It gets more and more interesting on the global warming front. Seems the Bush administration is trying to silence Dr. James E. Hansen, the chief NASA climate scientist from pushing his message of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

See the NYT article.

Naughty, naughty, naughty! The members of the Bush administration who thought up the current methodology for monitoring terrorist activity needs to have their hands slapped from the cookie jar. They also need to be prosecuted.

I can’t wait until the next time I fly. I’ve been critical enough of this administration that I may just have attracted the attention of someone in Homeland Security. Oooo – the boogey man.

The New York Times does a pretty good job of shredding the argument for warrantless suveillance.

If you’re not familiar with the types of civilizations ranging from zero to three, I suggest you familiarize yourself with it, but for those unwilling to google I’ll give a brief synopsis:

Type 0: Uses dead plant/animal matter for energy. Right now we are a type 0 civilization.

Type 1: Uses all planetary resources for energy. We’re coming close with the fusion projects.

Type 2: Uses its closest star as its main energy resource. We’re still quite a way off from reaching this point.

Type 3: Uses galactic resources for energy.

So with this in mind, you can see that the Republicans and the Bush administration are keeping us mired in a type zero civilization. Even though we could make choices that push us towards type one, we won’t because short term profit trumps long term growth.

But there is a glimmer of hope. ITER is about to be built and the Chinese are building their own fusion reactor. Not only does fusion produce more energy, its waste product is several orders of magnitude less dangerous. In essence it produces heavy water.

But I’ve had discussion with a few people from ITER. THe United States could have financed the entire effort. Instead we believe that the end of the sword is a mightier form of diplomacy.

So if you wonder why the 2006 elections are so important keep this in mind. The Republicans are people who’d keep us type zero, probably even type negative one if they could. Sticks and stones.

See that, I can turn the physical into the political.

Ok, I’ve noticed that the pace is picking up with regard to religious nuts handing out their little tracts in public places, like intermodal transportation hubs, etc.

So today as I’m about to board the trolley home, this guy starts passing out this tract. Everyone just took it, some threw it away immediately, others held on. When he came to me I didn’t even take my headphones out of my ears and said to him “Go peddle crazy somewhere else.”

Was I rude? I mean, in public I have a reasonable expectation to not be annoyed by those attempting to proselytize.

My dismay is only increased by the fact that this year there was no Columubs Day celebration on Federal Hill, but we had TWO religious processions and one wine festival.

One of these days I’ll post the video of one of the lame religious processions.

But here is what I’ve noticed. Ever since George W. Bush was elected President, the religious nutcases have come out of the woodwork. I want these folks to go back to being the freaks that they were, the people we laughed at, and didn’t take seriously.

The world was so much better then.

Spending. You read that right, spending. That’s billion with a ‘B’. Pork projects that increased in number over the years that Republicans have controlled Congress.

What happened to a party that used to pride itself on being fiscal conservatives and social libertarians? It was hijacked by the military-industrial complex also known as Corporate America. I won’t even start in about the religious nutcases comprising the so called religious right.

Graphs here.

So apparently Sprint-Nextel is filing suit in regard to the sale of cell phone data.

When I first heard of this two things came immediately to mind. Either:

a) Cell carriers were hacked and the data was stolen. When you consider that most every wired and wireless carrier has been hacked/phreaked at some point in time you can see why I’d think like this.

or

b) Cell carrier deliberately sold the data as a new revenue stream.

But someone else in the office brought up a good point.

Maybe said cell carrier realized they were being hacked and decided to make a business opportunity of it.

Here is the original story.

A citation to be given to obnoxious cell phone users. You know the type, phone glued to ear, yammering on about nothing that couldn’t have waited ten minutes or so until you were at your desk, etc.

What we have here is a solution.

This is laugh out loud funny. Chances are this guy will eventually be killed by his own gun, more than likely he’ll be his own murderer.

Yet we let jackasses like this make law. Scary isn’t it.

See it here.

Friend of mine designed and maintains a supercomputing cluster that does atmospheric and oceanographic simulations and modeling. He likes to tell me that these temperature fluctuations are normal and that global warming is a red herring.

I like to tell him that I think the amount of CO2 we pump in to the atmosphere does in fact create a greenhouse effect and that maybe while it isn’t responsible for the overall rise in temperature, it does help to accelerate the global cycle.

See the NASA graphs here.

This is scary stuff. Consider this and also consider that most college graduates today are functionally illiterate.

And also consider that business now has direct input with many colleges, Johnson & Wales being prime among them. Could explain why in some programming classes we had to write papers. Heaven forbid we hone programming skills.

See the story here.