The Slamlander

They can sure make a boycott stick too.

The Danish-Swedish dairy giant Arla Foods says its sales in the Middle East have plummeted to zero as a result of a row over cartoons published in Denmark.

If Denmarks buckles unbder and starts censoring their press based on whether it’ll piss off a few few fundies then our entire way of life is in trouble.

To be fair, I’ve seen almost as bad in the US, with boycotting of non-Christian firms and products (US findies somehow don’t count Mormons and Catholics as real Christians either) for reasons completely unrelated to those products.

And let’s not forget the boycotting of anything French, while we’re at it. Just because Chirac and Schroeder rightly believed that invading Iraq was a dumb idea.

memage for the wicked

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4. Trade for five years before they diverted her to the stations
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. Okay, now what?
3. What is the last thing you watched on TV? Laura Croft II: the cradle of life
4. Without looking, guess what time it is: 1300
5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time? 13:45h
6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? Not a damned thing
7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing? 15 min ago, had a smoke.
8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at? blogshares.com
9. What are you wearing? Sweatsuit with wool sweater.
10. Did you dream last night? Nope, never do.
11. When did you last laugh? At lunch
12. What is on the walls of the room you are in? Clock, pictures, white paint.
13. Seen anything weird lately? Just our friendly neighborhood ravens
14. What do you think of this quiz? You really don’t want to know
15. What is the last film you saw? Laura Croft II: the cradle of life
16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? Some sanity
17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know: I worry a lot, more than most people know but I never let it show.
18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do? abolish religion
19. Do you like to dance? yes
20. George Bush: Lame Duck
21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? She was a girl, Jennifer Tiu, 24 years old now
22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him? Anything but Michael.
23. Would you ever consider living abroad? I already do.
24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates? Let’s go out for a smoke.

The story that does not want to end!

I’m still working on the last five pages … the fourth time!

1. 1st time — it was going way past 15 pages. Okay, chop it off and move it to the prolog of the next book in the trilogy.
2. 2d time — 10 pages, wrong direction, not the way to go, delete and start over
3. 3d time — Way too much detail and going past 10 pages again!
4. 4th time — what next?

Stuck at

• 158,810 words
• 452 pages
• 3136 paragraphs.

The UN finally made a statement, which appears to be masterful statesmanship.

Speaking for the Mid-East Quartet – the EU, the US, Russia and the UN – Mr Annan said any new government must accept previous agreements.

This is the rather carefully worded statement issued by Mr. Annan

The Quartet’s statement, read by Mr Annan after a meeting in London, said: “All members of the future Palestinian government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the roadmap.“

to which Hamas responded

“The Quartet should have demanded an end to [Israeli] occupation and aggression… not demanded that the victim should recognise the occupation and stand handcuffed in the face of the aggression,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

At issue is a billion USD in funding by the EU and US, to the Palestinian Authority and the above statement refers to Isreal itself and not just the occupied territories. Hamas has never backed down from the goal of destroying Isreal. Until they publically step away from tha, they are dangerous.

Regardless of how this ends, I think it’s a good-thing(tm). This is because Hamas has been the single largest stumbling block among the Palestinians since before Arafat. Fatah may be the visible dog but Hamas was always the rock-hard kernel of resistance and any gains made were always turned back by Hamas. They are and always have been the major obstructionist for Iseal/Palestine peace plans, even though they always try to blame it on the Isrealis or the US.

The problem has always been that Hamas was always hiding behind Arafat and Fatah. Arafat is no longer there and they just shot Fatah in the back. Now they are out in the open where everyone can see what they want, how they are, and the degree of their hatred for the Isreali people. People can also clearly see that there is no negotiation with Hamas. They want nothing less than to destroy the state of Isreal. Until they actually declare that they are giving up that goal there is no negotiating with them.

Negotiating property lines is sort of moot when the other bloke really is trying to kill you.

This is a rather strange one to wake up to this morning. I expected it to be pure fluff and some parts were almost childish (the chainsaw thing), however, I think that this might catch out a lot of us if we answer honestly instead of politically-correct.

Definitely. You scored 47% Cold and 53% Level-Headed!

You can kill. But the question “Why would you?” arises. Out of safety or cruelty?

Because this report fails to mention the comparative cost of generating the same power with fossil fuels. The cost I am talking about is in two forms; economic and environmental. Dropping the econ issues for the moment, they always fail to consider what to do with the toxic by-products of the fossil plant, which prooduces many megatons more of the shit than a nuke plant.

I think that fossil fueled plants should have the same 100% capture requirement for their waste as a nuke plant does. This means no venting the exhaust gasses and particles into the atmosphere. Then we can actually compare the two technologies fairly.

Radioactive waste has a half-life, arsnic is forever.
– T. Pratchett

Of course, I am writing about the Kyoto Protocols on Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. it turns out that Canada is not finding it so easy to meet the terms of the treaty.

I am no fan of the Kyoto Accords because they are based on bad science and political fraud. However, I am in favor of cleaning up the envionment in a rational manner and for rational reasons. Growing up in the Los Angeles basin sort of turns you off to bad air and you don’t want it anymore. I may not be an environmentalist but I am very much against preventable environmental pollution.

Mr Mills expressed admiration for two other processes which have been initiated within the last 12 months: The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and the G8+5 grouping set up by Tony Blair’s UK government early last year.

I checked these dudes out and it sounds sincere. Let’s see if they get some legs under them.

See here. I used to cut Bush some slack, no more.

This has got to be one of the dumbest moves that I have ever seen inb international politics, ever. It is only eclipsed by the president of Iran’s infamous November statements.

Bush is always talking about democracy, right? So now he has it in spades. There were more UN NGOs watching the Palestinian elections than there are US listening devices in the Russian embassy in DC. It wasn’t rigged and Hamas is the Palestinian people’s choice, like it or not. Right now, it just looks like the US is preaching the same sort of democracy they preached in 1950 Latin America, where the people could have any government they chose as long as America approved it.

Yeah, I’m on record as being very anti-Hamas. They should never have been allowed to run, a mistake on Abbas part, I’m sure. He got the wrong end of the calculated risk. However, now that they won, fair and square, the US has to abide by it just like Fatah has to or admit that it doesn’t really want democracy in the middle-east.

Words mean specific things and it’s about time that Bush learned that and to be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

Yet another propaganda article from the BBC.

For those that don’t know the BBC, it is the most trusted english language reporting agency in europe. It has every bit the reputation of NY Times, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, or the Washington Post. It also appears to be the propaganda arm of the British Government.

This article has a number of problems on it’s own that make it into what I call a Pulitzerism;

1. By itself, it is a credible report but it’s extremely one-sided.
• They mention, in an alarming way, that sealevels will rise ~30cm (~12 inches) by the end of this century
• They also mention that this was predicted and due to Global Warming
• They imply by omission that it has only been rising since 1870.
• They fail to mention that this has been ongoing since ~10,000BC
• They fail to mention that the Pleistocene-Holoscene boundary saw sealevel rise rates as high as 15m (~50 feet)per century.
2. Now we get to the part that makes my teeth itch

• There is now a consensus among climate scientists that rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are the major factor behind rising temperatures.

  This is only a partially true statement. There is no consensus that atmosphereic CO2 is the main culprit. Note that we have yet to see a link between any of this and anthropogenic causes of global warming.

• Through the 1997 Kyoto protocol, industrialised countries have committed to cut their combined emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But the US and Australia have withdrawn from the treaty.

  Okay, where did this come in from? It implies the agreement that our civilization is the cause of this and that we are actually able to do something about it, but that the US and Australia aren’t cooperating. They also fail to mention that China and other countries also fail to buy into this bullshit.

• Dr Church urged: “”We do have to reduce our emissions but we also have to recognise climate change is happening, and we have to adapt as well.”

  Nice little uncharacteristic tie up here. They didn’t have to bring in an outsider to make their point. This guy is a true believer, a faith-holder in anthropogenic global warming. Now we know why th report is so one-sided and fails to even look at the fact that Global Warming is a natural trend that pre-dates our civilization by millenia.

Yes, we do have to adapt there is no choice because we can’t even slow this train down. Global Warming is coming down the track like a Southern-Pacific frieght train. Standing in front of it will only discolor it slightly.

It would behoove them to sit down with a spreadsheet and do some population growth models. It gives you a whole new appreciation for early civilizations development. Also a profound appreciation for what a too-high growth rate does to your technology.

The issue isn’t how many kids you can pop out per year. The issue is how many can you train per year, given a specific matriculation rate.

Too many kids means that the parents are doing nothing else but raising them. Without outside help this means that they are not developing new tech, even if everyone is an Einstein. Neither are they building the new facilities that the burgeoning population needs. Oh, and spend 18 years popping out one new kid per year and this means that the last one is not an adult until 36 years later.

My main char has two wives. They start a new clan. After 25 years, at one kid each per year, they have a total of 47 kids, 68% of which are females who also start breeding at 25. That’s 47 kids being cared for by only three adults. Without outside help, this does not happen.

After 25 years, the daughters start to breed, with a new one coming online per year, and the two original moms drop out (due to exhaustion, no doubt. The moms now have the brains of a turnip.).

At the 50 year mark (500 year life expectancy) you have 323 kids and only 52 adults. This is not counting any mates the males may bring in (polygamous society with no shortage of fresh mates, two to five adults in a family unit).

Work out a few of these models and you quickly begin to apply it to the real world. Africa is poor, starving, and low-tech because of their birth-rate! It’s that simple. The same is true for most other “third-world” countries that are in bad shape. A sign of a too-high growth rate is when the median population age is at or below the matriculation age. This basically means that the kids outnumber the adults.This means that women are barefoot, pregnant, and in the hut (you can’t afford a kitchen with that many kids).

Given this data, the Church’s stance on contraceptives and birth-control is unconscionable.