Research shortage

Budgets Falling in Race to Fight Global Warming

Other articles in the Energy Challenge series in the NYTs

On the road to recoverini

Berlusconi, Mills indicted in Italy

just chill dude

Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts

This guy is not going to live long with this attitude, so much hatred is not a healthy disposition.

What the world needs to hear

Global warming could cost trillions of dollars

LONDON (AFP) - Global warming will cost the world up to seven trillion dollars in the next decade unless governments take drastic action soon, a major report will warn.

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned last year by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to lead a review into the economics of climate change and will deliver his findings Monday.

Interestingly, the Tories are gaining support in the UK, and their leader, Cameron, won the position running on a green platform. If it takes conservatives to be green, so be it. I am beginning to think I am going to become a single issue voter: the environment.

The Slavador Option

Operation enduring chaos: The retreat of the coalition & the rise of the militias

Iraq's savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peace returning than the insurgency, and was the main reason for the Americans recently pouring 12,000 troops into the capital - an operation that, they now acknowledge, has failed.

Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out 'irregular missions'. The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the 'Salvador Option' after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.

Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff

Lakoff on: Stay the Course

Follow the money

Democrats Get Late Donations From Business

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.

The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

This is a pretty good indicator of things to come.

Happy baby syndrome

googling on yahoo

Official Google Blog: Do you "Google?"

... words that fell victim to those products' very success and, as they became more and more popular, slipped from trademarked status into common usage.

Will "Google" manage to avoid this fate? This year has brought a spate of news stories about the word's addition to the Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English dictionaries, an honor that's simultaneously highly flattering and faintly unsettling. Consider, for example, this passage from a New York Times story published last May:

"Jim sent a message introducing himself and asking, 'Do you want to make a movie?'" Mr. Fry recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Buda, Tex. 'So we Googled him, he passed the test, and T called him. That was in March 1996; we spent the summer coming up with the story, and we pitched it that fall.'"

Now, since Larry and Sergey didn't actually launch Google until 1998, Mr. Fry's usage of 'Google' is as distressing to our trademark lawyers as it is thrilling to our marketing folks. So, lest our name go the way of the elevators and escalators of yesteryear, we thought it was time we offered this quick semantic primer.

Wankers.

Bush Reserves The Right To Repeat Katrina Failures

I'm hoping to here more about this in the coming 2 weeks.

Going green and Influencing people

WITTs, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don't Go Green

So, big news: Americans are shallow, misinformed, self-interested, and unsophisticated. But they're our neighbors, our colleagues, and our relatives. And they're likely your clients, customers, or constituents. If you want to move them toward greener behavior and actions, you'll need to deal -- carefully and creatively -- with all of these sobering realities.

When it comes to enivornmentalism, half the world is this way. The most interesting part is the divide between the more communal and more individualistic personality types. My feeling is that it is more complex than this, that it depends upon the topic and people are more or less communal or individual. Regardless, self-interest appeals to everyone, and short-term self-interest arguments appeal to everyone most strongly. So if you want to change peoples minds, "They're not about to make purchase decisions based on a maybe-someday rationale for stemming environmental problems. They want to know: what's in it for me, today?" I think that is more or less right, and I didn't need a whole series of studies to tell me that. Just go read the book: How to win friends & influence people by Dale Carnegie.

Here is a summary of his book (more detailed summary here). I love the internets and tubes!

Fundamental Techniques for Handling People:

• Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give people a feeling of importance; praise the good parts of them.
• Get the other person to want to do what you want them to by arousing their desires.

Six Ways to Make People Like You:

• Be genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember and use people's names.
• Encourage others to talk about themselves and listen to them.
• Discuss what the other person is interested in.
• Make the other person feel important.

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking:

• Avoid arguments.
• Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never tell someone they are wrong.
• If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Begin in a friendly way.
• Start with questions the other person will answer yes to.
• Let the other person do the talking.
• Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
• Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
• Sympathize with the other person.
• Appeal to noble motives.
• Dramatize your ideas.
• Throw down a challenge.

Nine Ways to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment:

• Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
• Call attention to other people's mistakes indirectly.
• Talk about your own mistakes first.
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
• Let the other person save face.
• Praise every improvement.
• Give them a fine reputation to live up to.
• Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
• Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Best advice you'll ever get.

List of Members of 109th Congress Being Looked at by DoJ

check it out

Wow

No wonder GOP freaking out at Michael J. Fox ad

A new national study revealed that American voters' support for stem cell research increased after they viewed an ad featuring Michael J. Fox in which he expresses his support for candidates who are in favor of stem cell research.

I thought it was a powerful ad when I saw it and I guess it is resonating. That is great. When people can actually see the consequences of policy, they generally think twice. Check this out:

Respondents were asked to indicate what candidate they would vote for in the U.S. House of Representatives election if it was held today before and after viewing the ad.

* Republicans who indicated that they were voting for a Republican candidate decreased by 10% after viewing the ad (77% to 67%). Independents planning to vote for Democrats increased by 10%, from 39% to 49%.

Here is a link to the original story on yahoo. It makes me glad that this guy can't completely overcome human decency.

The newest Asian tiger

Vietnam’s Roaring Economy Is Set for World Stage

I thought that this statistic was particularly amazing: "Vietnam has reduced the percentage of its people living in abject poverty — less than $1 a day — to 8 percent from 51 percent in 1990, a greater advance than either China or India." Growth while reducing poverty, how great is that.

What they are doing with AI...

'Tower of Babel' translator made

well, they still have a ways to go, but it is interesting. Made me think of the movie the Hitchikers Guide...

U.S. troops call for Iraq withdrawal

U.S. troops call for Iraq withdrawal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 200 active duty U.S. armed service members, fed up with the war in Iraq, have joined an unusual protest calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, organisers said on Wednesday.

The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, is the first of its kind in the Iraq war and takes advantage of U.S. Defence Department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal (Advertisement) opinions to members of Congress without fear of retaliation, organisers said.

If this makes big news, I expect a lot of right-wing hate to come spewing at these guys. I always thought it was incredibly stupid that they were able to associate support the troops with war. I'd hate a war monger to be my spokseperson if I was in the military.

France accused on Rwanda killings

A former senior Rwandan diplomat has told a tribunal that France played an active role in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Former Rwandan ambassador to Paris Jacques Bihozagara said French involvement stemmed from concerns about its diminishing influence in Africa.

France has denied playing any role in the 100-day frenzy of killing in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.

After the hearings, the Rwandan panel will rule on whether to file a suit at the International Court of Justice.

Search this blog for real.

Google personal search engine is nice, thanks Nick.

To search this and the old blog take a look at the bottom of the page, and give it a try. Much better than the old way.

[update] Hmm, perhaps it has to spider all the pages or something, but it seems to miss a lot.

Looking in der spiegel

A Superpower in Decline: America's Middle Class Has Become Globalization's Loser

Google Bomb

Source code from here

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert