For every carbon offset you buy ....

you could be feeding a starving child whose mother has AIDS in Africa. Please, use less carbon and instead of flying or driving send your money to the poor.

Butterflies and mathematical models

“Dr. Kayoticus,” the curmudgeon slurred, “You have perhaps heard of the so-called butterfly effect?”

“Of course, Philterawl, as you well know, I have made many published advances in that field of study. Why do you ask?”

“Yes, yes – a hurricane in Bermuda due to a little flapping moth in Paraguay! Well, I have been talking with old Netty over drinkies and billiards about his biologics and his insects and his obsession with Darwin and all that. He is convinced that your whole butterflying making a big blow is bunk.”

“What’s bunk, old man? The butterfly effect? Does he think that I consider one of his little Lepidoptera as a giant wind turbine? Doesn’t the poor man understand a model? I have proved that, because of cumulative effects in an inherently chaotic, non-linear process, a little change might magnify – in a layman’s sense, mind you – the minor disturbance in some distant point and produce effects of many orders of magnitude greater at another point.”

“Oh, I understand the basics, I suppose. Still, he was claiming that if butterflies could cause hurricanes at the flap of a diaphanous wing, then there would be more hurricanes that I could count. And so, well … look here, old man – do you seriously think that butterflies could survive in a world of millions of hurricanes, just happening with each fluttery take-off from a tea rose bush?”

“What in heaven’s sake are you talking about, Philterawl?”

“Well, I mean, Netty might have a point. In a world of flapping butterflies making hurricanes willy-nilly, there wouldn’t be any possibility for butterflies to have evolved into butterflies – what with all the storms and chaos and such from their infernal flapping. Where would they land to have a go at laying eggs, or whatever bugs do?”

“Not all butterflies cause hurricanes! Just some could. Obviously you and Netty do not understand the point of the exercise. Butterflies are not making hurricanes willy-nilly – the point is that they could, and in the precisely right circumstances, cause a devastating effect far beyond their little expenditure of energy.”

“So butterflies don’t cause hurricanes?”

“No, no, man – don’t you understand? – they could! As I, and others, have shown in many, many models.”

“So some butterflies do cause hurricanes? I would like to have a specimen of the type that swamped New Orleans. I could give it to my sister Elizabeth for her birthday – she collects the vermin, you know.”

“Are you drunk again, Philertawl? Good God, man! I said that they could – it’s a mathematical model, for god’s sake! I’m not saying that we have evidence of the fact.”

“Well then, has a butterfly ever caused a hurricane?”

“Heavens!, man how do I know?”

“Then what’s the butterfly effect again?”

Make the currency stronger! Blame Bush!

Cut three zeros from money's official denomination - sexy:

I am the currency - sexy:

Read this.

Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

"Whether it be that the multitude, feeling the pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring and ingenious depredators who take away the rich man's superfluity, or whether it be the interest that mankind in general feel for the records of perilous adventures, it is certain that the populace of all countries look with admiration upon great and successful thieves. Perhaps both these causes combine to invest their career with charms in the popular eye."

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: Economic Ganster with Army Alert

First this: Tal Cual

And then this: Fred Flintstone is an evil capitalist

No te recomiendo Los Picapiedras, porque a lo mejor a tu papá no le gustan, porque presentan el modelo capitalista como algo natural y propio del hombre que existía incluso desde las cavernas.

Oops, my mistake. I mean this:


Presidente Chávez amenaza con estatizar supermercados abastos y frigoríficos

En el marco de la entrega de pensiones a un grupo de jubilados realizado en el Círculo Militar, el presidente de la República, Hugo Chávez, amenazó con estatizar frigoríficos, supermercados y abastos en caso que incumplan la regulación establecida en los precios de la carne y otros productos de consumo masivo.

“Haciendo un esfuerzo de paciencia todavía estoy. Le he mandado mensaje a los productores, a los intermediarios de los mataderos, frigoríficos y de los abastos. Pero si ellos siguen empeñados en violar los intereses del pueblo, la constitución, las leyes, yo les voy a quitar los frigoríficos, los abastos, supermercados y los voy a nacionalizar….Así que prepárense”, dijo.

Dijo que estos sectores iban a tratar de boicotear el sistema de suministros; pero “bienvenido el boicot, pero nosotros contraboicotearíamos y al final de los finales, será nuestra la victoria, porque es nuestra la razón”.

Dijo que primero le ponía el ojo a los grandotes (Supermercados).

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: The Market is a Bitch.

William Lara: Especuladores “no se van a salir con la suya”

William Lara, ministro de Información y Comunicaciones, aseguró que el gobierno está actuando en contra de la especulación, pues a su juicio, “no se van a salir con la suya”, afirmó que en los operativos, llevado a cabo por el Seniat y el Indecu, se encontraron 7 toneladas de azúcar escondida”.

Afirmó que "los especuladores son delincuentes criminales y enemigos del pueblo y deben sentir la acción firme de la ley. El Gobierno ratifica que esta es una lucha frontal y que se van a activar mecanismos de importación de alimentos".

Aseguró que “lograrán impedir mayor especulación, será un éxito total y estamos seguros; espero contar con los medios de comunicación social”.

Para Lara, es una necesidad que aquellos medios, que no “simpatizan con el gobierno” se adhieran con esta campaña contra la especulación. “Ojalá que los propietarios de los medios de comunicación social que no tienen simpatía por el proyecto revolucionario del presidente Chávez, cumplan con su función ante el pueblo y no se dejen llevar por sentimientos políticos”.

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: Hillary with a sword.

Maduro: Negroponte “es un narcotraficante convicto y confeso

El canciller Nicolás Maduro dijo que Jonh Negroponte, número dos del Departamento de Estado, “es un narcotraficante convicto y confeso (…) estamos enfrentados a unos criminales y los vamos a seguir derrotando”, manifestó desde la marcha con motivo del 4 de Febrero de 1992.

Acusó a Estados Unidos y a Negroponte de "comprar armas y matar a los pueblos de Centroamérica" mediante el cubano-venezolano Luis Posada Carriles, sentenciado en Venezuela por la voladura de un avión cubano con 73 personas a bordo.

Posada Carriles, quien se encuentra en Estados Unidos acusado de fraude migratorio, "es un terrorista protegido por el gobierno de Estados Unidos", dijo

Maduro habló en el Paseo Los Próceres ubicado al lado del Fuerte Tiuna, sede del ministerio de Defensa momentos antes del desfile militar en celebración del 15 aniversario del fallido golpe que protagonizó el presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez.

Venezuela es "un pueblo patriota que está enfrentado a una banda de criminales de mafiosos", agregó. "La única amenaza que hay contra los pueblos de América Latina es que delincuentes como Jhon Negroponte tengan poder en los Estados Unidos", sostuvo.

Chávez "intentó exportar su populismo radical y pienso que su comportamiento amenaza las democracias en la región (...) "No pienso que haya sido una fuerza constructiva en América Latina (...) "países como Bolivia, entre otros, se encuentran bajo influencia de Chávez", declaró Negroponte esta semana.

Where is the public discussion of the role of nuclear power in the global warming debate?

The following is a translation of some paragraphs from chapter 2 of Benjamín Otálora’s forthcoming Essays at the Close of the Twenty-First Century, to be published by the Aleph Zubehr Press (Teheran).

After a clever start following the Second World War, a series of public-relations disasters struck the pocketbooks of the clandestine, powerful group of western capitalists who had bet large fortunes on nuclear energy. Although briefly politically disorganized, especially confounded by the refusal of oil reserves to decline - in fact by the ever-increasing estimates of those reserves, - the nuclear cabal finally restructured itself. Jettisoning the discredited notion of "limits to growth," which the cabal had heavily subsidized, the nuclear power interests finally adopted as their public-relations ploy the notion of manmade global warming.

Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming had the advantage of being superstitiously apocalyptic but irrefutable in the space of many decades, in contrast to the theories testable in the memory spans of the befuddled public. Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, and so many other doomsayers on which the nuclear cabal had put their marketing trust and invested millions, had been embarrassed in the space of decades. The western socialist chattering class, for a variety of ideological reasons, had also invested in these discredited doom mongers. And so they quickly dropped from the public's view once it became clear that the apocalypse would not arrive via limited resources. But CAGW fit the nuclear cabal's interests well: Every weather-related disaster, or even widespread discomfort with the day's humidity, could be blamed on global warming. Ask the great mass of Americans: Too cold, or too hot? No matter: it was related to weather wasn't it? And climate and weather, aren't they the same thing? Once the public had become aware of the idea of global warming, anything dissatisfying, large or small, could be connected to the believed-in phenomenon.

As with the acceptance of the limits-to-growth apocalypse, which had won its short-lived public credibility after several spikes in oil prices, global warming really became a useful marketing tool only after the American public could be impressed with supposedly unusually hot summers. Once this hot-summer impression was accomplished, the public relations campaign appeared to work like a charm. The campaign could take a particularly cold winter and, with a few expert pronouncements ex cathedra, confirm the belief in apocalypse-by-carbon-emissions. The nuclear power interests were delighted and were more than glad to continue subsidizing this public-relations wonder.

But cabals are only cabals, and conspiracies ultimately have their finale when they emerge from the shadows to appear commonplace banalities, or fall forever into unrecoverable obscurity. What the nuclear power group failed to anticipate was the variety of interests that might make a dollar on their invented apocalyptic stampede. And once the scent of easy money is in the air, other cabals with sharper knives will have their way. After having invested so much to begin the momentum of climatic superstition, to what miserable grief the nuclear interest came? This sad affair is the subject of the next chapter. And so now we begin the sordid and richly profitable tale of Archers Daniels Midland.

Associated Press headline just waiting for a juvenile punster

Hilton At Dulles Airport Closes After 120 Sickened

Or, if you would rather not contemplate the idea that Hilton rarely closes, you might want to answer the question How much would you pay to see Paris Hilton and Shanna Moakler going at each other with all their might?

My problem with an immediate answer is, Who in the hell is Shanna Moakler? And I refuse to google her, in any sense of the verb.

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: The New York Times cautions stout fellow

via AP:

Venezuela's Chavez Takes Aim at Reid

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 19, 2007
Filed at 11:34 p.m. ET

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of President Bush, focused Friday on a new American target: newly named U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Chavez took issue with comments Reid made just hours earlier to the National Press Club in Washington, citing the Venezuelan leader as among the threats facing the United States in 2007 because ''Chavez and (Cuba's Fidel) Castro want to put their leftist marks on young democracies.''

Chavez, in Brazil attending a summit of 10 South American leaders, said the Nevada Democrat got it wrong.

Instead, Chavez declared he wants to ''put the leftist stamp on the people, those who the imperialist gringos don't want or can't understand because of fear or ignorance.''

''I think this leftist stamp in Latin America is going to spread throughout the world because the only the left can provide the transformation we need,'' Chavez said.

South America has seen a sharp drift to the left in recent years with the election of new leftist leaders.

Reid in December toured South America with five other U.S. senators but did not go to Venezuela.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said the bipartisan group led by Reid was trying to counter Chavez's attempts to form an ''anti-American bloc'' in the region.

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: ultrapassando os limites.

Lula avalia que venezuelano "flerta com o autoritarismo"

KENNEDY ALENCAR
da Folha de S.Paulo, em Brasília

O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva avalia que o colega da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, comete erros político e econômico ao anunciar o plano de estatização e também ao patrocinar emenda constitucional que permitirá a reeleição ilimitada.

Oficialmente e por ora, o discurso de Lula e do governo brasileiro será o de respeito à soberania venezuelana. Nos bastidores, porém, Lula disse em conversas reservadas que acha que Chávez está ultrapassando os limites da democracia e que perderá apoio de setores moderados da esquerda mundial.

Para o petista, apenas alas radicais da esquerda internacional e do Brasil tenderão a idolatrar Chávez ainda mais.

Em descanso no Guarujá, o brasileiro chegou a dizer que o colega "flerta perigosamente com o autoritarismo", segundo apurou a Folha. E considerou que, ao usar na posse do terceiro mandato o lema castrista "socialismo ou morte", Chávez sinaliza uma disposição de radicalizar que pode isolar a Venezuela internacionalmente.

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: La Hugotopia merece medalla de oro en el desempeño de la libertad de expresión

Blah blah blah from otro estafador

«Ahora el llantén de estos oligarcas es mayor porque el Estado decidió recuperar la señal del canal 2 para ponerla al servicio de todo el pueblo y no solo de un pequeño sector de la oligarquía», sentenció el ministro de Comunicación e Información al comentar las declaraciones de Gonzalo Marroquín, presidente de la Comisión de Libertad de Prensa de la Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP), quien afirmó que se estaría produciendo un deterioro de la libertad de prensa en Venezuela como consecuencia del autoritarismo del Gobierno.

Footnotes on the Revolution as Con Game: "Pendejo desde la p hasta la o."

Presidente Chávez rechaza posición de la CEV y califica de "pendejo" al secretario general de la OEA.

El Presidente de la República, Hugo Chávez, ratificó que la decisión de no renovar la concesión de RCTV es irrevocable y rechazó los pronunciamientos de la Conferencia Episcopal Venezuela y del Secretario General de la OEA, José Miguel Insulza, a quien calificó de "pendejo" por lo que calificó una "intromisión" en los asuntos internos venezolanos.

Durante el acto de juramentación del nuevo gabinete ministerial, el Primer Mandatario manifestó su rechazo a los pronunciamientos en defensa de RCTV. "Nada ni nadie podrá evitarlo".
En tal sentido, rechazó la posición manifestada por la Conferencia Episcopal Venezolana. "Están defendiendo lo indefendible" y les pidió que se dedicaran a lo suyo. "Zapatero a su zapato".

Chávez cuestionó que la Iglesia Venezolana haya emitido un pronunciamiento defendiendo a RCTV, pero que en ningún momento, se hubieran manifestado cuando se produjo el golpe de Estado de abril de 2002.

Igualmente, criticó el pronunciamiento de José Miguel Insulza, secretario general de la Organización de Estados Americanos, el cual calificó de "insulso" y lo instó a renunciar a dicho cargo. "Sr. Insulza, váyase con su insulsería para otro lado. Vaya que es bien pendejo el Dr. Insulza, un verdadero pendejo. Pendejo desde la p hasta la o". Dijo que denunciará la injerencia del funcionario en todos los foros internacionales a donde acuda.

Evil US government is torturing prisoners - Not!

Presos mais perigosos do Rio são transferidos para presídio no Paraná