>> ^arvana:
Not sure where this is, but my guess would be the Coastal Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. I've spent a lot of time hiking those mountains, and this looks exactly like that terrain.


Spot on. This comment sais it is Mount Fromme.

Unfortunately a dupe of this clip:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Mountain-bike-downhill-run-filmed-from-helmet-cam

Not sure where this is, but my guess would be the Coastal Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. I've spent a lot of time hiking those mountains, and this looks exactly like that terrain.

Interesting. #1 was proposed by Al Gore in 2000. #3 has been proposed since Carter (and likely before that). #2 he's got partial support from Democrats on -- oil companies should drill on the leases they already hold, before seeking new lands in areas that have been restricted for environmental reasons.

Too bad the slogan is "drill here, drill now", kinda gives me the impression he's just interested in the Outer Coastal Shelf (OCS) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The shale oil thing is still a non-starter. It's not been economically viable to extract, provides a low EROI (Energy Return-On-Investment), and the process is very detrimental to the environment. It might now be profitable for companies to exploit it, but as a method of reducing price, it's fundamentally flawed, because it's so expensive to extract.

Why not make it "Invest now for the future", and make the development of alternatives the primary thrust? Even if we start tomorrow, OCS oil wells would take 7-10 years to come online, and the amount gained would be trivial.

The only true path to energy independence is with alternatives, focusing primarily on oil supply just kicks the can down the road.

If we nationalized the oil reserves, and then sought reserves that could meet our demand, the strategy would make sense. Something tells me that's not what Newt's suggesting. Without doing that, we'd have to increase global supply to exceed global demand for the foreseeable future, and we just don't have that kind of supply within our borders, period.

So, as far as I've understood, they are essentially creating energy by cooling the warm upper waterlayer, and heating the lower waterlayer.

As charliem pointed out, the climatic effect of this has to be thoroughly studied before it is even partially viable. Isn't the climate of every coastal country severely dependent on the flow of the major warm and cool watercurrents? As well as most marine life migratory patterns?

Seems like a very dangerous force to mess with. I would by far prefer for the effort to be focused on nuclear- or sun-based alternatives.

>> ^jwray:
Even if all this is true it doesn't acquit CO2 emissions from possibly hastening the return to the next 22C plateau (during which there would be no polar ice caps). Residents of low-lying coastal areas need to move inland before that happens but it may be hundreds or thousands of years.



So I shouldn't go for that downtown Charleston property I've always dreamed about retiring in eh?

Even if all this is true it doesn't acquit CO2 emissions from possibly hastening the return to the next 22C plateau (during which there would be no polar ice caps). Residents of low-lying coastal areas need to move inland before that happens but it may be hundreds or thousands of years.

Sup. I'm Jim. I'm a lifelong New Yorker (26 full years) and just finished my undergrad at Hunter College, majoring in Latin and minoring in Physical Anthropology. My battle with college raged for eight years, and I have to say to all doubters and those living in fear: fuck what your parents (and others) say and do it your way. I got into the grad school of my dreams (in Biological Anthropology), and have enough perspective now on what's important that I'm deferring admission for a year so I can go live and teach English as a second language in Taipei, Taiwan.

I travel a lot. It started with a month-long humanitarian trip to rural Kenya when I was 14, digging irrigation trenches in Kondo, Kenya (near Thika) with the Ridgewood, New Jersey, YWCA. That experience affected me deeply, organically engendering in me the staunch idea that race is total bullshit, and I am addicted to constantly proving myself right (also, it might be noted that I was raised by a Jamaican woman whom I loved more than my own mother--I'm of mixed European descent). My latest jaunt was last summer to coastal Ecuador, where I attended an archaeological field school, and where I met my girlfriend. We're going to Peru at the end of this month (I hear they're finally closing Machu Picchu pretty soon due to foot traffic erosion of the ruins), and we'll have less than ten days state-side before we go off together to Taiwan.

VideoSift and science mags are pretty much the only things that I use these here intertubes for. I am a pretty staunch atheist, but my particular brand of atheism has many facets, as I believe every individual's brand of religiousness/spirituality has.

I'm not sure what's going to happen when I get back from Taiwan; I might go to grad school and support myself by teaching high school biology, or I might get my finances in order and check right out of this crazy-ass America hotel. My girl and I are researching what it would take to open a hostel in South America and all the costs associated. But that's just the latest pipe-dream.

K, that's enough about me. Catch y'all on the sift waves!

Ah, classic cartoon cheese. The heroes and villians talking to themselves and stating the obvious. Aquaman attempting to swing an ancor around underwater for momentum while its drawn completely straight. Aquaman suddenly appearing in the submarine. Aquaman stopping a small fire by wiping out every coastal city in the western hemisphere. They just don't make cartoons like that anymore.

The ultra cheese and uselessness of Aquaman got me thinking of some other worthless heroes that should be thrown into the Justice League cartoons. They need to tap into Section 8. This includes what could even possibly be Dag's favorite hero, the Defenestrator.

Sixpack: Team leader, whose special ability is grotesque drunkenness and beating villains with broken-off liquor bottles.

Bueno Excelente: An obese, sweaty, and bald Latino in an overcoat who "defeats evil with the power of perversion." Generally, the only thing he says will be "Bueno", often preceded by a creepy chuckle. It is strongly implied that he violated Kyle Rayner in some way [2].

The Defenestrator: A large, burly man in a denim jacket, black sunglasses, with black hair who obsessively carries around a window through which he forcefully throws criminals and the occasional unlucky policeman. His assaults on police officers landed him in Arkham Asylum.

Dogwelder: A thin, silent man in a welder's mask who spot welds dead canines to evildoers, resulting in extreme burns and general horror. The question of how exactly one can weld a flesh and blood animal to a person is not answered by the series.

Friendly Fire: A large, hapless man in a red cowl, Friendly Fire would easily be the most powerful of Section 8's heroes if he were to shoot anything other than allies with the potent bolts of energy he fires from his hands.

Jean de Baton-Baton: A bizarrely gaunt walking French caricature who defeats enemies with "the power of Frenchness," as expressed by savage beatings with a baton and occasionally blinding others with rings of garlic and onions.

Flemgem: A sickly, thin, bald man in a green suit and a purple domino mask who has the ability to produce and expel large volumes of phlegm, which can blind, suffocate, or simply gross out evildoers.

Shakes: A thin, hairy vagrant who upsets people through stutters and an overall shaking palsy. He is a frequent, accidental target of Friendly Fire.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_(comics)

The fly trap is indigenous to the coastal bogs of North and South Carolina. I grew up in this area. When I was 5 I would hunt for them in the nearby forest. I kept trying to transplant them around the foundation of our house. I would water them and give them dead flies, not knowing they need live flies to stimulate the release of their digestive enzymes. No matter how much attention I paid them, they would wither and die. Anyhow, due to habitat destruction, they are endangered and protected.

Nice one, you coastal plains woman you.

I disagree with that, countless times in history various parties have pronouced the end of war due to intellectualism, idealism or economic factors yet war and the concept of enemies remained.

Yes ideally we should be able to differentiate between enemies as a populace and enemies as organizations, but we are fallible, and most do not see it that way. This is helped on by the administration that hopes to push forward a perpetual war, remember how ominously it would proclaim not just a war on terrorism but a wider clash of cultures between Islam and Christianity. Not helped at all by President Bush's constant usage of Judeo-Christian concepts in his speeches at the start of the war.

The majority of the population does not see the differentiation at all, most Americans have no seen foreigners unless you happen to live in multicultural cities and along the coastal areas. Further feelings of xenophobia abound, as well as racism, how many people have I seen fidget nervously on airplanes at the site of a Muslim wearing the dishdasha.

Popular culture does not shy away from these concepts, rather it utilizes them to build upon preconceived notions. The administration never says we are fighting against a particular person, we are always against Iran or North Korea acquiring nuclear material, as if the entire population of those countries is hell bent upon that singular issue. The wider contextualized story is never presented, such as the aspects of why such nations would choose to be so hostile to the US.

I do not believe that people are inherently evil or inherently good either, I believe people are inherently selfish, the concepts of good and evil are simply built upon by social influence most of the time, it is better to be good because of law individually, but the morality compass can sway either direction depending on how it would benefit your actions. People are far more motivated by fear then any other emotion. This is manifested in fear of Islam, fear of terrorism, fear of death and so on. Again factors used in manipulation of the masses.

I also disagree with your thinking that religion or philosophy is in any way the driving force behind the conflicts we witness today, those are merely facilitators of acquisition of power.

I recently read Ahmed Rashid's Taliban, which chronicled the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it was clear that the Islam created was a fallacy, it wasn't Islam more as it was Pushtan tribal traditions coated around an Islamic undertones, stripped of over 2000 years of Islamic scholarship to something totally alien. This is not real Islam as its world participators know it but a sabotaged form of it.

I would agree that wealth dissipates war but not entirely, consider Saudi Arabia, a country that is the largest exporter of Oil, yet most of its population lives in utter subjugation due to a fundamentalist strict Wahhabi version of Islam that sustains the Saudi Royal family in power and in control of the oil resources while rich its wealth does not reach most of its population who are then converted to anti-western sentiment by the government controlled religious schools who preach it so that criticism of the Royal family never flourishes. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. But there is a benefit to the US and Saudi Arabia of this going on, because the US assures defense and support despite a brutal and authoritarian regime, SA assures the supply of oil and foreign funds to the US.

This is a case of economic development still fostering conflict in the future, the same is for the Western actions when it comes to dealing with nations like Iran and North Korea, mainly by marginalizing them and cutting them off from economic development by way of sanctions.

Globalism might assure more reasons not to commit to war in the future, but it will not prevent it, because war is not derived from ideology but from power, western capitalism depends on a imbalance of power to thrive and if the scales are tipped in the favor of power in the hands of one nation over others it will lead to eventual conflict.

Hi and thanks for your kind replies.

I am working on a documentary film on those much maligned and misunderstood subjects of truth and reality.
It will look at the history and evolution of philosophy and science since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers.
While doing that I will make about 20 short videos on the central subjects of physics and philosophy. So I look forward to having them sifted and getting feedback.
My partner Karene works on the sexuality section of our philosophy site. We are going to make videos on our 18 main subject pages from the sex study she is doing. Should be completed over next 3 months.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/sex/

And we have just spent $15,000 dollars on latest film quality digital video camera (plus accessories.). Looks really cool - but i don't get it till early January.

http://www.dvuser.co.uk/content.php?CID=171

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/film-screenplays/philosophy-movies-on-truth-reality.htm

Karene and I live on 650 acres of bush on the South West Coast of Australia - it is absolutely beautiful here - big Karri forests, Jarrah, peppermints, lovely coastal heath and mix of sandy white beaches, limestone cliffs and granite outcrops.
I love nature - and just hate the way humanity is destroying it! So that is my ultimate motive - to help save Nature as a way of saving humanity. And I believe that knowing the truth about things is the best foundation (yes, I am one of those odd natural philosophers - we spend our time reading thinking and writing on truth and reality).

This was going to be a short reply - became a bit of a polemic. Sorry. Tis meant kindly and with thanks,
Cosmic cheers,
Geoff Haselhurst

Summary:
A year of coastal erosion on "Lines of Defence".

Go to http://www.ifever.org.uk for
* Higher quality videos
* More details on project
* Full image archive

Project Details:
"Lines of Defence", when installed on 15th January 2005, consisted of 38 flags in five lines, each one meter apart, positioned on the eroding cliffs 60 m. south of Martello Tower W, East Lane, Bawdsey, Suffolk.

Letters on the flags spelled out SUBMISSION IS ADVANCING AT A FRIGHTFUL SPEED, a text sourced by Simon Frazer for its reference to climate change and the essentially fearful reaction which prompts people to go to war.

A camera was positioned at Martello Tower W, looking south towards the harbours of Felixstowe and Harwich. The tower is less than 10 m. away from the cliff's edge and is the focus of a local campaign to fund sea defences. The camera recorded the progress of the work by taking one image every 15 minutes from 15th January 2005 to 15th January 2006.

The final flag fell from the cliff on 16th September 2005; making the loss of land 14 metres in the first 8 months of 2005. At this point along the coast a total of 17 metres eroded in one full year. To mark this spot one white flag was placed 17 metres from the cliff's edge on 6th January 2006.

That's a simplistic argument to make, that Russians 'tried' democracy and it failed. The fact is that Russian's never got to experience democracy at all, with the coming of Yeltsin into power the centralized market system was thrown out overnight for a capitalist economy, workers were issued shares for the companies they worked in, the Russian currency collapsed, pensions were stopped, all due to western economists (who arrived in droves) believing that the spirit of entrepreneurship would suddenly infect the souls of people who lived under communist rule for over 60 years.

But what happened was that some individuals within that system started buying out the shares from the workers who needed to sustain themselves at that point, seizing massive control of various industries, thus creating the oligarchs. The same people who now own various football clubs in the UK.

The people as a whole felt robbed, they blamed democracy for that, failing to see how the economic reforms worked against them, instead of blaming the transition many more people assumed it was democracy that was at fault. What should have been a long term phased switch into a market economy like the one seen with China was rushed within the space of a few years, incomes and welfare of course fell. Look at how gradually China introduced free market zones, by cordoning them off to small regions, then allowed foreign direct investment there. The whole motto of their capital development was "import 1st product, assemble 2nd product, manufacture 3rd product".

The current Putin government is full of KGB cronies who have muscled their way into acquisition of the most important sectors of the economy, most significant of them being the oil sector, which is wholly responsible for the economic boom in Russia. The war in Iraq and possible war with Iran has seen the Oil price soar year on year since 2000 and Putin's coming into power and the economic boom in Russia, that's not coincidental. This is why Putin visited Iran, instability in the Middle East sustains the high oil price and Russia's development.

Putin did give something to the Russians, and that is pride in their nation, a seeming return to the heyday of the Soviet Union with it's planting of flags in the Arctic, stance against the American government and nuclear armed patrols that hark back to the Cold War era. But it also came with government control of oil resources, elimination of civil rights, elimination of freedom of press, state control of media, needless military expansionism, Byzantine rule of government, political oppression through assassination of those who oppose the government.

Just this past month he imposed a collective freeze on food prices until after the elections sometime in January, this was done so as to keep the appearance to Russia's poor that the economy was doing well when in reality food prices across the world are rising, once elections are over they can remove the freeze.

A good article on "Why Putin Wins" is Sergei Kovalev's article , who gives a realistic breakdown of Russia as it is now and what is its future. As Scott Horton says in "What Putin Wants":

The challenge will be for America more than for Russia. In America, there is still a hope that the democratic process can work to effect a rollback of creeping authoritarianism and a restoration of the beacon of hope that the land once held up to the world. In Russia, all sight of that beacon is lost.

Your argument that non-democratic states like Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offer a higher standard of living is ridiculous, most of the population lives in poverty as the wealth is concentrated in the Royal family and even then only through the continual oil production, almost everything it produces is sustain through government subsidization, much more of its products are simply imported. Jordan differs because they possesses a technocrat King who believes in development, that doesn't mean tomorrow a tyrant will take power.

And am sorry but slave like hours on minimal wage for 90% of the population making Nike shoes does not translate into a higher standard living for the Chinese as a whole, not to mention that development is confined to the coastal areas, while inland China lives in poverty due to lack of investment and encroaching desert taking away valuable agricultural land. China possess an incredible amount of income disparity, firms are still mainly controlled by the Chinese government. It is true that there is slowly an emergence of a middle class, that is being educated abroad and not going back to mainland China, because opportunities in the west are much better.

The argument that ANY government policy has a potential to achieve strong economy is simplistic, the market system works because various agents start to develop products and services to supply a demand of other agents. That requires freedom of enterprise, the ability to freely form business solutions. That means reform laws that actively invite business activities to take place. Communism or centralized market economy does not lead to a strong economy because the demand and supply signals do not exist, the government decides what is important to produce and does it. It leads to a mis balance and a concentration of power in the hands of the few, this is why the USSR failed, and why China started to put in place free market reforms in the 80s. States in the Middle East still sustain their perverse development through oil money, without which all of them would quite realistically fail, as they are overly reliant on foreign labor and are not actively developing their skilled labor force, not to mention the sheer amount of corruption that occurs between those in high office and citizens.

Your mention of a few democratic states that are in poor shapes is simplistic again, they are not failures of democracy but rather a lack of proper reforms and rule. Brazil is doing rather well now actually even though government corruption is still rife as is political instability. Nepal is constitutional monarchy, where the King has assumed emergency powers and holds all executive power so I have no idea why you lumped it in there. Albania on the other hand has had successive government instability with the neighboring war, socialist, democratic governments in succession, the economy however is steadily developing even though stability has been hard to attain since 1990.

The idea behind democracy is that citizens can have a say in where their nation is heading, being elected to government doesn't make saints out of people where they suddenly selflessly try to achieve economy development for the people as a whole. The African nations where strong armed authoritative ruler one after the other prove this, as does Hugo Chavez who after winning the trust of the poor is now concentrating all executive power under his own control, as does Iran where Mahmoud's promises to the poor for oil revenue sharing amounted to nothing but continuous tensions and sanctions from the west.

I think you need to further broaden your understanding of the complexities of government rule and policy with regards to economic development as they are rather basic right now.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

My point was more that because the belief systems on the coasts and the middle are so different- a "one size fits all" federal government doesn't work. A "loose confederation" is more appropriate. We can't avoid the fact that the majority of Kansas voter want ID in the classroom, that's their problem - not Oregon's.

In reply to this comment by guessandcheck:
In reply to this comment by dag:

...IMHO this is not a bad thing. The disharmony between the coastal states and "Jesustan" in the middle, highlights that the US is made up of regions where the majority have very little in common with each other.

Kansas wants to teach Intelligent Design in the classroom? OK, fine. Thank Darwin, I'm from the Republic of California.

no, we need a federal government that keeps kansas from doing this kind of thing. i'm from iowa and was very upset that our highschool(in 2000 mind you)let christian church youth ministers in to eat lunch with the students and hand out free snacks to people that would sit with them. there's no reason religion belongs in our schools. students have the right to their own beleifs, but religion should be taught in a classical lit class and not as a science. the midwest needs some outer influence to keep it from being absorbed into the religious abyss, for the sake of the minority that can't abandon their homes for a coast (though most want too ).