Based on The Sagacious Iconoclast‘s SiteMeter statistics, lots of folks here continue to enjoy the archival entries that I have been posting from time to time, so tonight I have for your delectation a number of entries pursuant to our upcoming season of celebrations and long winter evenings when one has more time to enjoy good fiction and other forms of high-quality entertainment.

• I have added a page containing information on and links to the
  134 Iron Chef shows I have been able to find on the Innertubes.
• I have added a half-dozen films about private investigator Mr. James Lee Wong (four featuring Boris Karloff) and Mr. Fu Wong (a bad guy, featuring Bela Lugosi) to my Charlie Chan & Mr. Wong page.
• I have added a page with 44 interviews from The Charlie Rose Show, should anyone find any of the folks on my selected list of interviewees to be of interest to them too.
• Somewhat over three years ago I discovered a web site named Munseys, which has tens of thousands of rare and hard-to-find titles, including over a thousand items in the Pulp Fiction category. From there, here are my favourite 142 entries from the mystery / murder / detective short-story sub-genre thereto, from 1897 through 1956, at my new Pulp Fiction Archives page.
• Should you find it handy, I’ve put my
  Christmas Carols
   (Formatted for Printing) 

  page back up again, for the season.

A car loaded with gas canisters detonated in a busy section of downtown Stockholm today, followed by another explosion 10 minutes later caused by a suicide bomber. After the explosions, the bomber was found dead lying about 300 yards away from the car bomb, reportedly wearing a suicide vest and a backpack full of nails and surrounded by the remains of pipe bombs. The bombs apparently were inexpertly crafted and failed to detonate to full capacity. Two people were wounded in the bombings, which took place in a street filled with Christmas shoppers.

Read more:
Sweden: Progressive Shangri La
Update: R.I.P.

Here goes, then. Electricity accounts for 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Mexico accounts for 1% of world electricity consumption. Light-bulbs use at most 3% of that electricity. Mercury-vapor fluorescent bulbs reduce electricity consumption per candela by – at the very most – 33% compared with incandescent bulbs that one can actually read by. So, once the President’s Initiativo Grande has been put into full effect throughout Mexico, world carbon emissions will have fallen by 40% of 1% of 3% of 33%, or a dizzying 0.004%.
So far, so good. We shall generously assume that 0.004% of the entire manmade greenhouse-gas contribution since 1750 will be forestalled by the Grand Initiative. Now for the equation. The amount of CO2 concentration forestalled by, say, 2100, is in the present instance, 0.004% of the difference between the CO2 concentration predicted for that year, 836 parts per million by volume on the IPCC’s A2 emissions scenario, and the CO2 concentration of 278 ppmv which the IPCC thinks was present in 1750.
So we’re looking at 0.00004(836-278), or 0.0223 ppmv. Not a lot, really.

Be sure to read it all.
… more @ Cjunk about Cancun’s $100 Billion new bureaucracy including a very sobering reality check from Monckton … no, we aren’t winning.
Update: Nova tracks today’s $100 Billion Battleground in Cancun. World Bank to be trustee?

Faced with the growing prospect that a new climate treaty is distant, the European Union has led calls to extend the Kyoto Protocol.
Japan has adamantly opposed a new Kyoto round, pointing out that the treaty named after its ancient capital covers only 30 per cent of global emissions because China and the United States are not part of it.
Russia, a major exporter of carbon-intense fossil fuels, has backed Japan’s position, while Canada was also seen as a quiet supporter.
In a compromise, the proposed Cancun agreement would call for talks to set up a second period of the Kyoto Protocol but not oblige members of the treaty – such as Japan and Russia – to be part of the new round.

Update 2: Donna weighs in …

Politically, I’m independent and moderate. So when conservative commentators characterize the climate change juggernaut as a United Nations plot to control our lives, my first instinct is to arch an eyebrow and murmur: Really?
To my ears, that sounds far-fetched. But as I become more familiar with the UN’s approach to climate matters, the harder it is for me to regard this organization as benign. Pernicious sounds more like it.