Tucked in amidst the medical buildings on Pill Hill in the KoreaTown-Northgate District, Oasis Food Market opened earlier this fall as a combination restaurant/grocery store. I’d had my eye on it for months since I frequently catch the 1R bus across the street and had been admiring the beautiful tilework they were restoring on their building—but little did I know what was in store for me once they finally opened!

Oasis is divided into two halves: restaurant on one side, grocery on the other. It’s worth noting that the grocery is remarkably complete—they carry a nice selection of produce, all sorts of Middle Eastern and British specialties (canned, boxed, prepared, and frozen), and organic coffee beans. There’s even a halal meat counter hidden way in the back. This is important since they’re open until 10 pm, providing a nice late-night alternative to Whole Foods and the 24-hour Safeway. There’s also an impressive selection of Middle Eastern spices.

But what you really want to head to Oasis for is the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant that occupies the other half of the (huge!) storefront. First, there’s the deli counter, lined above and below with fresh Middle Eastern breads. You can get all sorts of spreads, salads, and other goodness here (including, of course, hummus and baba ghanoush—very reasonably priced!) The last time we visited, they had started to label the dishes, which is good since one of the major challenges is figuring out what each dish is. But all of them are tasty, and there’s a huge selection of fetas and other cheeses to go alongside. The house-made pita bread is excellent, as are the stuffed breads. The Afghan bread also looks like it has a lot of potential, though I have yet to try it.

Then there are the sandwiches. From the street, you can see the lamb and chicken shawarma roasting on spits, and both are good, though I thought the lamb was a notch above. We’ve tried them both as wraps (my pick) and as a plate with rice and salad. The falafel offers a good option for vegetarians (or for anybody who appreciates a good falafel sandwich!) The lines can sometimes be long—the neighborhood has definitely discovered this spot!—but it’s well worth the wait. There are still a few holes to fill—the coffee bar (or what looks like it will be the coffee bar?) isn’t quite set up yet, and the staff are still getting into the swing of things as they get through opening kinks like what to do when the restaurant’s credit card machine goes down and takes the grocery store’s computer system with it. But all of that will sort itself out in time, and the staff are good-natured and patient. (They’re also very willing to help; on one visit, the owner wanted to know what else he could stock for someone, even with the impressive array they already have!)  It’s a great addition to the neighborhood, and will definitely have us heading over to that stretch of Telegraph a lot more often.

Grade: A−
Cost: $

Telegraph Pole and Lines.

The Right Reverend Humphrey Southern, the Bishop of Repton, has sparked the first “silly Bishop” story of the season, the Telegraph reported. “Writing in the monthly Derby diocese newsletter, he said: ‘This is the ‘Happy Christmas’ month. Yet to many that greeting will be hollow, coming as an insult, or even an obscenity.’ ”  Lots of sniggers and tut-tuts from those who think themselves superior to all things religious, but the Bishop is absolutely right.

Many people dread Christmas.  When I was a church-goer I occasionally went to an early communion service on Christmas morning, but would avoid the “family service” if I possibly could.  They always assumed that we were all in families, that we had all woken up to presents, that it was a day for people being together etc.  When people are alone, or are reeling from some catastrophe, this is profoundly alienating.  When I became a local preacher I would have refused to take the Christmas morning service (it was usually the ministers who had to do it, anyway).  I once, early on in my preaching career, had to do the Sunday before Christmas, and I made sure that I reinforced the message that for many people “Happy Christmas” was empty and that it should not be a time of smug contentment.  (That service was reportedly very well received, and I think the message was appreciated.)

For many people, Christmas has no connection with religion.  That has allowed some confused atheists to maintain that they can perfectly well celebrate it as a human festival of a hope for the future.  But the fact is that, as far back as you can go, the midwinter festival is profoundly spiritual.  Remove that foundation, and you get the consumer binge that is now all around us.

With characteristic clarity of style, Christopher Booker has summarised the Climategate scandal and its implications in an article for the Sunday Telegraph that I’ve been looking forward to since the story first broke. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s powerful, thought-provoking and simply cannot be ignored, (can it?).

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including not just the “Hockey Team”, such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC’s 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre’s blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt’s blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones’s refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got “lost”. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to “adjust” recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre’s demolition of the “hockey stick”, he excoriated the way in which this same “tightly knit group” of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to “peer review” each other’s papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.

Los Extranjeros del espacio exterior ya están entre nosotros en la tierra, dicen los científicos del gobierno búlgaro que dicen que ya están en contacto con los extraterrestres.Esta Noticia Sale Publicada En Un Diario Ingles Telegraph.

El trabajo en descifrar un complejo conjunto de símbolos que se les envió está en marcha, los científicos del espacio del país, el Instituto de Investigación, dijo.

Alegan los extranjeros están respondiendo a 30 preguntas formuladas a ellos.Lachezar Filipov, director adjunto del Instituto de Investigaciones Espaciales de la Academia Búlgara de Ciencias, confirmó la investigación. Añadió que los investigadores del centro fueron el análisis de 150 círculos de las cosechas de todo el mundo, que creen que responder a las preguntas.

“Los extranjeros están alrededor de nosotros, y nos están mirando todo el tiempo,” el Sr. Filipov dijo a los medios búlgaros.”Ellos no son hostiles hacia nosotros, más bien, que quieren ayudarnos, pero no hemos crecido lo suficiente, a fin de establecer un contacto directo con ellos”.

Sr. Filipov dijo que incluso la sede de la iglesia católica, el Vaticano, había convenido en que los extraterrestres existían.Él dijo que los humanos no iban a ser capaces de establecer contacto con los extraterrestres a través de ondas de radio, pero a través del poder del pensamiento.

“La raza humana fue sin duda va a tener contacto directo con los extranjeros en los próximos 10 a 15 años”, dijo.

“Los extraterrestres son críticos de la conducta inmoral de la gente en referencia a la interferencia de los humanos en los procesos de la naturaleza.”

La publicación de los investigadores del BAS informe relativo a la comunicación con los extranjeros viene en medio de una controversia sobre el papel, la viabilidad, y la reforma de la Academia Búlgara de Ciencias.La semana pasada dar lugar a un acalorado debate entre el Ministro de Finanzas de Bulgaria, Simeon Djankov, y el Presidente Georgi Parvanov.

Fuente Original http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/6650677/Aliens-already-exist-on-earth-Bulgarian-scientists-claim.html



“Los extranjeros están alrededor de nosotros, y nos están mirando todo el tiempo,” el Sr. Filipov dijo a los medios búlgaros.

El trabajo en descifrar un complejo conjunto de símbolos que se les envió está en marcha. Los científicos Búlgaros del Instituto de Investigación, dicen alegar,  que los “extranjeros” están respondiendo a 30 preguntas formuladas por ellos.

Seguir…

You may have noticed an increased chill in the air since Friday as, over the last week, global warming has finally been exposed as an elaborate hoax orchestrated within the innately Machiavellian halls of the University of Anglia. At least, that’s what right-wing commentators would have you believe following the revelation of hacked emails from leading climatologists. In reality, and despite the bitter cold, climate change continues to devastate lives and 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years in the past 150 years.

Unexpected as the sceptics seizure of what scant controversy exists is, I was surprised by the rabidity of The Telegraph’s James Delingpole. Even the great arch-hatemonger Melanie Phillips’ responded with hyena-like caution

In Delingpole’s latest mocking piece he manages to both research much of the ‘liberal’ and scientific responses to the ’scandal’ while ignoring entirely what they have to say. He uses the frustratingly common tactic employed by those of his ilk (read: cunts) to pepper the post with no facts or arguments, preferring quotes followed by sarcastic comments.

Subsequently, he plucks fifteen words from a Guardian article, ignoring the other 1,023 (most of which take the edge off the sceptics’ cries about a smoking gun), to persist with the suggestion that these emails will somehow end the global warming debate (they won’t). If I was to take James’ lead and pick only a handful of words to share from this article, they’d probably be the following:

“The revelations did not alter the huge body of evidence from a variety of scientific fields that supports the conclusion that modern climate change is caused largely by human activity.”

A most salient point was made by RealClimate.org; a blog written by climate scientists, some of whom were among those who had their emails hacked. With the quote below however, we can forgive the obvious partiality as everything said is supported by 160mb worth of private emails never intended for public scrutiny.

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

And that’s the point, really. The emails would only truly vindicate the climate change deniers if the following conditions were fulfilled:

1. Evidence of a hidden agenda proving climate scientists are working as part of a global conspiracy seeking a) money, b) power, or c) a new socialist, hippy, vegetarian world order.

2. The science behind the evidence of anthropogenic climate change relied solely on data gathered by the few scientists involved.

Unfortunately, as can be guessed by anyone with any sense, the worldwide consensus on climate change is based on more than tree rings and ice cores (average global temperature being an obvious one along with shrinkage of the ice caps) and not even the most blinded, fanatical and mentally unstable deniers are unable to distort the content of the emails to an extent that convincingly suggests a worldwide conspiracy (not that people wouldn’t still try…). This means I’m still liable to trust scientists and their data. As David Aaronovitch writes for The Times:

It is, of course, very hard for the lay-person such as you or me — or him [referring to AGW sceptic Lord Lawson] — to come to a scientific view about climate change. It seems prudent to note that the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion and peer-reviewed studies in the climate field do agree on the cause and nature of global warming. They also tend to agree, incidentally, that not cutting carbon emissions, let alone allowing them to grow, is likely to have a whole series of deleterious effects (to say the very least) upon our planet.

If there was anything seriously ropey going on behind the scenes with global warming (denier scepticism seems to be based on a genuine belief that this is a global conspiracy to destroy capitalism, crush freedom and impose a totalitarian, socialist global government) the hacking of over 10 years worth of private emails between people described as ‘leading climate change scientists’ should have revealed it. They don’t. The emails show normal people writing casually (sometimes, I’m sure they would say, regrettably) and displaying a clear passion for their work, conviction about what they do and a tangible fear of sceptics out to derail their efforts (In light of this event, I’m reminded of a Lord of the Rings quote… Aragorn: “Are you frightened?” Frodo: “Yes.” Aragorn: “Not nearly frightened enough. I know what hunts you”).

With this in mind, this scandal, while it’s sure to embarrass some of those involved, actually serves to offer more evidence (if more was needed) against the far-right’s claims to a hidden climate change agenda. Next time a sceptic confronts you with any conspiracy nonsense, point to the emails as evidence to the contrary and tell your climate change denying friend to fuck off.

+++ Apologies for the lack of blogging this month: there are busy times, there are less busy times, and I’ve had the former for the last few weeks +++

Yes, that’s right, my Oxford college’s JCR has finished off the 2009 committee session with a set of light-hearted motions in the final General Meeting of the term, faithfully minuted by me in my function as outgoing JCR Secretary, one of which involved the renaming of the JCR to ‘Gryffindor’ from the Harry Potter books and films, as well as the equivalent renaming of Christchurch College to ‘Slytherin’, Merton to ‘Ravenclaw’ and St Hugh’s to ‘Hufflepuff’.

The Cherwell (Oxford’s independent student newspaper) broke the news first, followed by the Telegraph and now the BBC. It really is going national! I wonder how long it is until (a) it gets brought up in PMQs or (b) someone from Warner Brothers complains that we’re in breach of copyright…

Just to clarify: the motion is only, and can only ever have been, a bit of humour to lighten up the end of a JCR session in which a lot of serious and unwieldy constitutional reforms were pushed through. To actually rename the JCR we would have to rename Magdalen College itself – and the fellows almost certainly wouldn’t allow that, however amusing it would be. The copyright issues would only be the first of a whole host of obstacles that would prevent this gentle whimsy from becoming legal, binding reality.

For The Telegraph

Taylor Swift is walking right down the middle of Wembley Arena – no mean feat considering that row upon row of hysterical fans stand between the American country pop star and the front. A couple of bouncers help her through while she turns this way and that in a knee-length blue dress and cowboy boots, hugging and thanking as many people as she can. If Kanye West attempted to crash onto the stage right now, as he did in the middle of Swift’s acceptance speech at the recent MTV awards, he’d likely be torn to shreds by thousands of tiny pink fingernails.

Finally back onstage she waits – little pink mouth agog, eyebrows habitually arched – while her adoring audience scream for nigh on ten minutes. There are 12,500 people (mostly young girls) in attendance tonight, a figure not far off the £13,000 Swift donated to Children In Need live on British television just three days earlier. Between then and now she has appeared in LA via satellite to accept no less than five American Music Awards, beating both Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga to artist of the year.

Though Swift only broke through in the UK this year with her second album Fearless, her global album sales already exceed 10 million, and she performs with the steady confidence of a superstar. Still just nineteen, she glows with youth, tossing her platinum blonde curls and carrying her lanky frame with practised grace, taking care to high-five the VIP fans flanking the stage every time she passes. This two-hour show is impressive, high-energy stuff – full of costume changes, set pieces and dance routines.

Miley Cyrus, that other current American teen sensation, appears in an opening video montage to particularly amplified screaming and we are reminded that though Cyrus and Swift are both ruthlessly marketed to young teenage girls – perhaps the last mass record buying audience – Swift is not part of the clique of pin-ups who have emerged from the Disney TV shows High School Musical and Hannah Montana. Rather, this is the girl who was so determined to be a singer that at the age of 11 she was handing out demos in Nashville, hundreds of miles from her home in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. She writes nearly everything she sings (call it country, but this is pure pop) and can carry the whole arena even without her seven-piece backing band, playing a customised guitar with remarkable skill.

Her secret’s not her talent – she can write, but her vocals often err on the flat side – yet Swift is the very opposite of a diva: self-made, grateful, unpretentious and hardworking. She’s every young girl’s best friend, and judging by the noise they’re making tonight, Swift’s got a fair few friends to her name.