On death and dying.

An excerpt of Charles Krauthammer's piece:

No one grasps more greedily--and cruelly--the need for agency in death as does the greatest moral monster of our time: the suicide bomber. By choosing not only the time and place but the blood-soaked story that will accompany his death, he seeks to transcend and redeem an otherwise meaningless life. One day you are the alienated and insignificant Mohamed Atta; the next day, Sept. 11, 2001, you join the annals of infamy with all the glory that brings in the darker precincts of humanity. It is the ultimate perversion of the "good death," done for the worst of motives--self-creation through the annihilation of others. People often denounce such suicide attacks as "senseless." On the contrary, they make all too much malevolent sense. There is great power in owning your own death--and even greater power in forever dispossessing your infidel victims of theirs.

[suicide bomber] [Islam] [Muslim] [Iraq] [Israel] [death]

Global warming, carbon offsets and the boy from Ipanema.

Tall and tan and young and lovely, the boy with carbon offsets goes walking and when he passes each one he passes goes aaaiiieeeeeeeee!

Mark Steyn at his usual!

[global warming] [carbon offsets] [Al Gore]

Man's intoxicating vanity.

From Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park:

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity! Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.

It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

[global warming]

UFOs to the rescue of planet Earth...

News24.com reports that

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said on Wednesday.

"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet," Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

[global warming]

Are there any success stories in Iraq?

I never see any photos in either newspapers, magazines or on TV that point to anything positive going on in Iraq. Here's a collection of pics that sheds some light as to what really is going on beyond the bombs.

[Iraq] [development] [US] [involvement] [Halliburton] [Bechtel] [infrastructure] [USAID]

Democracy: what's so great about majority rule?

James Madison, the father of our Constitution, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, " . . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Walter Williams says that

...one of the primary dangers of majority rule is that it confers an aura of legitimacy and respectability on acts that would otherwise be deemed tyrannical. Liberty and democracy are not synonymous and could actually be opposites.

Go here to read the rest.

[democracy] [majority rule] [minority] [constitution] [government]

Environmentalism: the new religion?

Environmentalism, the doom and gloom that surrounds the reporting about the imminent demise of the planet by its careless inhabitants, the pontification from those who want to tell the rest of us what we are doing wrong, and the shock and horror that I hear from youngsters, all remind me of a different time, when I was lectured about the same stuff, although then it was not global warming, but rather, global icing, and the horrors of land fills and disposable diapers.

In fact, I even switched to cloth diapers for one of my kids, because I was so concerned about the impending disaster, and wanted to do my share in alleviating the planet's burden.

Then the Chernobyl debacle occurred, and I remember how scared we all were about that. Years before, the incident at Three Mile Island had made a profound impact on the perils of nuclear reactors and nuclear power.

So, it was with great interest and amazement that I just read a couple of not-so-old speeches of Michael Crichton. I did not know much about the man, other than the fact that my kids loved Jurassic Park, and had re-read the story umpteenth times. For anyone who is starting to panic and thinks that the end of the world as we know it is near, I recommend reading his speeches here and here. They are informative, rational, without all the hype, and provide food for thought.

In fact, I was surprised to find out that the Chernobyl disaster, although a tragic event, was not really the global catastrophe it had been depicted. About 50 people died in Chernobyl, which is apparently the number of Americans that die every day in traffic accidents.

In the final analysis, Crichton equates environmentalism with religion, ascribing it as holding all the incidents of the Judeo-Christian faith: the garden of Eden, a paradise, where man is in a state of grace and unity with nature; falling from grace leads us into a state of pollution, and we are faced with a future day of judgment. As "energy sinners", we are doomed to die, unless we seek salvation -or its modern day equivalent: sustainability.

Now, if environmentalism is the new religion, who are the real prophets and who are the Pharisees?

environmentalism religion Crichton Chernobyl global warming

The slave trade and religion.

It's been 200 years since the slave trade was abolished in the UK. The man who led the cause of abolition, William Wilberforce, was a deeply religious man.

Modern skeptics should remember that the great campaign against the international slave trade was not led by atheists. It was fought by people with deep Christian convictions about the dignity and freedom of every person made in the image of God.

Read John Loconte's piece on Wilberforce here.

[Christianity] [slavery] [abolition] [Wilberforce] [Britain]

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900.

Read an incisive review by Keith Windschuttle of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, by Andrew Roberts at the New Criterion. Here's an excerpt:

Eventually, Roberts says, just as historians now see no fundamental discontinuity between the republican and imperial eras of Rome, they will not see a great distinction between the British Empire-led and the American Republican-led periods of English-speaking world dominance between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries.

Indeed, the author quotes the distinguished Indian economist and historian Deepak Lal who declares the English-speaking peoples’ rise to predominance the most important event in the history of the past millennium. The spread of their common political culture has been, Roberts says, the most significant historical development since the invention of gunpowder and the printing press.

Hence, rather than “the century of the common man” or “the American century,” Roberts calls it the century of the English-speaking peoples, and emphasizes that it is far from over. Having seen off the major challengers to their supremacy, his subjects today have no rival in might, wealth, or prestige—though they have plenty of enemies. “We are part of the hegemonic power that the Arabs, Africans, and Europeans so self-referentially loathe.”

[English speaking people] [America] [Britain] [imperialism] [hegemony]

Gaucho Polish Jews? Sapo cancionero, el grillo y la noche estrellada, mate y bombilla, alla va el gaucho polaco y judio…

The story of Moises Ville in the Argentine Pampas, courtesy of the BBC:

When tens of thousands of Jews fled the pogroms in eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries they mostly sought refuge in the cities of New York, London, Paris and Buenos Aires.

But one small group of Polish Jews arrived in Argentina with the ambition of recreating a biblical dream and working the land.
…..
The Jewish congregation, like most in the other rural Jewish towns in Argentina, is small and elderly and does not warrant its own rabbi. The future is uncertain.

But for now at least the Hebrew prayers and traditions brought from Eastern Europe over 100 years ago still mix with the sound of crickets on a starlit night on the Argentine pampas.

[Argentina] [pampas] [polacos] [polish] [jews] [judios][gaucho] [cowboy] [argentina]

How big a hoax could global warming hysteria be?

Geoffrey Hunt says that,

As hoaxes, deceptions and hyperbole go, this one may be the biggest and hardest to shake. Following a pattern from other panics, clever entrepreneurs and global corporations alike will make a handsome profit, some even obscene, employing the 16th century idiom "a fool and his money are soon parted." Of course government bureaucrats, never actually in danger of a recession or natural devastation affecting their lifetime employment, will have found another justification for tenure.

Ouch!
[global warming]

Too many cases of "sudden jihad syndrome"?

An editorial at Investor's Business Daily points to the obvious...

It looks like the Muslim teen who opened fire on shoppers in a Salt Lake City mall is yet another case of "sudden jihad syndrome," a condition in which normal-appearing American Muslims abruptly turn violent.

Taken together, this and other cases add up to an invisible jihad inside America.

...

This is not terrorism, the FBI said. Just some nutty kid. In all these cases, the feds' first reaction was to shrug. They said the perps were lone individuals who just went ballistic after having a bad day, as if anyone could have done such crimes.

But they weren't just anyone. They were all young Muslim men. Of course, the FBI can't treat all law-abiding young Muslim men as potential killers. But neither should the agency ignore this trend.

Read the whole thing.


[tagname]

Chilling comparisons between global warming and bad science.

Rep. John Linder writes in The Washington Times that

"Global Warming" had a precursor in capturing the hearts and minds of the world. Michael Crichton, in his novel "State of Fear," brilliantly juxtaposes the world's current political embrace of "global warming" with the popular embrace of the "science" of eugenics a century ago. For nearly 50 years, from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century, there grew a common political acceptance by the world's thinkers, political leaders and media elite that the "science" of eugenics was settled science. There were a few lonely voices trying to be heard in the wilderness in opposition to this bogus science, but they were ridiculed or ignored.

Believers in eugenics argued that we could improve the human race by controlling reproduction. The most respected scientists from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other bastions of intellectual rigor retreated to a complex on Long Island named Cold Spring Harbor. Their support came from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman fortune working with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, State and other agencies. The "science" was not lacking important public supporters. Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson were enthusiastic believers. The theory won approval of Supreme Court justices, leaders in higher education and Nobel Prize winners. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was one of the most vocal adherents. She established the first "birth control" clinic in 1916. They believed that "the best" human beings were not having as many children as inferior ones -- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, Blacks, degenerates, the unfit and the "feeble minded." Sanger said "fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste." H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Roosevelt said, "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind. Twenty-nine states passed laws allowing sterilization. Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were sterilized -- some legally.

The Germans were the most progressive. They had help. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists, one of whom was Josef Mengele. Ultimately the "mental defectives" in Germany were brought to newly built houses where they were interviewed. They were then shown to a back room where they were gassed. Eventually the German program was expanded into a vast network that killed 10 million undesirables. After World War II many of the public dherents to the pseudoscience of eugenics went silent. Colleges removed the textbooks and stopped teaching it.

Michael Crichton gives us yet another example of politicized science:

A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops. Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures.

Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet. By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.
global warming eugenics Crichton

More on the science behind global warming.

Here's an excerpt of what Michael Crichton testified before the United States Senate in September 28, 2005:

...when adhered to, the scientific method can transcend politics. And the converse may also be true: when politics takes precedent over content, it is often because the primacy of independent verification has been overwhelmed by competing interests.

Verification may take several forms. I come from medicine, where the gold standard is the randomized double-blind study, which has been the paradigm of medical research since the 1940s.

In that vein, let me tell you a story. It's 1991, I am flying home from Germany, sitting next to a man who is almost in tears, he is so upset. He's a physician involved in an FDA study of a new drug. It's a double-blind study involving four separate teams---one plans the study, another administers the drug to patients, a third assesses the effect on patients, and a fourth analyzes results. The teams do not know each other, and are prohibited from personal contact of any sort, on peril of contaminating the results. This man had been sitting in the Frankfurt airport, innocently chatting with another man, when they discovered to their mutual horror they are on two different teams studying the same drug. They were required to report their encounter to the FDA. And my companion was now waiting to see if the FDA would declare their multi-year, multi-million dollar study invalid because of this chance contact.

For a person with a medical background, accustomed to this degree of rigor in research, the protocols of climate science appear considerably more relaxed. In climate science, it's permissible for raw data to be "touched," or modified, by many hands. Gaps in temperature and proxy records are filled in. Suspect values are deleted because a scientist deems them erroneous. A researcher may elect to use parts of existing records, ignoring other parts. But the fact that the data has been modified in so many ways inevitably raises the question of whether the results of a given study are wholly or partially caused by the modifications themselves.

global warming climate research

Venezuela and the war on terror.

This Investor's Buisness Daily editorial brings to mind a certain quote: "Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern." - G. K. Chesterton.

With a warning on the Sawt-al-Jihad Web site, al-Qaida vowed to attack three of the top four oil suppliers to the U.S. — Mexico, Canada and Venezuela — on the logic that the economic disruption would drive the U.S. from Iraq.
...
Venezuela is another story. Its defense chief of staff, Rear Adm. Luis Cabrera, scoffed at al-Qaida's threat as "illogical" because of Venezuela's long record of antagonism toward the U.S.

Meanwhile, Saul Ortega, chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Foreign Affairs, dismissed the threat as a U.S. concoction and "terrorist maneuver." It's not surprising because many Venezuelan officials, including Hugo Chavez, subscribe to crackpot conspiracy theories about George Bush being behind the 9/11 attacks.

Read it all here.

[Venezuela] [al Qaeda] [oil] [Iraq] [war on terror] [Chavez]

Are all scientists the same? Are they all experts on global warming?

Thomas Sowell has a couple of interesting articles on global warming and all those scientists mentioned, cited or quoted by global warming crusaders... Mr. Sowell points out that

There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.

Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate....

... Are there serious scientists who specialize in weather and climate who have serious doubts about the doomsday scenarios being pushed by global warming advocates? Yes, there are.

There is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled "Hot Talk, Cold Science." More recently, he has co-authored another book on the subject, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years."

There have been periods of global warming that lasted for centuries -- and periods of global cooling that also lasted for centuries. So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.

Other serious scientists who are not on the global warming bandwagon include a professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen.

His name was big enough for the National Academy of Sciences to list it among the names of other experts on its 2001 report that was supposed to end the debate by declaring the dangers of global warming proven scientifically.

Professor Lindzen then objected and pointed out that neither he nor any of the other scientists listed ever saw that report before it was published. It was in fact written by government bureaucrats -- as was the more recently published summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is also touted as the final proof and the end of the discussion.

[global warming] [climate] [science] [religion]

Why all the recent hysteria about global warming?

The non-scientific answer is probably encampsulated in David Warren's succinct analysis:

Once upon a time, there were two modes of journalism, called tabloid and broadsheet. The distinction was clear. The first (tabloid), aimed at the more ignorant and credulous section of the population, was shamelessly sensationalist, and indifferent to its own track record. The second (broadsheet), aimed at the more intelligent and sceptical -- businessmen, especially, with money on the line. It cultivated greyness and sobriety, and was fixated on reputation. Tabloids were for fun, broadsheets were for information. In my own lifetime as a journalist I have watched this distinction evaporate, and the unrestricted triumph of the tabloid ideal.

But at the same time, there has been a swing, among the class of people who staff the media. Where before they were generally short on academic qualifications, but long on street smarts, now we have a broad creamy froth of journalism-school graduates with zero street-smarts, but thorough indoctrination in the art of attitudinizing. Or to put it another way, the political outlook has swung dramatically from right to left.

Nevertheless, so long as our (human) race can stay out of the trees, there will be a demand for good solid information and lively but responsible analysis. These have not disappeared, but gone largely underground, or more precisely, into the aether of the Internet. People who feel the need to know what is actually going on, are increasingly by-passing the “mainstream media” and going directly to the best sources.

[global warming] [ozone] [climate change]

There's a lot of superstition going around...

Archbishop Pell from Australia makes sense of the global warming hysteria:

What we were seeing from the doomsdayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.

I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all. But enough is enough.

Read more here.

[global warming]

Talking about global warming...

The question is whether what's happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it. Or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. To the eco-chondriacs that's a no-brainer. As Mark Fenn of the Worldwide Fund for Nature says in the new documentary ''Mine Your Own Business'':

''In Madagascar, the indicators of quality of life are not housing. They're not nutrition, specifically. They're not health in a lot of cases. It's not education. A lot of children in Fort Dauphin do not go to school because the parents don't consider that to be important. . . . People have no jobs, but if I could put you with a family and you could count how many times in a day that that family smiles. Then I put you with a family well off, in New York or London, and you count how many times people smile. . . . You tell me who is rich and who is poor."

Well, if smiles are the measure of quality of life, I'm Bill Gates; I'm laughing my head off. Male life expectancy in Madagascar is 52.5 years. But Mark Fenn is right: Those l'il malnourished villagers sure look awful cute dancing up and down when the big environmentalist activist flies in to shoot the fund-raising video.

Read it all here.

[global warming]

Can a 400+ year old schism be overcome?

Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt.

The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.

In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.

The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.

[Anglican Church] [Church of England] [Roman Catholic] [Vatican]

Unparalled perfidy.

Strong stuff:

Give us the tools and we'll finish the job, said Winston Churchill in the dark days before our official entry into World War II. America delayed its entry into both world wars, but once in, we were committed to win. Hillary thinks that applies only to her campaign, not to the war on terror.

Neville Chamberlain's naivete may have helped bring on World War II, but at least he supported his country when war began. Norway's Vidkun Quisling and France's Vichy government under Marshal Petain may have collaborated with the Nazi enemy, but after their countries' defeats, not before.

We'd have to go back to Benedict Arnold to find Americans as eager as Murtha & Co. to see an American defeat on the battlefield.

They are working on the game plan of al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In October 2005, Zawahiri outlined al-Qaida's plan in a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, late head of al-Qaida in Iraq:

"The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority . . . over as much territory as you can spread its power in Iraq . . . in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans."

John Murtha and his perfidious friends are working on creating that void and completing Zawahiri's first stage. They are the appeasers Churchill warned about who hope that by feeding the Islamofascist tiger, it will eat us last.

Read it here.

[Iraq] [war on terror] [terrorism]

That’s the point: a society whose army recruits drunken pregnant adulterous fornicating exhibitionist women, and it’s no big deal...

Mark Steyn dissects and explains Dinesh D'Souza's new book. Excerpts:

The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11 is the geopolitical If I Did It. As you may recall, that was the title of the artful OJ Simpson tome no sooner announced than yanked from the warehouses and pulped by its publisher: OJ isn’t saying he did do it but if he had done it he’d have done it like this. Likewise, Dinesh D’Souza’s new book: he’s not the jihad’s marketing consultant but, if he were, this is pretty much the critique of America he’d have offered to buck up the lads in the cave on September 10th 2001.

...
From a sophisticated writer, the central proposition of this book is absurd - that western conservatives should make common cause with “moderate Muslims”. That would be merely the inversion of the freakshow alliance between the godless left and the jihadists embodied by the participation in one of the big “anti-war” rallies of a group called “Queers For Palestine”. “Moderate” Islam is preferable to jihadism, has many admirable qualities and many less so. But attempting to align our social values with theirs would be the right’s strain of appeasement and just as doomed. The reality is that Islam sees our decadence not as a threat but as an opportunity. For the west to reverse the gains of the cultural left would not endear us to Islam but would make us better suited to resisting its depradations. We should reject Britney because she’s rubbish not as a geopolitical strategy.

[D'Souza] [Iran] [Iraq] [jihad] [west]

Of NASA, astronauts and diapers.

Did you know this?

“The diapers they use today are a modified adult diaper, except you just pull it up like a pair of shorts,” Teresa Sindelar (a camp programs manager in the education department at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center), said. "Inside there is a chemical [sodium polyacrylate] that can absorb about 1,000 times its weight in water. The powdery material is woven into the fabrics of the diaper itself so when the astronaut uses the restroom, the liquid is absorbed into the fabric and the diaper pulls it away from the skin.
The NASA diapers helped to influence the consumer diaper market, as well as feminine hygiene products. “It's what we call a spinoff, which is anything that is developed for the space program and then is passed down for commercial use,” Sindelar says. “Since NASA is a governmental institution they can't patent anything. The basic design and chemicals in the consumer products are the same as the NASA products, so if you were to pull apart a baby diaper, you would see the powder.”

Check out the whole story here.

[NASA] [astronauts] [diapers] [Lisa Nowak]

Global warming in a nutshell.

George Will is succinct as to what the concerns are regarding global warming:

The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets: 1. Global warming is happening. 2. It is our (humanity's, but especially America's) fault. 3. It will continue unless we mend our ways. 4. If it continues we are in grave danger. 5. We know how to slow or even reverse the warming. 6. The benefits from doing that will far exceed the costs.

He then comes up with a couple of mistifying (at least for me) questions:

Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there?

Interestingly, in 1997 during the Kyoto Protocols,

The [US] Senate warned against any agreement that would require significant reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States and other developed nations without mandating "specific scheduled commitments" on the part of the 129 "developing" countries, which include China, India, Brazil and South Korea—the second, fourth, 10th and 11th largest economies.

President Clinton and his earnest vice president knew better than to seek ratification of Kyoto by a Senate that had passed its resolution of disapproval 95-0. Fifty-six of those 95 senators are still serving.

[global warming] [Kyoto Protocol][developing world][Al Gore][inconvenient truth]

Here's the law that makes Hugo Chavez a Dictator:

GACETA OFICIAL DE LA REPÚBLICA BOLIVARIANA DE VENEZUELA
Número 38.617

Caracas, jueves 1º febrero de 2007

REPÚBLICA BOLIVARIANA DE VENEZUELA

LA ASAMBLEA NACIONAL

DE LA REPÚBLICA BOLIVARIANA DE VENEZUELA

Decreta :

la siguiente,

LEY QUE AUTORIZA AL PRESIDENTE DE LA REPÚBLICA

PARA DICTAR DECRETOS CON RANGO, VALOR Y FUERZA

DE LEY EN LAS MATERIAS QUE SE DELEGAN

[Press Read More below for the full law.]


Artículo 1.— Se autoriza al Presidente de la República para que, en Consejo de Ministros, dicte Decretos con Rango, Valor y Fuerza de Ley, de acuerdo con las directrices, propósitos y marco de las materias que se delegan en esta Ley, de conformidad con el último aparte del artículo 203 y el numeral 8 del artículo 236 de la Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela y, en consecuencia:

1. En el ámbito de transformación de las instituciones del Estado:

Dictar normas con el objeto de actualizar y transformar el ordenamiento legal que regula a las instituciones del Estado, a los fines de que éstas orienten su actuación al servicio de los ciudadanos, en forma eficaz, eficiente, honesta, participativa, simple, imparcial, racional y transparente, evitando el sobredimensionamiento estructural y garantizando la participación popular.

2. En el ámbito de la participación popular:

Dictar normas que establezcan los mecanismos de participación popular de la comunidad organizada en la aplicación del ordenamiento jurídico y ámbito económico y social del Estado, a través de la planificación, el control social, la inspección técnica social y la práctica del voluntariado, y que adecuen la estructura organizativa de las instituciones del Estado, para permitir el ejercicio directo de la soberanía popular.

3. En el ámbito de los valores esenciales del ejercicio de la función pública:

Dictar normas orientadas a erradicar definitivamente la corrupción, reformar el régimen funcionarial y de responsabilidad personal del funcionario, fomentar su ética, su actualización técnica continua y su formación como servidor público.

4. En el ámbito económico y social:

Dictar normas que adapten la legislación existente a la construcción de un nuevo modelo económico y social sustentable, destinadas a los sectores de salud, educación, seguridad social, seguridad agroalimentaria, turístico, de producción y empleo, entre otros, que permita la inserción del colectivo en el desarrollo del país, para lograr la igualdad y la equitativa distribución de la riqueza, actualizando el Sistema Público Nacional de Salud y elevando la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos y de los pueblos y c omunidades indígenas, en aras de alcanzar los ideales de justicia social e independencia económica, así como las relativas a la utilización de los remanentes netos acumulados de capital.

5. En el ámbito financiero y tributario:

Dictar normas que profundicen y adecuen el sistema financiero público y privado a los principios constitucionales y, en consecuencia, modernizar el marco regulatorio de los sectores monetario, banca, seguros, tributario e impositivo.

6. En el ámbito de la seguridad ciudadana y jurídica:

Dictar normas destinadas a la organización y funcionamiento del sistema de seguridad ciudadana, del sistema policial y del sistema penitenciario; establecer procedimientos eficaces, eficientes, transparentes y tecnológicamente aptos y seguros para la identificación ciudadana y el control migratorio y la lucha contra la impunidad, así como establecer procedimientos tendentes a materializar la seguridad jurídica.

7. En el ámbito de la ciencia y la tecnología:

Dictar normas que permitan el desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología, a fin de satisfacer las necesidades de educación, salud, medio ambiente y biodiversidad, industrialización y calidad de vida de la población, de conformidad con los principios constitucionales.

8. En el ámbito de la ordenación territorial:

Dictar normas que establezcan una nueva distribución y ocupación de los espacios subnacionales, a los fines de que se constituya una nueva regionalización del país, para optimizar la acción del Estado, y que regulen la creación de asentamientos de las comunidades en el territorio nacional que estimulen el desarrollo endógeno.

9. En el ámbito de seguridad y defensa:

Dictar normas que establezcan la organización y funcionamiento de los asuntos relacionados con la seguridad y defensa integral de la Nación, así como la implementación de las zonas operacionales de defensa de la Nación; que desarrollen la estructura, organización y funcionamiento de la Fuerza Armada Nacional, así como lo atinente a la disciplina y carrera militar; la organización y funcionamiento del Sistema Nacional de Inteligencia y Contrainteligencia; para la regulación y supervisión de todo lo concernie nte a la materia de armas y elementos conexos; y las que garanticen y desarrollen la atención integral de las fronteras.

10. En el ámbito de la infraestructura, transporte y servicios:

Dictar normas que fomenten la utilización del potencial humano e industrial y la infraestructura existente, a los fines de optimizar los sistemas de transporte terrestre, ferroviario, marítimo, fluvial y aéreo, regulando la prestación de los servicios públicos en general, y de un sistema para la construcción de viviendas dignas, así como el desarrollo de las actividades marinas y conexas, de los espacios acuáticos e insulares, de los puertos, de las zonas costeras, y del comercio marítimo. Igualmente, dicta r normas regulatorias que actualicen el sector de las telecomunicaciones y la tecnología de información, tomando en cuenta su convergencia, el servicio postal y el acceso de los ciudadanos a la Administración Pública mediante mecanismos informáticos, electrónicos y telemáticos.

11. En el ámbito energético:

Dictar normas relativas a los hidrocarburos y sus derivados, que adecuen la normativa vigente a las transformaciones del Estado y en armonía con el principio de plena soberanía de los recursos naturales; tales como, las relativas a las potestades regulatorias de supervisión y control del Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Energía y Petróleo; las concernientes a los regímenes sancionatorios, disciplinarios y de administración y recaudación de los tributos; al sistema de distribución y transporte de los pro ductos derivados del petróleo y gas doméstico; y a las medidas de seguridad aplicables a los bienes afectos a las actividades petroleras, con especial énfasis a los tecnológicos e informáticos y a la administración e inversión de los ingresos percibidos por la República en razón de los hidrocarburos. Dictar normas que permitan al Estado asumir directamente, o mediante empresas de su exclusiva propiedad, el control de las actividades realizadas por las asociaciones que operan en la Faja Petrolífera del Orino co, incluyendo los mejoradores y las asociaciones de exploración a riesgo y ganancias compartidas, para regularizar y ajustar sus actividades dentro del marco legal que rige a la industria petrolera nacional, a través de la figura de empresas mixtas o de empresas de la exclusiva propiedad del Estado. Dictar normas para reformar el Decreto Número 310 con Rango y Fuerza de Ley Orgánica de Hidrocarburos Gaseosos, a fin de adecuar el aprovechamiento, exploración, explotación e industrialización del gas a las po líticas implantadas por el Ejecutivo Nacional para este sector. Dictar normas que permitan al Estado asumir directamente, o mediante empresas de su exclusiva propiedad, el control de las actividades realizadas por las empresas privadas en el sector eléctrico, por razones estratégicas, de seguridad, utilidad o bienestar social. Dictar normas para reformar la Ley Orgánica del Servicio Eléctrico, en función de las medidas de reestructuración del sector que viene adoptando el Ejecutivo Nacional a los fines de l ograr una mayor expansión y eficiencia del servicio en beneficio del pueblo.

Artículo 2.— Cuando se trate de un Decreto con Rango, Valor y Fuerza de Ley, al cual el Presidente de la República le confiera carácter Orgánico, deberá remitirse, antes de su publicación en la Gaceta Oficial de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, a la Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, a los fines de que ésta se pronuncie sobre la constitucionalidad de tal carácter, de conformidad con lo dispuesto en el artículo 203 de la Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

Artículo 3.— La habilitación al Presidente de la República para dictar Decretos con Rango, Valor y Fuerza de Ley en las materias que se delegan tendrá un lapso de duración de dieciocho (18) meses para su ejercicio, contado a partir de la publicación de esta Ley en la Gaceta Oficial de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela .

Artículo 4.— La presente Ley entrará en vigencia a partir de su publicación en la Gaceta Oficial de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

Dada, firmada y sellada en la Plaza Bolívar de la ciudad de Caracas, sede excepcional de la Asamblea Nacional, a los treinta y un días del mes de enero de dos mil siete. Año 196º de la Independencia y 147º de la Federación.

Palacio de Miraflores, en Caracas, al primer día del mes de febrero de dos mil siete. Años 196º de la Independencia y 147º de la Federación


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