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25 Oct 2011 14:44

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World: Prof. Richard Muller, leading climate change skeptic, changes his tune

  • When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.
  • UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller • Explaining how he went from being a prominent figure in the world of climate change skepticism and denial, to somebody convinced of its reality. Muller was no shrinking violet on this matter; he had once decried the scientific consensus on this issue as “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” However, after heading up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which analyzed a tremendous amount of temperature data, Muller found that his numbers matched up neatly with the scientific consensus on climate change (he found the earth’s temperature has risen about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s). Muller’s conclusion? “Global warming is real.” source
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24 Oct 2011 16:36

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Biz: U.S. may be headed for a holiday season credit rating downgrade

  • The ‘not-so-super’ deficit commission is very unlikely to come up with a credible deficit-reduction plan. The committee is more divided than the overall Congress… The credit rating agencies have strongly suggested that further rating cuts are likely if Congress does not come up with a credible long-run plan. Hence, we expect at least one credit downgrade in late November or early December when the supercommittee crashes.
  • Ethan Harris, economist for Bank of America Merril Lynch • Speaking on the looming possibility the U.S. could suffer another downgrade to their credit rating, this one in late November or early December. The last downgrade to the U.S. rating was not without controversy — one U.S. official called it a “a facts-be-damned decision,” over an accounting error by Standard and Poor’s that incorrectly inflated their deficit projections by nearly $2 trillion. Whatever might cause a credit downgrade, though, that it’s a dire consequence to be avoided is not in dispute, and rumblings are growing louder that the U.S. may end up biting this bullet again soon. source
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24 Oct 2011 16:02

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Politics: Rick Perry: Trump not sold on Obama’s birth certificate

  • Say it ain’t so, Rick!  The Texas governor and presidential candidate recently told Parade Magazine that he dined with Donald Trump, and that Trump didn’t believe President Obama’s birth certificate was genuine. When pressed for his own opinion, Perry said he had “no reason to think otherwise… I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the president of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.” (Photo by Gage Skidmore)source
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24 Oct 2011 14:59

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World: Wikileaks may fold by the end of 2011 if financial blockades continue

  • Assange says low funds may cause shut-down: Visa, MasterCard, eBay, and Bank of America have all imposed financial blockades against the confidential document-leaking organization, which head-man Julian Assange says may soon force their closure. Wikileaks has already suspended their normal publishing functions to devote their full time to legal battles against the institutions that have barred money from flowing to them. Bernd Fix, a board member for the Wau Holland Foundation which processes payments to Wikileaks, estimates that this year they’ll bring in just $95,000, compared to $1.4 million last year. source
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24 Oct 2011 14:45

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World: Libyan NTC says they will investigate Gaddafi’s death

  • Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gaddafi will not be tried. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him. His death was in their benefit.
  • Mustafa Abdel-Jalil • Speaking on the NTC’s new committee to investigate the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, after what glimpses of video have made clear was an initial live capture of the deposed dictator. The tact of this quote is a little bothersome, though, for the simple reason that Abdel-Jalil is already implying that Gaddafi’s people, not his people, are to blame for this. At best this is an opinion for which there’s yet no evidence, or none the NTC has presented — we’d feel a bit better about this if, with today’s formation of a Libyan committee to investigate the killing, the NTC leader wasn’t promoting any pre-conceived notions of may have happened. Hopefully the committee will be impartial, and pursue an independent analysis of what took place, even if it doesn’t end up reflecting well on the rebels who surrounded Gaddafi in his final moments. It’s an early test. source
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20 Oct 2011 16:57

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U.S.: FBI panel votes to update their definition of “rape”

  • The previous definition the FBI used dated way back to 1929, a bad era for victims’ rights. The Federal Bureau of Investigations has been operating a definition of “rape” from an era which was not especially kind to victims of sexual assault (which is not to say our present times are sterling by any stretch). The definition: “Carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” That’s self-evidently a very broad and vague way to describe it. The new proposed definition: “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” This notably removes the requirement that the event be “forcible” to qualify as rape, as well as the gender-specific expression that only women can be rape victims. source
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20 Oct 2011 16:52

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Culture: Harold Camping is again really, pretty sure the world will end tomorrow

  • thenChristian minister Harold Camping, he of the Family Radio network, predicted that the world would come to an end on May 21st when the Rapture occurred. This didn’t happen. He’d also incorrectly predicted this for 1994.
  • now Camping is again claiming that doomsday’s a-comin’: “Oct. 21, that’s coming very shortly, that looks like it will be, at this point, it will be the final end of everything.” We humbly predict this won’t happen. For the third time. source
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20 Oct 2011 15:25

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World: NTC says Libyan forces, not NATO, killed Gaddafi

  • Libyan NTC claims credit for Gaddafi killing: It’s been a rather wild day as far as world news is concerned, which you’d probably expect when a notorious dictator of forty years is slain; in the aftermath, Libya’s National Transitional Council has said that Gaddafi’s capture and subsequent death (what happened exactly is yet unknown, as video has surfaced of Gaddafi once being alive under rebel custody, albeit in chaotic circumstances) was the work of Libyans, contrary to speculation NATO may have had a hand in it. Said spokesman Ahmed Bani: “It was our courageous revolutionaries who have killed the tyrant and not NATO.” source
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20 Oct 2011 15:01

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Politics: Oops, that’s bad: Herman Cain implicitly makes pro-choice stance

  • So what I’m saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.
  • GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain • Expressing his views on abortion on Piers Morgan Tonight. We applaud Cain for being willing to split with his party’s orthodoxy, here, but in doing so he’s exposed himself to a damaging contradiction; he also said he believes life begins at conception, and that abortion was appropriate “under no circumstances.” What that means to a passionately anti-abortion GOP base is that Herman Cain, while believing a fertilized egg is in fact a human life, is not willing to defend that life through the law. And if he was striving for independent appeal (which wouldn’t work even if he supported abortion rights wholesale), his personal objection to abortion under any circumstance blunts that. Cain’s Twitter account has since said he is “100% pro-life,” which follows exactly with what he implied before; pro-life personally, but not legislating his opinion. This could be a critical blow to Cain’s recent success in GOP polling. source
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19 Oct 2011 16:43

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Culture: Bryant Gumbel likens NBA commish Stern to “plantation overseer”

  • If the NBA lockout is going to be resolved anytime soon, it seems likely to be done in spite of David Stern, not because of him. His efforts are typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern-day plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys.
  • HBO’s Bryant Gumbel • Comparing NBA comissioner David Stern to a “plantation overseer,” a reference chock-full of obvious racial implications. We feel a bit at a loss to really weigh in on the accuracy of these remarks; the NBA lockout negotiations have been somewhat opaque, with the exception of a source claiming Kevin Garnett’s intensity “f***ed everything up.” Gumbel’s tenor makes it seem pretty obvious he’s referring to a respect issue between Stern and the players, though the slavery reference will make some people’s eyes roll in the context of whether millionaires (the 1%, so to speak) will become millionaires additional times over. That said, Gumbel is a veteran and respected sports journalist, and may have insight into these proceedings unknown to us. source
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