OT (off-topic)

Very interesting read.

When I walked into the Speaker of the House’s press room and saw a staff member (Jesse Lee, Senior New Media Advisor for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi) typing a blog into WordPress, I knew the world had changed (I remarked that I knew that Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic which makes WordPress, was a smart guy from the first time I met him). That’s Jesse on this post typing into his WordPress-run blog.”*

Kids can be cruel.

That’s as true today as ever. But nowadays, technology-savvy youth with the intent to hurt have more weapons at their disposal to torment their victims.

Cyberbullying, as it is known, is perhaps more common and potentially harmful than conventional schoolyard and classroom bullying. Cyberbullying occurs when the Internet or cell phones, or both, are used to spread information or send photos with the intent to hurt or embarrass someone.”*

*From: http://www.nydailynews.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

A survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group, suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting.”*

*From: http://hispanicad.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Global warming in Spain could see rising seas devour huge swathes of beach, many animal and plant species facing extinction and the countryside much more prone to floods and forest fires, scientists warned.

Their forecasts were contained in a report presented Tuesday to Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who promised to make the fight against climate change a top priority if he is re-elected in March. He promised “a new contract between mankind and the planet.”

Zapatero spoke the same day the European Union said Spain was among only three countries of the bloc which are not on track to fulfill their carbon dioxide reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The others were Italy and Denmark.”*

Recent research suggests that in our warming world, devastating hurricanes, like Katrina, may become more common. The new study, detailed in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science, adds another element to this dilemma, suggesting that the damage these hurricanes cause may actually fuel global warming due to the loss of carbon-consuming trees.

Tulane University researchers estimated the number of trees felled by Katrina using satellite imagery taken before and after the storm. Forest trees act as a carbon sink, sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to provide themselves with food. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is the major driver of global warming.

When trees are destroyed, they decay, returning the carbon stored inside them to the atmosphere.”*

The US is calling for a ban on the fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.

A three-to-five-years ban is being proposed to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat).

The call comes amid deep concerns that the stock may collapse if the level of overfishing continues”*

The macroeconomic consequences could be quite dramatic,” Hatzius said in the note to clients. “If leveraged investors see $200 billion of the $400 billion aggregate credit loss, they might need to scale back their lending by $2 trillion.”

“This is a large shock,” he said, adding the number equates to 7 percent of total debt owed by U.S. non-financial sectors.

Hatzius said such a shock could produce a “substantial recession” if it occurred over one year, or a long period of sluggish growth if it occurred over two-to-four years.”*

Fall, the long- running series of shorter days and cooler nights, was canceled earlier this week after nearly 3 billion seasons on Earth, sources reported Tuesday.

The classic period of the year, which once occupied a coveted slot between summer and winter, will be replaced by new, stifling humidity levels, near- constant sunshine, and almost no precipitation for months.

“As much as we’d like to see it stay, fall will not be returning for another season,” National Weather Service president John Hayes announced during a muggy press conference Nov. 6. “Fall had a great run, but sadly, times have changed.”"*

The children who live on Chile’s Eduardo Frei Montalva Air Force Base are pawns in a great game in the Antarctic that they can but dimly understand.

The cluster of snowbound cabins, a 2½hour flight from the tip of South America to the bottom of the world, is home to a permanent population of eighty that includes ten married couples with a total of 12 children, aged 1 to 17. Residents describe the remote outpost as a colonia.

“It’s strange and difficult but it’s super-beautiful,” said Alumna Jofré, 12, whose father is chief of operations at the ice-covered airfield. “We have had amazingly beautiful experiences. We ski and snowboard and sledge.””*

It has recently come to my attention that you (and by “you” I also mean “I”) are in the grip of mass self-delusion. It’s long entrenched, and reinforced every night as many of you swig your beers or glasses of wine, lean over your keyboards and earnestly debate the merits of John Edwards and Barack Obama, fret over Hillary Clinton’s authenticity and calculate the chances of Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd.

You are lying to yourselves. In a quest for an “electable,” “not insane” presidential candidate, you are willfully overlooking the candidate who actually comes closest to representing the things in which you really believe: justice and peace and the basic freedoms that should be afforded to every American, regardless of race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation or galactic origin. In an effort to distance yourself from the squish of the Birkenstock and the stench of the patchouli, you have convinced yourself that compromise and pragmatism light the path to the White House. And you are correct. But still, before walking listlessly down the aisle toward our impending union with tepid centrism, let’s rip our clothes off for one final, ill-advised fling with ideological honesty.”*

Agricultural policy is not sexy. You probably don’t know the intricacies of “loan deficiency payments” or “base acreage,” and you probably don’t care. This was once an agrarian nation, but now there’s a less than 1% chance that you’re a farmer, and if you are, you’re probably part time; the average farm family gets 82% of its income from nonfarm sources. We’re not a people of the soil anymore, and for most of us, our eyes glaze over when we see farm statistics like the ones in that last sentence.

But farms still cover most of our land, consume most of our water and produce most of our food. If you eat, drink or pay taxes–or care about the economy, the environment or our global reputation–U.S. agricultural policy is a big deal.

It’s also a horrible deal. It redistributes our taxes to millionaire farmers as well as to millionaire “farmers” like David Letterman, David Rockefeller and the owners of the Utah Jazz. It contributes to our obesity and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, eliminate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast-food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the nonagricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.”*

A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis.

This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion worth of sub-prime debt.”*

As Preston Wiginton, a white supremacist from Texas, stepped forward to address thousands of Russian nationalists at a rally Sunday in Moscow, he lifted his black cowboy hat high in the air.

“I’m taking my hat off as a sign of respect for your strong identity in ethnicity, nation and race,” he said, exposing his close-cropped head to a freezing drizzle.

“Glory to Russia,” Wiginton, 43, said in broken Russian, as the crowd of mostly young Russian men raised their right hands in a Nazi salute and chanted “white power!” in English.”*

O rend thy garments, America! Heap ashes upon thy head. We, the generation of generations–triumphant in our multitudes, invincible, indomitable, insufferable–have come into our inheritance. Hereby we claim our birthright. Give us all your money.

The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today’s vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex, in places like Paris, St. Bart’s, and Phuket.

How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley Davidsons?”*