War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Just as I figured: Computers are intolerant, racially discriminatory and just creepy. Figuring out African-Americans was a problem for HP’s newest face-recognition gear: In the video, Wanda (Caucasian) and Desi (African American) — two employees at what appears to be a computer electronics store — expose a flaw in the webcam software. As depicted, the software…
In the midst of bad news from many quarters, this latest does make one feel better. From Wired: That asteroid is Apophis, a 900-foot asteroid. Calculations released on Christmas Eve 2004 appeared to show that there was a greater than 2 percent chance the asteroid would hit the Earth in 2029. The asteroid appeared ready…
Copenhagen: Tempers flared Monday at the United Nations climate summit as poor nations staged a walkout to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries, and the U.S. and China jockeyed for position. The talks have become what one observer called a “farce,” as guidelines agreed on two years ago are not even…
Nearly in a near-panic. Wikipedia:Â Oceanic anoxic events or anoxic events occur when the Earth’s oceans become completely depleted of oxygen (O2) below the surface levels. Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past. Anoxic events may have caused mass extinctions. These…
(Illustration found here). A new satellite-based study published Sunday in Nature Geoscience indicates the supposedly more-stable East Antarctic ice sheet has as been losing 57 billion tons of ice bulk a year since 2006. From the BBC on the report: “We felt surprised to see this change in East Antarctica,” study leader Jianli Chen from the Centre…
One of the great turds of the US political system, Sen. James Inhofe, yes, that silly-assed Republican from Oklahoma, displayed a most-marvelous bit of horror-irony this week as he tweaked the future and all those to come after us. Inhofe is a major big-mouth-crybaby global-warming denier — appears a fairly ignorant man. And with the Copenhagen climate…
Climate-change study and an ultimate understanding of future global weather appears fickle at best, and way off the mark at worst — in the last two years the big global-warming news is negative factors “have been significantly underestimated…” In this particular case it’s methane gas, which is not only produced by landfill sites, fossil fuel…
Beware of feel-good economic news… (Illustration found here). Even as the US stock markets post some high gains, even as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which has risen over the past six sessions, also finished Monday at its highest level in a year, and even as those infamous banks appear to slowing on losses…
A few short years ago, anyone who discussed subjects like “peak oil” were considered a crank (not to be confused with, for instance, ‘Will my car crank without fuel?’) or a nutcase or just a plain worry-wart-conspiratorial fruitcake (not to be confused with a Dick Cheney), but nowadays there’s enough evidence from authentic sources to…
There’s something I just don’t understand regarding climate change/global warming, although there’s plenty of opinions (Truism — opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one) about this horrifying weather/sky/ground/ocean-related event barreling square at humanity, and with seemingly a lot of multi-verified science to warrant near panic — Why isn’t climate change taken more seriously? Does many…