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POPSThe Greenhouse Gas That Nobody Knew It's like eating mushrooms. You would soon be dead if you ate every mushroom that you didn't know was poisonous or not. The only sensible way to eat mushrooms is to only eat those you already know are not poisonous. Intelligent beings use the precautionary principle, business and technological innovators eat any mushroom / chemical they can find with the result that they (and the rest of us) are more like to end up prematurely dead. Wise men know that innovation is deadly dangerous, and that societies which are based on it risk extinction.
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POPSAnother Notch For Rightwing Shock Jocks.
A story like this, puzzles me as to why it's legal to spread hate over our airwaves. The rightwing shock jocks, have been doing this for years without remorse or fear of reparation. We all enjoy freedom of speech and would never want to do anything to jeopardize this right, a corner stone of democracy. But when it's used to spread xenophobia, doesn't that strike you as being criminal? It's illegal to shout FIRE in a crowded room, shouldn’t it also be against the law to shout THIS GROUP, RACE, or ETHNICITY IS EVIL. Yet that is exactly what the Limbaughs, Lou Dobbs' and other hate spreaders do when they use media tools to distribute their loathsome rhetoric. It happened in Tenn. when a crazed man went looking for Liberals to KILL because a radio jock said liberals were ruining America. When will the time come, to say enough hate, it's time for healing? As long as rumor brutes can sputter their revulsion behind the safety of a microphone, it will never end and some innocent will suffer.
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POPSPalin Blamed for Obama Death Threats Let's hope they do, anyway. The piece tells us: The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks. Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Because that's the politics of division and destruction, which is what the right wing does. "Country first" my ass.
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POPSObama Victory Alters the Tenor of Iraqi Politics Over all, however, there was a new tone of optimism. “The atmosphere is positive with the American attempt to preserve the sovereignty of the Iraqi nation,” the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told the news channel Al Arabiya. He praised the inclusion of a new provision stating that Americans would not launch attacks on Iraq’s neighbors from Iraqi soil. “There’s going to be a significant presence, but they are not going to be ‘combat’ forces,” said the administration official. “The other thing we witnessed through the Bush period was that when the Iraqi politicians couldn’t reach a compromise, Bush interfered,” Mr. Habeeb said. “I don’t think Obama will do that; he will not try to set the Iraqi agenda,” he said. “I think the politicians will have to be mature enough to solve their own problems and dare to make compromises.”
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POPSAl Gore: When Powerpoint Gets in the Way Al Gore gives a great opening and closing to his presentation here, using very personal stories, humor and high interactivity with the audience. You can feel him relating to his audience. He comes across clearly and authentically. However, notice how that fades when he goes into his set of 15 text slides. These could have been much stronger with less text. This would have made it easier for the audience to read, and allowed him to connect more with the audience. Instead he's doing a combination of reading the slide, rewording part of the message and then adding on some talking points. This tend to come across more as a scripted lecture and less an invitation to join him, which is the atmosphere he creates so well in the beginning and end of the presentation. You can see additional comments at the TED website: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html
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POPSElectricity Found on Saturn Moon continues: Morente's team studied data returned from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which broke away from NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005 to become the first probe to go below Titan's clouds. (Read "Voyage to Saturn" in National Geographic magazine.) As soon as the probe entered the moon's atmosphere, a strong wind tilted the device about 30 degrees. This accidental motion enabled Huygens to detect the Earthlike electrical resonances that it otherwise would have missed, which Morente and colleagues describe their study, published in a recent issue of the journal Icarus. Jeffrey Bada, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, believes the process that allowed lightning to spark life on Earth is universal and could happen in many environments—including on Titan.
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POPS"Hate Speech" Hate speech codes are rules intended to ensure an atmosphere free from harassment and intimidation, conducive to a learning environment. In many countries, deliberate use of hate speech is a criminal offence prohibited under incitement to hatred legislation. We have free speech here, BUT you must also be responsible for your words. We also have another way of dealing with unsavoury types of people, like racists, bigots or those who hold other not-so-educated views. They are totally allowed to express their views (politely), but we "tier dem ihjel", meaning they can talk all they want, but we don't have to listen. They are shunned and we don't "entertain" them, or their views. It's like this, "If a racist stands in the middle of a forest and spews hate, and there's no one there to hear him, is he still a racist?" *LOL* They are "frozen out". If someone speaks trash, don't feed their hate. Don't entertain them at all. Just walk away and ignore them. It works.
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POPSThe Obama Temptation There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.
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POPSGuide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images I don’t think this blog would be half of what it is without Flickr. The images included with most posts magnetize the eye to the page and create an atmosphere for the rest of the piece. It’s also one of the most commented-on aspects of the blog — the images are something I think leaves an impression on a lot of people.
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POPSThe Human-Powered Nightclub Two people dancing produce enough power for one light bulb. That may not be a lot of juice -- but imagine if this technology was deployed in busy areas like train stations, where thousands of people walk all day long.
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