Are the deserts getting greener?

It has been assumed that global warming would cause an expansion of the world's deserts, but now some scientists are predicting a contrary scenario in which water and life slowly reclaim these arid places.

They think vast, dry regions like the Sahara might soon begin shrinking.

The evidence is limited and definitive conclusions are impossible to reach but recent satellite pictures of North Africa seem to show areas of the Sahara in retreat.

It could be that an increase in rainfall has caused this effect.

Farouk el-Baz, director of the Centre for Remote Sensing at Boston University, believes the Sahara is experiencing a shift from dryer to wetter conditions.

"It's not greening yet. But the desert expands and shrinks in relation to the amount of energy that is received by the Earth from the Sun, and this over many thousands of years," Mr el-Baz told the BBC World Service.

"The heating of the Earth would result in more evaporation of the oceans, in turn resulting in more rainfall."

Almost like something I've heard before.

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2009/07/05/facebook-and-networking

It took me longer than I should have to arrive at the conclusion that networking is the difference between achieving merely very good things and achieving greatness. The best networker I know writes for this blog. The US is a very meritocratic country. Whatever your background, if you're good at what you do, you'll get far. But to get to the very top, you need to know the right people.

As wealth grows and material things become more accessible in the first world, social status will be the capital invested as a means to get rich.

Conjecture: In traditional societies the size of Dunbar's number, positive interactions such as friendliness, praise, and well wishes had to be balanced with negative interactions such as rebuke, scold, and revenge. With highly networked societies of abundance, the possibility of only positive interactions arises. Negative people can simply be ignored.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/aoCQc8pezIo/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-07-20/

Administration officials... urged a skeptical public not to judge the Democrats' overhaul until Congress writes a final version.

http://xkcd.com/612/

libertarianism

thedesertmouse

Paulson reveals US concerns of breakdown in law and order

The Bush administration and Congress discussed the possibility of a breakdown in law and order and the logistics of feeding US citizens if commerce and banking collapsed as a result of last autumn's financial panic, it was disclosed yesterday. Making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving office, the former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson said it was important at the time not to reveal the extent of officials' concerns, for fear it would "terrify the American people and lead to an even bigger problem".

Mr Paulson testified to the House Oversight Committee on the Bush administration's unpopular $700bn (£426bn) bailout of Wall Street, which was triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers last September. In the days that followed, a run on some of the safest investment vehicles in the financial markets threatened to make it impossible for people to access their savings. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, asked Mr Paulson to reveal details of officials' concerns, which were relayed to Congress in hasty conference calls last year. The calls included discussion of law and order and whether it would be possible to feed the American people, and for how long, according to Mr Kanjorski.

thedesertmouse

People in Order (correct version)

Via Alex Lightman.

Original: craschworks - comments

Original: craschworks - comments

phanatic already posted this, but I run into it all the time when I tell people that I won't be buying a Blu-ray player because it includes a kill switch to disable your player. "Oh, they would never do that."

Amazon zaps purchased copies of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles

People who bought Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm for their Kindle were surprised to discover that it had disappeared from their devices overnight. It turns out the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version, and Amazon caved into their demand to sneak into people's electronic libraries and take back the book at the publisher's request.

Perhaps even more troubling, the Kindle can also push "updates" of books you've downloaded. I can see how this would be useful for correcting typos and such, but once the mechanism is in place, it's a near-certainty that it will be used for other purposes.

My father-in-law worked for a tire company that put out a nice hardcover retrospective of their ads over the years. Some of them were racist. They tried to recall them and issue a bowdlerized edition. With the Kindle that would have been easy. It's a little harder to rewrite history when it's on paper.

Another good example I can think of is Stephen King's The Bachman Books, which used to include a story called "Rage", about a high school shooting. It's since been excised. No evidence it had anything to do with any real high school shootings, and it was in print for many years before such things became regular news. In fact, I think it's one of the better examinations of the subject. Of all the strange and perverse places Stephen King has gone, that's the one we're not allowed to see?

The bottom line is, newer is not always better. I don't want the latest remaster of my favorite album that's been compressed to hell so it sounds better on Clear Channel. I don't want the FBI agents to be carrying walky-talkies instead of guns. Don't get me wrong, I like streaming media services like Pandora and Netflix, but if I enjoy a piece of art enough to watch it again, I also buy a physical copy they can't revise. In my world, Han Solo shoots first, and music still has dynamic range.

Paulson reveals US concerns of breakdown in law and order

The Bush administration and Congress discussed the possibility of a breakdown in law and order and the logistics of feeding US citizens if commerce and banking collapsed as a result of last autumn's financial panic, it was disclosed yesterday.

Making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving office, the former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson said it was important at the time not to reveal the extent of officials' concerns, for fear it would "terrify the American people and lead to an even bigger problem".

Mr Paulson testified to the House Oversight Committee on the Bush administration's unpopular $700bn (£426bn) bailout of Wall Street, which was triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers last September. In the days that followed, a run on some of the safest investment vehicles in the financial markets threatened to make it impossible for people to access their savings.

Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, asked Mr Paulson to reveal details of officials' concerns, which were relayed to Congress in hasty conference calls last year. The calls included discussion of law and order and whether it would be possible to feed the American people, and for how long, according to Mr Kanjorski.

But of course, individual citizens who had the exact same concerns and were willing to do something about it on a personal level were paranoid nuts who should probably be watched closely by the government.

By way of chuckles48.

Who would be a worse President?

Who would be a worse President?

http://yrif.org/2009/07/19/the-tyler-cowen-review/

http://yrif.org/?p=791

Another book review! This one from “Marginal Revolution” blogger Tyler Cowen:

I am a pro-religion non-believer, but if you wish to hear from an anti-religion non-believer, this is the place to go. He will tell you that your religion is false.

In addition to its humor, I prefer the content of this book to the better-known “new atheist” tracts.

This could go a long way toward helping me win back credibility in the economics community, with whom I have been on the outs ever since I disavowed the Savage Axioms.

• Make Pictures
  Clay Enos makes great portraits
  (tags: photography blogs blog photo)
• A Guide to Active Record Associations
  (tags: ruby associations)
• Vice Magazine - “ARCHIVAL GIRLS” - By Richard Kern
  “She was photographer Spencer Tunick’s girlfriend back then. I met her through him. She was real cute, real young, and was up for anything. This photo is from a time when I didn’t think anything of doing something weird with my models. Right after this setup, I shot her in another archway in my apartment, hanging upside down. The ropes broke and she just bounced on her head. It freaked me out! That’s when I realized that I have to watch what I do because if she broke her neck and I had the cops up here and she’s all tied up and dead, naked except for combat boots, what am I going to say? ‘We were just taking some photos’?”
  (tags: art porn richard_kern)

Original: craschworks - comments

Blind man sees after having a tooth implanted into his eye.

During the procedure, a minute section of a patient's tooth is removed, reshaped and chiselled through to grip the man-made lens which is then placed in its core.

It is implanted under an eyelid where it becomes covered in tissue.

The process requires a living tooth as an implant because doctors suggest there are chances the eye would reject a plastic equivalent.

So a canine - which is the best option due to its shape and size - was taken out of Mr Jones' mouth.

A patch of skin is then taken from the inside of the cheek and placed in the eye for two months, where it gradually acquires its own blood supply.

The tooth segment is finally transplanted into the eye socket. The flap of grafted skin is then partially lifted from the eye and placed over its new sturdy base.

Finally, surgeons cut a hole in the grafted cornea to let light through.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/8LEylc55_aQ/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-07-19/

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MassadAyoob/~3/fq58hGR6cXY/

http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/?p=356

A cartoon on the editorial page of today’s Gainesville Sun newspaper compares Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to the Cheshire Cat.

With what her confirmation hearing is turning into, the comparison seems apt. One would think a wise Latina with lots of time on the bench, and hopefully lots of time assessing the credibility of witnesses, would realize how pathetic she looks when she re-frames questions into straw man arguments to escape uttering an honest answer to a question fairly posed.  That strategy would get her kicked off a high school debate team.  Unfortunately, knowledgeable pundits think it’s going to get her confirmed.

Heather MacDonald thinks Sotomayor has been blatantly disingenuous, and may be steeped more in the Kool-Aid than in the nourishing lifeblood that came out of the feminist movement.

My old friend and colleague Don Kates, a long time fighter for civil rights on issues of race, victims’ rights, and Second Amendment issues, flatly called her a bigot in his guest editorial in the San Francisco Examiner.

Earlier this week I expressed my very adverse reaction to Sotomayer. Today the San Francisco Examiner printed them in the form of the guest editorial which follows.

-Don

Suppose a nominee to sit on the Supreme Court had consistently and repeatedly expressed the considered opinion that the views of non-Caucasian and/or female judges will be inferior to those of male Caucasian judges. Would such statements not plainly show the nominee to be unfit to be a judge? After all, our nation’s jurists are supposed to render decisions based on neutral legal principles rather than on the sex, race or ethnicity of the litigants.

Sonia Sotomayor’s defenders will insist that her racist and sexist sentiments should be evaluated in context. And rightly so. The context here is not just a single off-hand unconsidered and inept statement which is susceptible of multiple interpretations. Her opinion that white male judges will make inferior decisions is something she has expressed over and over again in prepared speeches she has had ample opportunity to phrase exactly as she meant them.

Nor can there be any doubt about what she meant, nop matter how she now seeks to evade the meaning when it is politically disadvantageous. She did not simply make the self-evident point that diversity is important because judges opinions may be shaped by their differing backgrounds. Rather she says the reverse – that the background of Latin females makes them better decision-makers than white male judges.

Note that the necessary implication of her repeated statements is adopting racist and sexist qualifications for the judiciary. The implication of what she is saying is not that diversity is good, but that it is bad; if we want the best judges, all judges should be Latin women. Nor is this necessary inference refuted by the fact that it is nonsense. Racism and sexism are nonsense but many people believe fervently in racist and sexist ideas. And Sotomayor’s considered and repeated statements show that she is emphatically one of them, despite the fact that she is an unusual variety of racist.

This is, of course, consistent with her most famous ruling, the New Haven case in which she held that white firefighters who had passed a promotion test could be denied promotion because black firefighters had flunked the test. Understandably the Supreme Court reversed this racial ruling. What has been missed here is the margin by which the court repudiated this ruling. It is true that four of the nine justices dissented in the case. But that was because they endorsed a different theory Sotomayor had not used. As to the theory Sotomayor used, all nine justices agreed that it was wrong.

When her nomination is confirmed – as the almost worshipful statements of the senators hearing her testimony show she will be confirmed – Sotomayor will be the firsr openly racist and sexist Supreme Court justice in more than 65 years. The last one was Justice McReynolds who was appointed in 1914 and served into the 1940s. A man of limited intelligence, he was a more conventional bigot who despised women and especially blacks and refused to talk to his colleagues Justices Brandies and Cardozo because they were Jewish.

Sotomayor’s defenders will doubtless point out that one of the Supreme Court’s great liberal justices, Hugo Black, was an Alabaman who had been a Ku Klux Klan member in his youth. This may mean no more than that the Klan dominated Alabama politics when Black was a young man. Whatever the reason for Justice Black’s Klan membership, he had long since resigned and disavowed the Klan in 1934 when he was appointed to the Court. Surely Klan membership is not something we would want in a Supreme Court justice who is supposed to render justice equally to all.

Is diversity a good thing? Of course. But not “diversity” to the extreme of bigotry. There is no room in American politics for racism and sexism, especially not on the Supreme Court.

Finally, Robert Heinritz calls out the nominee for her weasel-like response to a simple question about the rights of American citizens to self-protection.

No Constitutional right-to-life, per Judge Sotomayor
Robert G. Heinritz, J.D.

It now appears Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Obama administration out-maneuvered the supporters of life and ability to defend life.  No one in the major media will bother to mention the NRA’s scholarly objections.  (See below.)

When a Senator asked Judge Sotomayor whether the Second Amendment guaranteed a personal right - or as lawyers would say, “a fundamental right” -  she said in effect  “the Constitution doesn’t give me the right to go home, get a gun, and come back to shoot you.”  She actually said that!  Not a single Senator challenged her adroit change-of-subject.  She was permitted to get away with this.  Not one news-reporter called attention to the irrelevancy of Judge Sotomayor’s response, or the evasiveness of her answers.  Not even Rush Limbaugh got it.  Nothing in the Constitution would ever protect the scenari o Judge Sotomayor used to so deftly dismiss Second Amendment protections.  She totally avoided a direct answer to the “personal” or “fundamental” rights issue by changing the subject.

What did the Founders of America mean by “fundamental” or “personal” right-to-life?  Among other things:  When a gang of hoods corners you on the street, your right to defend your life is a very “fundamental,” very “personal,” right - which no state or municipality may take from you.  When armed-intruders break into your house and threaten your  wife and children, your  right - and for that matter, your entire family’s right -  to a weapon for defense is a very personal right.  When an armed robber corners you and demands “your money or your life” - reasonable people would consider that very personal.  When an elderly grandmother fears going outside and keeps all her doors and windows barricaded, her right to defend against younger, stronger, and sometimes armed intruders - in her home, and on her way to her grocery store -  is a very personal right.  When my granddaughter is mugged, robbed, raped, and nearly killed at a bank-ATM, her right to defend her life, property, and virtue is a very, very fundamental right.  When my wife and20I are traveling across America in our RV, we believe we should treat all strangers as friends.  But we also have the free choice, and we demand the ability, to protect ourselves from armed thugs and bullies no matter where we are in the United States.

Judge Sotomayor’s judicial record shows she disagrees that Americans have such rights.

I don’t much care for the bother and responsibility of securing a firearm nearby.  But I’ve lived long enough to know the world sometimes presents threats that justify it’s presence.  A free person’s right to defend his or her life is a very personal right, a “fundamental right” - pre-existing our U.S. Constitution -  which is more important than our property, our ability to speak-out on political issues, our right to vote, or our rights to a Miranda warning when approached by a police officer.

Thro ughout history this has always been true among free people.  During the years American Colonists were bickering with Great Britain over taxes, representation, and rights; the one thing that finally provoked a shooting-war with their mother-country was Britain’s use of armed soldiers to disarm free citizens.  The Founders were well-read on history and the classics, and well-acquainted with what England did to it’s “subjects” in Ireland; first disarming them, taking over all their lands and resources by force of British arms, and consigning the Irish to virtual serfdom or slavery.  The most loyal of America’s Founders knew that government’s disarming of its free-citizens was the first step to slavery.  “Slavery” was the word they used.  History has confirmed this basic truth countless times in countless countries over the succeeding 200 years.  Free, law-abiding citizens do not give up their right to arms.

Judge Sotomayor may turn out OK on the Second Amendment, but her record doesn’t so indicate.  I am frankly outraged at the Senators, the press, the NRA, and every other civil rights group for allowing her to get away with her deft sidestepping of the question of the Second Amendment’s confirmation of “personal” or “fundamental”&nbs p;rights.

During the Reagan years, Democrats and left-wingers were infuriated by how effectively Reagan communicated his message.  It now appears Republicans have worthy adversaries in President Obama and his strategists.  The Founders of America are turning over in their graves.  We’ve got to do better than this.

And the NRA’s take on the nominee is HERE
We knew that President Obama would attempt to replace outgoing Justice David Souter with someone of a liberal stripe. At least the 5-4 balance won’t tip…until the next opening becomes available. Still, with a vast pool of candidates with genuine judicial mindset to pick from, surely he could have come up with someone who would at least give straight answers to simple, straightforward questions.

But not even the usually sensible David Pogue of the Times appears to have done any actual research on the subject. Am I the only blogger in the world who cares about getting the facts right instead of just going for the quick and easy chance to smear Amazon? Or just the only one who can see the obvious?
1984

It was instantly apparent to me what must have happened, so I looked into it. From stories posted on other sites, and from my own research on Amazon.com, it's clear the books in question had been published illegally--and not by the publisher with U.S. rights for these books, which are still under copyright protection in this country.

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2009/07/18/shays-servant-powerful

Via Clusterstock, the Wall Street Journal reports on one of CIT's maneuvers attempting to get themselves a bailout:

CIT had been trying for months to improve its connections in Washington. It spent close to $90,000 last year on lobbying, and $60,000 in the first quarter of 2009. It brought onto its board of directors former Congressman Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican.

Yes, that's Chris Shays, of Shays-Meehan fame, or legally speaking, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. You know, the one that masqueraded as a way to keep money out of politics? The one that actually served the interests of the ruling class while a whole army of useful idiots pontificated about democracy?

http://yrif.org/2009/07/18/accomodationism-is-false/

http://yrif.org/?p=783

Generally, I try to avoid debates on topics that contain more than 14 letters. Today I will make a rare exception.

You see, there’s a new book, Unscientific America, arguing that scientific illiteracy threatens our future.

I have no doubt this is true. Just last weekend I wore my Maxwell’s Equations T-shirt out to a nightclub, and not a single woman remarked on how clever it was. And to be frank, I’ve had similar experiences with my “Carbon Based And proud of it!” shirt, with my periodic table tie, and with my “Negative air pressure differentials SUCK!” shirt.

(And you don’t even want to know about my “Geologists Make The Bed Rock” misadventure.)

Like everyone else, I have lots of good ideas about how to solve this problem:

• bring back “El Mundo de Beakman”
• new CBS drama “Dr. Quinn, Postdoctoral Researcher”
• marijuana-growing contests
• daily ballistic pendulum demonstrations in elementary school classrooms
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge video put into constant rotation on MTV and MTV2
• routine in-school showings of pro-biology movies like Underworld: Evolution and Dragonball Evolution
• new national anthem: “She Blinded Me With Science”

“Those are great ideas,” you’re thinking, “and I’d love to fund them. But where’s the debate?”

Well, I haven’t read the book per se, but I’m told that the debate lies in chapters 8 and 9: “Why Wicked Scientists Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False” and “Why Wicked Bloggers Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False.”

Apparently (and, again, I’m piecing this together from what I read on a couple of blogs and in TV Guide), by telling people that science and religion are incompatible, we’re scaring them away from science (but not from religion).

Instead we should be reassuring them that science and religion are perfectly compatible, just as long as they abandon a few ancillary tenets like “our holy scriptures mean what that say” and “god doesn’t have to obey the laws of physics” and “it’s possible to get pregnant without sperm, and also it’s possible (using 1st-century technology) to come back to life after being dead for three days.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure that we’re also not supposed to point out the necessity of throwing out the religious claims. Better still to trot out Francis Collins and the BioLogos crew.

After all, he worked on the Human Genome Project, so anything he says about science is automatically trustworthy. And if science and religion are compatible enough for him, then who are we to argue?

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2009/07/this-week-at-c4ss-republicans-fake.html

In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?