floccinaucinihilipilificate

Earth Day was yesterday. It was a day for me, to show respect. Respect for the planet we live on, and recognition of the fragile ecosystem that sustains human life. All that was asked to mark the occasion was to turn off non-essential lights for 1 hour. Drop electricity consumption for just an hour. That was all. So we gathered as a family in the living room, a couple of candles lit, and all the lights off. I even turned off the computer. Yes, I turned off the computer. Those that know me, know I never have the computer off. Last night, it was off. I shutdown. Apparently I was in the minority. At 8:15PM, I took the camera to the balcony to take a couple of shots at the condo across from us. I went back out at 9:15PM. The before and after are below. WTF people? Were these people simply unaware? Like our PM, dumb-ass Harper, didn't give a rat's ass? I'm at a loss. I don't comprehend. It was big in the newspapers. It was on TV. It was everywhere! W

South Park fans, rejoice. MTV Networks now has every South Park episode available online , uncensored, and for free. This is how media should be available to the masses. And you know what? People will still fork out money for the DVDs.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) symbol -- now universally known as the Peace symbol -- turns 50 this year. The symbol was designed for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC), by designer Gerald Holtom in 1958, to be used in a 50-mile Easter march from Trafalgar Square, London, to atomic weapons factory at Aldermaston. The symbol combines the semaphoric signals for the letters "N" and "D" -- representing "Nuclear Disarmament." From its adoption by CND, the symbol spread to the US, then around the world -- with CND never trademarking the symbol -- leaving it free for the world to use. 50 years ago, the symbol was created to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Today the symbol is universally recognized, though its power to provoke has diminished with the loss of the baby boomers idealism. Nuclear weapons has proliferated, and the world is now threatened by rogue states with nuclear enrichment programs; a new found inter

This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Researchers cut holes into the sides of cows and insert an cannula, which allows access to a live animals stomach. These holes are so big, you can actually see what's going on inside -- literally, reach into the stomach of a cow. Cows stomach have millions microbes that aid in digestion, and surprisingly, cannulated cows are usually the healthiest of the herd. You would think that walking around with a hole in your stomach would be bad for you, but apparently not. Some farmers apparently keep cannulated cows in their herd so they can serve as microbe donors to sick cows. Just bizarre. [Source: Oddity Central ]

So what exactly is wrong with anonymous free speech? If you're a public figure, especially in a position of power, anonymous critique is construed as an open, if faceless, assault. And with great power, usually comes great irresponsibility. Rather than welcome criticism as an opportunity for improvement -- a perspective that any public servant should take when facing heat from their constituents -- most counterattack. That is the case currently being played out in the backwater town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, where John Adams, an anonymous blogger is raining on the stupidity of public officials there. In response, the police chief, James Coan, is using city employees to play detective to unmask John Adams. Can we say misuse of public resources, folks? Apparently not, say Coan and his cohorts in government. The the police, the blogger "seems like an anti-government radical." Yes, criticizing the people who work for you is considered radical by some. WTF?

From Pew Research's Social Values Survey: Nearly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they mostly (14%) or completely (9%) agree that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries according to the most recent Pew Social Values Survey; those most likely to take this view include white men (30%), persons ages 18-29 (29%) and self-identified conservative Republicans (28%). You can find the details in the Pew Research's report, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 - Political Landscape More Favorable To Democrats . On a totally superficial level however, it seems like younger Americans are leaning more towards the values of Canadians.

Wikileaks has released an early drawing of the " Fat Man " bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in the closing of the second world war. The drawing had remained censored and not publicly available until this release. There's nothing secret about it, since the design has long been superseded.

Karen Kidd [PDF] from the University of New Brunswick has done something terrible -- she has poisoned a lake in North Ontario -- to prove a point. The point being, that what we flush down the toilet, or otherwise allow to pollute our water system, threatens to have a horrible repercussions down the food chain. Kidd, a ecotoxicologist purposely introduced estrogen into a lake in northern Ontario to test the effects on the lake. What her study revealed, was that while algae, bacteria and invertebrates weren't impacted, fishes were. Fishes with smaller body mass was first impacted, leading to the entire species dying off. The the larger fish -- and even the larger fish -- a combination of declining food source, and estrogen poisoning. Estrogen introduced to the lake caused fishes to mature slower; males to become feminized, to the point where sperm production ceased, and egg production started. Estrogen is dumped into our sewage system as it is excreted from the human body, b

Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. ... Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature "C Company" carved into the chest. By late morning word had got back to higher authorities and a cease-fire was ordered. My Lai was in a state of carnage. Bodies were strewn through the village. BBC News. On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of the American 1st Battalion, swept through hamlets of My Lai and My Khe of Son My village in Vietnam, looking for Viet Cong. There were no Viet Cong in the village, but Charlie Company started a wave of violence, shooting at everything alive. Civilians ran fo

The Huffington Post is carrying a post by RJ Eskow that examines the Clinton cult. Check it out if you're a Clinton cult member, and reflect. People are going to end up hating you more than they hate the Republicans, and John McCain will get elected ... unless of course ...

This image was taken by Luis Vasconcelos and posted on Reuters blog . The caption: An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL) More on the Landless Workers' Movement can be found on Wikipedia . Yet again, another example of the rich living off the poor.

I just read about a study David Sloan Wilson and Ingrid Storm conducted, that compared the moral thinking of liberals and conservatives. Dr Wilson and Dr Storm found several unexpected differences between the groups. Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives, but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves whom they spent time with. Such choice, or the lack of it, did not change conservative stress levels. Liberals were also loners, spending a quarter of their time on their own. Conservatives were alone for a sixth of the time. That may have been related to the fact that liberals were equally bored by their own company and that of others. Conservatives were far less bored when with other people. They also preferred the company of relatives to non-relatives. Liberals were indifferent. Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs. The opposi

In the mispent youth of science classes and houses of ignorance, where robed mystics babble incoherently, we were led to the belief that there was a beginning. That the beginning was something miraculous and mysteriious, and if we stared too long we'd probably go mad with more questions -- or worse, blind. In the beginning, there was nothing, and from it, everything emerged -- space, time and the very laws of nature. The Man (Purusha) has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He pervades the earth everywhere and extends beyond for ten fingers' breadth. The Man himself is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be. He is the lord of immortality and also lord of that which grows on food. Such is his greatness, and the Man is yet greater than this. All creatures make up a quarter of him; three quarters are the immortal in heaven. With three quarters the Man has risen above, and one quarter of him still remains here, whence he spread out everywhere, pervadin

In a speech delivered today , addressing U.S.-Cuba relations, G.W. Bush spoke out defiantly on upholding America's economic embargo on the island, while scolding other democracies around the world, of not following the U.S. lead. Bush spoke of human rights abuses; of political prisoners being tortured; of jail time without trial -- without guilt -- for offences against the regime. Bush stood with Cuban dissidents, telling their stories of "brutal repression right off the shores of the United States." At no time, did Bush allow the irony of Guantanamo to get in his way.

Ever closed a Firefox tab and wished you hadn't? lifehacker has a great tip for undoing that close. Ctrl-Shift-T (Windows) or Cmd-Shift-T (Mac) will do the trick! How's that for a cool feature?

Wim Hof and Lynne Cox can do an amazing thing -- they can withstand extreme cold temperatures with no adverse effects. Hof ran a half-marathon, bare foot, dressed only in a swimsuit, at the Arctic Circle. He swam 80 metres under an ice sheet at the North Pole. He climbed Mount Everest in shorts. Cox on the other hand swam the Bering Strait and a mile through icebergs in the Antarctic. Neither suffered from frostbite or hypothermia due to their prolonged exposure to frigid temperatures. That has left doctors wondering how they do it. Amazingly enough, Hof and Cox are quite normal. There is nothing in their physiology that differentiates them from everybody else. The only theory with some merit, is that both have used their brains to mentally prepare their bodies for the extremes. This is a tantalizing prospect, as it speaks to some untapped potential of the brain. Being able to take control of the body -- the organs, and the physiological response to external stimuli is ama