30 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  3. Three things. First, the quote of the day has to be this from Rush Limbaugh:
    “Can you imagine if WikiLeaks, if these guys would start offering illegal rap CDs for download? Why, we would be jumping into gear so fast to get this guy behind bars, he wouldn’t know what hit him. If this guy was putting illegal music, stolen music, and people would download it free from his site, this guy would be history! But, no: he’s out there publishing all these dirty little secret, these cables that go back and forth from State Department to embassy. We can’t find him, we don’t know where the little twerp is.”
    See the full comment here which was good:
    http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112910/content/01125107.guest.html
    Second, is the West *finally* getting some spine?
    http://www.theprovince.com/life/Chilliwack+trustees+Christ+back+into+Xmas/3881278/story.html
    Third, Latimer was granted full parole – 10 years too late if you ask me:
    http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/29/robert-latimer-granted-full-parole-reports/

  5. Thanks SDH, the X-ray piece is very interesting!
    and scary … why would so much be masked on a document??? what are they hiding ??? why???

  6. Sargur N. Srihari, Beyond C.S.I.: The Rise of Computational Forensics
    Such high-profile cases grab the headlines and our attention, but they also point to an underlying problem with fingerprints—and with shoe prints, handwriting, and nearly every other form of classical forensics data. “The fact is that many forensic tests…have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny,” a committee convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded last year. One of the main problems with forensics evidence is that it must be analyzed and interpreted by a person, whose own theory of the crime can introduce a bias in the results. There can also be significant uncertainty in the analyst’s conclusions, but oftentimes that uncertainty is never quantified or conveyed to judges and juries.
    And yet, these traditional forms of forensics evidence can be very helpful, provided they can be looked at objectively and the uncertainty of the results can be measured and properly explained. The relatively new field of computational forensics has sprung up to address those needs….

  7. Fixing Lewis
    A Sword Between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates
    by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen
    A Sword Between the Sexes? is a thoroughly researched and masterfully composed account of a development its author detects in C. S. Lewis’s thought on gender matters that moved, as Lewis matured, from the hierarchicalism and gender essentialism of “Priestesses in the Church?” and That Hideous Strength toward the greater egalitarianism of works like The Chronicles of Narnia and Till We Have Faces, a movement influenced by his encounters with outstanding women whose qualities he earlier would have been inclined to deny or ignore.
    http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-045-b

  8. Nuking anything is not good, nads, spuds, film (I’m old):
    Nuked Food” – The Dangers of Irradiated Food
    Nuked food is the common term for irradiated food – food which is exposed to high level radiation for the purpose of sterilizing it. This high level radiation penetrates the food which, as anyone who has paid attention in chemistry knows, raises the energy level of the atoms and molecules which the food is composed of. This results in myriad “free radicals” – atoms which have lost an outer electron due to having absorbed a shot of higher energy.
    And instead of being chemically neutral, such an atom has now become strongly attractive. This will break and re-arrange many chemicals bonds in the atoms, molecules and chemical compounds of the cells of the food under radiation. So much so that the cellular processes of any micro-organisms in the food are disrupted, and the micro-organisms in the food are killed.
    The cells of micro-organisms live and die by exactly the same chemical laws and processes that our cells live by. And if our cells were subjected to the same radiation, they would die just as surely.
    The idea is that the radiation dissipates, and things return to normal. But we have come to know and understand that free radicals form stable compounds that are different from the original chemical compounds, and that the free radicals and the altered compounds are harmful to us in many, many ways – among them a trigger for heart diseases and cancer.
    The greatest danger, in my view, is the havoc such free radicals can wreak in the delicate chemistry of reproduction, when our cells, or an ova, divide and replicate – a cell or an an ovum is about the same size as a micro-organism – and in the growth and development of the embryo, when it is acutely vulnerable to any abnormalities.
    Personally, I cannot understand how people can be so irresponsible to allow and apply what is such a powerful free radical creation tool that it kills all micro-organisms in the food – micro-organisms which live and die by exactly the same chemistry as we do. To me this is incomprehensible.
    Here then is a calm and cogent article by an accomplished and respected Cancer research scientist, plus a few abstracts (no abstracts were available for many more papers) of animal trials done with irradiated food, as listed in the Public Archives of the National Library of Medicine.
    Original Article:

  9. Hello Kate,
    First off, thanks for the h/t on the Suzuki item last week. On the Wednesday night my little outpost in the blogging universe had just hit 1,000 views after 2 and a half months.
    I signed in around 8:45am Thursday morning and saw this blue line shooting off into orbit. After five days, I’m 90% of the way to the second thousand.
    I’m not sure if anyone has passed this link your way. It’s a Suzuki Foundation form letter to each persons MP. They would like a few thousand more letters sent…..
    http://action.davidsuzuki.org/C-311?utm_source=morag-blog&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=Bill-C-311
    Second, here’s the Monday Cancun posting from a WWF – Canada blogger, Zoe Caron.
    http://blog.wwf.ca/blog/2010/11/29/signs-of-change-day-one-at-the-cop16-climate-talks-in-cancun-mexico/
    The WWF site also has some videos on Hudson Bay polar bears, it seems the ice is late.

  11. From the atricle on stuxnet SDH at November 29, 2010 10:48 PM:
    “The nuclear facility in Iran runs an “air gap” security system, meaning it has no connections to the Web, making it secure from outside penetration.” ; and several para’s later….
    “During this time the worms reported back to two servers that had to be run by intelligence agencies, one in Denmark and one in Malaysia.”
    This doesn’t compute. 🙂

  12. Socialism: Ich Bin Ein Hopeless.
    Leftist Spiegel melts down.
    Der Horrerrr:
    “Europe is discussing the horror scenario of a break-up of the euro zone.”
    Der “experts are alarmed”. Jawohl.
    …-
    “Fears of a Euro Demise”
    “The Disastrous Consequences of a Return to the Deutsche Mark”
    “Europe is discussing the horror scenario of a break-up of the euro zone. At present, that still seems unlikely, but experts are alarmed. A comeback of national currencies would be fatal — especially for Germany.
    The deutsche mark is still around. Even almost nine full years after the introduction of euro notes and coins, German households still have an estimated 13 billion deutsche marks — stashed in hiding places, in collections or under grandma’s mattress. And, if opinion polls are to be believed, almost 50 percent of Germans would like to see the currency reintroduced as the country’s official means of payment.
    In fact, pollsters at the EU’s Eurobarometer have determined that: “For many Germans, the deutsche mark was the symbol of economic security, stability and prosperity.” Those are attributes that euroskeptics will never be able to associate Europe’s single currency with.
    From one perspective, they might be right. Hasn’t the financial crisis in Europe gotten drastically worse in recent weeks? First it was Greece, and now Ireland too has had to draw on the €750 billion ($993 billion) euro rescue fund set up this year to prevent the euro zone from breaking apart.
    A number of other euro-zone countries may be about to share the same fate. Financial markets are already betting that Portugal will need a bailout. And, if worse comes to worst, it could even happen to Spain, which would surely mean the end of the euro as we’ve known it.
    But what would really happen if the euro collapsed? Would it really herald a return to the good, old days, to a Germany that uses the much-revered deutsche mark? Or could it actually be a harbinger of chaos and economic depression?”
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,731798,00.html

  13. The(Montreal)Gazette is up to its usual biased reporting. First it baldly reports that the Tories stole the election in Vaughan (what part of democracy doesn’t the Gazette get?).
    Then it manages to run a lengthy article on the razor-thin margin of victory by the P.Q. over the Liberals in Kamouraska (despite the Liberals ensuring that the Bombardier company which will construct subway wagons in the riding got the contract against international competition) without once mentioning that the Action Démocratique candidate Gérald Beaulieu got 23% of the vote. The A.D.Q., given its uneven history since leader Mario Dumont left, did unexpectedly well in the much-watched by-election.
    The Liberals still have a four or five seat edge in seats over the P.Q.

  17. An Australian perspective on the oxymoronic “safe injection sites”:
    Gary Christian, Blinded by the Dominant Ideology
    The “scientific” evaluations of the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in Sydney provide an excellent case study. A number of “independent” evaluations have been funded by the New South Wales government since 2002, and the latest by KPMG, costing $240,000, was due in July 2010. If voices in the media are to be believed, each has shown the success of the experiment, and each gives weight, they opine, to the argument that the injecting room should be made permanent….
    Yet any close analysis of the injecting room evaluations shows an almost diametrically opposite picture….

  19. AGW Progress Report.
    H/T Mao Stlong* Lepolt.
    (*Mao Stlong is Red-Green UNaBomber Maurice Strong, Canadian Liberal leader Bob Rae’s Uncle Mo Strong (search).
    …-
    “[Denmark]DK centre for CO2 fraud”
    “Denmark is at the centre of an extensive, international CO2 quota fraud that runs into the billions, according to the conclusions of a report from Tax Minister Troels Lund Poulsen (Lib) to the Energy Policy Committee, Ekstra Bladet reports.
    Environment Committee Chairwoman Ida Auken says the report is sheer admission from the Tax Ministry.
    “The Danish quota register is the centre for all of Europe’s fraud – we now have it black on white from the ministry itself,” Auken tells Ekstra Bladet and urges Climate Minister Lykke Friis to help the Naitonal Auditors to clean up.
    “The Climate and Energy Minister has been trying to cover up the size of the scandal that is on her table. Now the Tax Minister has revealed the issue and passed the buck on to her,” Auken says, adding that the case is so big that responsibility must be placed in the issue.
    38 billion
    The report says that there has been fraudulent trading in CO2 quotas across the European Union, with many of the cases pointing back to Denmark.
    Investigations are being carried out in several countries, with the Danish Fraud Squad involved in investigations in Germany, Spain, Norway and Belgium. In France alone, authorities have found some 151 quota accounts in the Danish register which they suspect have been used to carry out VAT fraud in CO2 quota trading.
    The Tax Ministry has been working on the issue for some months, but several countries are said to be slow in providing the necessary information.
    Tax Minister Troels Lund Poulsen has written to Parliament saying he plans to make personal contact with his colleagues in France and Germany in order to get more information.”
    http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1129571/dk-centre-for-co2-fraud/

  23. AGW Report: AGW Ich Bin “left-wing youths”.
    Mit der “high-speed ICE train” und “more than 100 squealing pigs”.
    “A police spokesman said mass snowball fights are an annual ritual among mainly left-wing youths in the city’s Connewitz district, and that they usually culminate in rioting.”
    …-
    “Travel Chaos and Beauty”
    “Snow and Freezing Weather Hits Germany”
    “Winter arrived early in Germany and much of Europe this week, causing thousands of accidents and travel chaos but also creating snowy landscapes of exquisite beauty. Temperatures are expected to remain well below freezing for the rest of the week and more snow is expected.
    Winter hit Germany with a vengeance on Tuesday as heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures caused some 2,000 traffic accidents on icy roads and led to more than 250 flight cancellations at Frankfurt airport alone. At least three people died in accidents on icy roads.
    Many roads and motorways became impassable due to ice and snowdrifts, and there were long traffic jams across the country. On the A-96 motorway near Munich, an accident cause a 10-kilometer tailback.
    Some 200 passengers had to be evacuated from a high-speed ICE train near the Bavarian town of Kronach on Monday night after snow caused a tree to topple onto an overhead line. The train was stuck and temperatures inside fell sharply because of a power outage. The passengers were taken to a nearby school gymnasium and provided with hot drinks and food before they continued the journey in buses.
    Elsewhere in southern Germany, a truck carrying livestock overturned on an icy motorway and more than 100 squealing pigs were hurled onto the tarmac. Some 25 of them died in the accident.”
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732088,00.html

  25. I think the pianist in Every Time We Say Goodbye is McCoy Tyner. I’d never heard of him. He’s great.

  26. AGW Report: “record freeze” and “Record breaking cold across southern Arizona” edition.
    >>> “Stockholm is forecast to experience its coldest seasonal temperatures for over 100 years”.
    This is a record-ing, a record-ing, a record-ing, a rec……
    …-
    “Sweden braces for record freeze
    Stockholm is forecast to experience its coldest seasonal temperatures for over 100 years this week as winter weather takes hold of the country, according to the Swedish Meteorological Institute (SMHI).
    Temperatures across the country are expected to drop to record lows for the first week of December, with the exception of the far north, with averages coming in 7-10 degrees Celsius below normal.
    Stockholm registered -11 degrees Celsius at the weekend, the coldest November temperature since 1965 and the mercury is set to plunge further on Wednesday and Thursday, dropping as low as -15.
    “It is far below average temperatures, which usually oscillate around zero at this time of the year,” said Alexandra Ohlsson, a meteorologist with SMHI.”
    http://www.thelocal.se/30516/20101130/
    …-
    “Record breaking cold across southern Arizona”
    “SOUTHERN ARIZONA – A number of locations feel record low temperatures this morning, says News 4 Meteorologist Chris Nallan.
    Tucson, Douglas, Benson, and Safford are just a few that feel the extreme cold this morning. Tucson dropped to 23 breaking the previous record 24 set back in 1934. Douglas shatterd the record of 19 set back in 2004 dropping to 11. Benson also broke a record plunging down to 10 degrees early this morning.”
    http://www.kvoa.com/news/record-breaking-cold-across-southern-arizona/

  27. Woohohhooo … John Baird and Canada are winning.
    Canada owns the podium … again.
    Bend your knees, Iggy.
    Take a bow, Canada.
    …-
    “What really goes on at COP16 in Cancun”
    Posted on November 30, 2010 by Anthony Watts
    I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get the “fossil of the day” award. Watch the presentation at COP16 and get some popcorn.
    I wonder if the producers of Jurrasic Park gave permission to licensed use of the logo, of if they are just scofflaws?”
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/30/what-really-goes-on-at-cop16-in-cancun/#comment-540810
    From Comments:
    “Matthew Bergin says:
    November 30, 2010 at 2:07 pm
    Sure makes me proud to be a Canadian. The only western country with enough sense to opt out of this climate madness.”
    “JER0ME says:
    November 30, 2010 at 2:03 pm
    Go Canada!
    Is this how these people ‘save the world’? I think it can survive without them, really.”
    “Robert Austin says:
    November 30, 2010 at 2:15 pm
    As a Canadian, I am proud to share the award of three fossil awards by these dim bulbs. May we continue to overachieve in this respect. May our larger neighbour to the south take due note and join us in competition for the fossildom podium.”
    …-
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/11/30/post-by-election-analysis/#comment-56472

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