN Homepage Blog.  We're live and we're ready!

MSN.com BETA is Live!!

Its live!  We've now got the new page live with all our services hooked up.  Go take a look at the link below.  We are still working through a few minor issues before we start sending real traffic to this page, but all in all it looks pretty good.

MSN.com BETA

Here are a couple of the things you will see with this page:

• Collapse and expand modules for content you do or don't like
• Add modules for additional functionality (more coming soon)
• Change to one of 5 themes
• Personalize with your location
• Add stocks
• View your mail in the page (including deleting mail from the page)
• Select an edition of the slideshow that matches your interests

Currently, we've optimized this for the majority of our users which run IE on XP, and haven't completed work for alternate and downlevel browsers.  We're working on support for all major browsers, so stay tuned.

We've also dramatically reducted the number of ads on the page.  WHEW! (been working on that one for a while)

We're also using AJAX quite extensively, so you'll see the page load and data pop in after the page is usable.

We'd love to hear from you about what you think.  Ad a comment or give us a trackback.  Tell us what you like and what you don't.  We're interested in hearing your opinions.

Thanks,

Kerry D. Woolsey,

MSN Portals PM

 

PS.  This is the "butterscotch" theme