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Chinese scientists of the Academy of Meteorological Sciences, are sounding the alarm over the rising temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau . Over the last 30-years, as temperatures have risen at a steady clip of 0.42 degrees Celsius every year, the plateau has been losing an average of 131.4 square kilometres annually. The loss of more of the glaciers is causing temperatures to soar to record highs in China, resulting in thousands of deaths, droughts, floods and major economic losses. The plateau glaciers are also the mountainous source for some of the mighty rivers of China -- the Yellow, Yangtze, the Indus and other rivers -- which provide water to hundreds of millions of Chinese. As the glaciers disappear, scientists are warning that these rivers, some of the longest in the world, may also dry up, and are predicting major disasters by the end of this century. That's global warming for you. Will the Chinese react to this warning with good sense? I'm holding out h

New York Times is carrying an op-ed by James Bamford, a journalist who writes about US intelligence agencies, which argues that Bush is not above the law. On August 17, 2006, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the US District Court in Detroit, ruled in a case brought by the ACLU, that Bush had "undisputedly violated" the US constitution, statutory law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in authorizing the tapping of phones and email of Americans without warrant. The problem of course, was there was no consequence. Nothing happened. There was no mea culpa from Bush. Justice wasn't served. Justice didn't even do a little jiggle in response. It was all conveniently ignored. As a result, a huge disservice was done to Americans and America. The powers that were in Congress last year, the Republicans, in effect, sanctioned the abuse of America by one of their own by their inaction. So what does this all mean? Well, Judge Taylor commented that, “there are no

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The Beast is an interesting anti-war movie. It tells the story of a small band of Mujahadeen fighters hunting a Russian tank in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation. The tank, initially part of a larger tank group, had just erupted in a small Afghanistan village, hunting Mujahadeen fighters. The result is a decimated village, with few survivors, and hardly any Mujahadeen casualties. When the village fighters return to view the aftermath, they vow revenge, and set out across the desert in pursuit of the tank -- the one in question, that strays from the others in its group. In the tank, the commander, Daskal (played by George Dzundza), slowly descends into madness. He trusts no one, not even his crew. The tank driver, Koverchenko (played by Jason Patric), reads Daskal like a book, and knows what is coming can't be good. When Daskal turns on his crew, Koverchenko finds himself abandoned -- left for dead, chained against a rock in the desert. Here'

On June 24, 1982, on British Airways flight 009 , the pilot came on the plane's speakers to announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." An understatement to be sure. What followed is not what you would expect. There was no panic on board. Everyone remained calm. The flight attendants moved some passengers around so they could be sitting beside someone. With no engines, there was only one predictable outcome for the flight which was 10,000 km over the sea, on its way to New Zealand. The engine had caught fire and died, then the plane went into freefall -- a freefall that would last about 30-minutes before hitting water. With no future in sight, a miracle occurred. To save the passengers from oxygen starvation, the captain dropped the plane 6,000ft in one minute -- and the engines came alive.

My wife and I went out a couple of weekends ago, when we first had a little accumulation of snow. Worried that we may not get much more this winter, we took the cameras to record the snowfall. It's a good thing there weren't too many people out at the local park we were at, cause we were being just silly. Check out more from the shoot at my Webshots gallery .

The situation in Iraq is one that demands more blood before there's resolution. Resolution will not come from a clear and decisive victory, rather, it will come from sheer exhaustion. There has to come a time eventually, when people will just grow tired to killing each other, and the killing will stop. We're at a fork on the path to end the strife. On road leads to more US troop deployment, the other to complete withdrawal from the region. The road to more US troop deployment is the one that the Bush Administration seems to have accepted. Bush has declared that Congress be damn, he's the decision maker, and no matter what Congress does with what legislation, as the commander-in-chief, he's going to send more GIs into the quagmire. To complicate matters, the Pentagon has recently increased its military presence in the Persian Gulf by sending more warships and fighter jets – and Bush has authorized the ground troops to engage Syrians and Iranians in Iraq who are lending

In an interview with CNN , Dick Cheney summed up the-giving-the-finger response to Americans and Congress' resolution opposing more US troops for Iraq, with just a few words: "It won't stop us." That about sums up the attitude of the Bush administration's reign over the American empire. Sickening.

BusinessWeek is carrying an article on "the power of retribution, spite, and loathing in the world of business" -- and unfortunately, it's not the lurid Shakespearean stuff you'd really enjoy reading -- it is a business magazine after all -- but there is enough examples of how payback is dished out in the c-suite -- enough to make those of us cubicle warriors rub our hands in glee. Ahh ... revenge ... getting even, or seeing just retribution being meted to the deserved gives us such satisfaction. It is biologically wired into us to feel real good when someone who has done us wrong, gets what's coming to them. It is a response to perceived injustices -- whether purposeful, or indirect. At the executive level, emotional responses are just as common as they are around the office, in the classroom, on the factory floor or in the playground. It doesn't matter how mature we are, the response to perceived injustices is universal. While we no longer go for the

It's official -- the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) have moved the Doomsday Clock to five minutes to midnight, declaring that we now "stand at the brink of a second nuclear age" -- as evidenced by North Korea's nuclear weapons test, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US renewed interest in the military utility of nuclear weapons, and the existence of large nuclear arsenal in the US and Russia. For the first time, the BAS have also concluded that, "the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons." The course of the clock however can change, but "will depend on humanity’s ability to think in new ways about how to cooperate to achieve common goals." The BAS calls on everyone to engage in dialogue to bring action towards the fight against nuclear proliferation and the climate change. Specifically, the BAS sites major progress in the following areas would make the world a safer place: The US and Russia re

A couple of miners in some forsaken small town discover some white goo bubbling out of the ground. Being the experimental sort, they immediately stick their fingers in it and take it straight to their mouths for a taste. Turns out the stuff actually tastes pretty good, and once you get a taste for it, you crave more and more and more. It turns out that the stuff also does something weird with people's brains -- mind control -- making people who've taken the stuff wanting to see others do likewise so the whole world can be taken over by the stuff . In short order, the miners who discovered the stuff , make a hostile takeover of Chocolate Chip Charlie's business, hire a marketing genius to sell their wonder-goo, and partner with an unethical distributor to get the stuff out to the masses. As America succumbs to the stuff being sold as an ice cream/yogurt alternative, it's up to our heroes who know something is wrong with the stuff to save

The Orthodox Christian Church is going crazy over some believers in the twelve gods of ancient Greece, who are trying to stage a ceremony at the Temple of Zeus . The religion got the official recognition from the Greek courts last year and was allowed last year to perform a religious ceremony at the Temple of Hephaestus. This week, the followers of the Olympians wished to hold a ceremony to pray for international peace. Father Efstathios Kollas of Othordox Christian Church is getting his robes in a knot however. He has described the followers of the Olympic gods as a "handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past." Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Burma 's military government has enlisted the Buddhist monks in the country to systematically wipe out Christianity specifically -- all other religions, and any ethnicity that exist in the country today. The Burmese government is seeking uniformity in the population. Everyone must speak Burmese and practice the Buddhist religion. Looks like the country is in dire need of a Chinese invasion.

In the fall of 2006, the US quietly released an unclassified document summarizing their national space policy [PDF]. In the document, the Bush Administration provides some directional statements which alarmingly points to their goal of un-tethering the military to utilize space as a platform for national security activities. The United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity. Consistent with this principle, "peaceful purposes" allow U.S. defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests; The United States considers space systems to have the rights of passage through and operations in space without interference. Consistent with this principle, the United States will view purposeful interference with its space systems as an infringement on its rights; The United States considers space capabilities -- including the ground and space segments and supportin

Dr. Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel has come out with hash criticism of her peers in the weather business, on her blog. Cullen suggested that climate change skeptics who are meteorologists should lose their seal of approval from the American Meteorological Society because they are denouncing a scientific fact -- that the rapid climate change we've been experiencing in recent times, is a direct result of human activities on the planet. Meteorologists are in the powerful position of being in everyone's living rooms on the issue of climate change, and using that position to evangelize a political position is irresponsible. Not surprisingly, there are many who are now willing to lynch Cullen. Just check out her blog. It's puerile that what was a quiet scientific debate in the past decades, has turned into a public battle in recent times. Scientific progress on issues usually have dispute, as evidence is gathered, analyzed, interpreted and published. The process open

Wired is running a story on how Google edged out Yahoo in the search game, and now has nearly 70% of the search advertising market, while Yahoo continues to lose ground and now sits under 25%. Back in 2002, when Google was only a fledgling giant, and two years before it went public, Yahoo made an offer to buy Google -- for $3 billion. Google refused to sell. Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, wasn't about to offer the entire valuation of Yahoo to get Google, as his staff was advising. That would have been a merger. Instead, Semel decided he was going to buy competing technology and go against Google and trash them at their game. As history now tells us, Yahoo didn't quite make it, and today, Google is a giant, valued at $147 billion. The story is a great read.

Alexander Manu of the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, gave a talk titled, The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy at the UofT Rotman School of Management this evening. The talk was informative, thought provoking and entertaining. Synopsis: Companies constantly present technological developments -- new materials, new mechanisms, and new ways to enhance existing products and services. Yet these seldom lead to truly new ideas. Why? Humans are all born with imaginative instincts, but in the interest of efficient and predictable productivity, institutions such as schools and businesses routinely hinder those impulses. The most innovative products and services, author Alexander Manu argues, arise out of behaviours of play -- the ability to imagine, without limits, the question "What if ...?" Manu was pushing his latest book, The Imagination Challenge . As suggested by the

HD DVD discs, in a format war with Blu-ray discs, has just taken a hit from the pirates. A copy of the HD DVD version of Serenity, has hit the BitTorrent network -- all 19GBs of it. HD DVD was developed for greater capacity and higher resolution movies, but also to enforce studio control on how content is viewed by their customers. DRM protects the audio and video content of HD DVD discs, and the studios are looking to develop region encoding for dics -- the make it so that discs purchased in North America for instance, won't play on players in Europe. It's all about control. Enter muslix64 and BackupHDDVD, which provides a process to decrypt HD DVD encryption, as long as the decryption keys are available. After muslix64 posted the BackupHDDVD utility on Dec. 26, last year, it only took a few weeks before ways of obtaining HD DVD keys were being revealed. So, it should come as no surprise that someone has ripped an HD DVD movie and made it available via BitTorrent. I

Every wanted to just take your pants off on the subway and ride the car just in your underwear? Me neither. But there are some people who will go for such a thing. Improv Everywhere organized just such an event recently, in NY City, on the 6 line subway. The event is an annual event that has been running since 2002, and while breaking no laws, the partici pants regularly get busted for going public in just their underwear, boxers, or whatever. Why they do it? Because.

Scott Aaronson , a postdoc at the University of Waterloo, teaches a class on the history of quantum computing -- starting from time of Democritus -- or so the course title claims. He has made his lecture notes available online, and lecture 9 provides an interesting perspective on quantum mechanics, that most of us who took QM, may not have encountered previously. I don't know about you, but if you were like me and had the joy of studying QM, you may have been thrilled to have been part of that fine class of students who could boast about being in QM, while at the same time, secretly harbouring doubts -- maybe the whole thing was just a joke physicists were playing on the world. Aaronson sets out the make it all clear to the masses -- well, mathematicians and computer scientists anyway -- by doing something quite unremarkable -- something I've always wondered about. Do you remember how you were taught science? You were taught it the way it was historically developed -- inc

Comet McNaught , the brightest comet to fly into the inner solar system in the past forty years is putting on quite the show -- for those who can see it. McNaught, appearing low in the horizon, can be seen in the eastern sky at dawn and the western sky at dusk. It was visible last week to those of us in the northern hemisphere, and this week, has bowed out to be visible to those in the southern hemisphere. During its close encounter with the Sun, McNaught became visible to the naked eye during the day. McNaught was discovered last year, on August 7, by Robert McNaught. The animation above was taken by the LASCO C3 camera, on board the SOHO space craft currently orbiting the Sun. Updated: January 19, 2006 Here's are some cool photographs of Comet McNaught. The second was taken by Jamie Newman of Papakura, Auckland, New Zealand, yesterday. It's amazing that the comet with such an amazing tail can be seen in daylight, over a city. The first was tak

The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago since 1947, is set to move closer to midnight this week. The clock is symbolic of the humanity's vulnerability to destruction by nuclear war or other threats. The initial setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight, to reflect the state of the world due the threat of the cold war. It has since moved back and forth seventeen times in response to the vulnerability of the world to nuclear war. The clock was last moved in 2002, forward by two minutes, and now sits at seven minutes to midnight. On Wednesday, January 17th, at two events -- one in Washington, DC, and the other in London -- the clock will moved. The movement reflects the growing concern the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have over the escalating threat of nuclear weapons in the second nuclear age . The US and Russia continue to wield launch-ready nuclear ars

University of Calgary professor, Piers Steel, has published a paper on procrastination in American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin , in which he has defined procrastination in mathematical terms. The equation explains what Steel terms as Temporal Motivational Theory, and is defined as: Utility = E x V / ΓD, where Utility is the desirability of the task; E is the expectancy a person has of completing a task; V is the value of completing the task; Γ is the immediacy or availability of the task; and D is the person's sensitivity to delay. Steel concluded that procrastinators have less confidence in themselves and don't expect they can actually complete a task -- and unlike the advice of most self-help books, perfectionism is not the root of the problem. Steel found that perfectionists procrastinate less, they just worry about it a whole lot more than other people. Procrastinators are averse to work, impulsive, easily distracted and are not motivated to

The Plague , otherwise known as Clive Barker's The Plague , is a movie that capitalizes on the zombie resurgence. Barker served as a producer of the movie, and that was about it. Sticking his name on it is bit of marketing spin, but it did little to help this movie make it to the theatres. The movie itself wasn't all that bad. The acting was OK for this sort of thing, and the cinematography was good. The premise was a battle of the generations, with a zombie twist to spice things up. Ten years ago, the story goes, children around the world were infected by a plague. Doctors know nothing about it, and have never found out what it was that infected the children. The infected children, all nine years old or younger, went into a coma. Since then, they've been cared for -- some at hospitals, in large wards -- some at home, by parents who still love them and are waiting for them to wake up. Fast forward to today, and all hell breaks loose when the

Ah, what cheap thrills b-movie horror poop can be. The Bone Snatcher is set in some desert somewhere -- filmed in South Africa -- where a monster is accidentally awaken by some diamond prospectors. There are characters, none of them really anything special. They're typical of this fare. There is the girl. There is the nerd. There is the crazy guy who breaks all the rules, acts first and may think later. And there is the superstitious one. They're all going to die so only the nerd and the girl will live to be happy ever after. Of course, that's going to take two hours. The monster is introduced when it's awaken in the desert and it immediately grabs one of the mine prospectors and strips him of his flesh. Another two quickly follows. Others are sent in to investigate, and in short order, finds two bodies and start hunting the third, believed to be a murderer. In no time, they find the third body, a slinking skeleton covered with a black

Al Gore just can't catch a break, even in the reality that's slowly dawning over America. Frosty Hardison , a parent with a child attending a Seattle area school, has complained to the school board, that: Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher. The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD. Frosty Hardison you see, believes the Earth is 14,000 years old, supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education. The school board in response, did the right thing. They've placed a moratorium on the film, as it represents a controversial issue. Any teacher wishing to show the film in school must also be ready to present the opposing view of what the film depicts. Controversial issue? What controversial issue? Every science body in the US accepts that climate change is

Everyday, it appears, the world gets more and more stupid. The latest stupidity comes from Quesnel, B.C., where Christian parents are complaining to the school board that has included the practice of yoga at school. Says the local paragon of enlightenment, Audrey Cummings: There's God and there's the devil, and the devil's not a gentleman. If you give him any kind of an opening, he will take that. The school board on the other hand, is introducing the yoga practice in an effort to combat childhood obesity. Children however, don't have to practice yoga. They can do other exercises, or remain close minded, fat, and Christian .

BuzzWhack has published their list of 13 "most fun" and "most dreadful" buzzwords of 2006. So, without much ado, here they are: Most Dreadful Most Fun leveraging our assets blamestorming mission-critical Death by Tweakage conversate BMWs information touchpoint muffin top synopsize clockroaches electronify plutoed price-optimized prairie dogging targeted completion date carbon-based error surgerize menoporsche relanguage adminisphere computerate deja poo critical path bobbleheading Professional Learning Community ringtone rage

I've seen an Inconvenient Truth a number of times. There are many people I know however, who've never seen it. So I've ordered a copy of the film for free. I would have otherwise bought the movie -- but I found the free offer something I just couldn't pass up. Share the Truth was created by Eric Pan of Santa Cruz, CA, and he's on a mission to make as many people as possible see the movie. So are, apparently, a lot of the visitors to his site. Visitors contribute money to Pan's cause, and in return, Pan ships free movies to anyone who requests one. Once I receive my free movie, I think I just might donate to the cause. This is one remarkable idea, and I think it could be used for so many other must see documentary films. If you haven't seen the movie, here's a great opportunity to see it -- for free. If you're like me, and you have seen it, request it for free, contribute to the cause, then like I plan on doing, make everyone you know watc

Take any four digit number, rearrange the digits so you have the largest possible number and the smallest. Subtract the smallest from the largest. Take the result, and likewise rearrange the digits to get the largest and smallest numbers. Again subtract the smallest from the largest. Continue doing so. At the most, but the seventh iteration of this operation, you will get the number 6174. If you rearrange 6174 to the largest and smallest and repeat the operation, you will get 6174. It doesn't matter which four digit number you start with, you will always end with 6174. 5200 - 0025 = 5175 7551 - 1557 = 5994 9954 - 4599 = 5355 5553 - 3555 = 1998 9981 - 1899 = 8082 8820 - 0288 = 8532 8532 - 2358 = 6174 7641 - 1467 = 6174 How weird is that? This was discovered by D.R. Kaprekar , an Indian mathematician in 1949.

The universe is huge . It's humongously huge. Hugely humongous too. This map of the neighbouring superclusters, shows what it looks like out to a distance of 1 billion light years. It may or may not be interesting to you. What should be interesting however, is that you're looking at is only 7 percent of the diameter of the entire visible universe. So what are you looking at? There are 100 superclusters in this image, of which there are 250,000 trillion stars. That's big! Colossally enormous in fact! If you look out to 14 billion light years, this is what the universe looks like [below]. And if you look really, really carefully, you will not see me waving from the centre of it.

Mr. Rogers was a good man. Not only did his Mister Rogers' Neighborhood television show entertained and educated children in North America, but the man himself was also a great advocate for the use of media by the general public, beyond the control of its creators. Mr. Rogers provided key testimony at the US Supreme Court, in support of the VCR, which was widely objected to by the entertainment industry, as they saw it as infringing on their copyright. His testimony was acknowledged by the Supreme Court decision in a footnote: Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it ... I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television li

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto was rated "R" for the violence and gore. It didn't have to be rated "R." But I suppose that Gibson wanted to convey the brutality of the Mayan empire. He did so quite successfully, although he didn't need to. The film would have been even more successful had he toned down the violence and gone for a "14A" rating. The movie could have been the impetus for a lot more dialogue on the history of the Mayans than it now will. Oh well. Apocalypto a simple story, set in the larger context of the decline of the Mayan empire and impending arrival of the Spaniards. The story follows Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood, as his village is raided by Mayan warriors in search of human sacrifices and slaves. Jaguar Paw's village is decimated, but his pregnant wife and young son, Turtle Run (I love the name) survive by staying hidden. Jaguar Paw with the surviving adults are taken to the Mayan city, where the men are to

Have a quick review of this list of the US playing war games in other countries. They all end in disaster. So much for foreign policy.

2006 is over, and the BBC's William Crawley would like to say goodbye to it by naming the person of the year 2006 to be none other than Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, the Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, was in everyone's face in 2006, denouncing religion as the most dangerous thing the human species ever invented, and pushing his latest book, the God Delusion . Like him or hate him -- and there are many that do both -- Dawkins has never wavered in his arguments, and his science fundamentalism was a welcome pebble in the sea of religious fundamentalism that has swept the world in the last few years. 2007 however isn't looking so good if you believe the results of this AP-AOL poll of how Americans feel about the new year. It's just short of the end of the world, with the doom and gloom over the war in Iraq, potential military draft and ... wait for it ... "25% anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ" in 2007. Seems like Dawkins ha