This time its the claimed link between global warming and natural disasters.

...faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough...

...The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

Its just a hazy concept at the moment...kinda ephemeral...might even just be indigestion and hangover...but it just feels like maybe, just possibly, an outside chance, 1:1,000,000 shot, that there's a, just a faint fuzzy shadow on the wall thing really, that suggests a pattern of deception going on here. I'm with Auric Goldfinger on this -- three times is usually enemy action.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:17 PM | Comments (97)
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A man found alive, after eleven days of hell.

This is the spirit of Exantus.

From his hospital bed Saturday, Exantus turned to his family and said, "When you are in a hole I will try to reach out to you, too."

I'm kind of at a loss for words. Mere survival, existence, it's a big thing for so many who aren't part of this community.

Ok pretty much a cop out on my part. I do have words.

Overwhelm them with our gifts. Don't worry about the graft and crap. Your attention willl make a difference. Let's overwhelm them.

Yeah.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:08 PM | Comments (30)
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It's been ages and ages since we had one of these, but since there's no real news doin' and I'm all out of patience for music videos after yesterday's post, take a look at Charleston, South Carolina:

That's the small size. Definitely click over to SHORPY to see the jumbo size with all it's details.

SHORPY says that what you're looking at is the bombed-out remains of the Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar after the U.S. shelled Charleston. It's dated 1865, which makes me suspect it was taken after Sherman blew past on his way to burning the shit out of Columbia. At that point, the Confederates had already retreated and surrendered the city.

However, I was a little curious about this because after a bunch of poking around I couldn't find a date to put to the bombing. The Cathedral's history page seems to indicate that what we're looking at is not battle-damage, but fire damage:

On December 11, 1861, a fire broke out in a factory on Hasell Street, destroying much of Charleston including the cathedral. Everything was lost.

Fund-raising for a new cathedral continued for the next 45 years, and the cornerstone for the present Cathedral of St. John the Baptist was laid in January 1890.

So, dear readers, fire damage, battle damage, or both?

You can also take a look at the Cathedral today. It's currently getting a massive face-lift and all-around restoration. Videos, photos, and articles from the restoration are available here.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:55 PM | Comments (230)
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Media coaches Obama, one more in a series of "hey, you should probably do this big ears."

In a time of deep economic insecurity, Obama will use this stage on Wednesday to offer hope after a grueling, grinding first year of his presidency, aides say. For the many who think the United States is still on the wrong track, Obama will attempt to present a clearer sense of how everything he's pursuing fits together to help.

Let's revisit how everything he's pursuing fits together to help.

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:14 PM | Comments (426)
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Cool:

The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul's exclamation: "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" (1 Cor 9:16) The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts. Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word.

The spread of multimedia communications and its rich "menu of options" might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different "voices" provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.

That's from Pope Benedict's new website www.Pope2You.net. I've gotta say, it's not a bad effort. It's got papal speeches, apps for sharing Catholic stuff on Facebook, photos, and a link to the Vatican YouTube channel.

The message is sent as the Church celebrates its 44th World Communications Day tomorrow. My priest back home has had this covered for years. He's a moderator and participant on a discussion forum for Christian fans of the Harry Potter novels. Probably knows more Potter-verse trivia than anyone I know.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:48 AM | Comments (190)
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Some interesting results here

52% of the Palestinians and 42% of Israelis think its unavoidable. The Moroccans and Tunisians are significantly more upbeat with 77% and 73% thinking it is avoidable. Even 65% of Iranians believe its avoidable.

Curiously, only 39% of Egyptians think its avoidable. We might want to make note of that when considering any future weapons sales to Egypt. Its very embarrassing to be squaring off against your own weapons.

Lots more at the link.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:36 AM | Comments (153)
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Attack from the Right:

"We will formally announce at a later time, but we're moving forward to challenge John McCain," he said. "I think we all respect John. I think his place in history is secure. But after close to a quarter-century in Washington, it's time for him to come home."

He said he wasn't serious about running against McCain until a recent "outpouring of support" from Arizonans asking him to run changed his mind.

"Arizonans have a clear choice -- a clear, commonsense, consistent conservative, or they can remain with a moderate who calls himself a maverick," Hayworth said.

Hayworth's immediate problem will be getting funds for the race. As Ed notes, a primary challenge to the previous election's presidential ticket worked for Ned Lamont against Joe Lieberman, but Lamont could self-fund. McCain already has $5 million squirreled away and he starts with much greater name recognition.

Ed is still scratching his head over Palin's continued support for McCain in the face of a challenger like Hayworth, who presumably is closer to Palin's politics. She apparently views McCain as a friend, so she agreed to help when he asked. Ed thinks this might hurt her with more conservative grassroots types, but I'm not so sure. I think she gets a pass for being classy. Sure, too great an emphasis on loyalty got Bush 43 into trouble, but it's better than the alternative: publicly rebuffing her former campaign partner and starting that GOP civil war the legacy media is still desperately looking for.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:26 AM | Comments (237)
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Not content to let Chuck Schumer steal the scene by calling the Supreme Court "un-American", the President devoted his weekly address to the corrupting influence of corporations on elections.

Using terms like "the people's house", Mr. Populism goes on to decry "special interests" and claim that Citizens United will devastate "the public interest." As usual, Democrats are quick to shut down speech.

A hundred years ago, one of the great Republican Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, fought to limit special interest spending and influence over American political campaigns and warned of the impact of unbridled, corporate spending. His message rings as true as ever today, in this age of mass communications, when the decks are too often stacked against ordinary Americans. And as long as IÂ’m your President, IÂ’ll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you.

Assuming he is right that the "decks are stacked" against ordinary Americans, the President should be praising Citizens United. Now, instead of lone voices, Americans can band together to advocate for and against policies and politicians. The President is telling his skeery story about "unbridled" corporate spending while ignoring the fact that Citizens United was a group formed specifically to oppose Hillary Clinton in the election. Those people could never have made and distributed their movie unless they could do it together.

As I wrote yesterday, you have a right to speech, you have a right to associate with others, and you don't give up your right to speech when you choose to associate. The Constitution does not give to Congress the power to pick favored speakers and disfavored speakers. In fact, the First Amendment specifically prohibits such anti-democratic laws.

And yet the President protests that Citizens United will make his life more difficult:

That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time.

Did you catch that? "Any public servant", meaning Obama, will have to face opposition come election time. I can understand why that would upset him.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:03 AM | Comments (135)
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Just a taste and then you can click over for the whole thing:

It appears -- and I cringe to write this -- that either Gesaman or Maddux (or both), does not comprehend that the annual Jan. 22 protest in Washington, DC is a pro-life protest. Her/their concern over the prospect that "feminists" will no longer march to "memorialize" Roe v. Wade is...

I don't know. Clearly, this blog post is inscrutable and it's not worth trying to figure out the author's intent. But I am still wrestling with the idea that A) it's possible that there's someone out there -- anywhere -- that does not understand that pro-choice feminists are not participating in the March for Life and B) that Newsweek chose this person to write about today's protests.

Given the way the author twists quotes to make it seem like young women are not participating, rather than young people (neither of which is true, mind you), I'd say it was a conscious decision on her part to give the impression that (1) the March for Life is an aging, dying event; and (2) to the extent it still functions it's the eeevil men doing it. That probably comports with her own beliefs and wishes.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:44 AM | Comments (42)
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I know what you're thinking, as I thought that too -- Funny, but why is it when LGF was getting 500,000 hits a day on the right, he wasn't worth a profile, and now that he's getting 100,000 or less and on the left, he is?

Yeah, that's true. That's probably why they commissioned the piece.

A funny thing happened on the way to publishing it, though.

They discovered he's kind of a dick.

THE QUESTIONING OF Johnson’s tactics started to come not just from without L.G.F. but also from within. Readers both casual and loyal spoke up in the comment threads to ask, sometimes diplomatically and sometimes not, whether all this casual flinging of epithets like “fascist” wasn’t maybe an overreaction. Johnson’s response, in thousands of cases, was to block their accounts and ban some of them from viewing the blog. “Get off my Web site” was a common farewell. (Johnson insists that this is not true — that no one has ever been banned from L.G.F. merely for disagreeing with him — but the anecdotal evidence to the contrary is voluminous, and the fact that the offending comments were instantly and permanently deleted makes it impossible to check others’ records against his.)

...

No one ever said L.G.F., or any blog, had to be about the free exchange of ideas. “It’s his sandbox,” Pamela Geller says simply. “He can do whatever he wants.” Still, if you read L.G.F. today, you will find it hard to miss the paradox that a site whose origins, and whose greatest crisis, were rooted in opposition to totalitarianism now reads at times like a blog version of “Animal Farm.” Johnson seems obsessed with what others think of him, posting much more often than he used to about references to himself elsewhere on the Internet and breaking into comment threads (a recent one was about the relative merits of top- versus front-loaded washing machines) to call commenters’ attention to yet another attack on him that was posted at some other site. On the home page, you can click to see the Top 10 comments of the day, as voted on by registered users; typically, half of those comments will be from Johnson himself. Even longtime commenters have been disappeared for one wrong remark, or one too many, and when it comes to wondering where they went or why, a kind of fearful self-censorship obtains. He has banned readers because he has seen them commenting on other sites of which he does not approve. He is, as he reminds them, always watching. L.G.F. still has more than 34,000 registered users, but the comment threads are dominated by the same two dozen or so names. And a handful of those have been empowered by Johnson sub rosa to watch as well — to delete critical comments and, if necessary, to recommend the offenders for banishment. It is a cult of personality — not that there’s any compelling reason, really, that it or any blog should be presumed to be anything else.

“This is one area where I did change,” Johnson admitted. “I realized you can’t just let it be free speech. It doesn’t work that way on the Internet. Total free speech is a recipe for anarchy when people can’t see each other.”

And oh dear: Check out this dead-bang center shot at the target:

IN THE LAST DAY of November, Johnson delivered the final blow to his old alliances. In a post that he said took him about three minutes to write, he listed 10 reasons “Why I Parted Ways With the Right.” The “reasons” themselves amounted to little more than laundry lists: “Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.),” for instance. In the voluminous comment thread attached, Johnson was characteristically interested less in discussing the break itself than in discussing the reaction to it — calling readers’ attention to the number of times it was “re-tweeted,” linking to attacks on him, citing praise from quarters that not long ago would have considered him toxic.

Thanks to beedubya.

Posted by: Ace at 06:49 PM | Comments (644)
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