Category: Uncategorized

These credit card bills make interesting reading (from here):

I’ve blogged on this before but it’s such crucial issue I’m going to go on about it. I really think birth control is the solution to so many of our problems. Here’s a few:

• Climate Change – is a caused by a combination of behaviour changes (mainly fossil fuel usage) and the HUGE increase in the world population in the last century. If the population keeps going up as much as it is, then no amount of behaviour changes will help and if we could reduce it, we wouldn’t need such drastic measures as not visiting our relatives by plane.
• Species Loss – obvious
• Water shortages – obvious
• War – I’m very convinced by Jared Diamond’s arguments which show the clear link between competition for resources and war. Perhaps the best example of this is Rwanda where the war started just after the price of land in Rwanda became unsustainable for the majority of the population.

The main problems with reducing population are:
1. Christian fundamentalism. This is a big one. The US has withdrawn funding for billions of dollars of birth control programmes the world over because the belief that contraception is evil. They withdraw funding from any birth control programmes which support abortion even if the money doesn’t go towards the abortion part of the programme. The vatican has terrified millions of vulnerable Catholics into thinking that condoms are sinful and powerful Catholic lobbies are behind a lot of such US policy.
2. Economic myopia. People rant about pensions and bulges in demographic curves – yes – pensions are a problem if you reduce population. Not as much as a problem though as world wars, water shortages or the entire east coast of China being inundated by 20m of water for example.
3. Simply not seeing the obvious facts see here.

Why don’t thermostats ever do what they’re supposed to. One should be able to set the heating thermostat on 20 degrees and be done with for the whole year. Instead when it gets cold, you have to turn it up and when it gets warm, you have to turn it down.
Is it because they have a certain built-in tolerance otherwise they’d be going on and off endlessly when the stable temperature was reached?

Apart from the issues around cruelty to animals, which most people seem immune to, it seems being a meat eater is worse for the environment than driving an SUV. Methane, a product of animal farming is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. See the following links for details:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/%7Egidon/papers/nutri/nutri3.pdf
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html
http://earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm

What did the big slope say to the little slope?
“I’m inclined to agree with you”

I bought one of these:

http://www.petporte.com/index.htm
It’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. No installation/replacement of heavy magnets, stronger authentication than magnets, no collar required.
But this is even more cool.
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/37142/High_Tech_Cat_Door.html

http://www.419eater.com/

http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?p=1536470

See the effects of big oil lobbying:
On the subject of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change report (Front page headlines).
Herald Tribune (American newspaper):
Next to a picture of rising sea-levels. Effect of global warming? Depends on whom you ask

BBC:
Humans blamed for climate change
So Al Gore was right (in an inconvenient truth):
Scientists involved in the discussions said thursday that the US delegation led by political appointees was pressing to play down language pointing to a link between intensification of hurricanes and warming caused by human activity. They have tended to highlight uncertainties on certain issues.

In 7 years of working with non native english speakers I’ve noticed some recurring themes (the first thing is always the mistake, the second how it should be)

• Shortly instead of Breifly
• Actually meaning currently (French and German speakers)
• participate to instead participate in
• interested to instead of interested in
• Use of conditional instead of imperfect/pluperfect in counterfactuals (“if you would come to my house, I would give you a killer whale”) – esp German and Flemish Speakers
• Control instead of check.
• (Flemish speakers) helut instead of health
• (German Speakers) use of own as a normal adjective without “your own”,”my own” etc… e.g. “Do you have have an own web site?”
• (All) use of infinitive instead of participle: e.g. “it