Captain's Log

Using Jing with Dropbox

2010-08-10T19:48:00.001+02:00

Jing is a pretty nice screen capture software, it also has a video capture feature.
As many software around it has a freeware version and a pro version. One big difference is that in the freeware version they give you limited space to store your captured images and videos and also they are "framed" with annoying ads to Jing and other products of that softwarehouse.

But with Dropbox the problem is solved.

In the Public folder of your Dropbox, make a new folder called "Screenshots" and one called "Video Captures" (or whatever you want). Add a file in each one of them, anything really. We’ll need this for later.

Then open up Jing and in the preferences, select "Sharing Buttons: Customize...". Now select your Save button, it's the second one, it has the symbol of a floppy disk, and when you hover over it "Edit Save" appears.
Under Save Location, find your new Public Dropbox folder we created above, the one we proposed to call "Screenshots", Then in Clipboard contents, select Custom Code.

Now go back to your "Screenshots" folder and the file you added. Right click this file and find Dropbox… Copy Public Link. With that in your clipboard, go back to the Custom image code box in Jing.

Paste your text into the box. It will be a URL. Delete the filename from the end and add [filename] instead.

(In the end it will be a URL like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/XXXXX/Screenshots/[filename]
--- XXXXX would be your precise UserID, each Dropbox user has a different one)

Repeat the same process with the file inside the folder called "Video Captures", paste the URL in the box called "Video custom return text". Remember to remove the filename and add [filename] in the end.

Now you should be ready to go. Test it out by taking a screenshot with Jing, and saving it. It should now automatically add the public URL to the file, ready for you to paste into wherever you need it.

Using Dropbox as an automatic and free Web Publishing solution

2010-08-10T18:39:00.000+02:00

Here is a very interesting article I found about using Dropbox as your automatic and instantaneous web publishing service.

Shazai: and you thought you knew how Japan was alien to you?

2010-08-01T19:04:00.001+02:00

Big Fat Greek Funeral

2010-05-22T13:38:00.000+02:00

It is hard to say when an article is better than another, but once you start reading this one by Mark Steyn you'll have no doubts that you're going through the best one of the year... well, at least so far.

Earthquakes!!! It must be hotter this year!

2010-02-11T18:40:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I find one of those articles that really cracks me up! I nearly drop my iPhone reading this:

ENSLER: Well, I just think the idea that she doesn’t believe in global warming is bizarre.
BEHAR: Every scientist at every note believes in it but Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in it.
ENSLER: And I think we just kind of have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis.

But the best are the comments, although, since the comments would be eventually pushed down by other comments, I'll repost here the best ones so far:

Peer reviewed.

a capella on February 10, 2010 at 10:42 AM

If only Luke Skywalker had command of global warming instead of The Force … global warming is soooo much more powerful.

darwin on February 10, 2010 at 10:43 AM

These two are almost as good as Al Nobel Prize Gore, who calmly stated that the core of the Earth is the same temperature as the core of the Sun.

jwolf on February 10, 2010 at 10:44 AM

Let me get this straight: A woman whose only claim to fame is talking out loud to her vagina is now lecturing us on climatology?

Yeah. OK.

A Balrog of Morgoth on February 10, 2010 at 10:49 AM

So, plate tectonics are ruled by climate change? Who knew!

mizflame98 on February 10, 2010 at 10:54 AM

Maybe global warming can melt steel….

Vashta.Nerada on February 10, 2010 at 10:55 AM

ENSLER: Well, I just think the idea that she doesn’t believe in global warming is bizarre.

(Your two little girls schoolyard-like obsession with Palin is bizarre considering she currently holds no position of power)

BEHAR: Every scientist at every note believes in it but Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in it.

(No, you bon-bon eating chubby dumbass. See link for The Global Warming Petition Project. Thousands of Ph.D’s would disagree with you.)

ENSLER: And I think we just kind of have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis.

(It’s called faulting, you geography-challenged dimwit. The earth is a living thing in continuous motion.)

RepubChica on February 10, 2010 at 11:01 AM

If you were to fabricate a carrying case for a salt molecule and place the combined intellectual capacity of these two rocket scientists therein, the salt molecule would still have room to put its feet up.

Bruce in NH on February 10, 2010 at 11:04 AM

Plate tectonics could be effected by GoreBull Warming, because remember, according to Al Gore, the Earth’s Core is several million degrees.

ronnyraygun on February 10, 2010 at 11:06 AM

Sea change...

2010-01-26T04:23:00.001+01:00

...Sea change!

I would like to imagine...

2010-01-21T20:18:00.003+01:00

I would like to imagine with what new traits despotism could be produced in the world.

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is exactly what we talked about on the plane. Journalism=same old pattern, if you try to think for yourself and outside the box, your thoughts are constantly supressed until you learn to think like the rest. Then it´s all machine factory from there. The same recipe. Applaus. Until you one day meet yourself in the mirror...

Signy Eika Klempe

...and you might not like what stands in front of you, looking right back at you. But if you don't have anything different in your mind, in your "box", if no other vision, paradigm, ideas ever wondered in there then what you are likely to fall into is a sterile malaise of our soul. Since there is no other path you can follow but the same one over and over again therefore your hope to change the situation will be as absent as your knowledge of the pattern you're in.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote those words more than a century ago, he forseen the risk of betting on a bloated governemnt, that everything embraces and everything regulates, so that we can live happy and without a worry in the world like the donkey-kids in Pinocchio.
Peter Høeg once said that the failure not necessarily must presents itself like an abrupt fall, it is sometimes more common to be like a slow descent to resignation. And so apparently seems to be the fate of the western democracies, softened, clogged and bridled by the immense weight of the modern bureaucracy that steadily follows the mother of all directives: politically correctness.
Truth, facts are of no meaning and no use to it.
In the previous centuries, the "government" was maybe going to tax you heavily, maybe to finance wars, maybe to finance buildings or road constructions, but not a lot of services it used to provide to its subjects. Today, we might be told and used to consider ourselves luckier due to the fact that a miriad, an umbrella of services are covering all our needs, from cradle to grave, so that we don't have to do anything, neither worry nor prepare and learn how to act in case the problem arises.
Lucky? Not exactly. Besides the demographic argument and the fact that our pension system, being comparable to a big "Ponzi scheme" will inevitably fail though leaving its users in a condition of not receiving the service and not be used nor prepared to provide for themselves together with the inexistance of the structural inability of finding this help elsewhere.
And here lies the heart of it, this "structural inability".
If the government set itself to provice all these services then it will ask for the money to its very users, hence our lives will gradually be conducted to a greater dependance of the individual on the provider, but also due to the higher cost of life, a cost that is inevitable cos we pay in advance for all the services that we might or might not use, the families will become smaller and smaller, the old age is cared for by the provider [government], not anymore by the rest of the family.
In the previous centuries, the sons and grandsons would have cared for the old age of the person. Today, statistically speaking there are no sons and grandsons to do that, or they are too few and then again, the care has been already paid for.
So why then the old system would be inherently better? After all, what we need to do is just making the new system work. The heart of the problem in my opinion lies in the fact that the old family was indeed a strong organism, and was also naturally forming real bond with the other families of the community, village, town, ....
This created an extraordinary strength that widthstood an immense and never ending sequence of wars, invasions, deaseases, pestilences, ...
Even in case of a major war, when the governement was indeed wiped off, the substructure: the families, the communities were nonetheless going on.
Today, we are more and more dependent with a direct link to the government whilst the family and community cohesion is less and less. In case of a major war, in case of this superstructure being wiped off, the life as we knew it would cease to exist, we would have societal collapse.
But we don't need to imagine such gruesomes scenario; petty criminality is also a good example. Such a society would not be able to face an individual smart new organism that enters the "environment", such a petty criminal has no need or ties to the government, it moves freely, has no restrains.

Margaret Thatcher once said: "There is no such thing as Society, there are individuals and there are families".

This sentence might appear at odds with what I just said, because how can there not be a thing called Society if I used it and criticized it several times in the previous argument?
The point of the sentence is that Society is a non-entity. It is, to use a word dear to our century, a virtual concept. We built everything on the idea of society, and being society something that has no essence, inevitably causes the system to have an inherent weakness mainly due to the depersonification of the human being.
It's a centralization of everything, every need and service to a central power. Once this central power is for any reason unable to perform we'll have herds of people unable to live working lives.
The central power, the government should not consider its subjects (besides the fact that in my opinion it should not consider them subjects in the first place) a community, a society, should not try to regulate or legislate for anything else than individuals and families, doing so will inevitably provoke problems and injustice.

If you make a law to give special, therefore different treatment to, say a religious group or an ethnic minority, you will end up treating people differently and unjustly and once you go down this road, it never leads you to a happy place.
Everybody should be exactly the same in front of the law and the government should never meddle with communities (a "community organizer" is just another word for: I'm the government and I'll lay out special treatment for special interests), they tend to regulate themselves due to the fact that a community is just the sum of the individuals and family it is formed with.

"He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful"

Kohelet Rabba 7:16

Metals?

2009-12-16T19:44:00.000+01:00

Here’s an interesting insight that I obtained from a friend involved in energy issues:
1) Solar power and electric car batteries rely heavily upon rare earth metals.
2) The world’s largest repository of rare earth metals is China.
3) China has indicated that it will not export these metals, hence solar panels and car batteries will have to be built in China.
So, who is it that will benefit from “green jobs”, exactly?

Danny Lamieux

The Dog Ate My Tree Rings

2009-11-30T12:01:00.000+01:00

This is the apotheosis of madness. UK is going to be The Country where I'm sure I won't go to live!

A "good" explanation

2009-11-28T14:07:00.000+01:00

This Climategate is starting to become insane. Now it hits even New Zealand. The self called "scientists" at NIWA claim to have a "good" explanation for falsifying the data. Yeah! And the Main Stream Media stands in silence!

Peer Review

2009-11-28T13:48:00.000+01:00

Now THIS will most certainly have your jaw drop on the floor and you set your (provided you were so fool to buy it) DVD of "An Inconvenient Truth" on fire.

I'm so disgusted and infuriated, again, let me have a little pleasure: I TOLD YOU!!!!!!!

UPDATE 01: this is even more interesting.

Rahe on Tocqueville

2009-11-25T15:19:00.000+01:00

The thing that Tocqueville noticed when he came to the United States, that was unheard of and unthinkable in France to this very day, is that most of the things that for which the French looked to the government Americans did for themselves.

Paul Rahe

When the shit hits the fan

2009-11-25T02:42:00.000+01:00

The results "to me" never added up, let's not even start talking about the models that never predicts the future, but when the data is a complete error riddled disaster and best scenario have more holes than a slice of Emmenthal then I'll say it: I TOLD YOU!

The sad thing is that in the end is the normal people to pay for this.

UPDATE 01: some more details on what now is apparently being called Warmergate.

UPDATE 02: the US monodailies journalists are doing what they do best: bankrupting their newspapers by writing more and more BS.

Environightmare

2009-10-30T13:05:00.000+01:00

A very interesting insight of how much imbecile people can get if anything gets done to them in the name of the environment.

Nutty nutty England

2009-10-30T12:28:00.000+01:00

After reading news like these, one has to ask where in the world is England going?

Madness and more madness.

The Chicago Way

2009-10-28T11:36:00.000+01:00

Things at the White House are getting more grotesque by the minute.

Economically Moribund Feudal Backwater

2009-10-15T22:58:00.000+02:00

"Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?"
Mark Steyn

Even higher CO2 in the Ice Age

2009-10-15T22:45:00.000+02:00

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Don't mean to pile on here, but yes, our CO2 levels have been rising. They're currently at a whopping level of 360 ppm, which is higher than they've been for some time now. But if we go back a few years, say to the Ordovician Period, which was but a mere 450 million years ago, the CO2 levels then were at 4,000 ppm. Funny thing is, this was during a major ice age. So how on earth did CO2 levels get so high back then when there was no "man-made" warming. Let me guess, the climate models were all wrong.

Jeff Talbot

Just Another Day

2009-10-15T22:28:00.000+02:00

Here is something to write about on the subject of the NFL and Rush........If I recall the details correctly, Arizona was the only state to allow their citizens to vote on whether the gov't employees should get a paid day off or not, and call it Martin Luther King day. They voted it down. Not the recognition, just the idea of giving state employees another paid vacation.

The NFL yanked the Super Bowl from Phoenix as punishment.

Someone from Arizona called the NFL offices on MLK day on a hunch. Turns out the it is just another day for NFL employees . A spokesman said that it is a busy time of year for them, so they can't honor MLK by giving their workers the day off.

Dave Mikelson
Saint Paul, Minnesota

The demonification of dissension

2009-10-14T14:07:00.003+02:00

Up until today I always believed that one of the indicator of a dictatorship was the utmost belief by the dictator and the government that they were right, but so right that whoever dared to oppose or dissent from that was at least persona non grata. What normally used to push the nomenklatura to label you as a sort of enemy of the State was the act of criticizing the ideology behind the leader.

Up until now.

Today I discovered the Obama administration has dared to change the rules of the game. Every administration, every leader face opposition, criticism, dissension: it's the essence of Liberty which is supposed to be the essence of Democracy.

So the public protest of the White House Communication Director is, at least, grotesque if not ridiculous. She is protesting that a network, Fox News, had the guts to criticize the President, but when Bush was in power there was no problem about it plus I have never heard such a rant from Tony Snow.

... but she goes further, declaring that the reason is that the Network is the media arm of the Republican Party:
So? Even if it was? What's the big deal? Does she really think it's an adult behavior to whine about that? Besides, it could as well be that Fox News is simply on that mindset and the mindset of the President is far away from it. Wasn't it the "normality" during the Bush administration for the majority of the other networks?

I honestly think it's childish to think that if you criticize Bush you supposedly have strong moral principles while on the other hand, if you criticize Obama then you must be paid by a despicable political opposition.

Furthermore, by saying that, she's either implying that being paid by a party is bad or that THAT party, the GOP is bad, sort of a criminal entity. Now, although she might like to think the latter, I believe the meant the former, but this opens a dilemma... if that is so... then she needs to prove with facts what she is declaring otherwise it is pure libel and Fox News ought to sue her and probably more then just her since she repeatedly uses the "We believe...".

She also proudly says that the President doesn't want to have interviews with the opinionists at FoxNews: so what? Should they cry for that? President Obama can choose to go to the network he likes more, it's his choice. In my opinion, however, he shouldn't lose a minute to go to any network to amiably chat with this or that anchorman. He should do his job and worry less about spinning this or spinning that.

Last but not least, at a certain point of the video here below we hear her complaining that at FoxNews they even dare criticizing the ideology of the President.

WHAT???!!!

So the "ideology" is carved in stones, not questionable; maybe, and I said maybe we can criticize a dress or a grammatical error, but with respect.
Is this woman for real? No, seriously, she behaves like an hysterical soccer mom protesting for the behavior of a bully in his son's school.

Nobel Prize for Peace... here we go again, and again, and again....

2009-10-11T04:58:00.000+02:00

I wanted to write something witty and teasing about the recent decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to give the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama but I prefer to link to an exceptional post by the one man global content provider, Mr Mark Steyn.

But... one more thought about this "Prize"... I have an omen about the 2010 prize: Ahmadinejad... so much for appeasement boosting with a sprinkle of hopeychanging!

UPDATE 01: So the White House has declared that Obama said he accepts the Prize with "humility", yeah.... about that... it doesn't really work that way. Especially with the concept of "humility". You can be humble and behave likewise but you cannot preemptively tag yourself "humble" and expect people to stop judging on their own and use your suggestion instead.

UPDATE 02: About the "Wow!" supposedly pronounced by Obama at the moment of receiving news of the victory of the Prize; so the candidacy to the Nobel Prize had as a deadline a couple of weeks after he started to govern at the White House... So that probably explains the WOW, since this is a hopeychangey presidency then also the Prize must have been for having done nothing... Oh yeah... the Great Orator (except when the teleprompter is offline) talks and talks about milk and honey scenarios of peace, love and understanding... but what he's done is less than nothing, he literally screwed up the relationship with some of America best allies, while appeasing the worst dictators around,

Again Steyn is funnier than me:

I assumed this was a reference to his rip-roaring success in winning the Olympic Games for Rio, but as it turns out the deadline for Nobel nominations was way back on February 1st.

Obama took office on January 20th. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did he make in those first 12 days? Bowing to the Saudi King? Giving the British Prime Minister the Wal-Mart discount box of “Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times?”

“Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these.” “That’s okay. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.”

For these and other “extraordinary efforts” in “cooperation between peoples,” President Obama is now the fastest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. Alas, the extraordinary efforts of those first 12 days are already ancient history.

UPDATE 03: "I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize." - yeah...about that... I'm pretty sure that going on that road maybe one day he'll be of the same caliber of Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Arafat... he just needs to take inspiration from Jimmy Carter and great advices from his foreign policies adviser (Zbgniew Brzezinski).

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant heard by the Canadian Parliament

2009-10-11T04:52:00.000+02:00

And so it happened.... I'm not sure the Canadian MPs that "listened" to Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant really understood the words the said, the concept they expressed and explained in so many different ways till you stop and think that maybe the whole hearing itself is simply useless, cos maybe Canadian authorities should and must be intelligent enough to realize by themselves that Section 13 is an abomination because I take it that to ask for them to be intelligent enough to never had legislated for it is surely asking too much from them.

Here is the official transcript.
Here is an interview by Rob Breakenridge to Mark Steyn.

Shining - Spanish Version (Preview)

2009-10-09T18:16:00.003+02:00

Reminds you of something?

2009-08-24T01:56:00.004+02:00

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

James Madison (1751-1836)

Health Care

2009-07-30T18:53:00.000+02:00

Oh, and in case you are still utterly confused about what health care means and what one controlled and run by your government will mean for you, here is an enlightenment:

THE NATIONALIZATION OF YOUR BODY

Steyn, me and the Climate

2009-07-28T16:38:00.003+02:00

I am often astonished reading posts and articles by Mark Steyn, and I guess here in this blog that is no news at all. Yet I must admit that it's not often that I find such a complete manifesto matching so beautifully with my ideas about the AGW and the global climate in general:

Further to the post below, several readers have asked why I didn't refute the case made against me. Well, the case made against me is that I'm an uneducated clod, and I agreed with that. But, if you mean the argument on "global warming," my general line is this: For the last century, we've had ever-so-slight warming trends and ever-so-slight cooling trends every 30 years or so, and I don't think either are anything worth collapsing the global economy over.

Things warmed up a bit in the decades before the late Thirties. Why? I dunno. The Versailles Treaty? The Charleston?

Then from 1940 to 1970 there was a slight cooling trend. In its wake, Lowell Ponte (who I believe is an expert climatologist and, therefore, should have been heeded) wrote his bestseller, The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

From 1970 to 1998 there was a slight warming trend, and now there's a slight cooling trend again. And I'm not fussed about it either way. But here's how Media Matters corrects me:

In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, annual global average temperatures have both risen and fallen over the past 11 years, and while there have been some relatively cooler years during that period — including a decline in each of the past three years relative to the year before — climate scientists reject the idea that those temperatures are any indication that global warming is slowing or does not exist.

Gotcha. Those scientists "reject" the cooling trend of the last decade and think it's part of the "long-term" warming trend of the previous three decades. Just as, presumably, when he published his book on "the new ice age" in 1976, Lowell Ponte thought the warming trend of the 1970s was part of the "long-term" cooling trend of the previous three decades.

If you dig that jive, I'm happy for you. Glad you're a satisfied customer — like the lady who went to see the fortune teller and was told she'd meet a tall dark stranger the following Wednesday, and on Thursday met a blond midget! Amazing! But I like the way Prof. Ian Plimer puts it:

I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.

In the mid-nineties, which climatologist and which model predicted the cooling trend of the turn of the century and the oughts? And, if they didn't, on what basis do you trust their claims for 2050 or 2100?

Network

2009-05-24T17:21:00.003+02:00

CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

2009-04-27T05:00:00.001+02:00

If you have already watched this.

You might take a look at this one too:

A Trillion Dollars

2009-04-27T04:59:00.000+02:00

Did you know what a trillion dollars look like?

Here it is.

In a few words...

2009-04-27T03:57:00.001+02:00

This is memorable, it sums up what is more embarassing and insulting of the social liberal status quo.

Without having Hanif Kureishi's exalted, exquisite, Nancy-Mitford-style sensitivity for class distinctions, I do see that the combination of Mrs Thatcher's beliefs and her social origins (and perhaps also her sex) is toxic for people like him.

People like Mrs Thatcher – state-educated, lower-middle-class, provincial, female – were not supposed to question the 1945 state-socialist settlement. To its architects, such people were of no account. They were neither poor enough to attract romantic sympathy, nor grand enough to be entitled to power. They were expected to know their place.

But, read the whole piece by Mark Steyn's about it...

What he says and what he does

2009-04-24T16:48:00.004+02:00

Many times I tried to sum up some of my ideas into well written points on how Africa can and cannot develop. Well apparently Mark Steyn beat me amply with this witty, ironic yet brilliantly written piece on what aid is and aid does...:

...A quarter-century ago at Live Aid, Bob Geldof stood on the stage of Wembley Stadium and bellowed at the developed world: “Give us yer fokkin’ money!” By the time of Live 8 in 2005, the message had evolved: the rockers were no longer demanding our money, only that we in turn beseech our governments to give more “aid” to Africa. In her new book, the Zambian economist (actually, more of an econo-babe) Dambisa Moyo takes aim at Sir Bob and Sir Bono beginning with the very title: Dead Aid. Government-to-government aid, says Miss Moyo, all but guarantees corruption and barbarism: a country that seeks private business investment will be accountable to the global markets; a country that raises public funds from taxes will be accountable to its own voters. But a government that gets “aid” from other governments is accountable to no one and nothing, and decades of easy money that make self-absorbed Western do-gooders feel swell about themselves have debauched the political culture of a continent. Which is why so much of the trillion dollars lavished on Africa since the earliest days of decolonization has wound up in this week’s president-for-life’s Swiss bank account while the conditions for domestic wealth generation improve not a whit...

Tarantino movie or Reality?

2009-04-16T14:24:00.002+02:00

Almost fell from my chair when I arrived to the last part of the tale.
My comment was: unbelievable!

The robber, a 32-year-old man identified by Life.ru as "Viktor," burst into the salon at around 5 p.m. waving a pistol and ordered all of the stylists and clients to hit the floor and toss him their money.

At this point, 28-year-old Olga, whom Life.ru describes as a "delicate" girl trained in martial arts, was apparently still standing when she offered to hand over her cash. But when Viktor tried to accept her contribution, Olga surprised him with a quick punch to the chest, knocking the wind out of him before she flipped him to the ground.

Olga proceeded to tie Viktor up with a hair-dryer cord, gagged him and dragged him into a storage room...

She tied him to the radiator with handcuffs covered in frilly pink fabric, gave him some Viagra and had her way with him several times over the next 48 hours. When she finally let him go on the evening of March 16, Viktor had been "squeezed like a lemon," Life.ru reported.

First, he went to the hospital to have his injured genitals treated...

Precision, Deadly Precision

2009-04-14T21:45:00.003+02:00

If you see a scene like that in a movie, now, in 2009, your reaction would probably be to mentally lower the movie to a "B movie", just for that, because, after all: who's gonna believe these things happen like that?!"

Well, it came out they do happen.

so... what about Iceland?

2009-04-14T21:36:00.002+02:00

Iceland never is at the center of the media's attention, even the big economic crack was sort of ignored by tv and newspapers, maybe mainly because no one here in Europe knew much of the Icelandic economy to start with.
The bubble has burst completely there, and now this article describing that crisis can make you understand the global crisis. Yes because after all Iceland has a "simpler" economy than France or Italy, so if you understand how the game got broken there then it's easier for you to understand the dynamics of it somewhere else.

Here is the usual and enlightening post by Mark Steyn.

Academic Madness Watch - 01

2009-04-09T21:48:00.003+02:00

It is not breaking news that in most US colleges now there is a speech code in place. This can be more or less strict. The aberration is that the schools declarers that in order to protect the people's right they need to curtail free speech. In my house this would be called propaganda.

Quite astonishing was this guy's answer to the Southern Utah University:

In light of SUU officials plan to designate "Free Speech Zones" on campus, I thought I'd offer my assistance. Grab a map. OK, ready?

All right, you see that big area between Canada and Mexico, surrounded by lots of blue ink on the East and West? You see it?

There's your bloody Free Speech Zone.

Jeffrey Wilbur

Senior communication major from Bountiful

Read the whole thing here.

This ain't no Dirty Harry

2009-04-04T19:40:00.003+02:00

There is a lot of similar news with the same worrying pattern: when police, the tough one, is needed, well, bureaucracy eunuchized them somewhere along the last 2 decades.

This Steyn's pearl sums it up:

A few days ago in The Corner, I mentioned the South Yorkshire Police, who sat outside watching as a young couple and their children burned to death, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who sat outside a Greyhound bus for four hours watching a cannibal slice body parts off his victim and eat them. Now from Binghamton: >>> ...read more

This ain't no Dirty Harry! And if Dirty Harry is too old and wrinkled now anyway then reinstate Vic Mackey and give him carte blanche.

The Super-Bower

2009-04-03T13:14:00.005+02:00

Here is the picture:

Here is the video (checkout at 0:54):

...and here is the tragic explanation on why you should start to worry.

UPDATE 01: As George V, rex et imperator 1910-36, said, "Only waiters bow at the waist."

Crisis explained ...by South Park

2009-04-02T12:25:00.001+02:00

...aaaaand it's gone!!!

Decay and death of a country

2009-04-01T13:52:00.006+02:00

You know a country's institutions are at the stage that I'd call "cancer in the fabric of society" when things like this happens and right after they self compliment (the institutions) with this piece of filth:

The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.

But first of all, read about the fact:

In my column today, and in an earlier Corner post, I’ve written about Britain and its health-and-safety regime. Several readers have sent me articles from yesterday’s London newspapers. The story is sad — or possibly outrageous. In the Times, the headline was, “Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them.” >>> read more...

...and now read what Mark Steyn had to comment about it:

Jay, that fire story from Doncaster is almost unbearably sad: The characteristically moronic behavior of the braindead British coppers transformed it from a family tragedy to a national metaphor. >>> read more...

It is in my opinion utterly unbearable. Great Britain is well on the way to its sovietization (see this and this), this story shows, among other things, the arrogant disrespect for the individuality that the nanny-state once again proudly screams out load. If a person wants to risk his/her life to save a kid nobody should be entitled to stop that person. This is indeed the stupidification of the modern Europe! Sad thing is that I just hoped the Great Britain was different, but I'm realizing that it is probably even farther gone into decay.

Black & White World I, II, III, IV: FOR FREE

2009-03-30T19:52:00.003+02:00

Click on the image to read the four books of editorial cartoons by Cox & Forkum for free:

Road to Recovery

2009-03-30T19:42:00.003+02:00

This is EXACTLY my position as to what Government Intervention means in a crisis.

BIG GOVERNMENT

2009-03-30T18:36:00.003+02:00

THIS IS HUGE

2009-03-25T10:14:00.002+01:00

OMG he's not Jimmy Carter, he's way beyond him!!!

Three Sheets

2009-03-24T17:35:00.003+01:00

Three Sheets is one of my favorite show, unfortunately it is very difficult to see if you live out of the US of A.

...some more epic moments:

Las Fallas 2009

2009-03-20T00:17:00.000+01:00

Happy Saint Patrick's Day 2009

2009-03-17T15:03:00.006+01:00

Photo by Flipped Out

The image above was taken in Chicago, but after tonight I'll publish the ones I'll take here in Barcelona.

Innovative Ideas for Development

2009-03-17T12:44:00.003+01:00

As of today I am a collaborator of the blog called Innovative Ideas for Development. I'm feel honored to write in that blog, let me tell you a few things about it: it belongs to Nicholas Dominguez, who is currently with the Peace Corps in Kenya, although I guess the name if it speaks pretty much for itself and you should definitely get to know it by reading it!

UPDATE 01: Here is my first post on Innovative Ideas for Development.

Multiculturalism... according to Mark Steyn

2009-03-16T13:48:00.000+01:00

Europeanism

2009-03-14T13:22:00.003+01:00

Once again Mark Steyn says it perfectly and renders me speechless because, frankly, how could I have said it better?

...Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you've spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory. In the same way, few of those Americans who want to introduce Canadian-style health care to the U.S. have ever had surgery at the Royal Victoria. Indeed, America is full of immigrants whose hostility to Euro-Canadian public policy derives explicitly from their prolonged exposure to it...

Here is the full article.

Colonel Jeff Cooper's 4 Golden Rules of Gun Safety

2009-03-10T16:40:00.006+01:00

These are the 4 golden rules about gun safety, one day you might need to remember them, mostly for other people's safety:

All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of inadvertent discharges.
Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.

The Great Destabilization & more...

2009-03-08T16:19:00.005+01:00

Today i checked my favorite blog on the net, SteynOnline and there was not one great article but TWO!
So in the end I decided to link to both of them.

Rive gauche

National Journal's Stuart Taylor becomes the latest sophisticated analyst to notice the moderate bipartisan centrist in the White House is behaving very oddly...

...although I must admit I reserved the best and most surprising one in the end:

The Great Destabilization

Can America, the engine of the global economy, pull the rest of the world out of the quicksand?

Great article, nothing to reply about it, except maybe, one question:

Where do we go from here?

UPDATE 01: Apparently they touched the botton and very well started to dig and fast!

Dropbox

2009-03-08T16:17:00.002+01:00

Dropbox is ideed a great application.

You can get it at this LINK, but if you want an explanation of what it is you can watch this:

Matt Confesses: Video an 'Elaborate Hoax'...or not?

2009-03-06T20:53:00.001+01:00

The other day i stumbled upon this video. To appreciate the effect watch them in order:

1.

2.

Highly Trained Monkeys at YouTube?

2009-03-06T20:44:00.009+01:00

Google Apps ....explained

2009-03-05T18:24:00.000+01:00

Lie To Me ....Katers (Parody)

2009-03-01T15:04:00.002+01:00

Anyone seen the TV Series called "Lie To Me"? It's being aired on FOX, here's the link.

If you have already watched at least the first episode of the Series you can go ahead and go below to the Parody video by Katers, down at the bottom of this post, otherwise I suggest you first watch this:

Katers' parody:

Are you wondering how it will all end up?

2009-02-28T12:17:00.004+01:00

Are you? Well it's understandable, after all the plan changed so many times, first it was "Fixing the mortgage crack", then it became saving the banks, then the automobile sector, now it's EVERYTHING!
Reminds me of a smart kid that con the parents into giving him money for any desire he has.

This article by Mark Steyn says it all...

Mark Steyn: The Incredible Bulk battles the Fat Cats

Latest superhero of Big Government replaces Bailoutman, Mister Stimulus and Captain Recovery.

UNHRC: is it all a bad joke?

2009-02-28T01:04:00.002+01:00

2 years ago I published a video from UNwatch about the intervention by Mr Neuer at the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council).

Today, I publish another powerful video:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

2009-02-27T17:25:00.001+01:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Still no clue about the Economy?

2009-02-05T14:34:00.002+01:00

..and for those of you who still have no clue about the Economy, or have some clues but still can't wrap it all up into a working paradigm describing what in the world is going on in USA with the bailout, the "stimulus", the mortgage crisis, ...

Here is Mark Steyn at his best.

La notizia del giorno

2009-02-04T10:52:00.002+01:00

Christian Rocca in due righe riporta la notizia più interessante del giorno:

L’Arabia Saudita ha reso noto che undici detenuti che ha ricevuto da Guantanamo e che poi ha liberato dopo un periodo di "riabilitazione" sono tornati a combattere la guerra santa.

and Google went NUTS!!!

2009-01-31T16:19:00.006+01:00

16.15 CET, 31st January 2009
Google went NUTS
No matter what you are searchin on the famous search engine the outcome is always the same: This site may harm your computer.

Above the screen capture is about the "White House" because I dared Google say that the White House website was spinning malware.

Here is the explanation by the lads at Google.

...We want our users to feel safe when they search the web, and we're continuously working to identify dangerous sites and increase protection for our users. This warning message appears with search results we've identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer...

Now, they say that some malicious malware may trigger this, so I guess it could have been a wicked Firefox extension. No problem, I said to myself, let's use Google's favorite and extensionless new browser: Google Chrome

Same results!!!

I asked some friends around the globe to perform some tests and the results were the same.

...the tests were all performed by the www.google.com page, not by strange toolbars.

UPDATE 01: 16.30 CET, it seems solved.

OUCH!!!

2009-01-28T14:48:00.004+01:00

With two posts (1) (2) Mark Steyn makes me understand how screwed we are...

UPDATE 01: You might as weel read this one too and complete the picture.

25 Images to laugh a little

2008-11-18T13:59:00.000+01:00

Some of them are impressive...

CLICK HERE

...and make them fall!

2008-11-17T12:03:00.001+01:00

Let's see if you know what anthem is this:

"...O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter thine enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all!..."

Matrix.... on Windows?

2008-11-14T18:56:00.000+01:00

It's cool.... told you so!

2008-11-05T17:36:00.001+01:00

So the data, since 1998 are building up, now the trend is set and, ooooohhh look, it follows the one of the sun, nooooo??!!! Really? Told you so...

READ THE ARTICLE TO UNDERSTAND MY RANT.

Mining Your Own Business

2008-11-05T13:12:00.001+01:00

If you know anything about macroeconomics and energy related policies, then this piece will surely SHOCK YOU FULLY!

Good luck with the new King!

One of us

2008-11-02T13:27:00.004+01:00

"...some of us worry about a resurgent militant Islam and its attendant complications, some of us worry about global warming. In 20 years' time, one of us will be proved right and the other will look like an idiot."

Dennis Prager

The Nuclear Furnace at the Center of Our Solar System

2008-10-19T14:59:00.004+02:00

Watch this and this... and be in awe!!!

Thank God You're a Man

2008-10-17T16:04:00.003+02:00

Joe the plumber

2008-10-16T12:42:00.007+02:00

Joe Wurzelbacher

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."

Barack Obama

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too,"

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Every two decades, more or less, there is a new guy coming out, explaining that the market doesn't work, that when the tide is high the majority of the boats will be stuck on the bottom, blah, blah....
Why does it happen every two decades (+ or -)? My theory is that you need to appeal to the young people to push this idea each time. Young people don't rely much on experience. The reason why now is working great is because nobody I know that is younger than me understand anything about history, and here starts the problem. But is doesn't end there, I don't see people understanding economy around. Today we are surrounded by ready-to-eat information, we tend not to study a problem, not to analyze and not to calculate. The result is that almost everybody prefers to read the "answer" to a problem in a free-of-charge street distributed newspaper (I'm sure there is at least one in your town too) instead of verifying the problem with the data we know, why? Cos people don't know anything. They just pick the nicest theory around.

If to this you add the ability of the MSM to avoid the reality but to feed you only certain news, the laziness of young minds to think cos they fall into the belief their mind are better than their parents' simply cos "now" they swim well in the technological broth and their parents are lost in it, the radicalized presence of 68ers teachers all over the 1st world and what they preach

I cannot even think to explain how wrong it is Obama's vision of economics.
What he just explained in a couple of sentences (see above), it is the pure definition of Socialism. And it never worked.
You can see multiple example in South America.
If you take away with taxes from a guy who has already too much taxes to pay the result is that he will not hire anybody. But then you're taxing also other ppl, so they will not buy services around anymore, they'll try to do it themselves, like you do in a isolated farm, the result is called: recession.
Recession is not when the stock market hit a bump. Recession is when at the end of the month the people doesn't have enough to spend. What's the strategy of Mr Obama for that? More taxes so we can redistribute wealth around. Any country that tried redistribution failed. The reason? There are many, some are economical, some are philosophical.
When you take away the money a person gain through his work you are telling him two things: hide the money or work less.
When you give the money to a person that doesn't work you are saying: don't work or keep working undocumented cos this way you get two salaries.

The problem is that when you go that far in elevating to the gods this shapeless shiny object called "for the common good", you will destroy more and more the good of the single person, to the point in which you'll go from taxing the money, to taxing the private property and, eventually to take away the ownership of that private property. Excuses and reasons will always be provided, you can be sure of that. Here is the opinion of a Columbia University professor about it, yes, one of those mind-shaper you pay thousands and thousands of dollars to have your sons lobotomized by:

The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now.
Louis Proyect

You implement a system like this and you have a rotten economy within a decade.

I don't like the economical proposals done by McCain either but the Obama's ones are a sad, sad joke.

UPDATE 01:

ACORN

2008-10-15T16:02:00.001+02:00

No, not the seed.

In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN turned in 5,000 new registrations. The authorities there started reviewing them, and quit after they found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent. The mind boggles: ACORN turns in thousands of new registrations, and not a single one represents a legitimate voter.

Read the whole story here.
Hat tip: Mark Steyn

Amazing how it fits...

2008-10-12T18:29:00.001+02:00

He gets his shirts straight from Paris
Cigarettes from the Nile
He talks like a highbrow
But he plays Chicago style...

Read the whole post here...

Charles, the great...

2008-10-12T12:41:00.002+02:00

THIS, pretty much summarize my position on both candidates. I've never read such a spot on articles by Charles Krauthammer.

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate.

McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by the New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.

This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.

Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.

Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers's unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

Lobotomy?

2008-10-09T14:03:00.003+02:00

And then they call me a standardized person? Please...

When things get out of control...

2008-09-30T00:29:00.001+02:00

Three issues that should be investigated deeper, much deeper:

1. $700 Billion: Picked Out of Thin Air?

2. Obama and ACORN

3. Phillips: Subversive For Obama

Melanie Phillips opens a issue that is quite a mistery to me why no one in the MSM ever talk about.
I cannot tell you now what would happen in a month, but, if things will go the way the MSM are hoping they will go, a lot of people, in 2009 will ask themselves: "What was I thinking?!"

Technorati Tags: Obama, Bailout, ACORN

Is this man a joke?

2008-09-24T02:47:00.000+02:00

Spettacolare post di Christian Rocca:

Dunque. Joe Biden, quello esperto, ha detto che "when the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, "look, here’s what happened".
Ad avercela, una televisione, nel 1929. Ci fosse stata, tutti avrebbero visto il presidente e, magari, Joe Biden si sarebbe ricordato che non era Roosevelt, ma Hoover.

Non ho parole! Ma quando si sveglieranno i saputelli radical chic per rendersi conto su che accoppiata stanno scommettendo?

Technorati Tags: Joe Biden, Roosevelt, Hoover

Google Chrome

2008-09-05T17:40:00.004+02:00

The new browser from Google. It has potential. Let's see if they let extensions to be used with it.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Chrome

Reproposing a Classic

2008-09-05T14:21:00.002+02:00

Obama Gaffes, the man without his earpiece is clueless.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Gaffes

Wise, wise words...

2008-09-02T19:00:00.001+02:00

Hard work wins.
Don't blame other people without looking in the mirror first
You get out of life what you put into it and...
...no matter how hard you work: bad things are going to happen, and character

...is about how you deal with those bad things.

Larry Elder's father

Technorati Tags: Life

Google launches a new revolutionary browser

2008-09-02T16:23:00.001+02:00

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Don't know how the new browser is but the "comic-book" explanation about it is nice...

Technorati Tags: Google, Chrome, Google Browser

Paranoia

2008-08-29T23:14:00.001+02:00

Paranoia is a very comforting state of mind. If you think they’re out to get you, it means you think you matter.

Gilbran Quail

Technorati Tags: Gilbran Quail, Paranoia

Energia - I

2008-08-23T23:29:00.001+02:00

L'Italia sta messa proprio malino con l'energia. Non bastavano gli arabi e i Chavez a tormentarci con il loro cartello petrolifero (per chi non lo sapesse, nel mercato libero per definizione non sono tollerati cartelli) che ci ha fatto raddoppiare il prezzo di benzina e diesel in un paio d'anni, ora ci si mette anche la Russia di Putin, la Russia che ora che sembra aver assolto i suoi debiti con l'estero si prepara ad assoggettare uno ad uno tutti quelli che nel Caucaso e non siedono su giacimenti di qualcosa. Stavamo quasi per realizzare un gasdotto che da Kazakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turchia arrivasse in Europa senza passare per la Russia che Putin fa lo sgambetto. L'intera cosa avrebbe voluto dire concorrenza a Gazprom (compagnia di Stato russa), e quindi prezzi più bassi, più gas per tutti e più garanzie di continuità del servizio.
Quindi rifacendo i conti ecco come l'Italia sta messa con l'energia:

Siamo senza nucleare, senza petrolio, senza gas. Il gas lo dobbiamo comprare dalla Russia perché Pecoraro Scanio e i suoi verdi non hanno mai lasciato che si contruissero i rigassificatori che altro non sono che gran pentoloni che portano il gas in fase liquida a fase gassosa, niente si più: maledetti luddisti della malora! Il petrolio invece lo compriamo dai peggiori Governi di sta Terra.

Per fare una proporzione, se si investe un dollaro in una centrale termoelettrica a combustibile fossile, il risultato è un panino, se invece investiamo lo stesso dollaro in una centrale nucleare, il risultato è un milione di panini.
E per chi ancora crede alla favoletta della buona notte del Global Warming e ritiene che la CO2 sia la responsabile di ciò allora ricordo che il nucleare ha zero emissioni di CO2.
E per chi ha il coraggio di insultare la propria intelligenza con il discorso delle scorie prodotte dal "combustibile" nucleare esaurito vorrei ricordare che TUTTO l'uranio che si sia mai usato per scopi civili o militari era precedentemente in giacimenti presenti sul nostro pianeta dalla creazione dello stesso. Quindi, in un'ottica planetaria, o, globale, come piace dire oggi, andare a raccogliere tutto l'uranio, "esaurirlo" il più possibile, e poi stivare in posti sicuri le scorie è a tutti gli effetti una intelligente campagna di bonifica mondiale. Se la gente vuole l'umanità unita e impegnata a fare del bene al pianeta allora una buona cosa sarebbe andare a togliere schifezze radioattive dalle nostre terre per poi farci energia pulita e stivare le rimanenti scorie in posti ben più sicuri che il bacino idrografico dove stavano da miliardi di anni inquinando le riserve idriche.

Il più grande falso in bilancio lo fece.... Prodi

2008-08-23T23:04:00.002+02:00

Incredibile, anzi, credibilissimo. Vi ricordate quando Prodi sosteneva che il Berlusca aveva finito la sua precedente legislatura lasciando l'Italia con un 4.4% deficit/pil, dopo averla cominciata con un 3.1%?
L'Eurostat controlla tutto e viene fuori che l'aveva lasciata a 2.5%. E allora come salta fuori il 4.4%? Mega falso in bilancio, roba mai vista in Italia, ma ce la fa vedere lui, il Mortadella. Hanno vomitato l'impossibile sul bilancio 2006, quasi 30 miliardi di buco, per portare il tutto a 4.4% e scavare la fossa al Berlusca. Qualcosa però è andato storto. Cosa? Il Mortadella è davvero l'uomo dei miracoli: è riuscito in pochi mesi a disintegrare l'economia per benino. Fenomenale, per uno che ai giornalisti che lo incalzavano per un commento sulla squadra di Governo rispose:

"Non dico nulla, questo Governo sarà una lunga e bellissima storia d'amore: la leggerete alla fine!".

Non so se di amore di trattò, ma il conto l'abbiamo pagato noi e le pagine le sta scrivendo l'Eurostat. E poi in campagna elettorale, nel 2006 continuavano a rompersci le scatole con la storia delle famiglie che non arrivavano a fine mese.

L'articolo.

Technorati Tags: Prodi, Eurostat, deficit, falso in bilancio

When an Administration go... NUTS

2008-08-17T03:00:00.001+02:00

First there is THIS. And you start to raise your eyebrow.

Then you read THIS and you understand what Austin, TX is famous for.

Technorati Tags: Austin, Austin Climate Protection Plant, Austin Energy, Ingorant People Spending your Money just to make you feel Fluffy

Leonid Brehznev

2008-08-14T23:54:00.003+02:00

What is ours is ours, what is yours is negotiable.

Anybody still got doubts about Russia's attitude and intentions?

Technorati Tags: Russia, Leonid Brehznev

Georgia

2008-08-14T23:19:00.002+02:00

Georgia will soon be a memory, a small stain in the fabric of the XXI century. One think I must spit out: Europe stood there doing what it does best: NOTHING. USA bluffed a little, I give you that, but the bluff was easy to call. And UN, well, UN is simply unthinkable, why? Cos, as comment #5 perfectly put it:

Russia has a veto at the UN. Who in their right mind would think that the UN even has the power to do anything about it?

When a country invade another to conquer it, to fagocitate and they say so, when its foreign minister can go to the press and candidly declare:

...the world can forget about Georgia’s territorial integrity.

...then this country knows it is holding the whole planet by the jewels, this country is Russia and its zar is Vladimir Putin.
One thing is sure, Robert Kagan was right: history has returned, the world is spinning faster now and the XXI will not be after so boring as all the radical chic thought.

Thanks to LEXI for the picture

Technorati Tags: Georgia, Vladimir Putin, Robert Kagan, LGF

Pictures of the Day

2008-08-13T13:14:00.003+02:00

World Record and Olympic Gold Medal. Venetians rock!!!!

Technorati Tags: Pellegrini, Federica Pellegrini, 200m, World Record

Lexi colpisce ancora nel segno

2008-08-11T00:26:00.001+02:00

Lexi, ancora una volta fa segno con una sorprendende analisi geopolitica. Sicuro che tutto questo in Italia risulterà abbastanza nuovo. Non mi meraviglia che nessuno riveli quanto cieche siano le alte, altissime sfere in Europa.

Technorati Tags: Georgia, Bush, Putin, oleodotto

Biggest Bonsai in Venice

2008-08-08T17:39:00.001+02:00

So I was walking with Angela, and all of a sudden a shape, a green shape catches my attention. The day was hot, the sun was only making it worse but also gave this tree such a breathtaking shade of green. I have never seen anything so zen in Venice.

France doesn't trust Spain

2008-08-08T15:46:00.001+02:00

Barcelona, the famous Rambla, we're at the Carrefour supermarket, the only one in the Rambla and I stop, flabbergasted in front of the shampoo desk, yes, the shampoo. Now, let's spend a couple of words about the "Rambla", it is THE most famous street in Barcelona for sure, as a consequence ALL, but really, all the tourists want to walk there, as a consequence, in the Rambla there is the biggest concentration of petty thieves and scammers in Barcelona. The other supermarkets in Spain normally protect their liquor bottles from the thieves by enclosing them in alarm protected strong Plexiglas cases, here at the Rambla, the thievery pressure must be so high and brutal that they protect more than just liquors, as you can see, they also protect a €3 worth shampoo!!!
Welcome to Barcelona!

Where the press is free, and every man is able to read...

2008-08-05T21:15:00.000+02:00

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson

Thanks to Ruth Blameuser

Technorati Tags: Thomas Jefferson

Evolution of Dance

2008-08-03T15:25:00.001+02:00

Evolution of Dance

Technorati Tags: Evolution of Dance

The Squeaking Wheel

2008-07-30T18:09:00.001+02:00

The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.

Vic Gold

Technorati Tags: Vic Gold

Frederick the Great

2008-07-29T23:49:00.001+02:00

Frederick the Great, annoyed with the great sums of money going to foreign coffee merchants, issued the following declaration in 1777:

It is disgusting to note the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. If possible this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer. And so were his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer; and the king does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon to endure hardships or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war.

Technorati Tags: beer, coffee

It’s just Disney

2008-07-26T17:24:00.001+02:00

Finally a good Op-Ed column from the New York Times:

Op-Ed Columnist - Playing Innocent Abroad - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Hat tip: Camillo

Technorati Tags: Obama, Berlin, Disney

Holiday!!!

2008-07-20T23:31:00.001+02:00

I Get High With a Little Help from my Friends
Originally uploaded by Jayneblonde

I'm officially on vacation! I doubt I'm going to jump like this but I'll try to have fun!

The Audacity of Vanity

2008-07-20T17:40:00.001+02:00

Charles Krauthammer, more brilliant and more documented than the rest. He's one of the few real journalist I still enjoy fully:

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final “tear down this wall” liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder — who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap — called “a Europe whole and free”?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It’s as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Brandeburg Gate, Charles Krauthammer

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

2008-07-20T01:57:00.003+02:00

Here we are again with news from "Down Under". I just stumbled upon this "spot on" article by David Evans:

I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Australian, David Evans, Al Gore, Australian Greenhouse Office