Icebrrg Test

Europe Map

Let's see if this map comes up or not....

Almost ran a man over in CP.....

This happened last weekend, but I never got around to making a post about it...

I was coming home on Rt 1 in College Park from the Beltway, and was cruising in the left lane, doing roughly the speed limit. I drove past the Honda dealership, crest a small hill, and what do I see in the road ahead of me? A body.

I swerve (with about one second to react) to avoid running over the body and pull over in a parking lot. By the time I get back to him 3 cops had showed up (within 1 minute), and within a few minutes the guy sat up (I thought he was freaking dead!). The guy who hit him drove a Explorer, and the truck had damage to the hood and windshield. Thankfully, he pulled over immediately. There was a pool of blood in the street where the guy was lying. I couldn't believe the guy was still alive. When I drove past him he was lying motionless and had his arms and legs in crazy positions.

The super crazy thing is this all happened within 1 minute of me driving by. If I had been 1 minute earlier, who knows....maybe I would have hit him. It was in a dark part of the road, and he was nowhere near a crosswalk. Thankfully ambulances and police were on the scene within 2 minutes, and the guy is still alive. You have no idea how crazy it is to be driving your car only to have to swerve to avoid running over a human body. I thought it was an animal at first, but quickly recognized it as a person. Oh yeah, thank god my car isn't stock and there wasn't a car next to mine or else I would have hit them.

Defense Contractor Blackwater sues victims families

This is disgusting.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/53460/

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Here's a copy of an article I wrote for the Diamondback about global warming.

So you think you're up to date on everything there is to know about global warming? Well, what about the viewpoints of the global-warming naysayers, or at least those who refute the idea that man-made carbon dioxide is the principal cause of global warming?

Despite the popularity of the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, not every member of the documentary community has jumped on what critics call the "global-warming bandwagon," and there's one specific film leading the pack.

The controversial British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, shown in the United Kingdom March 8, challenges the carbon dioxide idea. The documentary was produced by Martin Durkin, the man behind Modified Truth and several other controversial documentaries.

According to the Al Gore-created An Inconvenient Truth, the rise in the earth's temperature is due to man-made carbon dioxide emissions; if we lower those emissions, we will bring the earth's temperature back to normal, the documentary asserts. However, according to Durkin and other researchers, the scientific reports on which this documentary is based on are either false or misleading.

The Great Global Warming Swindle starts with a brief history of climate change on earth. During earth's history, there have been periods in which carbon dioxide levels were 10 times higher than today and also periods, such as the Holocene Maximum, in which temperatures were much higher than today over a prolonged period of time.

If CO2 drove climate change in the past, the evidence should be present in ice-core samples - but that is simply not the case, some scientists assert. Professor Ian Clark from the University of Ottawa's Department of Earth Sciences, for example, comments in Swindle that, "You can't say that CO2 will drive climate; it certainly never did in the past."

The makers of The Great Global Warming Swindle argue that Gore ignored a crucial piece of data: Due to complicated processes in nature, warmer temperatures actually cause CO2 to increase in the atmosphere. Professor Frederick Singer, the former director of the National Weather Service, says in Swindle, "The warming produced the increase in carbon dioxide." He continues, "The hypothesis of man-made global warming is falsified by the evidence."

In fact, ice-core data reveal that CO2 levels rise approximately 800 years after an initial rise in temperature, partially due to both temperature changes in the oceans and an increase in vegetation, scientists also claim.

Professor Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia's Department of Environmental Sciences came to the same conclusion. "Anyone who goes around and says that carbon dioxide is responsible for most of the warming of the 20th century hasn't looked at the basic numbers," he says in Swindle. The data show that CO2 levels are a result of temperature change and not the other way around, he adds.

The documentary also raises a curious question: Why did the earth's temperature drop between the post-war economic boom of 1940 to 1975, a time when CO2 emissions were skyrocketing? Professor Tim Ball, formerly of the University of Winnipeg's department of climatology, says this about the 1940 to 1975 data: "The facts don't fit the theory [of man-made global warming]."

However, scientists in Swindle claim there is a possible explanation for the 1940-1975 temperature drop: the sun and solar flares. According to NASA's website, a solar flare is "an enormous explosion in the solar atmosphere ... [that]results in sudden bursts of particle acceleration." Research done by Professor Eigil Friis-Christensen, the director of the Danish National Space Center, asserts that sun spots and temperature are closely related. During the last century, solar activity peaked at about 1940, declined until 1975 and then rose again, suggesting solar activity, not CO2, is directly correlated to the earth's temperature.

However, Swindle does not advocate the loosening of pollution restrictions, and nor does it deny the earth has been going through a warming period recently or that CO2 emissions may contribute to global warming to some extent. Instead, the documentary is simply another point of view in a scientific debate seen by the general public as largely as one-sided.

But either way, if you're simply a science geek or someone willing to learn a little more about a popular issue, check out The Great Global Warming Swindle after watching An Inconvenient Truth this Earth Day. Either way, the topic will certainly provide much conversation fodder around the water cooler (or the beer keg).

After my article was published, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation also made a film similar to the Durkin piece. A link to the CBC piece can be found here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3309910462407994295

Here's a link to "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8v5du5_ag

Google spying on you?

Here's an interesting article about some new technology that Google has in production that will use your computer's internal microphone to listen to sounds in your room, and then use that information to tailor advertising specifically to your tastes. Google says this product is just a showcase for future technology, and isn't currently being used, but the idea that Google can listen to what goes on in my private residence scares the shit out of me.

Here's the link:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/08/google-research-prototypes-ambient-audio-contextual-content/

Ron Paul on the Real ID Card

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul was on Tucker Carlson's show recently and discussed his thoughts on the national ID card.
Here's the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mb7aiM9K9Q

They talk about other important issues, but they get into the national ID card issue around the 6 minute mark.

Dr. Paul voted against the Real ID card in Congress, and told Carlson, "The age of carrying our papers and national IDs...it's here."

I for one am opposed to any legislation that resembles that of Nazi Germany, in which we wouldn't be allowed to travel or buy things without "showing your papers". Since Dr. Paul is the only candidate talking about issues like this, I support his efforts to bring liberty and transparency back to our government. I don't support his view on every topic, but it's refreshing to see someone, especially in the Republican party, talk about real issues that affect people.

In case you were wondering, Dr. Paul considers himself a Libertarian. I'm beginning to think of myself as a mix of a liberal and a libertarian. I'll be frank when I say I never thought I would support someone running as a Republican, but since there's the distinct possibility that Dr. Paul is just using the Republican debates as a platform to use to build a strong 3rd party candidacy later on, I won't be losing any sleep over it.