Fox “News” is a disgrace
July 25, 2006
As the news rolls in that Israel is now bombing UN observers, note the construction of this story on fox.com right now:
Lebanon — The United States has given Israeli forces between 10 and 14 days to finish dealing Hezbollah “a strategic blow,” a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official told FOX News, as both Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas continued to volley rockets across the Lebanon-Israel border.
While admitting that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is working at a “slow pace,” the official insisted the plan was constructed out of concern for human life.
“We could do it much faster if we would be willing to inflict high civilian casualties,” the official said. “The decision was made to move in a methodical, slow way.”
Ok, so in the first few paragraphs we have the idea that Israel is being very careful not to hurt people. Read on below if you will. The truth is very different from this official Republican organ’s bizarre and twisted “news.”
Intollerable cruelty
July 23, 2006
Please read Cal Perry’s powerful article on CNN right now - Four children and the cost of war - Jul 23, 2006
Standing in front of this 8-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed, the “conflict in the Middle East” and the “cost of war” seem endless and suffocating. His pain cannot possibly be imagined as he shakes uncontrollably in and out of shock. He has blood coming from his eyes.
His name is Mahmood Monsoor and he is horribly burned. In the hospital bed next to him is his 8-month-old sister, Maria — also burned. Screaming at the top of her lungs is the children’s mother, Nuhader Monsoor. She is standing over her baby, looking at her son — and probably thinking of her dead husband. The smell of burned flesh is overwhelming.
Israel should be held accountable for this frenzied, kill and destroy as much as possible before the US reigns us in approach. It reduces them to the level of their terrorist enemy, who also kill children indiscriminantly.
A pox on both. There is no one to support in this fight, other than the innocents.
Israel has lost my sympathy and support.
Let’s get small
July 23, 2006
Vikto Klimov has figured out a way to get more efficiency from solar cells [Solar crystals get 2-for-1 TRN 051904]. This is good news. Our collective ingenuity, when directed at the right problems, is capable of what seems to be an unending supply of insights and breakthroughs. I am very optimistic about the possibility for great innovation in energy research.
Some of the key scientific insights of the last few decades have emerged not from the “bigger is better” approach, which seemed to prevail for the first half of the twentieth century. It seems we are now going to move ahead by getting smaller and smaller. Modern communications devices; computing technologies; genetics; quantum research; new energy technologies - they all seem to be succeeding by getting smaller.
Think of the engineering and manufacturing achievements of the microprocessor. Billions of transistors on wafer of silicon. And yet, we are still not approaching the scale of the most amazing aspects of the physical universe, such as the human brain. We can get smaller yet, and beyond that there is the quantum universe with different laws and different opportunities.
Human’s have become too big for this planet. We must become smaller or perish. The way to do that is to achieve greater and greater efficiencies that reduce our footprint. One way to reduce footprint and think smaller is to democratize power production and consumption.
Right now global power production is dominated by big power production and centralized distribution companies. This needs to change so that each individual has a way to contribute to power production by implementing local technology solutions that offset or eliminate the need for power consumption from a central source. Efficient technologies like Klimov’s bring that ideal closer.
Everywhere
July 23, 2006
Keeping my Mullet
July 22, 2006
Last year someone remarked that tag clouds are the new mullet. That may be true. Representation of taxonomy via tag cloud may not be the best way to do things most of the time. However, I still see a use for them in the proper circumstance, such as my delicious tags on the lower right side of this page.
So, I’m keeping my mullet for now, until someone shows me a better way to pack that many links into that small a space and convey some information about weight at the same time.
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