Hitting The Ton.

Conditions: Stupidly Cold.


Spokeman.


Most of the time, the President speaks through his white house press secretary. He's (or she's) the one who is up there in front of the ravenous reporters, fielding questions as best he can while trying not to sweat. Over the course of the Bush administration, a number of press secretaries have come and gone (itself an interesting fact). But the one we're concerned with today is former press secretary Scott McClellan, the spokesman at the beginning of the Iraq war years. See, at the time he'd go on about how the Iraqis want freedom, and the President wants to give it to them, and no evil dictator (threatening both his own people and America from his hidden bunkers and laboratories) is going to stop the righteous march of peace and democracy. Anyway, he was regarded as a professional, he took on the mantle of the presidents spokesman, and was the cause of much grief and incredulity during his reign. Now those days are long past, and it seems Mr McClellan wants to make some money from his years of being close to the president. So he's written a book, a book in that where:

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be "badly misguided."

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them -- and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.
[...]

The Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed" _ a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," McClellan writes.
[...]

McClellan called the Iraq war a "serious strategic blunder," a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

"The Iraq war was not necessary," he concludes. "Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake."

McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be "badly misguided." But he says he was sincere at the time.
- Huffpost.com

ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz... humph? What? Huh? Oh, yeah, former press secretary admits to shit we already knew. Well, colour me surprised. But here's the bit that actually pisses me off:

"I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be," McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them "complicit enablers" in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war.
Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

"A more self-confident executive would be willing to acknowledge failure, to trust people's ability to forgive those who seek redemption for mistakes and show a readiness to change," he writes.

- Huffpost.com

Ok, what? You know, it's not like I really believed all the gold-plated crap the white house served up as it inexorably maneuvered itself into war with Iraq. And at the time I fair argued myself hoarse trying to get people to see the stupidity of it. But to sit here, some five years down the track and have the puppet himself admit that he was jerking us around, and that furthermore that it's everyone's fault and we should all feel bad and buy his book really chokes my donkey. If there was any justice in this world, Scott McClellan would spend the next 100 years being forced to eat shredded transcripts of the crap he dealt out, and is now sorry for.

Hey Scott, I'm sure the dead forgive you.

More:
- Rove responds.

- Alternet article

-What was he thinking?




Pissing Money Uphill.

Apparently the direct costs of the Iraq war so far in terms of money is $523 billion dollars. Which is a lot. But the calculated costs (including things like economic losses and long term health issues) run to three trillion dollars. Like, whoa. What could a bright country like America have done with that kind of scratch? Here's an idea:

Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs cost roughly $2Bn a pop and have a net output of 1117Mw (1.12Gw). For $513Bn we could probably negotiate a bulk discount of, say, 20%, in which case we're good for 320 reactors, or about 375Gw of output. Our entire planetary civilization consumes about 16Tw, but the USA accounts for about 40% of that, so we could buy, outright, the equivalent of 6% of the US's energy budget. But this stuff pays for itself (it's producing electricity, a fungible commodity) and in actual fact, 50% of the USA's energy budget is coal, burned for juice. So we could cut 12% of the USA's coal-sourced carbon emissions, enabling the USA to not only meet but exceed the Kyoto protocol requirements using a single, fiendishly expensive gambit (and treating it not as capital investment but as expenditure).

- antipope.org

There's also ideas like eliminating disease from all third world countries, or building and manning a colony on Mars, or just giving each family in Iraq a couple of million dollars each (what would that have done for hearts and minds?). But in all this idle speculation there's an important point to remember. See, we didn't actually piss the money away, it was simply funneled into the various corporations that supplied the equipment and logistics needed to invade the country. So all that potential didn't disappear, it just went into the corporate accounting system, into the fat cat's personal holdings, into the boardrooms and the darkrooms of the true men of power, never to be heard from again.



Game Over.

For a very long time, cinemas have been fighting a war against pirates, in where people try to film the movie with a handy cam, then upload the thing onto the internet, and the theater owners and studios try to stop them, with the part of innocent-villagers-caught-in-the-crossfire being played by us. And the latest report comes from Adrian McCarthy, somewhere in America:

While at the cinema yesterday, I read a notice posted by the box office that Paramount has intentionally silenced bits of the soundtrack of _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ in order to deter and track piracy. The notice acknowledged that the momentary silences were annoying but that it was out of their control. Basically it said, please don't bug the manager if the sound drops out, unless it lasts more than a minute.

- www.boingboing.net

Blanking out the sound to create a signature that can be traced back to the theater? Okay, it's official, the war was finally lost on or about the 29th May, 2008. May the Lord have mercy on us all.




Keep Watching The ...Televisions!

A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.

Jeff Peckman, who is pushing a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver to prepare the city for close encounters of the alien kind, said the video is authentic and convinced him that aliens exist.
[...]

"It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera," he said. The alien is about 4 feet tall and can be seen blinking, Peckman said earlier this month.

In a statement, Peckman said "other related credible evidence" proving aliens exist will be shown at Friday's news conference, too.

- www.rockymountainnews.com

The Latest Astronaut.

Mars has another visitor. The Phoenix Mars Lander has finally fulfilled it's name and touched down on the red planet. Bask in the exotic alien views!




Nothing is written!!




Film Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Indiana Jones. How can you really be objective when you're watching a character that made you a movie fan in the first place? It's been 19 years since Indy last appeared, a fact that everyone including the filmmakers have pointed out as if it's an excuse of some sort. Frankly, I really don't see anything to apologize about. The latest Indy film is as exciting and fun as the previous two were. And I guess that's the point.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is an absolute classic. A perfect blend of character, story, direction and music. And people have been trying to recapture that ever since, including Spielberg and Lucas themselves in subsequent sequels. But try as they might they can't, that era and tone of film making is gone. Instead, things today are just naturally slicker, easier, and familiar, and we can either moan about it or just relax and enjoy the latest adventure, which is what I did.

Crystal Skull is set in 1957, and the years since the last adventure have apparently been busy ones for Jones. With WW2 now behind us we open with the new bad guys, the Russians, and Indy has to use all his wits to stay one step ahead. And essentially the film quickly becomes a headlong rush as Indy picks up new friends and old acquaintances, all while charging flat out into Central America in search of El Dorado, with the Russians close behind. The plot concerns itself over an ancient artifact with supernatural powers. It's not certain what it does, but the Russians want it and that's enough to keep things moving. The ending is heavy on the supernatural, but you have to remember, every Indiana Jones film has ended heavy on the supernatural, especially the first one.

The only concern I had throughout was 'where is the film going?' It starts off with a bang (...), but then comfortingly moves to having Jones back teaching at the university. Then he's off to a South American graveyard, and you don't know where this is going. Then he's into a central American rain forest and you don't know where this is going. But you eventually realize that the film is way past the halfway mark, and this is what it's been working up to - this is the finale. I believe this film will actually be a lot more fun on repeat viewings, because once you know where the destination is, you can properly sit back and enjoy the ride.

Indy is older, and the film is mostly honest about that. Some of the stunts are a little extreme even for stunt people, let alone 65 year olds, but that's being petty. I really liked this film, Harrison wears Indy like a familiar old suit, and looks more comfortable as the adventurer (and teacher) than he has been in anything over the last ten years. Karen Allen happily returns as an older, wiser but still feisty Marion, Shia LaBeouf is 'the kid' who does well for himself and Cate Blanchet chews the scenery as much as the script allows as the bad guy. But Indy sets the tone, and it's a fun, exciting and even informative tone that leads us off on one last true adventure. This is a lot of fun, damn it. Four cool motorcycles out of Five.



Epilogue:

My, do the film geeks HATE Indiana Jones 4. It seems likely they're scared of liking anything Lucas is involved with. Look, I figure you either go with the adventure or you don't. Maybe film geeks simply aren't capable of doing that anymore. Here's a good quote stolen from the AICN talbacks:

"I'll tell you what the negative reviews are. They're people that watch movies with notepads - making notes during movies about their fave moments and the points that they disengaged... besides the points where they're writing notes and not actually WITH the movie. I can't really speak for everyone - but there's people that will see a sequence like the Shia/Monkey sequence.... or the Prairie Dogs.... or even the Ants... and they'll disengage - say that's not realistic, that's just plain silly - and then they'll listen to the dialogue and think... that's corny, people don't talk like that - and while they're looking and disengaging from all those moments - they're missing the entire fucking point. INDIANA JONES isn't real - he's a concoction - he's a creation of cinema magic. He says the perfect thing, does the perfect thing - gets banged up, knocked around but at the end of it all.... He's the most amazing man the world never gave birth to. He could survive an atomic blast through ingenuity. He knew EVERYONE in the history in which he lived. And he's like a bad penny, he'll always turn up. It's about a dream of an adventurer, not the reality. The fx and sets are never quite real - because none of it is real. It's a fanciful painting of our dreams - after being drunk on the movies of the 30's, 40's & 50's... but doing that now... with all the fun and joy of the toys we have today. It's about Harryhausen and Demille... about Hawks and Ford... it's about every genre and the very celebration of movie making, watching and fandom. It's about being taken away - and there's some people that just refuse to get on board. They can't shake the cynicism of their own self-importance - and they go home... disappointed - because ultimately they've no room for being a kid anymore... even briefly."

Now either you buy that or you don't. I did.



(100 posts! Woot!)

Everything Must Go.

Conditions: Warmly cold.


Banging The Drum.

A wise man once wrote that people should not be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of the people. It's a good line, but what happens when a government really truly is afraid of the people? A story went around in 2007 of the Bush administration trying to push through some kind of program while Attorney General John Ashcroft was stricken with pancreatitis, making an end run around his second-in-command James Comey. The climax comes as Bush's stooges show up at the hospital to get Ashcroft to sign the document. Ashcroft, from his hospital bed, refuses and the day is won. Or was it?

What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Political blogs buzzed for weeks with speculation. Though Comey testified that the program was subsequently readjusted to satisfy his concerns, one can't help wondering whether the unspecified alteration would satisfy constitutional experts, or even average citizens. Faced with push-back from his bosses at the White House, did he simply relent and accept a token concession? Two months after Comey's testimony to Congress, the New York Times reported a tantalizing detail: The program that prompted him "to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases." The larger mystery remained intact, however. "It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate," the article conceded.
[...]

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

- radaronline.com

Yes, the Bush administration is making a list, and checking it twice. I'm not exactly surprised the powers that be would draw up a plan of whom goes first against the wall when the revolution comes, it's just the sheer incompetence of making it public that really shocks me. Pretty much every single thing this administration has done has been a disaster. A disaster of planning, a disaster of execution, a disaster of public opinion. And we've seen how they can't even keep the big secrets secret.

Of course, most rational people would actually want to be on this list, especially now that it's been outed. Given how horrendously unpopular the President and his posse are it would be a badge of honour to be a member of a secret anti-administration list. You could imagine people printing up t-shirts proudly claiming to be member # 532,125, or something. It's staggering that these serious, hard-nosed Republicans could time and again come across so amateurishly. Almost to the point where you could suspect it's all a setup for the *real* evil plan that you don't see, like turning Cuba into a giant farm, or building a secret bridge to the moon, or something. We want the government to be competant and planning and careful and maybe even ruthless and paranoid. It helps us relax if we know others are stressed out on our behalf. But peeling away the wallpaper and seeing that the emperor is not only naked but juggling spoons while hopping on one foot tends to undermine one's faith in the government even getting the basics of leadership right. Change can't come soon enough.




Not Laughing At The Joke.

Did President Bush lie to the American public in order to wage war with Iraq? It's both a simple and massively complex question. In passing we say "Why yes, he did. Pass the butter." - it's an accepted part of current history. But shouldn't it be more than a footnote to a presidency, or fodder for late night jokes?

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

This is written by a career prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, famous for prosecuting mass murderer Charles Manson. His latest book is taking a serious look at prosecuting George Bush, for essentially the same thing.

Senator Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that "Bush's distortions misled Congress in its war vote" and "No President of the United States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war." But, Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what? Remember, Clinton was impeached for allegedly trying to cover up a consensual sexual affair. What do you recommend for Bush for being responsible for more than 100,000 deaths? Nothing? He shouldn't be held accountable for his actions? If one were to listen to you talk, that is the only conclusion one could come to. But why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this complete free ride?
[...]

Although I have never heard before what I am suggesting -- that Bush be prosecuted for murder in an American courtroom -- many have argued that "Bush should be prosecuted for war crimes" (mostly for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. But for all intents and purposes this cannot be done.

- Huffpost.com

Of course not, since America actively hates the U.N and the ICC, believing them to be tools designed to take power away from America. Which is the whole point. America wishes to run the world as it's empire, and as such the President can do no wrong. As America's power increases, the presumed power of the President increases with it, which is why we regard current and ex-presidents with such awe (check out Reagan's funeral for reference). But one thing history teaches us is that nothing lasts forever, everything eventually falls and is rebuilt. So for now the idea of impeaching Bush is treated as folly, much as rubbing two sticks together to make fire was once treated as folly. But I retain hope that eventually the spark will strike and some semblance of justice will creak into gear.




Making The Same Mistakes.

This may surprise some, but long ago people used asbestos to keep their houses warm. It would be coated on the roofs and under the basements, wrapped around pipes and fittings, it was a cheap and effective method of insulation. It wasn't until many years later, when the people who applied the stuff, and the people who lived with it, started dying of lung cancer, that a few people started wondering if this brilliant material was actually dangerous to people's health. The human race does this kind of thing a lot, after all the inventors of X-rays died of cancer after x-raying each other too much. But in our modern society surely a lesson as obvious as asbestos wouldn't need to be learned again?

Scientists have warned that carbon nanotubes could pose a cancer risk similar to that of asbestos. They say the government should restrict the use of the materials, which are included in a variety of consumer products, to protect human health.

In most products containing nanotubes, such as car body panels, tennis rackets, yacht masts and bike frames, the fibres are embedded in composite materials, which provide strength and lightness. In this form they are likely to be relatively harmless. But the researchers said further studies were necessary to confirm that — it was not good enough to simply assume that people could not be exposed to carbon nanotubes embedded in materials.

Scientists would have to demonstrate that exposure from products was safe, said Andrew Maynard at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.

- Guardian.co.uk

So, it seems the circle of idiocy revolves yet again, and we learn a lesson we should have already known. When products with nanotubes in them are constructed, and then disposed of at the end of their life, the nanotubes could be released into the atmosphere. What happens when these carbon nanotubes are inhaled? Surprisingly, no one yet knows. That's just great. At least with asbestos we knew what it looked like and where it was likely to be. Do you know if the things around you have carbon nanotubes in them?



Oil!

The blood of the dinosaurs! Texas tea! Sweet, sweet, oil, the lifeblood of our civilisation has been all up in the news this week. The rocketing price per barrel, the gradual inching up at the petrol stations, all the world's in a uproar. It's almost like everyone's surprised, but surely that cannot be. Oil is and always has been a finite resource, and everyone understands what happens economically when you're selling a finite resource, right? And yet here we are, panic central.

------------

http://www.truthout.org/article/paying-war-pump

On Friday, Bush went to dine at Saudi King Abdullah's bizarrely opulent horse farm and pleaded for an increase in oil production, but to no avail. Bush received the same rebuff in April 2005, when oil was selling for $54 a barrel. On Tuesday, it sold for $129, and the price rise is a good measure of Saudi gratitude for the Bush family's unwavering support over past decades. Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, couldn't have been more condescending when he turned down Bush's request with the observation that "presidents and kings have every right, every privilege, to comment or ask or say whatever they want." He added at a press conference, "How much does Saudi Arabia need to do to satisfy people who are questioning our oil practices and policies?"

Enough to get the price back down to where it was when we saved your sorry oil-well excuse for a country, you ingrate, Bush might have retorted.

------------

http://www.bloomberg.com

Oil's rally to a record above $135 a barrel came as traders bought crude to cover wrong-way bets that prices would decline, according to data from the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The number of outstanding futures contracts, known as open interest, fell 8.1 percent in a week to 1.36 million at the same time that prices rose 2.6 percent, the data show. Falling open interest and rising prices are signs that traders are buying to exit so-called short positions that would profit if oil fell, and lose money as they rose.

---------------

http://www.nytimes.com

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, derisively accused the executives of trying to portray themselves and their companies as victims.

“To me it was just a litany of complaints that you are all just hapless victims of a system, you blame one thing or another, which most people would say is just simply the cost of doing business,” Ms. Feinstein said. “Yet you rack up record profits, record profits, quarter after quarter after quarter, and apparently have no ethical compass about the price of gasoline.”

Peter J. Robertson, the vice chairman of Chevron, replied: “I don’t feel like a victim at all.”

“I feel very proud of the fact that we are investing all of our earnings,” he said. “We invest in future supplies for the world, so I am very proud of that.”

Look, I hate to break it to y'all, but oil companies (much like every other company on the face of the earth) don't give a damn about you. All they care about, literally, is profit. That's it. Now if you were selling, I dunno, delicious crunchy nerfschwondlers, of which there's only ten left, then after the first five are gone wouldn't you jack up the price for the final five? Since you can't make any more money after they're all gone, and all the nerfschwondler transporters, and the nerfschwondler drilling platforms, and nerfschwondler cleaning factories. that cost so much to build and run, will be worth precisely nothing one the last nerfschwondler has been consumed, doesn't it simply make sense to jack the price up, especially since the world HAS NO ALTERNATIVE!!

I hear this all the time: "Oh, what are we going to do? I know, let's not buy any petrol for a day, or boycott a particular oil company for a week, just to teach them a lesson and get them to drop the price." How pathetic. You don't fight the price rises with boycotts when you're addicted to the product! That's like protesting high hair salon fees by chopping off your head! You fight oil prices by developing alternative energy sources, a point that a) makes even more sense when the oil WILL one day run out, and b) hasn't been mentioned by anyone. Until I read this:

The blame game makes for good sound bites on the floor of Congress. It plays well with folks back home who are struggling to find the money to fill up their SUVs but can't find Saudi Arabia on a map. All they have been taught to know is that Arabs have lots of oil and they are bad people. But think where this might lead: suppose we get tough with the Saudis and end up destabilizing the kingdom so that forces unfriendly to us take over. Then we will feel more or less forced to invade in order to maintain access to our national drug of choice. Where would it end? Does any of this help?

Rather than looking for villains, we should be exploring how we can adapt to having less oil next year, and even less the year after that. Rebuilding our oil-dependent transport, agricultural, and manufacturing infrastructure is going to be a big job, and it's going to take time. So the sooner we start, the better. The real problem is that we use too much oil. It's that simple and that difficult. If we truly want to reduce our vulnerability to high prices, the best way to do so is to reduce consumption. One way or another, we will adapt.

We will drive less, we will fly less, and we will grow our food more locally with fewer inputs. But these changes will go far more smoothly if we plan for them, rather than being forced into them at the nozzle of an empty gas pump. There is a cliché in action films: "We can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way." Blaming OPEC while doing nothing to rein in our domestic demand for petroleum only ensures that we will be adapting to Peak Oil the hard way.

- www.alternet.org/

Yes! Two points.




This Week In Scientology.

A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word "cult" to describe the Church of Scientology.

The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.
[...]

"'Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector."

A policewoman later read him section five of the Public Order Act and "strongly advised" him to remove the sign. The section prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.
[...]
After the exchange, a policewoman handed him a court summons and removed his sign.

[...]
The City of London police came under fire two years ago when it emerged that more than 20 officers, ranging from constable to chief superintendent, had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from the Church of Scientology.

- www.guardian.co.uk

Publicity.

If I were to tell you a Hollywood star got their chest waxed for a public service announcement about global warming, you'd probably want to know who it was. Brendan Fraser? Brad Pitt? Carrot Top? No, you're way off.

NEW YORK — Harrison Ford pulled a Steve Carell for a public service announcement: He gets his chest waxed. The 65-year-old star winces in apparent pain as a strip of hair is yanked from between his pecs for a PSA for Conservation International to raise awareness about the effect of deforestation on global warming.

- Huffingtonpost.com

I... have no words.



Latest Arrival.

Recently astronomers discovered the youngest known supernova in our galaxy, one that formed somewhere around 1868.

What you're seeing is a composite image of the expanding remains of a supernova - shown in orange is an x-ray image from 2007, and in blue is a radio image from 1985. Combined, they show the expansion of the star as it falls apart.

Awwww, isn't that cute? But wrong!! View the photo montage here.




Peace Out.

So Cute. So Doomed.

Conditions: So cold, yet so sunny.


Earth Update: Mankind Still Doomed.

According to experts, the atmosphere has had a tough time of it over the last few hundred years. The industrial age, leading to the world war age, leading to todays age of cheap airfares and S.U.V's for everyone has maybe perhaps pushed the atmosphere too damn far. See, humans create carbon dioxide in every single thing that they do, operate, and sit in. That carbon dioxide has to be absorbed by the earth, and according to latest measurements of the atmosphere, the earth plain ain't having it anymore.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the last six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be reabsorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than is currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

- truthout.org

Okay, so it seems the earth is becoming over-saturated with CO2. So what?

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued - and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper - "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points - massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them - that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
[...]

And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.
[...]

We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now, the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.

And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them - to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty - a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.

- truthout.org

So there we go. NASA's Jim Hansen has said "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted [...] CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Since humanity can't be bothered to look up from it's stupid wars and reality television shows to notice the house is on fire, I think it's safe to say we'll be living in a 385ppm and greater CO2 environment for quite some time, or at least until the mass extinctions start. Unless the giant industrial nations of this island Earth start working together, compromising and agreeing and doing all the things politicians hate, we're all doomed. So, surf's up, humanity!




Bureaucracy On Ice.



This week, the Bush administration, via the Interior Department, announced the eternally-photogenic polar bear as having made the list of endangered animals. Now on the surface this may suggest that the Bush administration were preparing to restrict some of their more environmentally-damaging activities in the frozen north in order to respect the newly-endangered bears, but, in the words of Albert Einstein, the surface don't meant squat. Or words to that effect.

While giving the bear a few new protections — hunters may no longer import hides or other trophies from bears killed in Canada, for instance — the Interior Department added stipulations, seldom used under the act, that would allow oil and gas exploration and development to proceed in areas where the bears live, as long as the companies continue to comply with existing restrictions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Mr. Kempthorne said Wednesday that the decision was driven by overwhelming scientific evidence that “sea ice is vital to polar bears’ survival,” and all available scientific models show that the rapid loss of ice will continue. The bears use sea ice as a platform to hunt seals and as a pathway to the Arctic coasts where they den. The models reflect varying assumptions about how fast the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will increase.

In prepared remarks, the secretary, who earlier in his political life was a strong opponent of the current Endangered Species Act, added, “This has been a difficult decision.” He continued, “But in light of the scientific record and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me,” he made “the only decision I could make.”
[...]

the Bush administration [says] it had no obligation to address or try to mitigate the cause of the species’ decline — warming waters, in the case of the corals, or melting sea ice, in the case of the bears — or the greenhouse-gas emissions from cars, trucks, refineries, factories and power plants that contribute to both conditions.

So essentially they're declaring that the polar bears are doomed and are not prepared to anything meaningful about it. And frankly, one can understand why. If the frozen homelands of the polar bear contain oil and natural gas deposits, then are we really going to leave it there undisturbed so that the animals can run upon it for the various documentary film crews to capture, or are we going to extract that energy for our daily needs? Can we feed a family on images of cavorting polar bears? Can we run our cars on images of swimming polar bears? No? Then screw 'em.

So really, why put bears on the endangered list? Why draw any more attention to their plight if nothing substantive can be done?

The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit in 2005 to force a listing of the polar bear. The center, based in Arizona, has been explicit about its hopes to use this — and the earlier listing of two species of coral threatened by warming seas — as a legal cudgel to attack proposed coal-fired power plants or other new sources of carbon dioxide emissions.
[...]

After the department missed a series of deadlines, a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the decision had to be made by Thursday.

In recent days, some officials in the Interior Department speculated that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney had tried to block the listing of the bear. People close to these officials indicated that two separate documents — one supporting the listing, and the other supporting a decision not to list the bear — had been prepared for Mr. Kempthorne.

In an interview, Mr. Kempthorne and his chief of staff, Bryan Waidmann, said they had not discussed the decision with anyone in the vice president’s office, though they did not dispute that two documents had been made available for the secretary’s signature this week.

“Let’s say I had my options available,” Mr. Kempthorne said.

- NYTimes.com

Uh-huh. So it seems that what's really happening here is a political power play between members of the Bush Administration, under pressure from a federal ruling caused by a legal suit filed by Environmentalists. I hope that's some comfort to the people who made a living from these animals.




Resonant Idea 'O The Week.

http://www.cracked.com/
t-shirts-that-will-make-women-have-sex-with-you.html

Film Review: Iron Man.

Superhero movies have quite a mountain to climb in order to work. Generally a superhero is or does something so fantastical that the audience is not going to accept it right out of the bat. People who can fly, or shoot laser beams from their eyes, or ...are a spider, - the whole concept handicaps itself before it's out of the gate. So the trick is to find some way of introducing a character to the audience that they can accept, and then make them into the superhero, which is why superhero origin stories are so common (and why The Hulk is getting two back to back).

In an inspired piece of casting, Robert Downey jr is the arrogant and brilliant tycoon and inventor Tony Stark who boorishly heads a weapons manufacturing empire. Of course humbleness in a superhero is vital, and it best comes from a fall, and both are handled very well in the opening act. The story is telling us that industry can change, and serve mankind, but only with great force of will. It's a nice message if somewhat divorced from reality. But that reality may sit as an extra layer beneath the slick Hollywood blockbuster we're presented with. Starting the film in Afghanistan, featuring a portrayal of America's enemies getting their hands on American weapons with which to wreak havoc, prompting the industrialist to invent an even more powerful weapon (albeit with the intention of merely creating a shield, but learning that the shield can also be used to inflict harm), and then that weapon being used against him yet again. There's scope here for a look at America's flawed foreign policy and military mistakes over the past decades. There's a disconnect between Stark building the first suit in order to escape, and then building the second suit once he's back home. Did he build the second one just out of curiosity? (then why include weapons?) Or because he wanted to right his wrongs? The sequence in the film where he realises he can do something about the weapons the bad guys have seems to indicate he didn't plan for that at all, and yet he knew enough to include missiles, guns and flares along with the armour and rockets.

Director Jon Favreau has hit all the marks here, Tony is a troubled character, who battles against his enemies and his own legacy. And the action sequences are exciting, thrilling and (miracle of miracles) quite clearly shot. The details of what is occurring are not obscured by the camera being wildly waved about. The only real criticisms I can think of are the simple ease (and subsequent glossing-over) at which massively complicated tasks are carried out by Stark (but I suppose you have to take into account that it is a superhero film), and the PG-13 rating which limits the impact of what happens since we can't clearly see it happening (particularly a flaw in a film about weapons and people). It may remind one of Robocop2, but as it is, it's a triumph of character-based dramatic and exciting film making. Four servos out of Five.



Peace out.

Getting The Mail.

Conditions: Cold. And Hard.


Eating The Homework.

You know, I don't really think much about Presidential legacies. The libraries that ex-presidents will build and fill with their mighty deeds doesn't really interest me all that much in the day to day hustle of modern life. But I do think that that topic is something current presidents do think about. A lot. Which is why the latest scandal-et surrounding the Bush White House stands out.

A late-night court filing by the White House on Monday revealed that official administration emails about the run up to the invasion of Iraq and the initial occupation may never be recovered.

Whistleblowers have accused the White House of destroying email records from their internal servers. The Bush administration disputes this accusation, claiming instead that many emails were stored incorrectly. The storage system came under harsh criticism from former employees who called it "primitive" and said it had deep security flaws that would inevitably lead to destruction of records. In September 2002, the Bush administration dismantled the Automatic Records Management System (ARMS) put in place by the Clinton administration and never replaced it.

Presidents are responsible for preserving all historical records during their time in office under the Presidential Records Act. Congress is conducting an investigation into possible violations of this act, including the destruction of at least ten million White House email records.

In response to a judge's orders, the White House Office of Administration (OA), which manages the networks and email systems in the White House, filed a statement (PDF Page 20), which revealed that no emails were saved between March 1 2003 and May 22, 2003. "Office of Administration is preserving 438 disaster recovery backup tapes that were written to between March 1, 2003 and September 30, 2003. Of those 438 tapes, the earliest date on which data was written ... is May 23, 2003," according to the Bush administration filing.

So presumably, assuming we're not all killed off by some crazy genetically-engineered corn-mutation virus, the future President Bush Memorial Library will have the following blank correspondence sections:

- The run up to the invasion of Iraq
- Harassing various countries for support in the U.N
- Dealing with former diplomat Joe Wilson, re: Yellowcake-gate
- Decisions about what forms of interrogation could be used in prisoner camps
- Formation of the post-Saddam Iraq ruling party, and their top priorities

Now, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but you must admit that having these sections missing is awfully convenient if you were trying to, I don't know, cover up some pretty awful things.

The Bush administration previously revealed backup tapes for the period of September 30, 2003 through October 6, 2003 were also destroyed. This period coincides with the beginning of the Department of Justice investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

In March, the White House disclosed many of the computer hard drives that would have contained email records and forensic data were physically destroyed as a part of a so-called "refresh program" undertaken by the White House to replace older computers. The suggestion to examine all the individual workstations came after the White House admitted to "recycling" or taping over some of the emergency backup tapes that record email records

- http://www.truthout.org

Gosh, what a terrible shame for the historians. Gee, I hope Bush's old cheer leading outfit survived all these purges and forgetfulness, it'd be a real tragedy if the library didn't at least have that in a display case.




We Believe What We Want To Believe.

In 2001 a former Kuwaiti soldier named Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was arrested on the Pakistani border and taken to Guantanamo as part of a general sweep. There, American interrogators accused him of deserting the Kuwaiti army in order to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Iraq. The claimed that after the Northern Alliance took Kabul he attempted to flee to Pakistan. Ajmi constantly denied this, and instead said he had never been in Afghanistan, and had gone to Pakistan to learn the Koran. In 2005 he was transferred to Kuwait in order to stand trial. During that trial the alleged evidence obtained while he was at Guantanamo was thrown out due to there being no signature, and he along with four others were acquitted and released. He returned to Iraq and had a son with his wife. Two weeks ago he left Kuwait illegally and went to Syria, eventually ending up in Iraq where he participated in a suicide attack on Iraqi security forces in Mosul. Various authorities have used this as evidence that a) he was a terrorist after all, and that b) everyone else in Guantanamo are also terrorists.

But consider this: Four years of torture and imprisonment. Four years. Four years of that kind of treatment can turn someone into almost anything. It's also possible Ajmi was telling the truth, and spent the last four years being tortured for being someone he wasn't. Was Ajmi a enemy fighter who managed to get out of jail to fight again, or was he someone who became an enemy fighter because he was treated like one? And does anyone even care?

Pentagon confirms ex-Guantánamo detainee carried out Iraq bombing

The Pentagon confirmed today that a Kuwaiti released from the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three years ago carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month.

The involvement of an ex-Guantánamo detainee will make it harder for civil rights lawyers in the US and Britain who have been fighting for the release of the remaining prisoners at the camp complex.

Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi and two other Kuwaitis are reported by their families to have taken part in an attack on Iraqi security forces in Mosul, a northern city that is the scene of intense fighting.

Although the families did not specify a date, seven people were killed in a suicide attack in Mosul on April 26.

Extra Credit: Endless War: Is the U.S. Trying to Set Whole World on Fire?




Resistance Is Dogmatic.

I believe I've stated before how the only real solution to our coming worldwide energy crisis is nuclear power. It's here, it's doable, it will provide the power we need with very little pollution problems (radioactive waste is an issue, but a manageable one.), and it's not relying on the fickle fortunes of weather, like the rest of them. So what's the holdup? How come nuclear plants aren't yet humming away in every corner of the planet? Well, an article by Christian Parenti on Alternet illuminates the issues:

"Wall Street doesn't like nuclear power," says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. The fundamental fact is that nuclear power is too expensive and risky to attract the necessary commercial investors. Even with vast government subsidies, it is difficult or almost impossible to get proper financing and insurance. The massive federal subsidies on offer will cover up to 80 percent of construction costs of several nuclear power plants in addition to generous production tax credits, as well as risk insurance. But consider this: the average two-reactor nuclear power plant is estimated to cost $10 billion to $18 billion to build. That's before cost overruns, and no U.S. nuclear power plant has ever been delivered on time or on budget.
[...]

More important is the fact that nuclear fission is a mind-bogglingly complex process, a sublime, truly Promethean technology. Let's recall: it involves smashing a subatomic particle, a neutron, into an atom of uranium-235 to release energy and more neutrons, which then smash other atoms that release more energy and so on infinitely, except the whole process is controlled and used to boil water, which spins a turbine that generates electricity.

In this nether realm, where industry and science seek to reproduce a process akin to that which occurs inside the sun, even basic tasks -- like moving the fuel rods, changing spare parts -- become complicated, mechanized and expensive. Atom-smashing is to coal power, or a windmill, as a Formula One race-car engine is to the mechanics of a bicycle. Thus, it costs an enormous amount of money.
[...]

Even if a society were ready to absorb the high costs of nuclear power, it hardly makes the most sense as a tool to quickly combat climate change. These plants take too long to build. A 2004 analysis in Science by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, of Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, estimates that achieving just one-seventh of the carbon reductions necessary to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 500 parts per billion would require "building about 700 new 1,000- megawatt nuclear plants around the world." That represents a huge wave of investment that few seem willing to undertake, and it would require decades to accomplish.

So, if I may sum up, the problems are that they're intensely complicated to construct and run, they take a long, long time to build, and they're ridiculously expensive to erect. All valid concerns, but I guess the most important question I have is, will they do the job? The author does allow that:

The fact that new nukes make little economic sense does not mean that old nukes are not profitable. In fact, these nightmarishly complex radioactive boondoggles have recently been turned into cash cows. Utilities achieved this remarkable transformation the old-fashioned way -- they used socialism.

Yes, the plants that were built way back long ago continue to hum along happily, and have become quite the profitable asset for any company wanting to own a nuclear power plant. This then suggests that the power plants are perfectly capable of doing their job as long as they are built properly and maintained. Which brings us back to cost. If cost is the only real barrier to nuclear power, then it simply behooves us to begin construction on these things as soon as possible, because the longer we wait, the worse the effects of an energy shortage are going to be on our way of life, and our economies.

Don't get me wrong, 18 billion dollars is a ridiculous amount of money, but how much would it cost to have a country's trains and trucks shut down because the companies that run them can no longer afford (or can no longer obtain) the fuel required to operate them? Consider how every aspect of our modern city relies on oil in one way or another in order to keep running. Would that cost more than 18 billion dollars? Power from rivers is already proving itself to be inadequate for our growing needs, solar and wind power simply aren't scalable enough to take on the demands of entire metropolises. And yes, Nuclear power stations are vulnerable, to terrorists and earthquakes and stupidity or complacency. But this is simply how life works, we take risks every day in order to keep going forward. We can either revert to the caves and villages of our ancestors or we can do what humans have proven themselves to be so good at: taking the next step forward.



Window Of Lies.

In our modern world, a lot of people don't get much of a view. So naturally a company has come up with a solution: fake views!

http://www.theskyfactory.com

Yes for a low, low price you too can get a weird skylight that shines pretty lies down upon your head. Why no, Timmy, we don't live the the Matrix. Ha Ha Ha.




Mind Job 'O The Week.

Early Wednesday morning, a spot of light just barely visible to the human eye (about fifth magnitude in astronomical parlance) appeared in the constellation Boötes. Astronomers say it was the toasted remains of one of the most titanic examples yet of the explosions known as gamma-ray bursts. News about the burst, in a galaxy seven billion light years away, began circulating by e-mail in the astronomical community when it was detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on March 19.

Gamma ray bursts are some of the most violent and enigmatic events in nature. Astronomers surmise that they might mark the implosion of a massive star into a black hole, or the collision of a pair of dense neutron stars.

The visible glow from this burst, said Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was 10 million times as bright as a supernova at that same distance.

The universe is some 14 billion years old, which means that the news of this cataclysm has been on its way to us for half the age of the universe. Whatever stars went to their grave then have been dead since before the Sun and Earth were born.

Peace out.

Feeling Small.

Conditions: Raining like dogs and cats.


Failing The Basics.

After 9/11 the Bush administration demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden, the Taliban offered to turn him over to the International Criminal Court, so the Americans bombed, then invaded the country, setting up a puppet government. The attack effectively put the Taliban and Al Queda in the same bracket, and the new Afghani government has been struggling to stay in power ever since. Now, since this is the real source point of terror for the U.S, you'd think this would be their primary focus in the war on terror. That this, above anywhere else, would be the place that they would focus the full force of their might in pacifying the lawless hordes. But no, the tiny country has proven to be a thorn in yet another empire's foot, and the current government is struggling. This week President Karzai had to duck yet another assassination attempt.

Kabul, Afghanistan - The attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai Sunday came as the latest sign of a trend worrying Western officials: that the insurgency is spreading from the Taliban stronghold of the south to the central and northern regions of the country.

The militant attack, the biggest in Kabul since mid-March, came during a public ceremony. Despite a massive security presence, militants managed to fire bullets and rockets at the president, killing two nearby lawmakers and a boy.

The insurgency in Afghanistan has not been "contained," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testified before a Senate subcommittee in February. "It's been sustained in the south, it's grown a bit in the east, and what we've seen are elements of it spread to the west and the north."

A recent study by Sami Kovanen, an analyst with the security firm Vigilant Strategic Services of Afghanistan, echoed this assessment. He reported 465 insurgent attacks in areas outside the restive southern regions during the first three months of 2008, a 35 percent increase compared with the same period last year. In the central region around Kabul there have been 80 insurgent attacks from January through March of this year, a 70 percent jump compared to the first three months of last year.

The numbers are part of a nationwide trend of rising violence. In the southern and southeastern provinces, including the insurgent hotbeds of Kandahar and Helmand, guerrilla attacks spiked by 40 percent, according to Mr. Kovanen's research.

Kabul itself has been largely free from the violence, but as Sunday's attack shows, there are signs that the Taliban's presence is growing here, too. On the sprawling, serene campus of Kabul University, where the nation sends many of its best and brightest, the Taliban has reached an unprecedented level of influence, students say.

- Truthout.org

So, America is not only failing, it's in danger of recording an EPICfail. You know, any true empire worthy of it's name would have completely pacified Afghanistan, rightly or wrongly they would have got the job done. In fact, Afghanistan can probably stand as the true test for any real empire through the course of human history and for the future. If you can take Afghanistan, then you're worthy of respect.

More: Leave Taliban Alone, Afghan President Tells West




Seeking Some Distance.

Remember that whole thing with Barack Obama reacting to controversial statements by his pastor with an intelligent speech about how we all have to be tolerant of each other and sensitive to our pasts? Well turns out that was good for just one outburst. Yes, the the good reverend has fired off another salvo, and this time Obama has made the standard distancing manoeuvre, greeted ravenously by the press.

Lured by the irresistible glow of the spotlight, the reverend launched a media blitz that took him from a softball interview with Bill Moyers on Friday, to a speech to a Detroit meeting of the NAACP on Sunday, to a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday morning.

Barack Obama is now declaring himself shocked and disappointed at Wright's unrepentantly racist and anti-American views--but Obama can no longer plausibly claim innocence in this matter, because he is the one who has encouraged Wright by trying to excuse and explain his views.

This time around, the Reverend Wright told his audience Sunday night that blacks and whites have different methods of thinking. Blacks rely on "right-brain" thinking, which is more creative, while whites rely on "left-brain" thinking, which is more logical. Oh yes, and blacks have a better sense of rhythm. As Victor Davis Hanson points out, if any white man had dared to breathe these hoary stereotypes--particularly the view that blacks are less suited to logical thinking--he would have been permanently cast out of polite society. The fact that Reverend Wright expressed those views to the NAACP (and received, by all accounts, a positive response) merely indicates how far that once-venerable organization has fallen.

Well, the rhythm part I believe. What else did the reverend say?

To the National Press Club, Wright reiterated his claim that AIDS was created by the United States government as a racist plot to kill blacks; he explained that Obama's "distancing" himself from Wright was only a political calculation "based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls"; and he also repeated his praise for Louis Farrakhan--the anti-Semitic, quasi-fascist, dictator-loving leader of the Nation of Islam--as "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century."

Well, again, he might have a point. Bear in mind that there's no actual statement of value, Farrakhan may just be an 'important' voice, in the same view as Bush being an important voice in the 21st century.

But right or wrong, this is no way to run a presidential campaign. Obama is trying to appeal to everyone in a very calm and intelligent way. Shooting off controversial statements is more in keeping with a stand up routine.

But of course you can't have a few controversial statements getting blown out of all proportion without the news media. Take it away:

The purpose of Obama's famous speech on race was to make Wright seem reasonable, understandable, even mainstream. The Obama campaign's hope, no doubt, was that this would make the Wright story go away. But Wright interpreted it as an invitation. If he's so understandable and mainstream, why not go on a media tour to explain himself to the world? And why not use Obama's own arguments to justify himself and browbeat his critics?

All of this is why it is no use for Obama to backpedal from his association with Reverend Wright, or to denounce him now, six weeks too late. It was Obama who sought to provide the Reverend Wright with immunity from criticism--and he can't complain when the reverend tries to take full advantage of that immunity.

This is the final collapse of the noble promise of the Obama campaign. The man who had once put himself forward as the candidate who would transcend racial politics once and for all has ended up legitimizing a Christian equivalent of Louis Farrakhan--and injecting him into the American political debate.

- http://news.yahoo.com

Actually, yahoo news, no, it is not. What this is, is sensation running rampart over the fields of reasonableness. What we really need here is the lawnmower of sense, and the headphones of peace. Yea.




Who We Are.

A cosmologist and astrophysicist writes about the big bang and other inconsequential stuff, like how we fit into the universe. Behold!

Our universe covers a vast range of scales, and an immense variety of structure, stretching far larger, and far smaller, than the dimensions of everyday sensations. We are each made up of between 1028 and 1029 atoms. This human scale is, in a numerical sense, poised midway between the masses of atoms and stars. It would take roughly as many human bodies to make up the mass of the sun as there are atoms in each of us. But our sun is just an ordinary star in a galaxy that contains around a hundred billion stars altogether. There are at least as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in our galaxy. More than 1078 atoms lie within range of our telescope.

All atoms contain protons. The atoms of the 92 naturally occurring elements that make up the periodic table each have a distinctive number of protons (one for hydrogen, 26 for iron, 92 for uranium).

Living organisms are configured into layer upon layer of complex structure. Atoms are assembled into molecules; these react, via complex pathways in every cell, and indirectly lead to the entire interconnected structure that makes up a tree, an insect or a human. We straddle the cosmos and the microworld - intermediate in size between the sun, at a billion metres in diameter, and a molecule, at a billionth of a metre.

Nature attains its maximum complexity on this intermediate scale: anything larger, if it were on a habitable planet, would be vulnerable to breakage or crushing by gravity. We are used to the idea that we are moulded by the micro-world: we are vulnerable to viruses a millionth of a metre in length, and the DNA double-helix molecule encodes our total genetic heritage. And it's just as obvious that we depend on the sun and its power. But what about the still vaster scales?

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Peace out, y'all.