Posted by: Fred ||
10/14/2011 10:53 ||
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#1
Took 'em long enough. Hope Fred gets his money back.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/14/2011 13:12 Comments ||
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#2
Beautiful. The Eastern District of Virginia usually doesn't take any sh*t from lawyers (or anyone else) - glad to see they're keeping up the tradition for such a worthy cause. :-D
Posted by: Barbara ||
10/14/2011 14:31 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Pakistain's monsoon floods have devastated millions of lives, but one month on, the international response remains sluggish, raising fears of a worsening humanitarian situation. "Gimme yer dough or the populace gets it!"
"The international community is not coming forward to provide funds," said Joe Cropp of the International Federation of Red Thingy and Red Islamic Thingy Societies (IFRC.) "Interest just isn't there," he told IRIN, the UN information unit.
Oxfam, for its part, says that while humanitarian aid will be needed for months to come, relief activities so far "have barely scratched the surface".
UN agencies have repeatedly called for funds over recent weeks, warning that the situation could deteriorate rapidly if new aid is not forthcoming.
Only 18 percent of the US$357 million Pakistain Flood Response Plan appeal has been funded to date. "It is really too little and it is cause for concern," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA.)
"Winter is about to set in, and with the cold the situation will become unbearable, notably in Sindh [Province] where 850,000 people live in temporary shelters," Byrs told journalists in Geneva.
An estimated 5.8 million people have been struggling to survive in Sindh and Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... provinces since torrential monsoon rains pounded southern Pakistain in September, triggering serious flooding. Over 1.5 million houses were damaged, three million acres of crops were destroyed and one third of cattle were lost, while three million people are still in need of food assistance, according to UN figures.
Many of those affected were still recovering from the disastrous 2010 floods, which affected 18 million people in Pakistain.
"What we have is a very serious situation in southern Pakistain, with hundreds of thousands of families affected, and vulnerable children who've already lived though one devastating flood, facing the repercussions of another one," said Marixie Mercado, spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF.) "The reality is that unless this crisis gets more attention -- and by that we mean funding -- things will only get worse."
Donors stay away
As shocking images from starving children in Somalia have gripped world attention, the suffering in Pakistain is getting comparatively little media coverage. This is one of the reasons funding remains so low, says Cropp, who is based in Islamabad.
The IFRC official believes donor reluctance is also a result of the bad press Pakistain has been getting, and its reputation as a haven for gangs. "If you look into the media, there are negative perceptions of the country. People are talking about the Pak government's relation with America; they're talking about militias, things like that. That negative perception may make donors reluctant to step forward."
Yet, he insisted the issue should not be one of politics. "The people of Sindh are not militias, they're ordinary people, they're farmers, they're teachers, and they need help."
The Geneva-base ACT Alliance also urged donors to step forward, bemoaning what it called the "sluggish" international response.
"The worst-hit communities are mostly likely already impoverished, marginalised and need help to stop them falling further below the poverty line and deeper into debt and uncertainty," the alliance of churches and church-related organizations said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/14/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
PAKISTAN: Flood impact to worsen unless aid increases
Gee Tough.
NO AID, you're trying to kill US, Fuk you.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/14/2011 0:08 Comments ||
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...and a belated Happy Indigenous Peoples Day to everybody.
By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe's climate for centuries.
The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.
"We have a massive reforestation event that's sequestering carbon ... coincident with the European arrival," says Nevle, who described the consequences of this change October 11 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting.
Hah. And you thought trees were good. Evil, evil trees, just pave the damned planet over and be done with it...
Tying together many different lines of evidence, Nevle estimated how much carbon all those new trees would have consumed. He says it was enough to account for most or all of the sudden drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide recorded in Antarctic ice during the 16th and 17th centuries. This depletion of a key greenhouse gas, in turn, may have kicked off Europe's so-called Little Ice Age, centuries of cooler temperatures that followed the Middle Ages.
By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 80 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.
About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population.
Trees returned, reforesting an area at least the size of California, Nevle estimated. This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air.
Ice cores from Antarctica contain air bubbles that show a drop in carbon dioxide around this time. These bubbles suggest that levels of the greenhouse gas decreased by 6 to 10 parts per million between 1525 and the early 1600s.
"There's nothing else happening in the rest of the world at this time, in terms of human land use, that could explain this rapid carbon uptake," says Jed Kaplan, an earth systems scientist at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Reforestation fits with another clue hidden in Antarctic ice, says Nevle. As the population declined in the Americas, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere got heavier. Increasingly, molecules of the gas tended to be made of carbon-13, a naturally occurring isotope with an extra neutron. That could be because tree leaves prefer to take in gas made of carbon-12, leaving the heavier version in the air.
Kaplan points out that there's a lot of uncertainty in such isotope measurements, so this evidence isn't conclusive. But he agrees that the New World pandemics were a major event that can't be ignored -- a tragedy that highlighted mankind's ability to influence the climate long before the industrial revolution.
Once again, everything would be wonderful if only human beings - Westerners, in particular - had never existed. As soon as Al Gore declares the science settled, the UN can take the appropriate measures.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/14/2011 0:11 Comments ||
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#2
DOn't believe all that stuff; in fact Chris was one of the world's first greenies; he practiced amazing fuel economy methods. Everybody knows he crossed the entire ocean on just 3 galeions.....
#4
Seeing as an extra 300 ppm CO2 is meant to cause a 3 deg C warming according to the IPCC "consensus", 6 to 10 ppm decrease should cause around 0.06 to 0.1 deg C cooling. Maybe a little more but not enough to explain the Little Ice Age. The guy is a dipshit. Wonderful who can claim to be a professional "scientist" nowadays.
Posted by: Aussie Mike ||
10/14/2011 4:58 Comments ||
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Mike! You're supposed to embrace the concept and leave the math to the professionals!
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/14/2011 6:20 Comments ||
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#6
I thought the sun had a Maunder Minimum at the time, or something like that?
#7
Okay, the LIA started about 1350 about 150 yrs before Columbus sailed. The number of people that came to the new world prior to the 19th century was in the hundreds.
The 40-80 million burning trees are all the "native Americans" that predate the Euros so the LIA is all their fault.
#9
CrazyFool, the observation is that the native peoples deforested, but when the pandemics hit much of that land reverted to vegetation again. Another deforestation came later as the european settlers spread west.
The Maunder Minimum hit over a century later than Columbus. It kicked off the depths of the Little Ice Age, but didn't start it. As I remember the data, Nevle is correct that there is a significant downturn during the 16th century that correlates with the rapid spread of pandemics in north America.
Aussie Mike, did you read the whole article? We don't have the full journal paper to analyze yet, but I don't think your back of the envelope calculations prove much. For one thing, the effect of CO2 is not symmetrically linear at the gross level - cooler land accelerates in cooling as the amount of snow/ice increases and winters last longer, thereby reflecting solar energy out into space through an atmosphere with less CO2 to trap it.
#10
There has been massive reforestation across the rural areas of the eastern US since the 1930's as small farms were abandoned. Of course it has been more than offset by deforestation in the tropics.
How much land was kept cleared of trees by Indian farmers? I thought the practice was one of clear, farm, move on, since fertilizers were limited.
The Maunder Minimum may have been at fault - the miscorellation in time due to those pesky faster-than-the-speed-of-light particles we've been reading about...
MAKKAH: An engineer working for the Tawafa Establishment for South Asian Pilgrims has developed an electric heater that can boil up to 1,000 liters of water to make tea and other hot drinks.
Dude. You're a genius...
Indeed. In the land of the servant, he invented self service and hot water tanks.
.Mahboub told Arab News that his new system would make available tea and coffee to pilgrims in crowded tents at any time, day or night, without the assistance of tea boys.
The number of pilgrims in a normal pilgrim tent reaches up to 5,000 and a number of tea boys are required to serve them. He said the 1,000-liter tank will have to be heated initially for two hours and a continuous water supply could be ensured with a buoy-like device.
The equipment is priced approximately at SR15,000, including installation costs, and will have a 10-year operating life.
The external wall of the tank is heat-insulated with a fiberglass cover to protect users. The tank has nine outlets and can serve 6,000 paper cups. An inbuilt stainless steel boiler enables the preparation of tea.
He added that the device was ideal for pilgrim camps and other large gatherings because of its safety and hygiene levels. By installing the system, which minimizes the risk of fires in pilgrim camps, Tawafa establishments can save on wages of tea makers and suppliers, Mahboub said. The equipment can be operated anywhere and can easily be transported from one location to another, he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/14/2011 00:00 ||
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Reading this is like watching a black and white grayscale film from the '50s.
#1
Swank gave Kadyrov birthday wishes at the ceremony and told him "people are better dressed here than in New York." When asked by a Russian host if she knew it was Kadyrov's birthday, she said: "I do my research, I study what is going on here."
She added she was unaware of Kadyrov's policies that human rights groups say promote fear, abductions, and executions of those involved in Chechnya's Islamist insurgency.
h/t Instapundit
WASHINGTON -- In Herman Cain's America, the tax code would be very, very simple: The corporate income tax rate would be 9 percent, the personal income tax rate would be 9 percent and the national sales tax rate would be 9 percent.
But there's already a 999 plan out there, in a land called SimCity.
Long before Cain was running for president and getting attention for his 999 plan, the residents of SimCity 4 -- which was released in 2003 -- were living under a system where the default tax rate was 9 percent for commercial taxes, 9 percent for industrial taxes and 9 percent for residential taxes. Cain started as programmer. Could it be he was such a successful businessman because he could write superior simulations? (standard SF plot)
#1
So we will be OK if Godzilla attacks the city during the Cain administration.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
10/14/2011 20:22 Comments ||
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Given how many cities and counties seem to push chrome projects on bond issues while ignoring basic infrastructure till it bites them in the a$$, I'd say a lot of the sitting members of local/state/fed government should have to play city building sims just to grasp the fundamentals.
#4
I have always maintained that a candidate for public office should demonstrate they can successfully play SimCity. One thing the game teaches you is how quickly you can dig a deep, deep hole by borrowing money. Unlike voters, arithmetic cannot be fooled.
#5
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, just declared bankruptcy. They should have tried a little SimCity before going off on their harebrained Green scheme.
In addition to passing through a metal detector, a random body scanning device, a physical pat down and luggage search, travelers are now experiencing "experimental" interrogations by TSA agents.
Those who fail to comply are having their luggage searched.
Travelers say they are being asked about their destination, for how long, and the purpose of their travel. Other questions include the contents of carry on luggage and why travelers are carrying significant amounts of cash.
So far, only 48 travelers out of about 132,000 who have been questioned at Boston's Logan International Airport have refused to answer and had their luggage searched.
Agents are also looking for behavioral clues to possible deception and hostility that warrants further scrutiny or a referral to law-enforcement officials.
Suspicious travelers can be diverted for further questioning, but only 10 people have been referred to authorities on suspicion of crimes such as drug possession - not as terror suspects.
Chat-downs are an extension of a program called SPOT, or Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It now fields 3,000 officers at 161 airports at an annual cost of $212 million.
From May 2004 to August 2008, 2 billion people boarded aircraft at SPOT airports and 152,000 were referred for secondary questioning, according to a Government Accountability Office report in May 2010. About 14,000 passengers were referred to law-enforcement officers and 1,100 were arrested during that period.
Rather than charging anyone with terrorism, the SPOT detentions included 427 arrests of undocumented immigrants, 209 in connection with outstanding warrants, 166 on fraudulent documents and 125 on drug possession.
Meanwhile, the GAO checked 16 people who had been charged in six terrorist plots during that period and found they had passed unhindered at least 23 times through eight airports where SPOT officers worked. So, the bottom line is that none of this ridiculously expensive crap stops terrorists, and is being used exclusively so that the federal government can nab petty criminals by denying constitutional rights to millions of travelers. What's not to like?
#1
WAnna bet they have some rule about 'you can only question one muslim person per flight - but you can question as many white old ladies you want...'
#5
No.. Read the other side of this on a tech article. The TSA is testing a system that monitors people (Sort of a lie detector on steriods). It has hi-def video and infra-red and sniffers, microwave and mag sensors... all tied into a near AI analysis program. For the test phase they need to ask questions in a double blind way. Some of those asked are TSA folks pretending to lie or tell the truth and some are real folks. The "AI" is a learning one..... and its networked everywhere. They hope to have a sensored environment watching us - and not just at the airport.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
10/14/2011 19:57 Comments ||
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#6
They will put air travel back years. Well on their way to bankrupt this industry.
#7
Why does carrying a large amount raise suspicion of terrorism? The TSA is supposed to be checking for people who want to bad things to the airplanes (and soon trains, buses and automobiles). A terrorist who is planning on blowing up a plane is unlikely to be carrying lots of cash.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
10/14/2011 20:38 Comments ||
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#8
But one who is financing and enabling terrorism might be, especially in the face of effective monitoring of transactions across banks etc.
And using cash to pay for rental cars, plane fares etc. is a useful way to avoid being detected before you're successful. The FBI connected the dots on the Colorado-based would be attacker of NYC in part through tracking credit card charges for such things, according to news reports.
h/t Instapundit
Iran acknowledged as a failure Wednesday its attempt to send a live monkey into space last month -- touted as its first step towards launching a man into space. Anyone seen Ahmadinejad lately?
Updated link
Marketing student Marc Bechtol learned from Catawba Valley Community College that what you say can come back to haunt you. The school suspended Bechtol on Oct. 4 for two semesters and banned him from campus in response to a comment he made about the school on Facebook.
The incident started when Bechtol was forced to sign up with the college's debit card service through Higher One bank in order to access his grant money. In the process of signing up, he was reportedly asked for personal information, such as his Social Security number and his date of birth.
Not long after he signed up, he allegedly began to receive unwelcome spam email from various credit card companies.
According to the website for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Bechtol wrote a post on the college's Facebook page on Sept. 28 about the incident.
"Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC's address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them?"
One wonders what kind of cozy deal Higher One and Catawba Valley Community College had?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
10/14/2011 19:51 Comments ||
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#3
"You Never Know Who Might Read Your Facebook Entries" or anything posted on the internet. Key words, ideas, mood, all public chatter on any form of communication. Stock market, medical records, government, business, politicians all want this information. They want to have an advantage. The decisions now will change day by day minute by minute as the prevailing wind blows.
#4
Could always phone Mom on the app of your iPhone to ask her to come clean up after you. Why should adult life at the sit-in be any different than the rest of our 'life'.
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/14/2011 8:52 Comments ||
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#7
Question: Why don't the protesters outfox the police and clean up their area, all by themselves?
According to the article they did, Bobby, staying up all night to scrub the concrete. Even pooled their pocket money to hire a private garbage truck to haul away the trash. But the fact of the matter is that they are residing on private property without paying rent nor getting permission.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] Pakistain's monsoon floods have devastated millions of lives, but one month on, the international response remains sluggish, raising fears of a worsening humanitarian situation.
