The Animal NY blog posted an alleged list of the XXL Magazine’s Freshman Class for 2010 which turned out to be fake (Go figure)

Aqua posted the official statement from XXL

Official Statement:
I’m writing from XXL to let you know the email about XXL’s 2010
Freshman Class
is a fake list that did not come from our magazine.

While we are flattered about the enthusiasm and heat The Freshman
Class generates,
this list did not come from XXL and was most likely created and leaked
by someone in hopes of boosting their career.

We are always on the lookout for the most promising artists who do, in
fact, make it into XXL.

The current issue of XXL (our double Dec/Jan 2010 issue with 50 Cent
on the cover) is on stands now.

Vanessa Satten
Editor-in-Chief
XXL Magazine
[REDACTED] www.XXLMag.com

Are yall really that hungry? smh..

Via:Slang Rap Democracy with the heads up

but CO2 will never hurt me.

Or something.

Kevin Rudd.  Fucking hell, every time he opens his mouth and waxes on in his dull wordy monotone I swear he says something that really gets my blood boiling.

I was reading a transcript of a speech he gave to the Lowy Institute in November of this year and boy does he carry on – check it out here http://www.lowyinstitute.org/ – 2/3 of the way down the main page  -  the pdf transcript is linked on there or, if you’re really brave and full of coffee and red bull, watch the soporific video.

So, back to K-Rudd, saviour of the universe.

Read the transcript, its full to the brim of hysteria that really can’t be backed up with a jot of science.

Stuff like

Temperatures in Australia rising by around five degrees by the end of the century.

Really Kevin?  The IPCC document you quote from predicts just under 1C warming, and thats somewhat overstating the effect that CO2 might have.  The other 4C are modelled by the IPCC from and include positive feedback loops that magnify the (small) effect of CO2.  There’s plenty of scientific research been done into this and observable data directly challenges these feedback loops (the lack of the tropospheric warming, much increased observed heat radiation into space, lack of warming in the first 400fathoms of ocean etc)

So pull the other one, Kev, its got bells on it.

Storm surges and rising sea levels ­ putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines, with insurance companies warning that preliminary estimates of the value of property in Australia exposed to the risk of land being inundated or eroded by rising sea levels range from $50 billion to $150 billion

Oh really?  What sea level rise?  Your own CSIRO research organisation and independent studies shows sea level rising only 1-2mm a year, so over 100 years, we’ll get 10cm rise.  Not quite so easy to scare people though is it.  10cm might cause some problems, but 100 years is a long way off – lets not try to predict this far ahead.  Can you imagine Queen Victoria coming up with good solutions to today’s world challenges?  No.

Sea levels might rise – but how in the hell, Kevin, is taxing CO2 going to help?  Its not.  Spend the money on some real research and sea defences.

It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change skeptics in all their colours ­ some more sophisticated than others

You want to know the agenda of “deniers” and “radicals” Kevin?

Its to stop moronic little twerps with severe myopia like you from making irreparable decisions that will affect all of us on the basis of the voice of one group of scientists and the IPCC (a body that has no accountability or review) when there is overwhelming evidence from valued scientists all over the world to suggest that CO2 might not (thats an understatement – data shows clearly that it *is* not) be the cause of global warming.

30,000 scientists, PhD’s, climatologists, physicists, palaeoclimatologists, geologists etc have signed a statement to the fact that they do not believe the connection between CO2 and warming. 30,000.  Thats more than the 4000 that participate in the IPCC.

See here http://www.petitionproject.org/

And thats just the American ones.

I don’t believe in science by consensus, or the world would still be flat and plate tectonics would still be regarded as a madness, but hell – an order of magnitude more people have data or research or intellect to realise there are more factors at work here and that a tax on CO2 will achieve nothing and cost us all dear.

So, Kevin – you want to know what motivates sceptics?  Its a quest for the truth.  Its out there, it might reveal that man *is* responsible for warming, but we havent found the evidence yet and taking action against Carbon is jumping the gun just a tad.  Jumping the gun in a grossly irresponsible way.

Check out this research http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php if you want to understand why so many people doubt you, Kevin.

Checking out the facts is a RESPONSIBLE course of action when so much is at stake.  So I can only conclude that you’ve fallen in love with the image of yourself as super-climate man.  Or maybe your cape has gotten stuck over your head – as clearly, the electorate being responsible is a bad thing as you go onto say in the Lowy speech

This brigade of do­nothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer.
Our children. And our grandchildren. If we fail, then it will be a failure that will echo through future generations.

Give it break, tugging on the heartstrings like that – cap CO2 for no good reason and we’ll all suffer and our children will be forever in the shadow of this stupid persecution of the “evil pollutant” CO2.  Big time.  Better to be really truly sure, and with the data thats out there, we’re really not.  Not at all.

If Copenhagen does not deliver the outcome we so urgently need, no individual climate change skeptic will be responsible, but each of them will have played their part.

I certainly hope so.  Copenhagen being a success is unimaginable.  We can’t atone for CO2 ills – its not CO2 thats done any of this, its natural.  Now I have no problem helping other countries out when it comes to development, aid, assistance in making the steps to developed nations, but to drop billions and billions on them whilst weeping about CO2 is just madness.

If climate changes like it has done in the past, then glaciations can happen in the space of one human lifetime.  Yes, thats from 15 degree average London to 4 degree Norwegian tundra in just 50 years.   Its happened before during the last ice age.  And warmed again at the same rate.  (see here)  Now that kind of thing we need to understand and have the $$ to survive.  No amount of CO2 is gonna block a glacier or help us through a 22degree rise.

Kev carries on..

For people who claim to hold the conservative torch, their scepticism is in fact radical in its riskiness and recklessness. By deliberately undermining and eroding the capacity to achieve both domestic and international action on climate change the skeptics are attempting to force the world to take the single most reckless bet in our long history.

Reckless to seek to understand the whole picture?  Erm, surely implementing a carbon trading scheme, something that can never be undone (too much money tied up in it – you cant just decide to abolish carbon permits when banks, pension funds, mortgages etc will be underpinned by carbon credits worth hundreds of trillions of dollars – you’ll make those credits worth nothing overnight and the economy will crash down making the latest GFC look like a blip) is reckless and radical.   If you have to do something, then for gods sakes make it reversible when you figure out the skeptics were right after all.

They are reckless gamblers who are betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption that their intuitions should triumph over the evidence.
The logic of these skeptics belongs in a casino, not a science lab, and not in the ranks of any responsible government.

Erm, surely its YOU that is being arrogant with your single minded determination in the face of so much contradictory hard scientific evidence.  Not smoke and mirrors blinkered conservatism intuition as you put it, Kevin, opinion based on actual hard cold fact.

It would be good if you actually spent an hour on google with an open mind, Kevin, but your superhero climate gloves must make it hard to type as you just carry on, calling anyone who dares challenge your view all the names under the sun.

Kevin Rudd, you’re a CO2 bully, a name-calling, vain, power crazed fool who will one day find your climate crusaders cape served upto you on a plate with a garnish of all your nasty words and rhetoric and you’ll be forced to eat it all with a very large slice of humble pie.

Jo Nova summed it up nicely for me here

And thats me vented..

We have arrived. This is it. Today is the day. My 23rd birthday is here. And so ends Twenty-Three. Before I begin my final post, I would like to thank anyone and everyone who has read this blog or this series. I understand that this, by and large, has not been the greatest quality, and I am certainly not deluded enough to believe that anyone gives a shit about what I have to say. I also owe a great deal of thanks to four people primarily: Pepsibones Krueger for doing a large part to inspire the series, and for periodic pep-talks throughout that gave me perspective and kept me going. Katiri Willaum for doing her part to get me blogging again, period, and for taking a continual interest in what was to come in Twenty-Three. Rachael Hayes for saving my ass with the last minute guest write and (likely) bringing a few more readers with it. Derek Sosnowski for putting up with over a month of Twenty-Three being the only subject that passed through my lips, for fielding phone calls to make sure my subject matter wasn’t ridiculous every afternoon, and for never judging the process.

Final Twenty-Three post commencing now:

I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but 2009 has sucked pretty royally from about every angle. Where The Wild Things Are lived up to the hype and I thought it was great, but I’ve only seen it once and that opinion could be changed (or affirmed). Same goes for Coraline. Parks and Recreation started this year and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that, along with Modern Family and The Middle. But, Twenty-Three isn’t the place to discuss such new things. Everything I’ve put in so far has been, somehow, tried and true. Has at least some kind of longevity behind it, proving that it doesn’t suck or isn’t about to start sucking.

So, perhaps because of my mood, I’m going to close out Twenty-Three with a reminder that this year has been bogus.

Aside from the few things I mentioned, I can’t think of anything good that happened with any media. Nothing was released or produced or started that seems to be worth writing about. Instead, we lived through the worst economic downturn in decades, watched the government give unrestricted bail-outs to companies that failed primarily because of a lack of ethics, had to hear about things like “Car Czars”, witnessed “Cash for Clunkers”, and thousands upon thousands of us lost our homes and jobs.

Oh, and there was still an unjustified war going on.

Doesn’t really matter what else happened. That sucked.

As a member of the class of 2009, I graduated into that bullshit. And, the majority of my friends are unemployed or under employed. If I’m not mistaken, the unemployment rate, when variables like the under employed and discouraged workers are factored in, is close to 20%. That rate is higher for my age bracket. They say that graduating into a recession hurts your earnings over your lifetime significantly compared with those who don’t. 2009 sucked.

Of course, that is a community based view of 2009 that leads me to believe that it sucked. The sucking doesn’t end there. If you know me, and many of you do, you know that 2009 sucked pretty hardcore on a personal level for me. One shit storm after another. Even at this very moment, 2009 is sucking the life out of me. Obviously, today is my birthday (!!!), and I’m hoping for some sort of fresh start. A chance to start 2010 a month early and have things stop sucking.

To be fair, just like 2009 has had a couple of good movies and television shows, 2009 hasn’t been without good moments for me. I graduated from college, I was accepted to the graduate school of my choice, and in spite of the terrible job market that I noted, I managed to land myself a ridiculously sweet gig about 10 days after I decided that I should try actually looking for a job. (Well, if you consider a sweet gig something that involves a future serial killer telling you that he’s going to cut you up and eat you for lunch). I’m also very thankful for a handful of  ridiculously great friends who have stood by me through the bullshit.

I think 2009 will go on the record books as one of those years like the bullshit early 1930s when everything sucked and bread cost twelve million dollars.

2009 sucked.

But that’s okay, because it’s that much more likely that 2010 will be significantly better as a result.

Thank you, for reading. Don’t forget that ps: you’re not dying will exist post Twenty-Three and watch out for Twenty-Four next year.

Hey there, everybody!

Remember when I told you about the Twilight scam that was going around?  Well, there’s another one.  Yep, indeed another one.

This time, it’s apparently promising you the chance to watch the in-theatres-now Twilight Saga: New Moon online.  Just as it is in life, you can’t believe everything you hear, kids.

PC Tools’ Malware Research Center is warning web users of another online scam that hopes to piggyback on hype surrounding the new Twilight New Moon film.

The security software developer says the latest trick tempts movie fans by promising them they can watch the film for free, before installing malware on their computer.

PC Tools said fans are baited with the text websites, chat rooms and blogs that read: “Watch New Moon Full Movie.”

 

Source.

Let’s not be gulliable, “be safe“! :O)

Well another sweet Thanksgiving has come and gone. The anticipation was great as the bird was selected. It was dressed all up, stuffed with all kinds of good bits, staged in its pan, roasted to a crispy brown, and then reduced to a dinner for the family and friends. When the meat of the bird was removed, all that was left was a carcass and a wishbone. So much pomp reduced to a memory.

Well another month of POTUS has come and gone. The anticipation was great as ACORN, SEIC and other organized Labor Unions selected their bird. It was dressed all up, stuffed with all kinds of words, etc.

Hey, there:

Just wanted to let you all know about a spam war going on right now it’s attacking Twilight fans!

A new Twilight scam making the rounds and exposed by PC Tools, isn’t a whole lot different from the usual M.O., but here’s a primer on how it works.

It all begins with a web search: Users search for “Stephenie Meyer” (a misspelling of the name of the author of the Twilight books) on the web, and find (rather high) in the results a link to a result reading “Stephanie Meyer at 365Multimedia.com,” with the description “Stephenie Meyer interview on Twilight the movie starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.”

* * * * * *

At that point, the user is asked for his credit card number, additional malware is installed on the machine, and Robert Pattinson is nowhere to be found. Now that sucks. (Bites? Pick your own favorite vampire reference…)

Source.

I’m gonna go Momma-style on you kiddies real quick with some internet safety tips:

1. Change up your passwords on your social networking (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc)  sites every once in awhile to avoid getting your stuff hacked into.
2. Never give your information out to anybody!  If you don’t them know personally, then don’t trust them.  They’re all evil!  MUHAHAHA!
3.  If it seems to good to be true, that’s because it is.
4. Clear out your temporary internet files & cookies from your search browser.
5. Don’t believe all the celebrities online at the social network sites are truly then.  Be smart and do your research:  review official websites that clearly state their participation in these sites.  If it’s not listed there, then guess what, you’ve just been had.

Well, just following a few of these tips will get you headed in the right direction to “Be safe.“

Good luck!

I’m writing to warn you about some shysters who almost scammed me!

Almost*

Basically I got a phone call off some bloke who said that I had applied for something and asked if I had a showreel. I said “no” and he said he’d call me back. The next day he phoned up and said that the casting director was out of the country but really wanted me for one of the main roles, so they’d have to see me in something. He proposed that they do a showreel for me, consisting of me acting different scenes out from the piece. When I asked him if he could send me the sides for the role, he said he couldn’t because “they didn’t want me to be tied down/attached to just the one role as this particular part would be composed of different characters.

I didn’t want to sound unprofessional by not remembering the name of the production (because as actors, I’m sure you all know, you apply to so many different things, it’s hard to keep up!) so I asked him the name of the role, he kinda just fobbed me off. Then the icing on the cake was that this showreel they they were going to do for me would cost £245.00. When I said that was too expensive he said then £180.00. I told him STILL too expensive then he asked, “what amount is good for you?” I just said “let me know if ever do real auditions and I may consider it” and hung up.

Just a couple of points:

• He called me outside of “working hours” in the evening (which isn’t unusual as such but sometimes…)
• He said I applied for something but he never sent me an email once
• He never once mentioned the name of the character or production
• He basically proposed that I pay for something that they wanted. When really they could have just auditioned me and sent the casting director the tapes/uploaded them onto a website
• Who’s to say that after I paid, they would say that I didn’t get the part (or that they would have filmed me at all)
• When I told him it was too expensive he kept trying to negotiate!

I think he got my details off CCP or some similar website. Just beware!

After arriving back at the Great Wall, I managed on my third attempt to get down to the T-junction in Itame and not far from the junction I spied a bus stop.

Arr I thought, a bus stop, I like buses, a bus could get me going on this tour, set me on the right direction. I had a look around to see if there were any buses  but there were none and it didn’t look asthough there would be any turning up . The sign on the bus stop looked clickable so I clicked on it and it  informed me about how to use the bus stop teleport system. Yes the Bus stop that took you to interesting places in SL. That was it really, you just click on the sign below and it teleported you to an interesting place in SL and from there you could get another bus (metaphorically) to somewhere else interesting or back again. Sounded ok, it wasn’t going to get me very far on the tour really, but you have to go on a whim when doing these things don’t you and I had nothing to lose apart from time that is, so I tried it out. The bus stop took me to a sim called Stolen Moments.

It looked quite pretty with a large willow tree and various little animals scurrying around. On further inspection stolen moments turned out to be mainly made up of a  a wedding chapel called *Heaven Sent which was a place to arrange your wedding in SL. Overlooking the sea, with honeymoon suite, reception rooms and champagne laid on

and as I later found , a handy shopping mall for the guests to buy those last-minute wedding gifts .

 It was hardly a place of interest to me Just another sim with another club and mall and wedding reception area.

 I did take a look around the mall though, you never know what bargains you might find.

I scolded myself for getting distracted, This was getting me nowhere Stolen moments had  certainly lived up to its name. I had a long way ahead of me and I was still unsure now whether I might still be under the influence of the vampire magic, after all I had been held up again, that’s what vampires do they play around with you like a cat plays with a mouse, then they move in for the kill. I teleported back to Itame and set off again heading towards the coast.

 I made some headway this time and had got as far as the sim of Pryeri before I noticed another bus stop .This one was different from the last in that  it had a real, well virtually real bus that would actually take you on a tour of SL.

 Sounded just the ticket, I could gain back the time I had lost. Just what I needed I could sit back, relax, take notes on the bus as it trundled along at a leisurely pace  from sim to sim. Yes for sure that would work  (I don’t think)  I hopped on anyway.

What is it about buses in SL that attracts me to them? . I guess in a strange world with outrageously weird stuff everywhere, they are not only something quite familiar but  also I think the thing that endears them to me most is  the fact that you don’t need buses at all in a virtual world. It’s the same as walking in a place where everyone flies the sheer perversness of it     I boarded the bus , settled down in my seat and the bus took off. Yes it took off from the ground and proceeded to fly.

I quickly read the instructions that were presented to me when boarding. The instructions informed me not to stand up at any time whilst the bus was travelling. The trouble was the bus was taking me the wrong way, back the way I had come.

 Oh dear , I stood up and as  I did so the bus exploded (like flying buses do in SL) I thankfully made it to the ground and pulled myself from the wreckage .

 Ok No more bus stops or buses, I made my way back to the road and headed in a westerly direction . After I had gone around about a hundred meters along the road I received a postcard from Steelhead sent by my friend Dr Ryne Beck I looked around for a place to rez it and spied an Outy’s particle paradise store. The great thing about Outy’s stores (apart from the fantastic particle related products they sell) is that 1. they are all over the place and 2. you can rez stuff in them. When I was driving my tour bus around SL and crashing it off world , Outy’s stores were nearly always handy and the perfect place to rez your vehicle again. So crossing the road over to the  Outy’s store I rezzed the postcard from  Ryne  and not long after doing so he IM’d me and  invited me  to pay a visit to the Steelhead steampunk sims where he had his practise

 If truth be told I  would have loved to of gone there and then but I had to press on. It seemed every turn I made I was somehow or other being coerced into stopping. Now of course I wouldn’t suspect my friend of any intended skullduggery to stall my journey  but the thing that made me stop and take note was the date on the card .

 For the post  date was the same as my real life birthday (not the 1800’s part). Coincidence? I think not (no such thing in this blog :) ). You have to look out for signs like these, they are the only way you can notice outside influences, underlying currents and things that lie beneath and don’t ring true. It was well documented that  Friend Doctor Ryne had recently attended a Halloween short story reading in Steelhead and My guess was that there were probably more bloodsuckers winging their way round that night than I would care to shake a (crossed) stick at. It would have been quite easy for one of them to enchant the poor Doctor unnoticed as he concentrated on telling his parable. I thanked him for his invitation but declined his offer for the time being.

A short while later as I crossed in to the  sim of Lebeda a Japanese bus sat there waiting for me at the side of the road. Just sitting there ?  hmm could I trust it I thought not  once bitten or should I say  twice bitten 

 I reached into my rucksack  and drawing my SL bible out I waved  it at the bus and hurried past.

 I’m not a religious person but I was given a bible some time back by a kindly nun who was spreading the word and I’ve carried it around for no particular purpose to this day. It’s tucked away  in  my special things to keep file .  Well there you are, maybe it helped me against a (probably almost definitely) possessed bus.  I don’t know it might of.

 I do know however that those suckers don’t like the god thing, crosses, holy water, bibles, could there be some truth to its power hmm. I pressed on with that thought in mind through Bhima, Trabala, Bouraq, Sylvina and Gallii 

hardly stopping

 only once when I had to drag myself out of the road

 and again,  a bit further on from where I had fallen.

 That’s where I saw this sign.

I clicked on the sign and it played onward christian soldiers and recited the Lords Prayer meanwhile I involuntarily started praying half underground and  inside a plywood pyramid which was located behind the sign . (most odd)

Was I being sent a message here ?  Bearded Priest type characters, missing churches, wedding chapels, powers from the bible and now another bearded effigy, Jesus what was going on here. Could it be that a struggle between good and evil was taking place, things were connecting like crazy, almost as crazy as my thoughts.

 Brrrr Shaking my head in a weird sort of way that avatars do sometimes, I tried to take hold of my senses and just enjoy the walk.

 After a while I was enjoying the walk so much I missed the turn and took the dead-end at Galli.  I would of took to the sea there if there had been a place to rez my boat, but there wasn’t ,so I didn’t and I then had to backtrack to Sylvina.

I noticed in the sim of Elpenor another of the huge crystals that I have seen sprouting out of the ground I’d been noticing them more and more since I left the hobo township of Calleta.

 They were made by Plexore Lumiere . They seem very popular with the folks on this continent and they reminded me very much of fuchsias in their colours and form

 and also, because of its crystal structure it brought to mind something that the baker’s kept mentioning in Baker blinker’s Weblog;   the Fuchsia Diamond .

I ‘m not sure if there is any connection there, I’m just channeling thoughts as they come. What with the crystals being in my favorite colours I was  hoping  that they would bring me some good luck, a bit of  earth magic maybe, although the one growing right next to the exploding bus didn’t seem to  :)

So I walked and walked and then  walked a bit more

and it was getting dark by the time I reached the bridge  at Alcis, so I looked around for a place to rest for a while.

 Someone had thoughtfully pitched a tent and also lit a fire just across from the bridge so I made my way down to the water’s edge and settled down for the night.

 I awoke to bird song and the crackle from the fire

 and after having some breakfast at the picnic table

 I decided to take the next part of the journey by boat . This time I wanted to sail, I have a Trudeau sailing boat powered by SL wind packed away in my rucksack (it folds away very neatly).

 I find it is a lovely way to travel, I did the whole of my round the 4th continent tour on this little sailing boat It’s very relaxing just the sound of water trickling by and the occasional flutter of the sail and creak from the mast, the  waves breaking on shore and the cry of a gull overhead. Never have I sailed in RL but if it’s as relaxing as this virtual sailing I might give it a try someday. Of course I don’t want to be doing with all that hoisting the main brace and avasting me hearty’s stuff. Just a pleasant gentle not getting really wet sort of sailing is what I’m after.

 I rezzed my boat on the shore and hopping on board, used the motor to get me away from the land and then raised the sail .

The wind wasn’t with me at this point so I had to tack, slowly but surely down the estuary and out to sea. Its a very  slow way of travelling sometimes but I find extremely satisfying. Everything I needed to control the boat was on an easy to use hud, but  you still feel as though you’ve achieved a little something when you’ve successfully dealt with some difficult wind  :)  (pardon me) . I sailed effortlessly up the coast and getting some strong gusts behind me now I really made good time.

It’s when you’re at your most relaxed, that is when you lose your concentration and when trouble rears its head. My boat hit the rocks near the sim crossing in Jota and I capsized.

 I managed to swim ashore to a waterside store in Algira and pulling myself up on the decking, looked out to see my little boat sinking down beneath the waves.

There was no place to rez my boat here and the sabre tooth tiger that was roaming the shop wasn’t in the mood to let me by at the time so I jumped back in to the sea and swam across the Algira coastline till I crossed over into Togata.

Up ahead of me a large ball seemed to be floating in the water. It was very large indeed.

As I got nearer it  turned out  to be a huge geodesic glass structure.

 I swam around it and then took to the air to see if I could get inside.

There didn’t seem to be a door. I peered in but it was difficult to see inside as there were hundreds of trees and plants. 

 I then hit upon swimming underneath

so I did and low and behold I found I could swim up inside of it.

 Inside I found myself in a beautiful tropical like greenhouse, a sort of ecosphere. It was gorgeous with fish swimming around the lily pads and mangrove type trees and beautiful butterflies fluttering around the little island in the middle. I would think this to be an ideal breeding ground for Rhopalocera  and for my vamped up Heterocera friends maybe this too could be a paradise.

 In such a place as this my  little vampire moths could breed and ready themselves for their fight against the undead.

I looked at the land and it said for sale with all objects. It was very tempting to upgrade again and buy this plot. I had just enough money on me. I seriously thought about it but I had made other plans for my future and although this gave me a few ideas it wasn’t the right thing for me just at this moment.

 I left the creatures to their Shangri La and swam ashore once more. The road had now turned to boardwalk and I was on the new Route 2 coastal path made by the famous moles from the Linden Department of Public Works.

 I have to say they’ve done well. There have been some lovely touches made to the walkways and roads since these creatures got their paws into the grid. The rez places along the side of the road are a godsend for a start, not only for rezzing your vehicles but anything that you suddenly feel the urge to rez, you can do it now without searching too long for a patch of build land or an Outy’s particle paradise . On top of this there is more detail to the road sides with sign posts and little features like this bridge

 with its jetty and pipe outlet all made by the LDPW’s moles.

 The boardwalk route came to an end on the upper right hand corner of Togata and lead into the mouth of a tunnel.

 The tunnel curved round the sim of Moma to meet with the next sim called Tiger.

The tunnel itself, as I made my way through it had several large creepy spiders hanging from its ceiling, nothing unusual in that. The unusual thing that took me by surprise was that I immediately started floating upwards as soon as I ventured inside .

This was due to my swimming override which I always wear when sailing. I knew then that the sea level had been raised in the vicinity of the tunnel, as to why they had done this I can only guess that it made it appear darker from the outside. I’m not sure if it was just my view but It didn’t seem to make much difference once I was inside, it just appeared as normal. I carried on swimming through the tunnel, It felt a bit weird swimming through a tunnel on land, though it was an even stranger feeling when I reached the other end and carried on swimming down the road.

 I took my AO off at that point and walked the rest of the way through Tiger.

 The sim of Tiger seems to be entirely owned by one individual called Kenti Rau former college professor, with a dual PhD, one in Wildlife Biology and the other in Counselling (Psychology)

At least that’s what it says on his profile. He also happens to be a tiger which seems appropriate enough for the sim he lives in.

At Manduka I tried to rez my boat again but even though I was in a rez area found ban lines completely surrounding it and had to move on to Girdler where I found a rez area that was right next to the sea.

 I had to wait for the wind to pick up a bit but soon I was back sailing and very quickly reached the sim of Oakworm on the northwest corner of Heterocera. 

 From there I took to the open sea and across to Hummingbird

where I capsized again and had to walk ashore. (Must remember to put swimming AO back on doh)

 Actually I did as it happens, intend to stop around here somewhere because I had another of my small excursions to make.

 When I had been making my famous (not) couch based flying vehicle the Quest 1.  I had been looking for a place to take some pictures of it for advertising purposes.

I came up with a little story line about a rescue mission on the slopes of a mountain .

I did a search for the highest mountain in SL and came up with the sim of Campion where the peaks rise to a staggering,.. Wait for it   366 meters.

 I hadn’t spent any time looking around the rest of the mountain range as I was too busy taking pics for the storyboard so I wanted to get a proper look now and also at a large creek like feature that ran diagonally through the sim of Hydrangea.

 And so with camera and notebook in hand I set off inland heading for the uplands.

 I took the road at first following it through Pandorus and into Hydrangea where  it curved steeply round to join with the inner highway between Ello and Woolybear (I love that sim name, think I’d like to live in Woolybear)

A short distance from the top of the bends heading west and I had reached the creek like feature I had been interested in .

 It was as I suspected, exactly what I had thought it would be ,and that was emm a creek like feature  :)

 It was rather deep though and devoid of water apart from a resident owned stream near the start.

I made my way up the creek crossing through Ello and eventually into Cisseps where I found more resident owned water at the end of the creek

 and a wooded area on the eastern bank

When I took a closer look at the wood I found it to have had an infestation of vampires.

. This time it hardly surprised me to have stumbled upon another bloodsucker lair. It was as if it was inevitable that our paths should once again cross . Only this time I was keeping  an eye out for the opposition, If there was a power struggle between good and evil going on in SL the opposing side might not be too far away.

 Just a short distance up, by the side of the wood I found a small temple like structure stuck in a 16m parcel of land and surrounded by ban lines.

It had a floating text sign above it saying Teleport to Mandala Bead games Mandala.

 I tried touching it but nothing happened so I gave up and crossing over to the west side of the creek found an area that seemed to be dedicated to of all things.  The  Mandala bead games!! (curiouser).

 The tree-lined area had lots of bead type objects spread over various boards aswell as a movie area which I couldn’t get to work. It all seemed to be connected with earth energy and about some guy who was going to integrate RL with SL using his brain waves and then somehow play the Mandala bead games. The guy in question was called Carlos Tapioca. I think the thing that struck me about Carlos above all was his resemblance to the bearded fellow that had read my fortune.

 It might of course  been the fact that they both had beards   but when I thought about it  you don’t see that many bearded av’s in SL , well I havn’t really.

My thoughts then  turned back to my first night of the tour when I had bumped into Neal Lyle the Palomarian lighthouse keeper. Neal had a beard, not a big beard but a beard none the less, was there a connection? First Neal then the bearded fortune-teller then the Jesus effigy and now Carlos hmm (curiouser)  Surely this had nothing to do with the struggle of good and evil in a virtual world or did it ? . My head shook again and I laughed to myself. I looked around at the playing surfaces with the beads on.

 It was a lot to take in and I’m not clear what the bead games were exactly about but I tried clicking on a few of the beads that were laying around and was rewarded with the message FOCUS ON THE ALCHEMY OF THE ENERGY OF THE ELEMENTS. What did that mean? I think it meant it was time for me to stop trying to make any sense of  all this and to carry on with what I had intended to do in the first place and that was to head for the hills , so that’s what I did.

 The next part of the journey took me south-east and cross-country to Phasma. I could begin to see the mountains as I drew nearer.

The tops were quite clear of cloud but the slopes below were shrouded in mist. As I got nearer it became very atmospheric. I crossed over a ridge line where the sims met but didn’t match in  height

 and then a bit further on the land began to rise sharply and I began my ascent.

it wasn’t long before the sides of the mountain became almost sheer and I struggled for a foothold . I found I could easily go tumbling back down if I wasn’t paying attention. The mist was surrounded me for some time you could almost feel it chilling your bones

 but eventually the sun broke through and I could see the mounting peaks towering above me.

 The whole northern mountain range of Heterocera which actually forms part of the outer volcanic basin of the atoll; stretches roughly from Athetis where the great wall ends right the way round to Nolidae, about 14 sims long Surprisingly this high up there is no snow .The grass covering the mountains is a rich green and densely covers the volcanic rock upon which it lays, I would guess the geothermic convection from the atoll’s substrates are still at work!! .

. Once I reached the top I really got a sense of height, one not always present when flying I might add. It could be you become slightly blasé with the height thing when you can fly like a bird. I started the trek along the mountain ridge heading east.

Along the top of the ridge various homes and outpost structures had been built. There had been no problem of course getting materials up this high, and the range of building was as varied as down near sea level, maybe one or two more airship and helicopter landing pads were present.

As I surmounted a peak along the ridge way and was finding a route down past some ban lines and steep terracing I came upon some marvellous anomalies that stood out from the mountain ridge. They had been named Bug spikes.

 Incredibly high needles of gridrock pushing up from the ground close to the sim edge.

 I’m sure the Bakers must have recorded these spikes or at least ones similar to these at some time or other. I took flight and ventured up the side of the strange cluster, up and up they went right up in to the clouds. At the very top was a small platform that the owner of the land had built around the peak.

 I dropped down onto the platform and took out from my rucksack an altimeter. You never know when you might need one of these so it’s something I always store next to my hang glider and . I placed the altimeter script inside a cube prim and placed the cube on top of the platform. It read 495 meters, that was 129 meters higher than what was supposed to be the highest point in the mainland;

 perhaps they just didn’t count these spikes as mountain peaks for some reason.

 I dropped back down to the ground and continued along the ridge getting steadily higher as I approached Campion.

 Here in SL anyone can build a tower that reaches into the clouds but not everyone can claim to live on the *highest mountain (*as far as I know) in SL.

 The lucky couple who hold that honour are Keen and Camille who “Welcome you to the Castle Bella.”

Their neighbours who must be a bit Jealous of their position have built some sort of tower to raise their status above Keen and Camille

but Cammi and Keen who incidentally when I looked into his profile sported yet another beard ;(cue twilight zone music) can quite categorically claim the honour .

 The actual highest point on their land is just over from the castle next to a small chapel. I walked over and measured the height  with the altimeter just to make sure and it was ,exactly 366m.

 I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by so I took a look around the chapel

 But this one I think was not *Heaven Sent

  Inside I found a free shotgun to aid with marriage ceremonies

and also a place to confess your sins .

As for inside the confessional box, I can’t begin to tell you what the animation with the priest had me doing   

 Standing up..hmm, I took leave of the chapel and wandered outside to where there was a stone balcony protruding from the side of the mountain top. The balcony had no railing at the end of it and when I looked down it was a long drop to what appeared to be some sort of graveyard.

This seemed as fitting ending to the excursion as any I could think of so without further ado about the matter;  I jumped.

 After crash landing in the graveyard  a few seconds later I looked up and  my eyes met with the grim reapers (His eye sockets actually)

I thought him quite a cheery looking chap even though he wasn’t going to get me in his clutches today, after all I had survived the leap of faith.

 Not all had been so lucky though,

 or maybe they had, judging from the pictures on the gravestones.

 One caught my eye in particular, I’m sure I recognised that guy from somewhere   :)

could just be the beard though 

Bye Bye Be Back

Every so often something comes across the monitor that doesn’t feel quite right. This is one of those times.

This morning, the usually-reliable Linux Alive Twitter feed moved a link to a blog item written by somebody calling himself “Ubuman” claiming that Canonical Inc. would release a service pack for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) sometime next spring. The blog item appears to have quotes from Colin Watson, a senior developer at Canonical, in which he allegedly said that changing some of the underlying components of the OS is not the way to go and that Canonical needs  ” ‘to reconsider the 6-month release cycle, and focus more on stability.’ “

(Now, granted, there’s been a lot of kvetching in the Ubuntu forums and elsewhere about “bugs” in Ubuntu 9.10. And so there was when 9.04 came out. And so there was when 8.10 came out. And so there was when 8.04 came out. And so there was … ad infinitum, ad nauseam. If I had to guess a percentage number of Ubuntu users affected by Ubuntu 9.10’s alleged “bugs” I would probably go less than 1 percent.)

However, as I read the blog post I began to have problems with it. For one thing, it’s not sourced. Yeah, okay, maybe this blogger did the interview himself, but there’s been no announcement of a service pack or something similar, official or otherwise, to that effect. Also, there’s no news items anywhere on the Internet referring to this story … at all. Finally, the fact that this is the only post on the “Ubuman is watching Ubuntu” blog (other than the generic “Hello, world” post used by many blog platforms as a space-filler) led me to suspect that the blog was created specifically to spread a specific piece of disinformation.

Only one thing to do, then. I shot off an e-mail to Colin Watson himself with a link to the “Ubuman” story and asked him straight out: “Is the information presented in the blog correct?”

Watson got back to me via e-mail less than an hour later with this answer:

This blog post is a tissue of lies. There is no truth in it whatsoever, and as you note he didn’t even bother to fabricate a source link. Thanks for drawing it to my attention, but feel free to quote my denial anywhere you think appropriate.

 

Well, this place seems appropriate.

I will point out that Linux Alive normally picks up its content from a Reddit feed and that it’s not that difficult to slip something disinformative into a Reddit or Digg feed. Watson himself has posted a comment on the Ubuman blog denying the report.

I’m sure this is a waste of time, but in case it isn’t obvious (it would be blindingly obvious to anyone who knew me, and of course the blogger didn’t even bother to make up a source link …), none of the statements attributed to me in this blog post were made by me, and they do not represent my opinion in any way.

 

I had also commented on that story to question its veracity but my comment was removed by the blog’s owner. It remains to be seen if Watson’s comment will remain in place.

At any rate, the story about a service pack for Ubuntu 9.10 has no weight to it.

Ubuntu 9.10 SP1 coming in spring 2010 | Ubuman is watching Ubuntu

Finally, the perfect car. You may all relax now, the planet has been ’saved’.

Jose and Yvette Strickland are former members of the Soul Factory in Maryland. They were generous enough to lend their church $900,000 to build a second parish in Atlanta, GA. The church says it was a “donation” and not a loan but they were making payments to the bank… GTFOH!!!

Two former churchgoers say they were swindled out of a small fortune by the leaders of the Soul Factory, a large African American church in Prince George’s County — accusations the church denies.

In a lawsuit filed against the church, the married couple, Jose and Yvette Strickland, say they lent nearly $900,000 under a verbal agreement to the Soul Factory so that it could open a satellite church in Atlanta. The church says the money was a gift.

“It was not a loan; it was a donation,” said Timothy Obitts, a lawyer hired by the church. He said the church is in the process of filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The suit, filed Sept. 30, has surprised members of the Soul Factory, a popular church among young blacks in Forestville. The church is known for its use of hip-hop and pop culture and its contemporary plays, such as “Two Angry People in Love Going Thru Hell.” It draws a few thousand congregants each Sunday.

According to the Stricklands, they began regularly attending the Soul Factory in 2000. In 2005, the church’s founder and pastor, Deron Cloud, began courting Jose Strickland’s financial help, the couple said, by inviting him to Wizards basketball games, on trips to Las Vegas and other activities and introducing him to top church leaders.

In 2006, the Stricklands say, Cloud asked Jose for $1.5 million to help open a satellite church in Atlanta. A few weeks later, Strickland, Cloud and other church leaders discussed financing the Atlanta church while in a private booth at a professional fight in Atlantic City, the couple said.
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Months later, according to the lawsuit, Strickland gave the church $886,500, which Jose, a mortgage banker, and Yvette, a real estate agent, said they raised by mortgaging several properties they owned to a private lender.

The Stricklands said that Cloud and the church initially made nine payments to the private lender but stopped making payments in mid-2007. In their lawsuit, the Stricklands allege that the non-payments led to the loss of seven mortgaged properties to foreclosure and $6.8 million in financial losses. Both have filed for bankruptcy.

Obitts, the church’s attorney, declined to go into detail about the lawsuit but said the church did not borrow money from the Stricklands. “This guy’s allegedly a sophisticated businessman,” Obitts said, “and yet he claims everything was done verbally. It doesn’t make sense.”

When asked why they gave the church such a large amount without any written agreement or contract or a structured loan, Jose Strickland said, “It was a trust situation, because they were a church, because we had a relationship.”

We know your supposed to give to the church because you are giving to GOD but who in their right mind would mortgage several properties to give a church a loan???

Ads are ads. You see them everywhere. Here’s an example:

Is there anyone who still believe in fairy tales like “and they lived happily ever after” or in “to be trully loved and to love whoever you wish”?  I do believe now that this stories are for kids and for those people who live in a dreamy world,  unfortunately, is a bogus world from this point of view, and if is not the same for you, cherish with all of your soul what you have…

Phone callers are trying to trick residents into passing their bank details, warns council officials… From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: free mobile phones. The blog is also related to: handphone.

Oh dear oh dear, here we go again with more doomsday predictions from politicians about the circus that is Global Warming. We have 50 days to save the world, according to Gordon “destroyer of UK plc” Brown, speaking about the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen.

I really hate Man Made Global Warming. Its turned into such a religious belief system that it has long been impossible to debate the “science” behind it all. In fact, to do so now is tantamount to heresy. You may as well try to talk the Pope out of believing in God for all the good rational debate does. Politicians are so whipped up into proving they are “greener” and more planetary aware than the other side that it ends up escalating into precisely the kind of rhetoric spouted by Brown. They’ll be walking around with “The End of the World is Nigh” placards before too long.

There’s a brilliant film made as a counter to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that points out there are some inconvenient errors in everyone’s assumptions.

Lets look at some of these

1. CO2 drives temperature

Firstly, its scientific fact that CO2 levels cause temperature rises. Al Gore showed a graph and it all looks very conclusive and he tells us we’re all screwed unless we get rid of all the evil CO2. We all know this to be gospel.

Conclusive that is, until you realise that he’s radically over simplified the graph so you cant see the detail. A quite important detail that actually shows CO2 rises a fair way (800 years or so) AFTER temperature change. Well, it would – any 11 year old can tell you that heat a liquid and it will release gas. The liquid being the ocean in this case. So no, there’s really no proof that CO2 causes any kind of warming. Quite the opposite. More than that, you only have to look at the geological record to tell you this is all bollocks – CO2 has been way higher in the past, but temperature does not correlate. Notice also that these graphs that are being presented as evidence of our demise only cover a few 100,000 years. Not even a blink in geological time. Certainly not enough to be representative of how climate works. I’ll come back to this.

I just read that this graph (the celebrated “Mann Hockey Stick”) has been well and truly debunked over the last few years due to serious errors in the data and the statistical sampling and smoothing methods applied. This graph however is still used as the basis for the whole man made global warming argument despite it being totally wrong.

2. CO2 is higher now than at any time in the past.

The warmists as I shall refer to them, believe CO2 is higher now than it has ever been. Well, thats utter bollocks. As I said before, its been a lot higher in the past and guess what – the Earth didn’t become an irreversible positive feedback loop and become a firey greenhouse oven. There’s a climate reconstruction graph from ice core, radiation, isotope etc data that shows this clearly. Warmists love to cherry pick their data. Its the same with the TV – “this year is the hottest since 2006″ What the hell? 3 years? What kind of stupid statistics are those? Baseless tosh.

3. These temperatures aren’t normal

We’re coming out of a glaciation at the moment. It may not feel like it or look like it, but, we’re actually on the warming cycle after the last North Atlantic glaciation event that started around 110,000 years ago and ended around 12,000 years ago. So its reasonable to expect the temperature to be rising. The current average temperature is a good few degrees below “average”. The problem that we’re being presented with data that only covers such a short timespan – in many cases only 300 years worth, of which less than 50 years are based on observations rather than reconstructions. Its just not representative of how the world actually works. Yes, glaciations and warmings can happen very suddenly – 50 years or so from warm to cold at the end of the last glaciation as the ice came back in a last hurrah – but we shouldn’t look at this in terms of human lifespans.

4. The data is clear

Its in the way data is presented

climate change since 1800 – looks dramatic doesnt it.

However, its all in the scale. is 0.1C a meaningful temperature increase? Is the CO2 really driving it? Lets look at it another way (with thanks to Michael Crichton)

no change at all then. Obviously the data has been presented to look this way – one extreme and one benign. Its the same data though. So which is significant? I’d wager the second. How can we be certain (especially given the historical temperature variations) that .5C is anything at all?

Its well known that temps in the cities can be 5C+ than the countryside, so perhaps this is the reason? Its also too convenient that the data has deliberately left out the “Little Ice Age” (The Dark Ages) and the Medieval Warm Period too – times when temperatures were much lower and higher than they are today. But that would ruin the graph and the impact, wouldnt it. Cherry picking data like that is a clear sign of trying to prove a point you already believe.

5. The modelling tells us all we need to know

One more thing that is never discussed is the validity of climate models. For all the computing power we have, we simply cannot say that our models can predict the behaviour of the atmosphere and climate. We’re getting it so wrong already – we’re having a cooler few years than predicted – quite a lot cooler in fact – this year being the coolest for some time. And there are less hurricanes than the long term average, not more.

The problems with models is they are not detailed enough to take into consideration the “little physics” stuff happening at a molecular level – quantum stuff, friction, boundary level fluid mechanics etc. To get round this, models usually artificially increase the viscosity of the fluid to compensate, but how we say with any confidence that a custard ocean actually behaves the same way and drives the atmosphere in the same way as real water? In actual fact, models are simply that – models, a guess based on assumptions and compromise in order to get results in a meaningful timeframe.

They might work on a weather forecast for a week, but thats it, there are simply too many variables we don’t understand and can’t add to the model or it becomes too complex. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) itself admits that its own models are just supposition with so many things as total unknowns. Not quite the certainty of a global catastrophe that Gordon Brown is talking about. More like a bunch of maybes built on possibilities and assumptions. Its the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction in 45 minutes thing all over again. Politicians are ignoring the real inconvenient truth of the matter which is that even the IPCC can’t say MMGW is real or predicable.

It doesn’t take a lot of research to uncover big holes in the very foundations of the pro Man Made Global Warming arguments, so the only explanation is that most people have been brainwashed into believing the hype, and I’m not surprised – its just about the only thing we hear about on the news and coming out of the backsides of the world’s politicians.

So, back to the evidence.

All these graphs are taken from http://wattsupwiththat.com

So, lets take some long term climate reconstruction data – the temperature over the last 70 million years – its been a lot hotter in the past and we’re clearly still in a period of post glaciation instability

So, how about CO2 from the same period?

Doesn’t follow that well, does it? The hot and cold periods kinda happen in the same place in both temp and CO2 graphs, but remember, the scale is in 5 million year intervals. So it kinda tracks on a 5-10 million year scale, but not very well and in many cases, it does the opposite trend. Also, as CO2 levels were once 10 times what they are today and the earth didn’t go all China Syndrome on us. Does this not debase the whole CO2 driving climate change argument completely? More than that, at periods of high CO2, glaciation happened, thawed and happened again. Oh dear, bye bye argument.

There’s more very interesting data to be found here http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/search/label/graphs

and here: http://heresmything.blogstream.com/v1/pid/313765.html

Oh, and this is without taking into consideration things like solar activity, which as the dominant heating force in our world, is more than likely to be the major influencing factor. There are some very interesting correlations to be had there but I don’t want to turn this into war and peace..

And lets not forget that 70 million years is a drop in the ocean of Earth’s history – its 4.something billion years old. And its not gone belly up yet.

So, in summary, the evidence, the graphs, the science, the data, modelling, the most basic of things either show something different to the core of the Global Warming argument, or at very very best, show inconclusive correlation based on supposition and unprovable assumptions.

So I suggest we all stop worrying about carbon and start trying to conserve the planet, stop polluting, stop consuming natural resources at a totally unsustainable rate, work out a decent alternative to fossil fuels as when they run out we have a big problem and perhaps the most important thing of all – stop breeding at such a huge rate to take the pressure off agriculture and food production.

That’ll make the most difference to generations to come. The late and very great Michael Crichton agrees with me in this speech. Read it. It’ll change your views on everything.

Climate change is natural, not radically forced by mankind, we cant stop it and to think we can is just unbelievably arrogant. Its about control, the big bad bogeyman. Governments LOVE that kind of stuff (look at “terrorism”), they can keep themselves and their buddies in power and money much easier that way.

Oh dear oh dear, here we go again with more doomsday predictions from politicians about the circus that is Global Warming. We have 50 days to save the world, according to Gordon “destroyer of UK plc” Brown, speaking about the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen.

I really hate Man Made Global Warming. Its turned into such a religious belief system that it has long been impossible to debate the “science” behind it all. In fact, to do so now is tantamount to heresy. You may as well try to talk the Pope out of believing in God for all the good rational debate does. Politicians are so whipped up into proving they are “greener” and more planetary aware than the other side that it ends up escalating into precisely the kind of rhetoric spouted by Brown. They’ll be walking around with “The End of the World is Nigh” placards before too long.

There’s a brilliant film made as a counter to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that points out there are some inconvenient errors in everyone’s assumptions.

Lets look at some of these

1. CO2 drives temperature

Firstly, its scientific fact that CO2 levels cause temperature rises. Al Gore showed a graph and it all looks very conclusive and he tells us we’re all screwed unless we get rid of all the evil CO2. We all know this to be gospel.

Conclusive that is, until you realise that he’s radically over simplified the graph so you cant see the detail. A quite important detail that actually shows CO2 rises a fair way (800 years or so) AFTER temperature change. Well, it would – any 11 year old can tell you that heat a liquid and it will release gas. The liquid being the ocean in this case. So no, there’s really no proof that CO2 causes any kind of warming. Quite the opposite. More than that, you only have to look at the geological record to tell you this is all bollocks – CO2 has been way higher in the past, but temperature does not correlate. Notice also that these graphs that are being presented as evidence of our demise only cover a few 100,000 years. Not even a blink in geological time. Certainly not enough to be representative of how climate works. I’ll come back to this.

I just read that this graph (the celebrated “Mann Hockey Stick”) has been well and truly debunked over the last few years due to serious errors in the data and the statistical sampling and smoothing methods applied. This graph however is still used as the basis for the whole man made global warming argument despite it being totally wrong.

2. CO2 is higher now than at any time in the past.

The warmists as I shall refer to them, believe CO2 is higher now than it has ever been. Well, thats utter bollocks. As I said before, its been a lot higher in the past and guess what – the Earth didn’t become an irreversible positive feedback loop and become a firey greenhouse oven. There’s a climate reconstruction graph from ice core, radiation, isotope etc data that shows this clearly. Warmists love to cherry pick their data. Its the same with the TV – “this year is the hottest since 2006″ What the hell? 3 years? What kind of stupid statistics are those? Baseless tosh.

3. These temperatures aren’t normal

We’re coming out of a glaciation at the moment. It may not feel like it or look like it, but, we’re actually on the warming cycle after the last North Atlantic glaciation event that started around 110,000 years ago and ended around 12,000 years ago. So its reasonable to expect the temperature to be rising. The current average temperature is a good few degrees below “average”. The problem that we’re being presented with data that only covers such a short timespan – in many cases only 300 years worth, of which less than 50 years are based on observations rather than reconstructions. Its just not representative of how the world actually works. Yes, glaciations and warmings can happen very suddenly – 50 years or so from warm to cold at the end of the last glaciation as the ice came back in a last hurrah – but we shouldn’t look at this in terms of human lifespans.

4. The data is clear

Its in the way data is presented

climate change since 1800 – looks dramatic doesnt it.

However, its all in the scale. is 0.1C a meaningful temperature increase? Is the CO2 really driving it? Lets look at it another way (with thanks to Michael Crichton)

no change at all then. Obviously the data has been presented to look this way – one extreme and one benign. Its the same data though. So which is significant? I’d wager the second. How can we be certain (especially given the historical temperature variations) that .5C is anything at all?

Its well known that temps in the cities can be 5C+ than the countryside, so perhaps this is the reason? Its also too convenient that the data has deliberately left out the “Little Ice Age” (The Dark Ages) and the Medieval Warm Period too – times when temperatures were much lower and higher than they are today. But that would ruin the graph and the impact, wouldnt it. Cherry picking data like that is a clear sign of trying to prove a point you already believe.

5. The modelling tells us all we need to know

One more thing that is never discussed is the validity of climate models. For all the computing power we have, we simply cannot say that our models can predict the behaviour of the atmosphere and climate. We’re getting it so wrong already – we’re having a cooler few years than predicted – quite a lot cooler in fact – this year being the coolest for some time. And there are less hurricanes than the long term average, not more.

The problems with models is they are not detailed enough to take into consideration the “little physics” stuff happening at a molecular level – quantum stuff, friction, boundary level fluid mechanics etc. To get round this, models usually artificially increase the viscosity of the fluid to compensate, but how we say with any confidence that a custard ocean actually behaves the same way and drives the atmosphere in the same way as real water? In actual fact, models are simply that – models, a guess based on assumptions and compromise in order to get results in a meaningful timeframe.

They might work on a weather forecast for a week, but thats it, there are simply too many variables we don’t understand and can’t add to the model or it becomes too complex. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) itself admits that its own models are just supposition with so many things as total unknowns. Not quite the certainty of a global catastrophe that Gordon Brown is talking about. More like a bunch of maybes built on possibilities and assumptions. Its the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction in 45 minutes thing all over again. Politicians are ignoring the real inconvenient truth of the matter which is that even the IPCC can’t say MMGW is real or predicable.

It doesn’t take a lot of research to uncover big holes in the very foundations of the pro Man Made Global Warming arguments, so the only explanation is that most people have been brainwashed into believing the hype, and I’m not surprised – its just about the only thing we hear about on the news and coming out of the backsides of the world’s politicians.

So, back to the evidence.

All these graphs are taken from http://wattsupwiththat.com

So, lets take some long term climate reconstruction data – the temperature over the last 70 million years – its been a lot hotter in the past and we’re clearly still in a period of post glaciation instability

So, how about CO2 from the same period?

Doesn’t follow that well, does it? The hot and cold periods kinda happen in the same place in both temp and CO2 graphs, but remember, the scale is in 5 million year intervals. So it kinda tracks on a 5-10 million year scale, but not very well and in many cases, it does the opposite trend. Also, as CO2 levels were once 10 times what they are today and the earth didn’t go all China Syndrome on us. Does this not debase the whole CO2 driving climate change argument completely? More than that, at periods of high CO2, glaciation happened, thawed and happened again. Oh dear, bye bye argument.

There’s more very interesting data to be found here http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/search/label/graphs

and here: http://heresmything.blogstream.com/v1/pid/313765.html

Oh, and this is without taking into consideration things like solar activity, which as the dominant heating force in our world, is more than likely to be the major influencing factor. There are some very interesting correlations to be had there but I don’t want to turn this into war and peace..

And lets not forget that 70 million years is a drop in the ocean of Earth’s history – its 4.something billion years old. And its not gone belly up yet.

So, in summary, the evidence, the graphs, the science, the data, modelling, the most basic of things either show something different to the core of the Global Warming argument, or at very very best, show inconclusive correlation based on supposition and unprovable assumptions.

So I suggest we all stop worrying about carbon and start trying to conserve the planet, stop polluting, stop consuming natural resources at a totally unsustainable rate, work out a decent alternative to fossil fuels as when they run out we have a big problem and perhaps the most important thing of all – stop breeding at such a huge rate to take the pressure off agriculture and food production.

That’ll make the most difference to generations to come. The late and very great Michael Crichton agrees with me in this speech. Read it. It’ll change your views on everything.

Climate change is natural, not radically forced by mankind, we cant stop it and to think we can is just unbelievably arrogant. Its about control, the big bad bogeyman. Governments LOVE that kind of stuff (look at “terrorism”), they can keep themselves and their buddies in power and money much easier that way.

An elderly woman in Essex is duped out of 4,000 from her bank account by telephone callers who claimed to be fraud officers…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: mobile phone shops. The blog is also related to: phones.

Major General Albert (Bert) N. Stubblebine III is an expert in PsyOps and Intelligence. He was the subject of Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare at Goats. Ronson was led to him through Uri Geller who claimed to have been working as a psychic spy. As if the story could not get stranger, Major General Stubblebine, with his wife Rima Laibow, and their Natural Solutions Foundation, is behind an extraordinarily transparent misinformation campaign regarding the sinister Codex Alimentarius.

That such a campaign is transparent, however, does not of course mean that it has not been successful. A vanishingly small number of people are aware of Codex Alimentarius and what it will mean when it is implemented from December 31st 2009. The Codex, which is clearly intended from its latin name onwards, to be unintelligible, will have serious repercussions for millions of people. It can be soberly said to declare war on civilisation, which began with agricultural cultivation and, of necessity, the storage and selection of seeds, since, following the destruction of Iraq and its cultural inheritage in the second Iraq war, a law known as Order 81 has been passed in Iraq - sometimes called “the cradle of civilisation” - a law which outlaws the keeping back of seeds, ensuring that farmers may be controlled by a small number of huge agricultural corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow selling seeds which, due to the terminator gene, produce crops from which seeds cannot be held back (it seems curious to me that of all the variables determined by genes, it should be the ability to produce a new generation that should be most in need of ‘correction’, but this only demonstrates the focus of the impetus in genetic modification), and, of course, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides which would in many cases prevent the very crops from growing if they were not genetically modified. Codex Alimentarius, eventually, seeks to do something similar worldwide. That there has been precious little mention of it in the newspapers and mainstream media is evidence that Stubblebine and others who would have the public at large misinformed or uninformed about Codex Alimentarius have been successful.

Major General Albert Stubblebine is a very interesting, very strange creature indeed. His pronouncements on 9/11 warrant attention. His pronouncements on Codex Alimentarius, credible or not, gives credence at least to the tagline of a member of one of the thousands of internet forums out there people by individuals who don’t quite know what to make of this world we are living in but who know that there have been better, less complicated, less sinister times, and who hope that, with any luck, there will be better times ahead: In ten years we’ll look back on this moment, laugh nervously, and quickly change the subject.

General Stubblebine is confounded by his continual failure to walk through his wall. What’s wrong with him that he can’t do it? Maybe there is simply too much in his in-tray for him to give it the requisite level of concentration. There is no doubt in his mind that the ability to pass through objects will one day be a common tool in the intelligence-gathering arsenal.

- Jon Ronson in The Men Who Stare at Goats