Sunday, January 31, 2010
S. Court Lets Places Like China, Venezuela Pick our Next Congress
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Glaciers Then and Now - You Decide. Growing or shrinking?
Ok, Skeptics and those convinced we are in a global 'cooling' period. Here are several glacier shots, then and now. Do these glaciers look like they are growing (from cooling), or shrinking (from warming)....?
Rise of the COFFEE Party! Fixing the World over a Cup of Joe
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
NASA: Warmest Decade in History. 2010 Could Be Warmest on Record
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Emergency Helicopter Following Boat on Clear Lake
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Solar Minimum - Impact on Weather As It Moves to Max
Friday, January 22, 2010
Supreme Court Just Threw Out 1 Man - 1 Vote: Foreign Corp Ads OK
The activist Supreme Court just threw out 100 years of law and has ruled that corporations, even foreign-owned ones, are people - and can run political ads. In other words, they just tilted the table towards the powerful and ended the American principal of "one man, one vote." And the party who brought the suit never even asked for that ruling!
People no longer count. Now it is the artificial "people" who will increasingly control who gets elected. Put it this way. If that was the rule when the automobile was first introduced, the horse and buggy people would have made them illegal and we'd still we walking. Now, coal companies with millions can stop wind and solar projects that would advance our future.
Under this, the new guy and the new technology will be buried by the old guys and old money. Who does that advance our country? We face a world where it is the control of new technology that makes the winners. Now the old, powerful ones will have even more power to kill the new.
As a result of this activist decision by an increasing one-sided court, now voting power is no longer a choice between men and women: instead it will go to the corporations with billions of dollars and the most powerful entities on earth. Now even foreign-owned companies operating in the U.S. can run a politician ad for or against a candidate. How nuts is that?
This decision will tilt the U.S. to become more like Mexico, where the powerful elites stifle regular people and competition. And you can see how Mexico has been a technical whiz under that system, right? Their top heavy system can't even produce jobs - so they send them to the U.S. rather than changing their system.
This was a bad 5-4 decision that ordinary people who don't control millions of corporate funds (like Wall Street banks, hedge funds, etc.) should fear the consequences whether you are a Democrat, Republican or a tea bagger. The court made a ruling on an issue that the Plaintiffs had not even pled. It should be reheard and reversed.
Activism by a court on the right should be as wrong as activism by a court on the left - especially one that throws out 100 years of precedent.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Mass/Texas - No More One Party Monopolies. Avoiding the China Syndrome
It's foggy here on Clear Lake today - can't even see across it - but the fog seems to be clearing in Washington and Texas where its becoming crystal clear that this will NOT be a normal political year.
From the new Senator Brown to a possible Texas Governor Medina from a third party makes this a fascinating year to watch
What happened in Massachusetts - the breaking of a single party stranglehold on office is also happening here in Texas. And that's good for both states.
Why? Because single party states are monopolies on power where cronyism and corruption set in and the real decision is made by a few voters in a March primary instead of the general public in November. A single-party State is no different than the single-party Chinese State dictating policy without any opposition to temper excesses.
Let's face it: The Democrat left overplayed its hand and people are more comfortable with Centrism then either the ideas of either extreme (left or right).
In Texas, we have a three-way battle for the GOP Governor nomination, including a candidate that represents independents, disgruntled Republicans, tea baggers and Libertarians to boot - Deborah Medina.
So instead of the race being two candidates trying to out-right-wing each other for the primary voters, the first debate between the three brought out discussions on legalizing drugs and giving ownership of our roads to foreign companies. I hope Belo Corporation changes it mind and allows Ms. Medina to join the next GOP Governor debate now that polls show her over 10%.
Have you ever seen an airplane fly on only its left or right wing? No. It only flies when there is a balance between the two. Massachusetts needs a break from the Democrat lock and places like Texas need a break from the GOP lock in order to give voters more choice and more than extreme candidate No. 1 vs. extreme candidate No. 2.
Breaking the one party monopoly on elections, which is happening in Texas before it happened in Massachusetts, is the only way to avoid the "China Syndrome."
Monday, January 18, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Al Qaida's 21st Century Jihad Cyber Recruiting – Web 2.0 Used to Spread Hate
The Web has proved to be a great gathering place for the haters of the world to find each other and bond. Now Al Qaida is using it to grow their organization that would have died or withered without its ability to reach out globally to easily influenced people.
Al Qaida has managed to stay alive for two reasons: (1) the remoteness of the Afghanistan/Pakistan badlands and access to other failed States like Somalia, (2) because of its sophisticated use of 21st Century technology: The Internet.
Creative websites have been established by Al Qaida webmasters to print articles and show videos that paint a one-sided story of their 14th century beliefs – that one religion (theirs) control the world and that the Westerns are killing Muslims because of their religion. (The one-religion-controlling-the-world idea is arrogant and moronic in a multi-religion world).
Like most hate groups, Al Qaida fails to tell the other side. It occurred to me that Americans should tell that story. How many Muslims know that the U.S. was defending Muslims who were being killed by the Christian Serbs in Bosnia, etc. in the 90’s?
I was reminded of that while watching “Behind Enemy Lines” the movie with Owen Wilson. It was based on a true story of an American pilot shot down over Bosnia by Serbs in the 90’s, while on a flight to monitor Serb activity. ( He was successfully rescued).
Unfortunately, incidents like the Blackwater shootings and the Abu Gharib torture photos give Al Quaida fuel to fan the flames of hate. They are useful ways to generate anger in jobless young men like the underwear bomber. With video and articles, they are talking to thousands of young men like him, using those episodes to convince these easily influence young men (and potentially women) that Westerners hate their religion, so they need to kill themselves attacking us.
So it occurred to me after watching “Behind Enemy Lines” that we should get our own websites showing the good things we are doing to support the ordinary Muslims from brutes like the Taliban. Recent polls show that the Taliban has lost favor with the population because of the Taliban’s cruelty and indiscriminate killing of civilians. We need to build on that with our own creative use of Web 2.0.
We could start by getting them to watch “Behind Enemy Lines” to show that Al Qaida’s extremist leaders are telling lies. (The sequence with the SAM missiles chasing our fighter is amazing).
The world has many religions and no one needs to put themselves above everyone else. Extremists do just that.
Pass the word.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Australia Burns - Seabrooks Red Sky...
Monday, January 11, 2010
Sarah Palin's Flip Flop on 'global warming'
I found an interesting article on the recent cold snap that has had people wondering if we were in a "global cooling."
A few weeks before she mounted the national stage, in July of last year, then-Gov. Palin told her state:
"Alaska's climate is warming. While there have been warming and cooling trends before, climatologists tell us that the current rate of warming is unprecedented within the time of human civilization. Many experts predict that Alaska, along with our northern latitude neighbors, will warm at a faster pace than any other areas, and the warming will continue for decades."
So she was for global warming before she was against it.
Alaska happens to be one of the states where global warming effects are visible - villages are disappearing due to the loss of the permafrost like this one pictured above...
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Texas: Solar Energy Jobs - Sign the Petition
Thursday, January 07, 2010
The Most Critical Issue To Our Future - If We Are to Have One...
Don't let the cold fool you. Here are graphs of both co2 and temperatures - and the trend is spiking way above the "normal" cycle. The second one is by the National Science Academy, showing both co2 and temperatures are spiking dramatically up.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Larger version of 800,000 year graph of climate change
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
How Earth Will Look in 90 years if Climate Change is Real..
In helping a friend do research on a presentation about "Climate Change: Myth or Real?" I came across a couple eye-popping pieces of real science.
The first is a graph showing the last 800,000 years of climate (they can do this by drilling ice cores). It shows that there is a natural cycle of heating and cooling for all 800,000 years -until now. Now the temperatures are spiking off the 800,000 year chart -- way above the average.
In other words, this is not a natural cycle... The second is a Google Earth video showing today's earth and how it will look in 90 years (in the year 2100), based on current temperature increases. Notice how it goes from a nice light green color to a dead, dark brown...
Think about this: If the climate skeptics are wrong, the planet dies, which is not good for either our grandkids or business. If the climate change proponents are wrong, we end up with cleaner, renewable energy, cleaner skies and more water - not to mention new jobs created by these new industries. Which scenario is worse for our kids' future?
Friday, January 01, 2010
Good Things About 2010
We survived the worst crash of our economy in over 70 years (that should make everyone feel better).
We have a whole new set of political figures to blame for everything we personally did wrong.
We are not starting this decade with a Presidential election being decided by The Supreme Court instead of the voters.
We are not in a bubble of irrational exuberance (which proved in the last decade to be a bad sign in a stock market).
We are not in a depression (they suck).
People are now saving more (instead of continuing the overconsumption binge, except possibly for overeating fatty foods).
More people now appreciate what it’s like not to have a steady paycheck, raising their empathy for those down on their luck (how can you understand the trap of being poor unless you have been there?)
We can be happy that Mr. Stanford and Mr. Madoff are in jail and that your GM (Gov’t Motors) warranty is still good (I need to trade mine in!)
We are rebuilding our economy with greener, cleaner, more diverse energy sources and 21st century technology that will create the jobs in the present and future (people who once made buggy whips were retrained to assemble the first cars; carmakers can now retrain to assemble wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) We don’t progress by standing still.
So, here’s to a new year and a whole new decade to try not to screw up (so we can look forward to the next one).
I’m thrilled to be in 2010!