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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Friday, December 18, 2009

18 Dec - Hot Topics


Key powers reach compromise at climate summit

Five nations, including China and the US, had reached a deal on a number of issues, including a target to limit temperatures rises to less than 2C.

Video – NASA manipulating data to support global warming?


The New Zealand
Climate Science Coalition

Are we feeling warmer yet?

New Zealand’s temperature has been remarkably stable for a century and a half.
New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is responsible for New Zealand's National Climate Database. This database, available online, holds all New Zealand's climate data, including temperature readings, since the 1850s. Anybody can go and get the data for free. That’s what we did, and we made our own graph.
To get the original New Zealand temperature readings, you register on NIWA's web site, download what you want and make your own graph. We did that, but the result looked nothing like the official graph. Instead, we were surprised to get this:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?



Will KDE conquer all our desktops in 2010?


This may come as a shock* for some: imagine to run a "Linux" desktop and software on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Well, you can. Just install * KDE* for Windows. On the other hand the 'full-blown' 



Gmail Account and Google Apps Got Hacked

Suggestions about what to do if you are hacked...with disagreeing comments.

Google Loses in French Copyright Case

A French court ruled on Friday that Googleinfringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project.

Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind

A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind.

Fluctuations in refugee rulings trouble critics

Some critics call it a lottery, others call it Russian roulette.
A CBC News analysis shows dozens of members of the Immigration and Refugee Board are overwhelmingly refusing claims for asylum in Canada, while others are overwhelmingly approving them.


Obama’s Christian Realism


An employee of a CIA front organization that also funds opposition groups in Venezuela was detained in Cuba last week.
An article published in the December 12th edition of the New York Timesrevealed the detention of a US government contract employee in Havana this past December 5th. The employee, whose name has not yet been disclosed, works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), one of the largest US government contractors providing services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The employee was detained while distributing cellular telephones, computers and other communications equipment to Cuban dissident and counterrevolutionary groups that work to promote US agenda on the Caribbean island.


Last year, the US Congress approved $40 million to “promote transition to democracy” in Cuba. DAI was awarded the main contract, “The Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program”, with oversight by State and USAID. The use of a chain of entities and agencies is a mechanism employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to channel and filter funding and strategic political support to groups and individuals that support US agenda abroad. The pretext of “promoting democracy” is a modern form of CIA subversion tactics, seeking to infiltrate and penetrate civil society groups and provide funding to encourage “regime change” in strategically important nations, such as Venezuela, with governments unwilling to subcomb to US dominance.
 



World News
  • Pentagon’s role in global catastrophe
    In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets — it...
  • Blood diamonds from Zimbabwe
    As Americans flock to stores for holiday shopping, some will buy diamonds for loved ones. But that gift could have a bloody past. If the diamonds are from Zimbabwe, the stones could have been mined...
  • Russia says U.S. slowing down nuclear talks
    Russia on Thursday accused the United States of slowing down talks to agree a new nuclear weapons disarmament treaty, after officials admitted the two sides could no longer sign the accord this year. U.S. and...
  • Copenhagen: Clashes Erupt as Deadlock Continues 
    Danish police on Wednesday kept thousands of protesters from entering the venue where the United Nations climate talks being held. A police spokesman said 250 people were arrested at various points in Copenhagen, one day...


Fenty signs bill legalizing same-sex marriage in D.C.


Auschwitz sign stolen 'by neo-Nazis’

The infamous “Work Sets You Free” sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp has been stolen in an audacious overnight raid provoking Jewish groups to condemn the theft as a “declaration of war”.

Neo-Nazi groups were immediately blamed for the act described by police as “professionally planned”, and which happened at three o’clock on Friday morning. Investigators are puzzled as to just how the thieves managed to remove the 16-foot long and heavy cast-iron sign without anybody noticing.


SARS appeal refusal by top court 'mind-boggling': RN

( It's the way they treat veteran combat troops. )

Multifox Makes Using Multiple Accounts Simple

. When you want to log into a service with more than one user name simultaneously you right click on the bookmark for that service or open the File menu and select "Open in New Identity Profile".Multifox is much easier than managing multiple profiles natively in Firefox because it does so without messing around in the Profile Manager and without having to manually create a new profile for each new additional service. If you need to, on the fly, test out five instances of a service Multifox will help you create five distinct profiles in five clicks.



(I have seen opinions suggesting this kind of add on places unnecessary vulnerability to the desktop because of the direct feed bypassing the browser safeties.  Opera has widgets to play with. Yahoo! Widgets came from the purchase of Konfabulator ; but are not obvious on their site. There are 5967 as I type this. )


UPDATE 3-Twitter hacked, attacker claims Iran link

* Twitter service restored after hacker redirects traffic
Iranian gov't probably not behind attack, experts say
(  Twitter was the means for 'Green Revolution' reports to come out of Iran. Ahmadinejad's followers would not be online as much as were Mousavi's rich supporters in north Tehran. )


Ottawa airport strip search prompts racism allegations

Kerwin Dougan of Voyages G Travel, the agency that sold Archer her tickets, said the Ottawa airport has a bad reputation for targeting blacks.
Dougan said he has worked as a travel agent for two decades and heard dozens of cases similar to Archer's, mainly among black clients. That's why he encouraged Archer to go public with her story.


Turmoil in elite Vancouver rescue team

Vancouver's elite Urban Search and Rescue Team is being overhauled.
 


The changes come amid allegations from some Urban Search and Rescue Team (U-SAR) members of mismanagement, financial impropriety and a lack of accountability by the team leaders who remain in charge of the task force.

U-SAR is known for its work in a number of emergency situations, most recently following a deadly mudslide in North Vancouver in 2005 and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the same year.
The City of Vancouver — a primary funder of the team — began an internal review of the organization in April, which has so far resulted in at least three highly skilled members being released from their duties.
Documents obtained by CBC News showed the team's chief medical director, Dr. Mike Flesher, of the Trauma Program at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, has been let go, as has 30-year veteran Vancouver firefighter Flynn Lamont, a specialist in training search dogs.
Both had volunteered with U-SAR for more than a decade and have not been accused of any impropriety.

Five foods that fix bad breath


Water World discovered by Harvard astronomers

Zachory Berta, a graduate at the Center first spotted a hint of the planet amongst the data accumulated. "Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld. It is much smaller, cooler, and more Earthlike than any other known exoplanet."

The hang-up with the Google Phone

For Motorola, the last thing it needs after delivering its first serious hit following years of wandering in the smartphone desert, is the vendor equivalent of the Borg now breathing down its neck. I wonder if the handset vendors' respective decisions to join the Alliance and place their bets behind Android would have been any different had they known back then that Google would someday try to move into their territory. I also wonder if this opens the door for Alliance members to start hedging their bets elsewhere, in case Google uses this initial device as the foundation for a more aggressive push into mobile hardware.



Al Gore shoots self, climate summit in foot

Gore, speaking at the climate change summit, claimed that the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. 



Unfortunately, the scientist whose research was quoted by Gore, Doctor Wieslav Maslowski, rather pissed on his chips by stating: 



“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”






HST makes cars cheaper: dealers

Under the current system, car dealers can get tax credits for the federal GST, but not the provincial sales tax (PST) on some costs related to their businesses. Similarly, manufacturers must also pay PST on some costs during the production process.

DWP pitches solar farm, state park at Owens Lake

L.A.'s utility presents its plan to the Lands Commission, which is cautiously receptive. It arose as part of a separate measure to control dust at the dry lake bed, to comply with clean air rules.



As part of its proposal, the DWP might enhance its flooding of a portion of the lake, which has created critical habitat for tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.



Owens Lake was drained nearly a century ago when its water was diverted to the Los Angeles Aqueduct.



To comply with federal clean air standards, the DWP must control lake bed dust that gets kicked up by the windstorms that have plagued the Owens Valley for decades. The moats are part of the utility's $500-million dust mitigation plan, and if construction on the project does not begin by Jan. 1, the city could face fines up to $10,000 a day.  



The commission's staff had urged the panel to reject the proposal in part because at least one species of bird -- the endangered snowy plover -- nests on portions of the lake bed and could be trapped and killed in the moats.


Looking like a cross between a giant termite colony and a settlement from Star Wars, the village of Kandovan, tucked away in the northwest corner of Iran, is famed for its extraordinary houses carved inside cone-shaped rocks. Some of the dwellings in this unique and age-old place date back at least 700 years and yet are still inhabited.


World Health Organization Says H1N1 Spreading in Afghanistan

The first cases seen in the country were in the military, both international and Afghan army


Pakistan's Defense Minister Barred From Leaving Country

Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told a local television station he and his naval chief were blocked from boarding a flight at Islamabad's airport for an official state visit to China, where he was to pick up a new warship.  He said he was not aware that federal authorities had his name on an exit control list.   
Mukhtar is among 247 people who are barred from traveling without permission while Pakistan's anti-corruption agency investigates graft charges against them.
Earlier Thursday, Pakistani intelligence officials say two suspected U.S. drone attacks in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border killed at least 17 people. 



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