The Blog with No Name

“We have freedom now, we have human rights, we have democracy. We will invite the insurgents to take part in our system. If they do, we will welcome them. If they don’t, we will kill them.” –Rashid Majid, 80, Iraqi

Damn straight.

(via Best of the Web)

Wow! My friend Greg was just on the CSPAN as a member of the participating studio audience! He got to ask Chistopher Hitchens a question! I’m so jealous.

I guess there are benefits to living on the East Coast.

Heh, if I had bothered to read his blog this morning I would have known he’d be there.

I’m watching live Iraqi coverage via C-SPAN’s live video stream. They seem to have an excellent amount of coverage. The host is an Iraqi American (his dad fled Iraq to America) and can help translate some of the calls they get from Iraq. They also have a blogger covering America media on the internet, and an Arabic speaker who is reading off of sites like BBC and Al-Jazeera. Christopher Hitchens is also a guest along with a couple other Iraqis. Sometimes they also have man-on-the-street interviews of Iraqis. Nearly everybody is optimistic, and it seems that the election has been successful.

Fox News is reporting that there was a turn out of up to 72% (a lower estimate is 60%) even while the terrorists were able to slaughter another 44 people. Nevertheless, the CSPAN show has had several callers who report the security situation was very good.

This is history in the making.

Here is a moving post by Hammorabi:

Our voting is:
No to the terrorists!
No to the dictatorships!
No to hate and racism!
No to the fascists!
No to the Nazis!
No to the mentally retarded tyrants!
No to the ossified, narrow-minded and intolerants!

The Iraqis are voting in few hours time for the new Iraq.

We are going to create our future by ourselves not by dictators.

We are going to say:
Yes for the freedom and democracy!
Yes for the civilized Iraq!
Yes for peace and prosperity!
Yes for coexistence!
Yes for the New Iraq!

Let them bomb and kill us. It will not deter us!
Let them send their dogs to suck our bones. We care not!
Let them bark. It will not frighten us.
Let them see how civilised to be free and democratic!
Let them die by our vote tomorrow! It is the magic bullet which will kill them!

Welcome New Iraq.
Welcome freedom and democracy.
Welcome peace and prosperity for all nations with out exception but terrorists!

People posting at Democratic Underground are going nuts.

Friends of Democracy has a small photo essay of ink stained fingers in Iraq. Here is my favorite:

To pee your way out of an avalanche.

In light of my on going love/hate affair with my computer, I’ve decided a new poll would be appropriate.

My take is that technology is all voodoo. This has been my cry whenever a computer inexplicably breaks or magically fixes itself. I think anybody would be hard pressed to convince me that computers really are just logic machines, coldly calculating numbers and adhering to a code of only ones and zeros. My everyday experience tells me that’s BS.

Vote!

N.B. Remember you have to be on the main index page to vote. . .

The only way I can explain this behavior is by positing that a Evil Being of some sort is conspiring against me. Fortunately, this isn’t very hard for me to do becuase it fits very well with my faith and theology.

This must be my Job-ian test. I am given a task that I must do, in this case a memo that is due at 8 A.M. this morning, and then I am confounded by another event, in this case my tower is on the fritz again, big time. I need to explain something about me. My computers are my domain. I am the sole ruler and arbiter of my machines. I control the existence and content of those machines, and I’d like to think that I also ensure their operation to a certain extent. But now, tonight, when I need to be concentrating on my memo, my tower once again has rebelled against me, probably incited by this Evil Being. When a machine has risen up against me, I am compelled with an almost overwhelming desire to quash the rebellion and instill peace and stability into my domain. I become possessed by a nearly single-minded purpose to bring the rebellious machine back into the fold of my benevolent will.

What does this all mean? Well, what would have been just another late night has turned into an all-nighter. Man, I was really rolling on my memo too, whipping out page after page. Now, I can barely concentrate because that tower over there is giving me the fits and threatening to dump all of my precious data. My faith is strong, and I will prevail.

The recent fashion trend in women’s shoes is these super-nasty, icky-looking, witch-modeling pumps with pointy toes:

This is my pick for the worst fashion disaster of the millenium. No offense to women who wear these, but I can’t stand them.

More for my own later reference, here are the product round-ups I did for MacNN:

#1: BookEndz docks, DVD-burner with LightScribe technology, and Circus Ponies NoteBook.
#2: SmartDeck, AirClick, and Delicious Library.
#3: Solio Power Pack, Lilipod, TuneBase FM, and PodBuddy.

ram.bunctio.us now resolves to steevak.com.

What to do with it? What to do with it? Hmmmm . . .

Recently I had a post about a Coptic Christian family that was slaughtered in their own home and the possibility that this massacre might have been religiously motivated. Jihad Watch has a bunch of posts on this matter, including a press release from the American Coptic Union, indication that the family faced a vendetta in the past, and some insider information. Take them for what they are. There are obvious ways to discredit these reports, but I do find them interesting.

Jihad Watch has much more on the slayings too. I still think the specter of bigotry and the fears of being perceived as anti-Islamic is going to discourage both news coverage and entertaining the very real possibility that this is Jihad in our own land. Just imagine if this was a family of Muslims who had their throats slit, religious symbols on the body mutilated, received death threats from some crazy Klans men, and nothing taken from their home. What’s the obvious conclusion everybody would draw?

Here they be. I noticed that I haven’t seen any of the best picture nominations. That’s odd. I do really want to see Million Dollar Baby because I love Eastwood’s work.

Another alarmist report (via Slashdot) on the global climate is on its way. I always find these reports humorous. Let’s look at a few things in this coming report. First, who is it drafted by? It’s drafted by “a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world.” Where are the scientists? Maybe that’s who the “academics” are, but that’s not obvious. More on what some scientists are saying in just a bit. So, we have some politicians and business types who are forecasting the evironmental doom of the planet. But I thought it was the business leaders who were causing all this pollution? Big ole’ nasty Big Business is thrusting smoke stacks up into the virgin blue sky and spilling out all sorts of nasty gunk. Furthermore, I thought the politicians were in the pocket of Big Business, enabling them to do more damage to the environment. This report must be from an alternate universe.

I guess the obvious answer to my question is the evironment is getting so bad even the Big Business and politicians can no longer ignore it. I mean look at what they’re forecasting:

“Beyond the 2 degrees C level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly,” it says.

“It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts. [They] could also imperil a very high proportion of the world’s coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest.”

It goes on: “Above the 2 degrees level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 metres over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet’s forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon.”

That’s some scary stuff! Though I do find it humorous that these people are predicting what the weather will be like decades from now when my local weatherman can’t accurately predict what the weather is going to be tomorrow.

But there is a minority report to all of this. This article (via Instapundit) is reporting the findings of actual scientists and climate experts. Here are their conclusions:

Scientists have traditionally viewed the relative stability of the Earth’s climate since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago as being due to natural causes, but there is evidence that changes in solar radiation and greenhouse gas concentrations should have driven the Earth towards glacial conditions over the last few thousand years.

What stopped it has been the activity of humans, both ancient and modern, argue the scientists.

Ah! Now scientists are reporting we’re saving ourselves with our gas emissions! These scientists believe that signs indicate methane and carbon dioxide levels should be falling right now, but instead they are rising. And what is partly responsible for this rise in greenhouse gases?

The unexpected trends could be explained by massive early deforestation in Eurasia, rice farming in Asia, the introduction of livestock, and the burning of wood and plant material, all of which led to an outpouring of greenhouse emissions.

Hmmm, I see trees being cut down, rice paddies, cows, and “plant material” burning in this list, but where are the SUVs, smokestacks, and Halliburtons?

Regardless, look at what we’ve saved ourselves from:

“In the absence of anthropogenic contributions, global climate is almost 2C cooler than today and roughly one-third of the way toward full glacial temperatures.”

At the peak of the last ice age, which began 70,000 years ago, 97% of Canada was covered by ice.

That’s some pretty scary stuff! Better keep those cows farting and those rice paddies growing or Canada is going to be covered with ice!

And the conclusion to this article is the real kicker:

Anthropologist Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, said: “If the research findings are correct, a radical change in the perception of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will be required.

“Instead of driving us to the brink of environmental disaster, human intervention and technology progress will be seen as vital activities that have unintentionally delayed the onset of a catastrophic ice age.”

Yes, you read that right. If this report (by scientists as opposed to politicians and business types) is right, then all of our pollution is saving us. That can’t be right!

But once again, we should turn our eyes to history and learn from the past. I think this article (via Slashdot) is helpful for this exercise.

An ancient version of global warming may have been to blame for the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history.

In an event known as the “Great Dying,” some 250 million years ago, 90 percent of all marine life and nearly three-quarters of land-based plants and animals went extinct.

Scientists have long debated the cause of this calamity — which occurred before the era of dinosaurs — with possibilities including such disasters as meteor impacts.

. . .

Ward’s team believes the extinctions were caused by global warming and oxygen deprivation over long periods of time.

Massive volcanic flows in what is now Siberia brought on the warming while, at the same time, geologic action caused global sea levels to drop, Ward explained in a telephone interview.

That’s some pretty scary stuff! Unfortunately, we can’t do anything to stop volcanoes, and we’re defenseless against asteroids (or are we?). Therefore, we’re screwed.

UPDATE: A freshly posted TCS article also tears apart the new we’re-all-doomed climate report. The author has read the whole report and exposes some embarrassments, some strong biases, and a noticeable absence.

I helped Baldino, an old college buddy, with a short film project to translate some scenes in Woody Allen’s Manhattan from Manhattan to Portland. He has posted it online. If you aren’t familiar with Manhattan you probably won’t get much of it. I know I wouldn’t have unless he showed me the pertinent clips first.