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A fishy story.

….Centre for Mathematical Biology (CMB)…. “research partnerships”…. SeaWeb

….David and Lucile Packard Foundation.…has funded SeaWeb….Packard has paid SeaWeb $23-million since 2000….

….Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded SeaWeb to co-ordinate an “anti-farming campaign”…

….published in Science…..the editor-in-chief was Dr. Donald Kennedy, a trustee of the Packard Foundation….

The current editor, Dr. Bruce Alberts, is a trustee of the Moore Foundation.

….The Moore Foundation….doesn’t know….much of a $450,000 grant to the David Suzuki Foundation was re-granted to the CMB for its sea lice research, but that this amount was “less than $100,000

Why did the David Suzuki Foundation remove Web pages on the dangers of farmed salmon?

Read the rest of the story: The case of the missing sea lice
By Vivian Krause

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/05/31/the-missing-sea-lice/

Yikes - Torres is a ginger.

A few years ago docked on Cosumel Island while on Caribbean cruise saw troop? (whatever) sailors exercise of one of the Mexican Navy boat? ship?, anyway one of those, not big, not small, navy crafts.

No insult intended, no opinion offered, it made McHale's Navy look positively organized.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZPTosyyW8c&feature=related

Welcome back Winnipeg!

Time lapse photography in the Arctic Norway’s Lofoten archipelago. Beautiful country.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8bb_1306874772

Perhaps there is a God!:

"3. Clint (Eastwood) threatened to kill Michael Moore

Once again, fact is way awesomer than fiction. So how exactly did Clint come to threaten Michael Moore’s life? Well, it just so happens that Clint got the opportunity to watch Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine, and he didn’t much care for the scene at the end where Moore sticks a camera in Charlton Heston’s face and pretty much makes an ass of him.

So, while accepting a Special Filmmaking Achievement prize for Million Dollar Baby at the National Board Of Review Awards in New York, he says, “Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I’ll kill you.” The audience laughs, everyone has a good chuckle, and then the laughter dies down.

To make sure everyone knows that this wasn’t a joke and there’s no punchline, he then says, “I mean it.” Gulp! These are the times when I’m glad I’m not a fat documentary filmmaker. Charlton may have been a gentleman about Moore’s boorish ways, but Clint, as always, knows the answer to obnoxious punks: the .44 Magnum.

Here's the link. I just stole it from Ace of Spades HQ.

what ho?

NYC no longer the richest city?

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/Cities-most-billionaires-2011-forbeswp-1003887367.html?x=0

sign of the times folks!!

"Michael Moore’s life" Black Mamba

The after life for Moore, as seem through the lens of Georgie Sorass, will be 200 (rendered) candles.. thats why Georgie likes Moore...

Black Mamba, Dirty Harry is a *vegan*?!
What???

Metamorphosis, or Why We Should Study the West

Generations detached from their culture's legacy will be less likely to defend it now, or in the future.

History was once timeless – or nearly so. A Renaissance reader of Livy or Thucydides would have found himself transported to a quite recognizable world. Monarchs and city states, fleets powered by wind and muscle, armies meeting at swords’ point, weather moving faster than word, visitations of Plague — all would have seemed quite familiar, down to the handwritten texts in which the events had first been described. Likewise (minus the city states) would it have seemed to a Ming literatus, perusing the court histories of the Sung, Tang, or Han. In both cases things had, of course, changed in many specific ways. But the warp and woof of human existence, the conditions of daily life, remained largely the same, even at its pinnacle. So Machiavelli could advise his Prince drawing now from antiquity, now from the careers of contemporaries like the Borgias. So too an emperor of the Ming could be advised on how to treat with the barbarous Jurchens – as a Han emperor, fifteen hundred years before, had handled the barbarous Xiongnu.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/metamorphosis-or-why-we-should-study-the-west/

Mexico has a navy?

I'm sorry, Chutzy. The pop songs at #7 are worrying too.

Yastrow: “We Are on the Verge of a Great, Great Depression”

http://tinyurl.com/3okkc5q

This has to fall into the "pray for an asteroid" category: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/klu-klux-klan-protests-westboro-baptist-church-video/2011/05/31/AGgoiPFH_blog.html

Not to detract from alarmist depression mongering or westboro church pornography, but here's a cogent analysis of a whole lotta stuff by Fareed Zakaria on Charlie Rose. Do yourself a favour and watch it. If only we could produce such stuff for a mere billion+ per year (plus .5 billion-ish in private advertising revenue ) with our state broadcaster. I mean, Charlie's show must cost at least that much, just look at the fancy set and effects. Obviously we need to increase the CBC's budget.

Even though Canada Post may not be the most important thing going on in people's lives, I would think that an imminent strike threat would at least register _somewhere_ on the Google News Canada page. Nope, not a word. Ominous...

Mao Stlong* Lepolt: a twofel.

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"Wheels start to slow at China’s factories"

"The din of hundreds of stamping machines punching out sheets of metal at the sprawling production facility in southern China suggests anything but a slowdown.

Scores of young workers sidestep massive rolls of steel, aluminum and copper that are scattered everywhere, vividly illustrating the Chinese economy’s mammoth appetite for commodities.

However, officials at the Yangjiang Xinli Industrial Co. factory, which makes small motors, fish and turkey fryers as well as barbecues, say they aren’t running at full capacity despite the approaching summer season.

The rapid expansion of China’s factory production that has underpinned the country’s staggering economic growth for the past decade is slowing."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/wheels-start-to-slow-at-chinas-factories/article2042590/

...-

"U.S. manufacturers are leaving China behind"

"The United States exported more goods and services in March than in any single month in its history: $172.7-billion (U.S.) worth. It was the country’s 21st consecutive month of rising exports, pushing the year-over-year increase to 20.9 per cent. In these 12 record-setting months, exports reached within one-tenth of 1 per cent of $2-trillion – more than four times the cost of the country’s imports of crude oil.

This is significant. People are starting to take notice. Markets writer Joseph Lazzaro (on the Daily Finance website) anticipates that the U.S. up-trend in exports could last for years and turn its intractable trade deficit into a surplus. More dramatically, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm, discerns “a renaissance” in manufacturing that will, within five years, lure major U.S. corporations to return home from China.

In fact, BCG notes, the process has already begun. Caterpillar Inc. decided to build its next manufacturing plant in Texas. NCR Corp. decided to move production of its automated teller machines from China to Georgia. Wham-O Inc., the iconic toy maker, decided to repatriate 50 per cent of its Frisbee and Hula Hoop production from China. BCG said many more such decisions will occur as wage rates for skilled workers rise in China, year after year, at double-digit rates.

“All over China, wages are climbing at the rate of 15 per cent to 20 per cent a year ...,” Harold Sirkin, a BCG senior partner, said in a release. “We expect net labour costs for manufacturing in China and the U.S. to converge by around 2015. As a result ... you’re going to see a lot more products ‘Made in the USA’ in the next five years.” At current rates, China’s wages could double in as few as five years."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/us-manufacturers-are-leaving-china-behind/article2041599/

*H/T Liberal leader Bob Rae, Mao Strong's nephew.

"Murder Most Academic - A British Ph.D. candidate puts “homicide studies” into practice."

"City Journal ^ | Spring 2011 | Theodore Dalrymple"

"In some modern societies—and certainly Britain is one of them—satire is prophecy. This makes effective satire difficult because reality so soon catches up with it. Satire is also dangerous and perhaps even irresponsible, for no idea is too absurd, it seems, for our political masters and bureaucratic elite to take seriously and put into practice—at public expense, of course, never their own.

Sometimes reality is far in advance of satire when it comes to absurdity. The results, however, are not always funny. If a satirist had come up with the idea of a violent criminal who had spent time in an asylum being admitted by a university to its doctoral program in “homicide studies,” thereafter turning into a serial killer, that satirist would have been denounced for poor taste. But this is precisely what a British university did recently. A man with a long history of criminal violence became a serial killer while working on a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Bradford, the subject of his thesis being the methods of homicide used in the city during the nineteenth century. He himself used methods more reminiscent of the fourteenth.

Stephen Griffiths is 40. He has never worked and has always lived at taxpayers’ expense. At 17, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for cutting the throat (not fatally) of a supermarket security guard who tried to arrest him for shoplifting. In prison, doctors reported, Griffiths had a “preoccupation with murder—particularly multiple murder.” They diagnosed him as a violent psychopath; that is, he had an intractable personality development that made him likely to commit new violent offenses.

The doctors were right."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728553/posts

Wiener or Weiner? A confabulation.

...-

"ARE ARTISTS LIARS?"

"Humans are natural-born storytellers, so lying is in our blood. Ian Leslie considers how this comes out in our art ..."

"Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, you can act,” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to have viewed the footage. “Are you good at lying?” asked Kaftan. “Jesus,” said Brando, “I’m fabulous at it.”
Brando was not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar is a fine one. If art is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order—as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have observed. Both liars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief—a skill requiring intellectual sophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars are writers and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying. Indeed, lying and artistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root—one that is exposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment.

A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities, including coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable. Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasio asked her about the Falklands War. This patient spontaneously described a blissful holiday she had taken in the islands, involving long strolls with her husband and the purchase of local trinkets from a shop. Asked what language was spoken there, she replied, “Falklandese. What else?”

In the language of psychiatry, this woman was ‘confabulating’."

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/ian-leslie/are-artists-liars?page=full

Mao & Mutts.

H/T: "China Small Animal Protection Association."

Read Wan.

...-

"Chinese dog eaters and dog lovers spar over animal rights"

"By William Wan,

BEIJING — The mutts were destined for the dinner table — all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward awaiting restaurants in northeastern China.

Then, fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road."

"“There was so much enthusiasm when the dogs were first rescued, but our worry is, what happens now?”"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-dog-eaters-and-dog-lovers-spar-over-animal-rights/2011/05/20/AGvgmVDH_story.html

This one's just for you, Richard Evans, at June 2, 2011 1:27 AM, it's a favourite of mine:

Canada Warship Seizes Tanker in Arabian Sea-- Reuters

When an officer of the HMCS Vancouver announced that the tanker was about to be boarded, the crew of the detained ship was confused, said Omari, but their confusion quickly turned to anger when they saw what the Canadians sailors were carrying.

"They were armed. With guns," said Omari. "Canadians. With guns. And a warship. What is this world coming to?"

"They were pretty rude, too," Omari added. "They started asking us all sorts of questions, like 'Where did that oil come from?' But first we wanted to know who gave them the damn warship."

http://www.satirewire.com/news/feb02/warship.shtml

Bono,multi-millionaire social activist,has gone out of his way to ease the troubles of the Slave Lake fire.
He dedicated a song to the victims.
To show my appreciation for his largesse,I will raise a finger in his general direction today,and give 10% of today's wages to a charity.
My act may not be much,but it will accomplish more than the wanker's empty gesture.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/Bono+dedicates+final+song+Slave+Lake+fire+victims/4876507/story.html

Neo-AGW Progress Report.

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"Countdown to flatline: world carbon trading market falls for first time – World Bank reports rumblings of possible failure"

"I wonder how long before flatlining occurs, like last year with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX):

Even the Guardian is covering this “failure” of carbon markets. They write:

The international market in carbon credits has suffered an almost total collapse, with only $1.5bn (£916m) of credits traded last year…

Now that the Kyoto protocol is essentially dead, the economic markets will surely pull life support for carbon trading with no political support in place for emissions reduction. With this report and news coverage, you can hear the traders already running for the exits.

Growth in Global Carbon Market Pauses Amid Uncertainty"

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

Call my cynical, but how thick are the rotors on this kid's helicopter parent?

Robert W. - heh. You should have seen the vid they made after the little guy was toilet trained. Eye of the Tiger and everything.

(They're saving all these videos to make his life a living hell in junior high school. It's what good parents do.)

Good for you wallyj. Bono being a wanker is right. Thinks he is G*d's gift to mankind.

maz2, thanks for the update.

Thought this might be appropriate for the Roadkill Diaries. Fresh meat, served up from the land of Obama.

We don't care about no stinkin inflation:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-bill-allowing-people-to-keep-roadkill-okd-20110513,0,6075663.story?track=rss