Devastation

I want to share with you the top story for today on the Common Dreams website. It's entitled "Small Nuclear War Would Cause Global Environmental Catastrophe". I was actually thinking of this possibility today as I drove to the Center this morning. I found myself remembering how the president is undoubtedly just itching to use nuclear weapons against Iran. And now this story:

SAN FRANCISCO - A small-scale, regional nuclear war could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, researchers have concluded.

The scientists said about 40 countries possess enough plutonium or uranium to construct substantial nuclear arsenals. Setting off a Hiroshima-size weapon could cause as many direct fatalities as all of World War II.

"Considering the relatively small number and size of the weapons, the effects are surprisingly large," said one of the researchers, Richard Turco of the University of California, Los Angeles. "The potential devastation would be catastrophic and long term."

The lingering effects could re-shape the environment in ways never conceived. In terms of climate, a nuclear blast could plunge temperatures across large swaths of the globe. "It would be the largest climate change in recorded human history," Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers' Cook College and another member of the research team.

The results will be presented here today during the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union.

Of course, our president doesn't believe in science so that's a problem.

CNN Quick Vote

Created: Monday, December 11, 2006, at 12:07:40 EDT:

Do you believe President Bush will be able to successfully shift the course of the war in Iraq?

Yes - 18%

No - 82%

Sunday prayer blogging

Whatever you believe, do pray for peace:

Let us know peace.
For as long as the moon shall rise,
For as long as the rivers shall flow,
For as long as the sun will shine,
For as long as the grass shall grow,
Let us know peace.

(Source: Native American)

The latest Bushism

I'm tellin' ya, that boy ain't right:

Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. I understand there's sectarian violence.

-- George W. Bush

He has a point

Look at this:

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

-- Stephen Hawking

'Truthiness' is the word of the year

Stephen Colbert

CNN had the article. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But for "truthiness" to sum up the year 2006 tells us just how far we - or our politicians - have strayed from a reality-based understanding of life.

Take a look:

SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (AP) -- After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word -- if one can call it that -- best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "'Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

I'm glad Colbert coined the word because it points to the current administration's contempt for facts. I'm not sure I think of it as "playful", however. Bitingly satirical, yes, and maybe a little sad.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

A free press

We need to pay attention to this:

The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people.

- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black

Christian Peacemaker Teams Press Release

The following press release was sent to me today by the Tulsa Interfaith Alliance:

Stop Depleted Uranium Weapons

For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 30, 2006

Media Contact: Craig Etchison
phones: 304-298-4704 or 800-896-1425 or 913-397-9660
email: cetchison@allegany.edu or RhoadsPrtg@aol.com

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and our partners around the world call for an end to the manufacture of depleted uranium (DU) weapons and the deployment and use of DU in theaters of war and practice ranges.

The United States and others have used DU munitions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and currently in Iraq. This has left behind a documented legacy in the civilian populations, of cancers and birth defects due likely to both DU's toxicity as a heavy metal and the radioactivity of tiny DU particles that are inhaled or left in the soil to become part of the food chain. The biological half life (decay rate) of DU is 4.5 billion years.

The high number of returning veterans who are sick and the deaths of nearly one in six of all US military personnel deployed to the Gulf in the last sixteen years also strongly point to the need to end the use of DU for the sake of our own troops. Congressional legislation mandating a comprehensive study of DU and its effects on US military and their offspring is most appropriate.

Because of its ongoing and indiscriminate harm to civilians long after a war has ended, the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions declare DU to be an illegal weapon of mass destruction. The European Union and other human rights groups have called for a ban on any further use of DU weapons.

Therefore, Christian Peacemaker Teams call on:

1. Alliant Tech/ABL, Rocket Center, WV, to stop all DU manufacture as well as the shipping of all DU products;
2. all world militaries to stop using DU weapons;
3. all military personnel to refuse to load DU ammunition or use it in any of its forms;
4. the US. Defense Department and all manufacturers of DU products, to join with BAE Systems of Great Britain and the British Defense Ministry as they have stopped DU weapons production and stopped its use in war theaters and practice ranges;
5. the U.S. Army and Air Force to follow the lead of the U.S. Navy as it has stopped its use of DU weapons. If the Navy has recognized the dangers of DU's use, it follows that the other military services should also end their use of DU weapons.

I wonder if the organizations called upon will listen to CPT. We are poisoning our own military - not to mention innocent civilians and the earth itself. There need to be more such protests.

Bush today

This is almost unbelievable. Except that I'm used to Bush's contempt for the press and his inappropriate snideness. Just look:

At a press conference this morning with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a reporter asked President Bush whether his use of the word “unsettling” to describe the violence in Iraq would “convince many people that you’re still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq.”Bush responded curtly, “It’s bad in Iraq. That help?” and then chuckled.

You can actually see the video right here if you like.

(Hat tip to Watertiger at Dependable Renegade.)

Have a green Christmas

Greenpeace has a page devoted to making your holiday season more green. You might want to check it out. Here's a sample:

1: Give a compact fluorescent light bulb or two as gifts. Save your friends and family money and save the planet too. Old-fashioned light bulbs waste 85% of their energy in heat and don't last long. Compact florescent bulbs these days come in all shapes, sizes, and colours. A 100% compact florescent household makes a great New Year's resolution, and a good investment in energy (and money!) savings.

There are eleven more suggestions.

And, on the subject of New Year's commitments, you might like to take a look at the page called 12 Steps which is about using less energy.

Pregnant Mary

Well, by now you probably know that Mary Cheney is pregnant. And, of course, the religious right is freaking out over it. Take a look at what this CNN article says:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, is pregnant, while a gay-rights group said the vice president faces "a lifetime of sleepless nights" for serving in an administration that has opposed recognition of same-sex couples.

Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are expecting a baby in late spring, said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president.

"The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation" to the arrival of their sixth grandchild, McBride said.

Mary Cheney was an aide to her father during the 2004 campaign, and now is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL. She and Poe moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to the Cheney family.
...
"Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child," said Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler.
...
Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America described the pregnancy as "unconscionable."

What is unconscionable is that Mary Cheney campaigned for a party that generates hate toward gays and lesbians and many in the glbt community believe she has sold them down the river. She has.

Dog Comes To Aid Of Injured Man

Cynthia sent me this story this morning:

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ore. -- A Crawfordsville man stranded in the dark was saved with the help of his dog last Thursday morning.

Jerry Hadler, a rancher near Sweet Home, went out to perform his daily chores with his dog, U-Kome, last Thursday morning. While walking in the dark, Hadler slipped and fell.

“I hit an incline and it just went out from underneath me,” Hadler said. “I fell on it and I broke my ankle.”

Hadler, who said he has suffered several broken bones in the past, knew instantly he had broken a bone in his foot.

His dog, too, knew something was wrong and began barking.

“She washed my face and my ears, ran circles around me, and barked and barked,” Hadler said.

Hadler’s dog then ran back to the barn, where friend Mark Marvin was starting his day as well. U-Kome ran circles around Marvin and began barking, Marvin said.

“I said ‘Go play, go to Jerry,’” Marvin said.

But U-Kome was persistent and didn’t take no for an answer. The dog led Marvin to Hadler, who was unable to walk.

“If it wouldn’t have been for that dog, it would have been quite awhile before I found him,” Marvin said.

I just wanted to share that with you because stories like this bring me much joy. There's just nothing like a dog!

Wales, Canterbury and Gore

Oh my goodness, I'd love a picture of the three of them together. Here's what the Telegraph has to say in an article called "Prince recruits Gore for 'green' campaign":

Theirs is an unlikely alliance: the heir to the throne, the leader of the Church of England and the man who so nearly got the most powerful job in the world.

But the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Al Gore will this week launch a new project to encourage big business to become more "green".

Prince Charles is said by aides to be "totally committed" to the scheme in which companies will be urged to assess – and reverse – the damage they are doing to the environment.
...
Prince Charles will be one of three speakers at the launch of his Accounting for Sustainability project. The others are the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Lord Browne of Madingley, the chief executive of BP, the petroleum giant.

It is understood that companies will be encouraged to follow Prince Charles's example by "offsetting" their carbon emissions. This is a service that allows individuals and companies to repair some of the damage caused by harmful emissions by channelling funds into projects that reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Just today I got an email about carbon offsets. Read about it at Carbonfund.org.

Littering

The coffee shop I often visit has a little freebie news sheet called "Coffee News". Here's an article in this week's edition:

Harvey Bennett threw five bottles into the sea near his home on Long Island, New York and waited. Six months later, he got a letter in the mail from a return address in England. The 55-year-old was excited, then shocked. The letter, allegedly from a person in Bournemouth, in Dorset County, wasn't thrilled to find the bottle washed up on his beach. In fact, he chastised Bennett for littering and scolded the American for his "profound eperiment." "I felt like I was being punished," said Bennett, who added that coincidentally, the bottle ended up in an area from which his ancestors embarked for American in 1644.

What are the odds? For any of this?

That we may fear less

If only our president understood this:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

--Madame Marie Curie

Retirement courage

This is good:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that it is time to face reality and recognize that Iraq is in a state of civil war. Powell made the statement after growing what are known as "retirement balls."

--Amy Poehler

Stranger Than Fiction

Cynthia and I played hookey today and went to the movies. We saw "Stranger Than Fiction" with Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson and I really, really, really want to recommend it.

Here's part of a review I found on Amazon:

The idea of "Stranger Than Fiction" appealed to me the moment I first heard of it. Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, wakes up one day and hears a voice. An omniscient narrator is relating his life with precision and no one can hear that voice but himself. It turns out that the voice is Emma Thompson, playing a famed author who is actually writing a novel about a character named Harold Crick. And it's the same Harold Crick. What is being put down in fiction is also concurrently happening in real life. It's a tricky concept, one that I felt might be impossible to pull off effectively. Well, not only does "Stranger Than Fiction" pull it off--it succeeds grandly as a surprisingly thoughtful, amusing, and moving contemplation of life. For Harold must immediately confront his mortality when the narrator informs him/us that he will soon die!

The complicated narrative of the film is pulled off brilliantly. The overlapping structure necessary to maintain the momentum and cohesion of the film must be attributed to a clever, intricate screenplay. Literate, witty, and real--it's a real treat. Lots of interesting effects help to pull the two worlds together making even the most mundane moments of Harold's life visually compelling. The movie's construction is fascinating and enjoyable.

I really loved this film. Go see it!