November 17, 2007 archive

U.N. Climate Panel Warns of ‘Abrupt’ Warming

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Note: This report, a portion which is copied (text only) below, has important embedded links here.



The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will issue a report this weekend that warns of “abrupt and irreversible” impacts unless world leaders address climate change this year.

In its strongest statement to date, the panel warns of a potential temperature rise up to 6.4C, sea level rise up to 43cm, Arctic summer ice to disappear within the second half of this century, and an increase to the increase we’re already seeing in heat waves and tropical storm intensity.

More below the fold…

Asian Headline News

Today’s Top Stories, WHAT WAS ON THE TUBE(NOV. 5-9), Celebrities Are Racists Too ,Hiding The Boss, Halloween All Year, My Road Rally Time Isn’t Good,What’s In a Name? Olympics

The Good Word From the Great Orange Satan

So I read this in Newsweek:

As much as Republicans and the media like to talk about the 60-vote threshold for any anti-war legislation, the fact is that if no legislation gets passed, there’s no money for war. A tough and principled Democratic caucus could force compromise on this legislation and, if none were forthcoming from the GOP, then see the war defunded by default. Either way, the public would cheer.

Looking for a angle to hate on the Great Orange Satan, I have come up with . . . plagiarism.

Frequency Friday: On The Air

Greetings from Fall River, MA!

Yep, the k357r3ls are out of the South at last!

Fall River, MA gave rise to a few famous folks…..

among others.

So I came here to get out of the South, and to do radio…..



….well, not exactly, but there is a Portuguese station in the building…..

Hey, look! A Portuguese video!

Just thought I’d throw that in.

On the air below the fold…….

Friday Night at Eight: Journey to the Core of the Human Spirit

So in my blogging around the b’sphere, I have been battling memes.  I am a meme killer!  Woo hoo!

Latest is over the immigration issue, Spitzer, the Dems, the third rail, all that jazz.  The meme that makes me most murderous is the notion “What is it about illegal you don’t understand?”  All of a sudden seemingly liberal bloggers have become law & order Wyatt Earp’s, deciding that the rule of law is far more important than silly feel-good stuff like human rights and human rights abuses.  It appears to me that if someone has broken a law, it is then very easy to hide behind that thought even when the enforcement of that law entails violence and punishments far outweighing the crime.

But this essay is not about the immigration issue.  One of the biggest frustrations in blogging about what is called “social justice” is there are so many injustices?  Which do I choose?  New Orleans?  Burma?  Mexico?  Darfur?  Gaza?

I choose not to choose.  I choose to deny any lines between these injustices.  For they all have the same root cause.

I’d like to introduce everyone (or re-introduce if you already know her) to Helen Bamber.  She is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story.

From a New York Times review by Sara Ivy of Helen’s biography, “The Good Listener,” by Neil Belton:

Helen Bamber grew up in London during World War II in an embittered Jewish refugee family and was scarcely an adult when she traveled as a relief worker to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just after the end of the war. Struck by the physical and spiritual wreckage she witnessed among the survivors of Nazi persecution, she decided to spend her life helping to rehabilitate torture victims by listening to their stories and advocating against similar abuses.

In his first book, ”The Good Listener,” Neil Belton suggests that for Bamber this work has fulfilled a moral imperative; ignoring human rights violations means being an acomplice in such behavior. It also means invalidating the victim’s experience of suffering and hampering his ability to recover.

Belton has written a comprehensive, thoughtful biography of a woman who possesses a near compulsion to challenge the brutality that those in power sometimes inflict. He includes wrenching recent examples of torture of political prisoners in Chile, South Africa and Israel. He proposes that systematic mental and physical abuses are neither impulsive nor merely sadistic; in this century, torture has become a ”bureaucratic industry’

I read this book years ago and have recently thought again of Helen Bamber.  She was a complex person, did not consider herself a “good” person.  Her father read Mein Kampf to her when she was little, he was a fearful and bitter man.  Her mother compensated by being overly frivolous and indulgent in socializing.

Vegas – the Highlights

This is just my take.  I’m sure others saw it differently.

33804983

Field Trip

The mechanical engineer designed and built coal and oil-fired power plants.

“More capacity! More steam generation!  More!  More!  More!” was the mantra under which he performed. He brought home little brown wire-bound booklets in which his precise mechanical engineer’s writing discussed tubes and cyclones and pulverized coal and sulfur emissions.

Sometimes he packed his family in the Le Sabre, and he drove them down along the Ohio River. During one such trip he pulled into a long gravel drive and onto the parking area of one of the big, belching, slightly egg-smelling power plants.

The oldest would excitedly grab the door handle and start to scoot outside when the mother admonished, none-too-warmly,”You do exactly as your father tells you.  No running around.  Don’t make noise.  And don’t get dirty.”

Friday Philosophy: Remembering

It has been a difficult time lately for some of us.  Not only have we discovered that political symbolism trumps equal protection under the law and the importance of coalition building, at least when it comes to protections for people like us, we get told in the back pages that we really need to shut up about our concerns, that speaking up for ourselves is the crassest form of selfishness.

It comes at a bad time of year.  It’s a time of year when we remember those who have fallen, and invite other people to remember them with us.  On Tuesday, November 20, is the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.  Special props to Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who started this. Some people know Gwen as a columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, whereas I know her as someone who transitioned at the same time I did.  Thank you, Gwen.

I won’t be able to post anything on that day.  It’s our last day before Thanksgiving Break and I have to teach three classes and chair a meeting of the Bloomfield College Gay/Non-Gay Alliance, where we will continue to plan our Safe Space training for the spring semester.  That, I suppose, is just more of my selfishness rearing it’s ugly head.

PONY OPEN THREAD: funny face dancing!!!

Load more