Monday, July 23, 2007

More OpenMoko

A review/preview from The Economist.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Blondie...

is performing live outside my window.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

openmoko

Anyone have experience with this yet? I'm intrigued.

From Zero to Hero

In the Seattle P-I:
During a last-call stroll through Pioneer Square early Sunday morning, Seattle's top law dog helped break up a sidewalk fight between a bar patron and a man in an eagle suit.

Lt. Kenneth Hicks, shift commander at the precinct that includes Pioneer Square, was leading Kerlikowske on a closing-time tour of the club district when the senior officers witnessed a man-on-eagle fracas, according to police documents.

The officers watched as a 30-year-old Seattle man shoved the eagle to the curb and then stomped on the costumed man's back as the eagle's costumed confederate -- a man dressed as a beaver -- looked on.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Canada and the Arctic

This is an interesting piece about Canada's response to encroachment from the US and Russia on their Northern-most territory.

Cool Sun

Skeptics of the idea that global warming is a man-made phenomenon often claim that the sun is simply entering a period of increased activity and that our carbon dioxide emissions have little or no effect on matters. Not so, according to new research presented to the Royal Society:
But a new analysis of data on the sun's output in the last 25 years of the 20th century has firmly put the notion to rest. The data shows that even though the sun's activity has been decreasing since 1985, global temperatures have continued to rise at an accelerating rate.

The solar hypothesis was championed publicly in March by the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The programme has been heavily criticised for distorting scientific data to fit the sceptic argument and Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at MIT who featured in the programme, later said that he was "totally misled" by the film makers and that his comments were "completely misrepresented".

The new analysis is designed to counter the main alternative scientific argument put forward by the programme - that solar activity may be to blame for global warming.

"The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Terror

Ruaridh Nicoll::
Then, yesterday, came a march through Glasgow to show that the entire country stands against the attacks. Muslims particularly rallied under the banner 'Scotland United Against Terror'. George Square saw 1,200 people turn up.

It was lucky it was a rally for Scotland against terrorism because across town 1,300 police officers - note the numbers - were gathering to marshal an estimated 12,000 Orange Lodge marchers making their way to Blythwood Square for the County Grand Orange Parade.

What's Right for America

This bit of a Byron York WaPo piece struck me:
So the commutation won no more than tepid approval from the base. And it certainly didn't offset the terrible damage the president did to himself during the immigration debate by backing a bill that would have put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. Many conservatives are still hopping mad over the president's description of the bill's opponents as people who "don't want to do what's right for America."

Bush and his cadre have been calling progressives unpatriotic for 7 years; how many conservatives were willing to stand up and denounce that? Now he trains his rhetoric on them and they're suddenly livid?

2.5 Hours

Colin Powell reminisces:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed that he spent 2.5 hours “vainly trying to persuade President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by U.S. forces. ‘I tried to avoid this war,’ Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. ‘I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.’” In terms of the current situation in Iraq, Powell said: “It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.”

If we believe that, we've also got to believe that he stood in front of the UN and made the case for a war he didn't actually support.