Oops, forgot the link. http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com....php?ref=fpblg

I think these are different folks than the team at Ryerson.

Cheers
Aj

This so RAWKS!!!

As of Monday, 31 October, 7 billion served
 

Sometime Monday, somewhere on the Earth, the population of the planet will cross seven billion. If we keep growing just as we are right now (and blessedly the overall planetary birth rate appears to be tapering off and converging toward the replacement rate) we're going to hit 8 billion somewhere between 2025 and 2030 and 9 billion around 2050.

Cheers
Aj

Nearly 1.4 million without power along East Coast
 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The unusually early snowstorm bringing heavy, wet snow to the East Coast has knocked out power to more than 1.4 million customers.

Half a million are without power in New Jersey, including Gov. Chris Christie, who declared a state of emergency.

Utilities in Pennsylvania say 428,000 customers have lost power. PPL spokeswoman Lissette Santana said Saturday that 200 crews were working to restore it. The company serves northeast and central Pennsylvania.

More than 160,000 customers lost power in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

In New York, about 88,000 have lost power. In Connecticut, utilities reported more than 370,000 without service.

And spokesman Todd Meyers says Potomac Edison had more than 26,000 outages in western Maryland.

About 19,000 had lost power in Massachusetts.

@yahoonews on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

For all the East Coasters on the Planet who lost power
 

Judge William Adams is a douchebag.

Judge William Adams (of Texas) beat his 16 year old daughter for using the internet.

The video is 7 years old, but the daughter just went public with it last night.

If you watch the video - be warned. It's really awful and super triggering.

I've been googling around about the guy, and apparently he's been real lenient in his court decisions around child abuse in the past - even going so far as to say that the testimony of the children who claim to be abused is irrelevant and doesn't count as evidence. I guess now we know what his subtext is.

Thank you for posting this, AJ. Though it's very unpopular to talk about population and to impose self limitation, better that we do that than have it imposed upon us by famine, water shortages, epidemics and disasters.

OMG. OMFG. My heart is racing and breaking. WTF! I am so upset.

I want these two to pay. Sadistic fucks. He is completely enjoying beating her into "submission".

as a sadist, I kinda hate when folks talk about physical abusers being sadistic and beating someone into submission....

and by the way.......as a sadist I am still considered mentally ill........laughin...

fucker should go to jail........

the dude really did at one point in the video start shouting that he was going to beat her until she submitted. it really freaked me the hell out. my own subtext put a really stressful spin on what was going on - but my subtext is always running around doing that.

Toughy,

He said the word "submission" (also says, "TAKE IT LIKE A WOMAN) which was why I placed the word "submission" in quotes.


For the record, I have no issue with consensual adult S/M or D/s.

I consider him a sadistic fuck not in a good way. Of course. FFS.

He ENJOYED beating and abusing her. Perhaps I should have rephrased it but emotions were running high, as I posted while watching.

I presumed people would know I am not commenting on any of us who partake in consensual kink.


ETA: It's the mother who says, ""turn over like a 16-year-old and take it! Like a grown woman!"

Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases
 

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/iO...70670072a1.jpg

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."

Boden said that in 2010 people were traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.

India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.

"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said Thursday. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.

Even though global warming skeptics have attacked the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.

Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme."

"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."

But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8 percent below 1990 levels. The U.S. did not ratify the agreement.

In 1990, developed countries produced about 60 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50 percent, Reilly said.

"We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."

Regarding the video of the Texas judge beating his child, I hope he loses his job, no matter how old the video may be.

Sad moment, the Texas judge won't face any charges for this beating he gave his daughter, it is still up in the air about his job.

Yeah, I guess in Texas there is a 5 year limitation on getting charged for that sort of thing.

RIP, my favorite grump
 

Yeah I think so, I just pray he loses his job, I mean that sounds bad but he has no need to be in a job where he deals with abuse cases when he himself is an abuser.

Interesting story.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark is a witness for the protestors who are using Nuremberg principles as justification for their actions. The main principle is that citizens have a responsibility to take action when they see crimes being committed by their government. And if they do not they can be held accountable as some were during the Nuremberg Trials.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/...rotesters_face

video of Amy Goodman on Democracy Now talking to Col Ann Wright and Ed Kinane

Drones on Trial: 38 Protesters Face Charges for Disrupting Syracuse Base Used in Overseas Attacks

A trial is underway in Syracuse, New York, of 38 protesters arrested in April at the New York Air National Guard base at Hancock Field. The defendants were protesting the MQ-9 Reaper drones, which the 174th Fighter Wing of the Guard has remotely flown over Afghanistan from Syracuse since late 2009. "Citizens have a responsibility to take action when they see crimes being committed," said retired Col. Ann Wright, one of the 38 on trial. "And this goes back to World War II, when German government officials knew what other parts of the German government were doing in executing six million Jews in Germany and other places, and that they took no action. And yet—and they were held responsible later, through the Nuremberg trials. And that is the theory on which we are acting, that we see that our government is committing crimes by the use of these drones, and that we, as citizens, have the responsibility to act."

Guests:
Col. Ann Wright (Ret.), one of the "Hancock 38 Drone Resisters" who protested the use of MQ-9 Reaper drones at the Air National Guard base at Hancock Field in Syracuse, New York, last April. Wright is a retired U.S. Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat who spent 29 years in the military and later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. In 2003, she resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq.

Ed Kinane, one of the "Hancock 38 Drone Resisters" who protested the use of MQ-9 Reaper drones at the Air National Guard base at Hancock Field in Syracuse, New York, last April. He is a member of the Syracuse Peace Council.

Two Quakes hit Starkes,OK Saturday night...felt as far away as TN
 

Sorry I misspelled name of town..it is SPARKS not Starkes...:(
SPARKS, Oklahoma (AP) — One of the strongest earthquakes in state history rocked central Oklahoma late Saturday after a day of smaller quakes, a 5.6 magnitude temblor that rattled a college football stadium 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, shook buildings, caused cracks and was felt as far away as Tennessee, authorities said.

Emergency authorities had no immediate reports of injuries or major damages. But one county's sheriff's office in the region said it was responding to calls and damages. The reports in the late-night hours were sketchy and the extent of damages remained uncertain early Sunday. The quake was one of several to rattle the state Saturday, including a magnitude 4.7 earthquake that shook the same area early Saturday.

The quake could prove the most powerful on state record if the 5.6 reading reported by the U.S. Geological Survey stands. The seismic monitoring agency said the quake struck at 10:53 p.m. local time Saturday (0353 GMT) and was centered about 44 miles (71 kilometers) east-northeast of Oklahoma City. It had initially reported the temblor as a 5.2 magnitude quake.

It said the quake struck near the community of Sparks — in eastern Oklahoma between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The temblor shook the stadium at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater just at the end of the school's football game with Kansas State. No. 3 Oklahoma State's players were gathered in the locker room under the Boone Pickens Stadium stands just after a 52-45 win against No. 17 Kansas State when the ground began to shake.

"Coach (Mike) Gundy was talking to me, everybody was looking around and no one had any idea," quarterback Brandon Weeden said. "We thought the people above us were doing something. I've never felt one, so that was a first."

The stands were already clearing out when the quake happened, just a few minutes after the down-to-the-wire game had ended.

If the intensity of the Saturday night quake is confirmed, it would be the state's strongest on record. USGS records show that a 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck El Reno, just west of Oklahoma City, in 1952 and, before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, a quake of similar magnitude 5.5 struck in northeastern Indian Territory in 1882.

The Saturday night quake was felt as far away as Tennessee and Wisconsin, according to reports received by the USGS.

Some in Oklahoma reported cracks appeared after the latest quake.

"There's a crack going from the closet to the ceiling. I've never seen that before. I was in my bedroom grabbing my phone and I happened to notice it," said Todd McKinsey, in the community of Moore, speaking with The Oklahoman.