Monday, August 27, 2007

Headlines of the Day

Most online news editors, in the U.S. anyways, decided a dogfighting millionaire athelete was more important than the embattled Attorney General's resignation. ABC wins the award for the "least effort in pretending to write their own content" award for not even adding a headline to their cut-and-past byline.

cnn.com:
"Vick's: 'Disappointed in Myself' "

msnbc.com:
"FULL RESPONSIBILITY"
Michael Vick pleads guilty, apologizes in dogfighting case."

abcnews.com:
"Angry Bush Says Gonzales Name 'Dragged Through the Mud' "
(This was the "push" quote fed to the media by the White House. It appears verbatim as the second line for almost every US published version of the story. ABC didn't even bother to check that the capitalizations were incorrect, or write their own headline they just cut, pasted and published.)

csmonitor.com
"Gonzales makes his exit
Farewell: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave his resignation on Monday and leaves his position Sept. 17.

latimes.com
"Atty. Gen. Gonzales is stepping down
Angry Bush says Gonzales critics dragged him 'through the mud' "
(Only in L.A. would they use abbreviations in a headline.)

nytimes.com
Embattled Attorney General Resigns
Gonzales Received ‘Unfair Treatment,’ President Says"
(The Grey Lady pulls her own quotes, kind of.)

bbc.com
Bush ally Gonzales resigns post
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, embroiled in a row over sacked prosecutors, has resigned."
(The Queen is not a push-quote whore, apparently.)

denverpost.com
Vick asks for forgiveness
Michael Vick apologized to the NFL and his Atlanta Falcons teammates today for "using bad judgment."

usatoday.com
Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns

http://news.xinhuanet.com (China State news org.)
U.S. attorney general resigns
(Dogfighter not mentioned)

yahoonews.com
US Attorney General Gonzales resigns

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Attorney General Gonzales Resigns

bloomberg.com
Gonzales Quits After Months of Turmoil Over Firings
(byline - Bloomberg: One of the few outlets that still writes their own stories!)

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Viet - Sand

People deeply concerned that America elected a man of suspect mental health and obviously  inferior management and descision making skills are overjoyed this week. 

W ( The President) has finally decided that the billion word historical legacy of Vietnam might be worth considering when making great power foreign policy descisions.

He thinks we should have stayed, even though he was so afraid of going himself (not to mention afraid of flying) that he became a drunk.

 

But it is a start.

Quote of The Day

 "We taped him up in an 'X' pattern," ..

Bobby Vigil, Describing what happened when his seat mate's mental health failed at 30,000 feet and he tried to open the doors to the airbus. 

Monday, August 06, 2007

The Boor War (I)

A little honesty would help us all feel better about America. 

While doing your coffee juggling hate-radio listening, morning anti-yoga commute this week repeate the following mantra.  

(The truth will make you a better American:)

It was a Crime to go in, then.
It is a Sin to withdraw, now.

How can a compasionate American think otherwise?

A. 

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Global Dumbing

Recently I watched some of "Nova" on PBS. A piece about the global, undeniable and obvious change (downward) in moisture evaporation rates; caused by solar penetration reductions near 20%; caused by atmospheric particulate pollution levels (increased).

This circumstance is an important sideshow to the overwhelming GCC trends that are being talked about these days. But it shows a simplicity, both in the hobbyist observers who documented the trend, and the proof-of-solution that brought their separate research together.

The keynote of the show was broad documentation that weather really was milder - because the skies really were markedly cleaner all over North America and the world - in the three flightless days from September 11th - 14th 2001.

The greatest proof of global climate damage is in the simplicity of the solution.

Stopping.

The solutions to the problems we face are not complicated – The great challenges such as this are often just ethical questions. The answer to ethical issues tend to be very simple. It is the perceived and known discomforts of living with the outcome of those choices that is complicated. We know what is right and we know what is easy. The two are almost never the same. Strong men choose early and deal with it.

In my college decades I took every undergrad science class at two colleges: paleoclimatology, paleogeology, palenology (pollen), oceanography, Srat/Sed (the infamous), every kind of geology, dendrochronology, I counted pine trees (poorly), I sifted bison bones in the basement. I studied reports from underwater archaeologists who discovered fire rings thirty feet below mean sea level near the arctic circle. I heard lectures about mastodons found flash frozen in the tundra. I summarized the iridium layer that proves out the asteroid impact theory.

The teachers all said pretty much the same thing - "This climate change is real and it will happen to you: We don't think this. This is not opinion based: We know.

Now you know too."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/