I just spend a good solid 45 minutes calling locksmiths, hardware stores, and Canadian Tires in search of a beeping key finder/locator for my Gran. Earlier today I visited a Circuit City but all they could offer was a whistling activated version (and lets be honest, my 96 year old Gran shouldn't be trying to whistle every time she looses her keys).
Ideally I would order this one from Amazon.com. Unfortunately, it doesn't ship to Canada. Booo!
How can I get my hands on one? Ideas?
My friend is the creator of later, comics, an alternative webcomic set in a future Vancouver. She's been doing it for over a year now, and kicked it up another notch this month as part of NaNoWriMo, and I wanted to share it with you here.
Check out the RSS link for a bunch of recent ones all on one page. Here's a fun sample:
From Morning Meeting Nov. 25, 2009, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and the Financial Times' Chrystia Freeland discuss Matt's recent article at Rolling Stone and the divide between the recoveries on Wall Street and Main Street. Their analysis about what's wrong with the economic team Obama has surrounded himself with is spot on and until he starts listening to some different voices on how to fix our economy, Matt Taibbi is correct, the cycles of bailouts are going to continue to repeat themselves.
Ratigan: But Matt’s ultimate point is that we have all these people that are still perpetuating a policy that is supportive of the banking system for sure, regardless of who’s in there and an economy that is, has small business lending off a cliff, profits back at a record on Wall Street, one in four, one in seven mortgages delinquent; you know I could go on and on with these statistics but basically the economy was torpedoed and the financial markets were supported and the reality Matt is that it’s far more profitable not to lend money In this country. The fact of the matter is we’re giving banks money at a time when the government has rules that say you can make more money if we give you money if you don’t lend it.
Taibbi: Right…right…
Ratigan: And that is the inherent insanity of the entire situation. It’s like giving the banks money, legalizing the banks to make money without having to lend it is like letting the cops create a military state. They’re the custodians of wealth, the custodians of security have been completely compromised—you think it’s the people around the President that are largely responsible for that, correct?
Taibbi: I think so. I mean you have to remember that probably, if you were going to have a Nuremberg for the financial crisis, Bob Rubin would be one of the first people on the dock.
Ratigan: Yeah.
Taibbi: I mean he has a unique responsibility for what went wrong because he was not only responsible for the bad policy, the deregulatory policy under Clinton but he also helped destroy one of the biggest companies in the world in CitiGroup. And yet he was the guy who was put in charge and his people of being the architect of Clinton’s economic policies.
Ratigan: I think he’s got a great point, and I’m a, I was a Rubin, well listen I...I, Bob Rubin is an incredibly, obviously very accomplished, intelligent, etc., etc., etc. and they had an idea which was we’ll create a hyper-efficient system—we’ll create the most efficient financial system in the history of the world—as long as it doesn’t collapse we won’t have a problem. But it’s like an efficient sports car. It goes around the track real fast and then it blows into the wall, but if you’re able to bail out and give the crash to the tax payer.
Freeland: I just think we need to be careful because Bob Rubin isn’t in the White House right now and the big bailout of Wall Street—we have to really be clear…
Ratigan: Umm hmm.
Freeland: …wasn’t Obama’s bailout. The bailout of Wall Street…
Ratigan: Understood…
Freeland: …was Hank Paulson’s bailout. That’s when the TARP happened. It was last… (crosstalk)
Ratigan: There’s no question that the car hit the wall last year… (crosstalk)
Taibbi: With the bailouts every step of the way Obama named…
Freeland: That is absolutely right and it was Obama’s choice to keep him, but it wasn’t Obama’s White House…Ratigan: Let him finish. Go ahead Matt.
Taibbi: Obama got elected. On the day after he got elected he put two CitiGroup executives in charge of the economic transition team, especially Froman. Two weeks later they do a gigantic bailout of CitiGroup and that very same day those same, those CitiGroup executives hired Tim Geithner to be the Treasury Secretary. It’s an absolute quid pro quo.
Ratigan: I would say Tim Geithner as the head of the New York Federal Reserve since 2003 as the bank regulator, in New York, over these banks at a time when the banks were accumulating leverage, at a time when the swaps market was continuing to get crazier and crazier, that this, that these people believe, implicitly or explicitly that that type of modeling is somehow good for America, based over a period of years.
Freeland: Well don’t get me wrong; I’ve written a piece complaining…
Ratigan: I know, I’ve read it.
Freeland: …about how the guys at Goldman Sachs…
Ratigan: I get it.Freeland: …think that they’re Ayn Rand characters, but I just think that we have to be careful to get our facts right and so for example if you talk about CitiGroup, these actions were taken when Obama was not yet in office and I think one of the original sins about the financial bailout was there should have been more strings attached. If you look at the strings that Warren Buffet attached to the money that he lent to Goldman Sachs, he got a better deal than the U.S. Treasury did.
Ratigan: But to allow the continued funding of the banks under the counsel of the Obama advisory team and not come out with a windfall profits tax to take back the profits being made this year and all the banks CEO’s compensation for the last ten years, because those people were paying themselves to accumulate risk that they couldn’t accumulate because they legalized doing that.
And the fact of the matter is that I think Matt’s onto something, is there’s a good question to be asked which is why is it we’re not seeing a windfall profits tax? Why is it we’re not seeing a restoration of the rules of lending and investing? And the question you’re asking is maybe there…or the answer you’re positing is maybe the reason you’re not getting that is because the people advising the President don’t want us to have that.
Taibbi: And also you have to look at the way the financial regulatory reform was you know what the White House proposals were on that this fall. All the things that Tim Geithner sent to the Hill were very, you know, soft touches on Wall Street. There was sort of a permanent bailout mechanism written into the resolution authority portions of the House bill.
Ratigan: That’s a fact.
Taibbi: And it required a sort of open revolt in the House to get those measures killed or watered down. That was the White House’s position. They wanted to have basically an automated future bailout system.
Ratigan: So that I can basically pay myself out, torpedo the system and then whoever is left has to pay. It’s totally nuts. And that was a Geithner… (crosstalk)
Taibbi: This was a built in safety net for the top twenty five banks in the country.
Freeland: This is where I’m with you. I think that financial reform has not gone far enough, absolutely.
Taibbi: And that’s all because that it was these people who were writing these bills.
Ratigan: So the issue you take Chrystia is to be cautious in assigning particular blame to Larry Summers or to Bob Rubin at this point because we don’t have enough information to know whose doing or did what. But we know that what’s gone on has been directly offensive and destructive to American and directly beneficial to the banking system.
Freeland: Yeah and look…
Ratigan: We just have to figure out who and why.
Freeland: I think bailing out the financial system, no matter what your politics, you have to be glad that that happened because we didn’t have a second Great Depression.
Ratigan: I disagree. I would say that’s like saying putting out a house on fire—we’ve got to be glad we put the house out that’s on fire…
Freeland: Yes…right…
Ratigan: But I’m more concerned about the fact that the people building our houses build houses that burn everybody in them down every ten years and everyone’s acting as though the fire was an accident and the fire wasn’t an accident. The fire was started consciously by individuals ten years ago and it came home. That’s my… (crosstalk)
Taibbi: It’s also a repeat of a pattern. Let’s not forget that.
Ratigan: Exactly.
Taibbi: This isn’t the first time we’ve bailed out Wall Street. You go back to the Peso Crisis, Long-Term Capital Management, the, you know…Greenspan cuts the rates eleven times after the tech crash, we have the housing bubble. It’s over and over and over again we have the same policies and it’s because it’s the same people who are setting the policies in the White House. I mean it’s not… it’s no accident that this is happening.
Freeland: Well that’s why financial reform legislation needs to be the central part of the discussion. That’s how the new house gets built.
Ratigan: Exactly and more importantly making sure that we identify who burned the house down, who made themselves rich burning the house down, getting the money back from those who made themselves rich burning the house down, punishing those who burned the house down and then building a new house that doesn’t allow people who like to burn houses down to build them. And they’re acting like the house fire was an accident and I think that’s where you run into a lot of problems.
Michael Steele, November 2009: It's "offensive" that critics dismiss Sarah Palin as a 2012 possibility. Quitting "was a smart move for her to make so she can focus on the future."
Michael Steele, July 2009: "I take 2012 off the table...I think that she's trying to focus on getting her house in order, her personal house in order."
This raises an important question: Palin-Steele 2012 or Palin-Beck 2012?
Careful which turkey yer slaughterin' there, you betcha.
And Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Crooks and Liars, we sincerely thank you for your readership and support over the past year....
Open Thread for football, parades, food, gratitude, etc....
http://www.noisetosignal.org/2009/11/put-a
Andrew Ellard of Noise To Signal begins an analysis of what went wrong with Dollhouse. Part two is here. Part three forthcoming. And before we complain, it is only the kind of analysis that could have been written by a fan.
The thread continues. Since we were last debating the merits of pie, I give you…evil pie. Probably rhubarb.
I have no idea what those subtitles say, but it's probably something horrific.
Read the comments on this post...
November 25, 2009 CNN
A couple of aspiring reality-TV stars from Northern Virginia appear to have crashed the White House’s state dinner Tuesday night, penetrating layers of security with no invitation to mingle with the likes of Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Tareq and Michaele Salahi — polo-playing socialites known for a bitter family feud over a Fauquier County winery and their possible roles in the forthcoming “The Real Housewives of Washington” — were seen arriving at the White House and later posted on Facebook photos of themselves with VIPs at the elite gathering.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s
The season 4 Thanksgiving episode "Pangs" recognized as one of "15 Classic Thanksgiving Episodes." Nice to see the Buffster get some mainstream recognition!
Rush Limbaugh says the climate scientists should be 'drawn and quartered'. Glenn Beck touts stolen emails as evidence for a 'scam,' and the Moonie Times says, well who the hell cares. The Moonies are down to 45,000 uber-wingnut subscribers. Last week we explained the story behind one of the stolen emails. Paleo-climatologist Micheal Mann of Realclimate, who was intimately involved in the issue discussed in some of the emails in question, was kind enough to take time out of his holiday week to provide further clarification.
DS: When Phil Jones wrote in 1999, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i. e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," what did he mean?
Michael Mann: Phil Jones has publicly gone on record indicating that he was using the term "trick" in the sense often used by people, as in "bag of tricks", or "a trick to solving this problem ...", or "trick of the trade". In referring to our 1998 Nature article, he was pointing out simply the following: our proxy record ended in 1980 (when the proxy data set we were using terminates) so, it didn't include the warming of the past two decades. In our Nature article we therefore also showed the post-1980 instrumental data that was then available through 1995, so that the reconstruction could be viewed in the context of recent instrumental temperatures. The separate curves for the reconstructed temperature series and for the instrumental data were clearly labeled.
The reference to "hide the decline" is referring to work that I am not directly associated with, but instead work by Keith Briffa and colleagues. The "decline" refers to a well-known decline in the response of only a certain type of tree-ring data (high-latitude tree-ring density measurements collected by Briffa and colleagues) to temperatures after about 1960. In their original article in Nature in 1998, Briffa and colleagues are very clear that the post-1960 data in their tree-ring dataset should not be used in reconstructing temperatures due to a problem known as the "divergence problem" where their tree-ring data decline in their response to warming temperatures after about 1960. "Hide" was therefore a poor word choice, since the existence of this decline, and the reason not to use the post 1960 data because of it, was not only known, but was indeed the point emphasized in the original Briffa et al Nature article. There is a summary of that article available on this NOAA site.
There have been many articles since then trying to understand the reason for this problem, which applies largely to only one very specific type of proxy data (tree-ring wood density data from higher latitudes).
As for my research in this area more generally, there was a study commissioned by the National Academies of Science back in 2006 to assess the validity of paleoclimate reconstructions in general, and my own work in specific. A summary of that report, and link to it, is available here. And the New York Times (6/22/06), in an article about the report entitled "Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate" had the following things to say:
A controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years was endorsed today, with a few reservations, by a panel convened by the nation's preeminent scientific body...At a news conference at the headquarters of the National Academies, several members of the panel reviewing the study said they saw no sign that its authors had intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result. "I saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation," said one member, Peter Bloomfield, a statistics professor at North Carolina State University. He added that his impression was the study was "an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure."
DS: You wrote, "Perhaps we'll do a simple update to the Yamal post. As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations," what's the story there?
MM: This refers to a particular tree-ring reconstruction of Keith Briffa’s. These tree-ring data are just one of numerous tree-ring records used to reconstruct past climate. Briffa and collaborators were criticized (unfairly in the view of many of my colleagues and me) by a contrarian climate change website based on what we felt to be a misrepresentation of their work. A further discussion can be found on the site "RealClimate.org" that I co-founded and help run. It is quite clear from the context of my comments that what I was saying was that the attacks against Briffa and colleagues were not about truth but instead about making plausibly deniable accusations against him and his colleagues.
We attempted to correct the misrepresentations of Keith's work in the "RealClimate article mentioned above, and we invited him and his co-author Tim Osborn to participate actively in responding to any issues raised in the comment thread of the article which he did.
DS: Phil Jones again wrote "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment -minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
MM: This was simply an email that was sent to me, and can in no way be taken to indicate approval of, let alone compliance with, the request. I did not delete any such email correspondences.
DS: You wrote, "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal"?
MM: This comment was in response to a very specific incident regarding a paper by Soon and Baliunas published in the journal "Climate Research". An editor of the journal, with rather contrarian views on climate change, appeared to several of us to be gaming the system to let through papers that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal. The chief editor (Hans von Storch), and half of the editorial board, resigned in protest of the publication of the paper, after the publisher refused to allow von Storch the opportunity to write an editorial about how the peer review process had failed in this instance.
Please see e.g. this post at RealClimate. Especially the 3rd bullet item -- see the various links, which lead to letters from chief editor Von Storch, and an article by the journalist Chris Mooney about the incident.
Scientists all choose journals in which we publish and we all recommend to each other and our students which journals they should publish in. People are free to publish wherever they can and are free to recommend some journals over others. For an example of this behavior in daily life, people make choices and recommendations all the time in their purchasing habits. It is highly unusual for a chief editor and half of an editorial board to resign and that indicates a journal in turmoil that should possibly be avoided. Similarly, authors are allowed to cite any papers they want, although usually the editor will note incorrect or insufficient citing.
I support the publication of "skeptical" papers that meet the basic standards of scientific quality and merit. I myself have published scientific work that has been considered by some as representing a skeptical point of view on matters relating to climate change (for example, my work demonstrating the importance of natural oscillations of the climate on multidecadal timescales). Skepticism in the truest scientific sense of the word is good and is indeed essential to science. Skepticism should not be confused, however, with contrarianism that does not meet the basic standards of scientific inquiry.
DS: "It would be nice to try to contain the putative "MWP".
MM: In this email, I was discussing the importance of extending paleoclimate reconstructions far enough back in time that we could determine the onset and duration of the putative "Medieval Warm Period". Since this describes an interval in time, it has to have both a beginning and end. But reconstructions that only go back 1000 years, as most reconstructions did at the time, didn't reach far enough back to isolate the beginning of this period, i.e. they are not long enough to "contain" the interval in question. In more recent work, such as the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, the paleoclimate reconstructions stretch nearly 2000 years back in time, which is indeed far enough back in time to "contain" or "isolate" this period in time.
So far the revival of V has been fairly reliably dull and nonsensical, but this week’s episode brought the first throw-the-remote moment when Our Heroes discover that a key part of the alien invaders’ plan is… flu shots. In what may be the most needlessly convoluted plan in the history of convoluted plans, the Visitors, or “Vs” because apparently “Visitors” takes too long to say (and just FTR, Internet, it’s not “V’s”; learn to pluralize correctly and keep that apostrophe in its holster) introduce some sort of vitamin shot that promises to do all kinds of wonderful things. Our Heroes naturally are suspicious, but discover that the miracle drug is in fact just a blind for the real threat: a chemical to be added to flu vaccine that causes people to die horribly (and I mean horribly: the “test subjects” look like they’ve suffered spontaneous combustion, not a bad drug reaction.) Of course, it seems likely that after the first couple of deaths a) the contaminant will be discovered and b) people will stop getting flu shots, meaning that at best this whole elaborate plan will kill a few dozen people. Or is it actually an insidious alien plot to spread the flu and increase absenteeism, thereby hurting our productivity at this already fragile economic time?
To be honest I don’t really care, and I’m already bored of talking about V. What does interest me is the persistent fascination with vaccines among conspiracy theorists of all stripes. It’s the one thing paranoid right-wingers and paranoid left-wingers have in common: a conviction that vaccination is somehow bad, though the reasons why it’s bad vary somewhat. Now, of all the health innovations of the last few hundred years, vaccines and antibiotics have to be pretty near the top in terms of improving public health (general antiseptics and reliable supplies of clean drinking water would be the only competition I can think of.) Vaccines are probably the more important of the two because antibiotics are primarily of use in a) curing venereal disease and b) surviving trauma and surgery — both worthy causes, but not really that significant on a population-wide scale. If you want evidence, look at the Spanish conquest of North America: the conquistadors had been more-or-less inoculated against smallpox (mostly by having survived it as children, or being exposed to it and developing antibodies while reacting asymptomatically), while the defenceless Aztecs died by the millions. Or look at the persistent use of milkmaids as icons of beauty in Western art: it’s not just because they look so fetching covered in cow manure, it’s because exposure to cowpox protected them from smallpox and the associated “small pocks” that marred the face of nearly every other person in Europe. (Next time you’re reading one of those epic fantasy novels with the embossed covers, try to imagine every single character’s face with little scars, pits and boils. Your desire for time-travel will drop substantially.)
So what is it about vaccines? Why are people so willing to believe anything bad about them, no matter how flimsy or nonexistent the evidence? (There have, it’s true, been a small number of bad or tainted vaccines distributed, but on average vaccines are still much safer than, say, cars or hamburgers.) Some of it is probably just reflexive post-’60s anti-authoritarianism — if the government, or doctors, or scientists, or any other authority figure wants you to do something, it must be bad — but vaccines are a special case. (We don’t see a similar resistance to antibiotics, for instance; in fact parents insist on getting antibiotics prescribed for children’s ear infections even though the evidence shows they have no positive effect whatsoever and help spread antibiotic resistance in bacteria.) The method of delivery no doubt has a role to play as well: taking a pill has little emotional resonance, but having something injected into you has an instinctive ick factor, with connotations of violence, poisoning and penetration. But the biggest reason, I think, is the power dynamic involved. Even though a doctor prescribes antibiotics, we control the act of ingesting them. Vaccines, on the other hand, are administered to us — and for most of us, our main experience with inoculations is as children. What inspires more terror in an elementary school than “shot day”? Unlike visits to the dentist, which are a solitary trauma, inoculations are often done in large groups, encouraging an “us” versus “them” feeling. Just as children fantasize that their real parents will someday whisk them away to the life of splendour and luxury they deserve, or that ice cream will eventually be deemed healthy and spinach poison, so too do we find it easy to believe that this awful experience — given to us “for our own good,” like so many childhood horrors — is part of some evil plot. We knew it all along.
So for everybody else in Canada it is “Thursday” but for me it is Thanksgiving II because my dad is American and he always insists on having Thanksgiving on American Thanksgiving but my mom is Canadian so she always insists on having Thanksgiving on Canadian Thanksgiving, and eventually they compromised by having two Thanksgivings. I think this is one of the reasons I have such a sunny welcoming personality. Think how much more awesome you would be if you got to have Thanksgiving twice a year. That’s basically how I am all the time.
So I am taking the day off. MGK has to go to school because, hey, future lawyer. But I know where he keeps his emergency key and besides I need to get some bagels and he always has the best bagels. He is, like, fanatical about his bagels. Seriously, you want to distract MGK, the way to do it is to tell him about this great bagel you had and then be sure to mention how soft and bready it was, and then he’ll look at you like you’re a dumbass and say “that’s not a bagel” and then he’ll forget whatever it is you wanted him to forget, although you will have to go through a five-minute lecture on why Montreal-style bagels are the only bagels and everything else is just a round bun with a hole in the middle.
Anyway, MGK knows where to get his favorite type of bagel and I don’t, so I just steal his bagels. (He doesn’t need the carbs anyway.) Which is why I’m using his computer right now. Well, no, that just explains why I’m here, not why I’m using his computer. See, while I was walking over here I had an idea for a villain named Dr. Doctor (”he has a bad case… of hurting you!”) and I wanted to check to see if anybody had used that yet because he would be a great baddie for Tomcats 12: Sexy Medical School. And it looks like I’m good!
Speaking of sexy medical school, I went out on a date with a doctor last week! She was a urologist, which I thought girls were not allowed to do but I guess I was wrong. (Stands to reason, when you think about it. I mean, guys can be gynecologists, right? Fair is fair. I am glad we live in such a liberated society.) Anyway, I told her about Dr. Doctor and she didn’t quite get it. Of course, she didn’t quite understand why I’m called Flapjacks either although I explained it, like, three times. Is it possible for doctors to be slow on the uptake? Is that, like, even allowed? I think there should be a test where you kind of point behind a doctor and say “OH GOD A MONSTER” and if they look then they lose their medical license or something. You don’t want to be treated by a doctor who believes in monsters, right?
io9 takes a look at various examples of hearty holiday feasting gone awry - including one such incident from the Buffy canon.
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vancouver :: bronwynmaye : Key Finder [+0] - vancouver :: dustbo : Vancouver based post-apocalyptic webcomic [+0]
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theonionfeed : [audio] 9 Drawn And Quartered At Renaissance Fair [+0] - crooksandliars : Matt Taibbi: Obama's Big Sellout to Wall Street [+0]
- daily_kos : Steele flailin' on Palin [+0]
- daily_kos : Late afternoon and early evening open thread [+0]
- pharyngula : Congratulations to the Ladens [+0]
- atheistofftopic :: dave_littler : I could write a better god with my ass tied behind my back! [+0]
- crooksandliars : Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and / or Football Open Thread [+0]
- whedonesque : Put Away The Dollhouse [+0]
- pharyngula : The pie made from the cursed undead heart of the vengeful bride of the son of the thread that will n [+0]
- cbc_topnews : Cellphones may replace credit cards [+0]
- crooksandliars : Reality TV Couple Sneak Into White House State Dinner [+0]
- whedonesque : "Pangs" gets recognition on The Daily Beast. [+0]
- cbc_topnews : Hackers skewed climate-change emails: scientists [+0]
- daily_kos : Michael Mann Responds to CRU Hack [+0]
- mighty_god_king : Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean you’re not also an idiot [+0]
- mighty_god_king : Turkey day for me anyhow [+0]
- whedonesque : Disastrous feasts from science fiction classics. [+0]