Our first real snowfall this winter -- It is TIME for this stuff, so I'm not complaining. Plenty of Deer tracks, but no sightings recently -- anyway I don't want to see bodies hit by sliding cars anyhow.
Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Heidelberg, Germany (Looking for Lada Edmunds Jr. -- NBC's main Go Go Dancer on
Hullabaloo); Salt Lake City, Utah; New London, Connecticut (looking for Joan Merwyn); Lehi, Utah (BOTH Utahns were looking for Kipling's
God of Our Fathers poem); Caldwell, New Jersey; Trnava, Slovakia; Louth, Ireland (Izzat YOU, Eavan?); Portland, Oregon and Castro Valley, California
REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, at:
Theater X-Net
Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley
Visit: Michael's Montana Web ArchiveTheater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
Spitfires of the SpacewaysWilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!
Thanks to Jim Keefe (
Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations --
HERE!
Charity Alert: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on
The Hunger Site every day. Also check into
Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.
In The Community: Slight redesigns going on at the
Hockaday Museum of Art webpage. The FVCC party was modest and fun, except that I didn't get home until 10:30 PM that night after working from 8:00 AM onwards at both jobs.
Media Watch: Nobel Prizes are more in the news this year because of Ex-Vice President Al Gore sharing the Peace Prize for
An Inconvenient Truth. The other 2007 winners are: Physics: Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance." Chemistry: Gerhard Ertl "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces." Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, Oliver Smithies "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells." Literature: Doris Lessing "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny." Peace: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" Economics: Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, Roger B. Myerson, "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory"
Science deniers tried to keep
Inconvenient Truth out of schools, but have failed so far. Here are highlights of a news article about the issue -- From David Adam of England's
Guardian newspaper:
Mr Justice Barton said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change. The judge made his remarks when assessing a case brought by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of a political group, the New Party, who is opposed to a government plan to show the film in secondary schools. The judge ruled that the film can still be shown in schools, as part of a climate change resources pack, but only if it is accompanied by fresh guidance... The "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change ...he had viewed the film and described it as "powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced", built around the "charismatic presence" of Mr Gore, "whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change".
Despite his finding of significant errors, Mr Justice Barton said many of the claims made by the film were supported by the weight of scientific evidence and he identified four main hypotheses, each of which is very well supported "by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]."This particular article left out Justice Barton's positive findings, summarized thus:
...that climate change is mainly caused by human-created emissions, that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that unchecked climate change will cause serious damage, and that governments and individuals could reduce its impact. Here are Barton's nine
errors (italics), with
comments (bold) by ME, whatever they are worth:
The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring. But the ocean levels are STILL rising. Where are those people going to go, huh judge? It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down. These are the guys who share the Nobel Prize -- and the conveyor 'slowing down' is disastrous too! Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts." Faulty debating manners perhaps, but the connection is THERE, and the judge says so. Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established. See desertification below. The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability." The Sahara has been expanding all our lives, and the damn global temperature has been getting warmer at the same time -- ignore this factor at your peril! Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that." Hotter waters meaning stronger hurricanes is a scary hypothesis, which needs to be stated though, before evidence pro and con can be gathered. Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm." Arctic ice is melting like crazy -- studies about the logical effects on wildlife are underway. The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult. But heat is a factor too. The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist." Nobody knows how much sea-level will change in a big meltdown, and the movie's INTENTION is to raise an alarm!
Doris Lessing is MY personal favorite of all the Nobel laureates this year. The Golden Notebook is a brutally honest look at what we call human relationships, or as Ms. Lessing brutally states it: "The Sex War." This novel is NOT for the faint of heart!
