Author: Serkadis

Jolicould is one of the ‘cloud’ OS pioneers and had been around for some time before Google Chrome OS was even announced. Yet, these two competitors now have quite a lot in common, they both rely on Chromium technology to power web apps. Jolicloud has just announced that it has transitioned from the Mozilla Prism platform to Chromium for running all … (read more)

Article Tags: Piers Corbyn, Steven Goddard , UK Winter Forecast 2009/10

On July 23, 2009 the UK Met Office issued their infamous winter forecast, ahead of the coldest winter in 50 years. It read:

““…Early indications are that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. For the UK, Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder *(and wetter) than last year “.

This was recorded by Piers Corbyn at Weather Action and several other sites on July 23.
Source:

I remember reading the article on the Met Office web site at the time. But something funny happened on December 30, 2009. The Met Office over wrote that link with a new article titled “Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10″ which has no mention of the original prediction. It now reads:

…for the rest of winter, over northern Europe including the UK, the chance of colder conditions is now 45%; there is a 30% chance of average and a 25% chance of milder conditions.

Click source to read FULL report by Steven Goddard

Source: wattsupwiththat.com

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Remember the unsubstantiated claims that Tea Party enthusiasts were daft enough to hurl racial epitaphs at members of the Black Congressional caucus with tons of media everywhere (yet not once seems to have been caught on tape)?

Well, it seems Andrew Breibart (of Big Hollywood and Big Government) is offering up $10,000 of his own dollars that will be donated to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can produce evidence of the racial assaults that have been alleged committed by Tea Party activists.

Here is a great interview video where David Shuster’s temper tantrum about the tea party members is deftly dealt with by The Big Black Lie author Kevin Jackson. I actually watched this a few times…

…And lastly, to be fair, it seems Obama did follow through on his pledge to donate his $1.4 million Nobel peace Prize winnings. These are the 10 beneficiaries of his “Just thanks for not being Bush” award.

“The Director of Minority Outreach for Georgia Right to Life, Catherine Davis is taking that message to the public, along with a massive public awareness campaign that has captured national and international attention. Drivers in the metro Atlanta area are seeing billboards that demand attention — and are changing minds…

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but blacks make up only 30% of Georgia’s population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against black babies — black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while blacks make up only 13% of the national population…” (source)

Prompted by this article (which should be a matter of common sense given the eugenic proclivities of Margaret Sanger…) I looked up the voting record of each and every member of the Congressional Black Caucus (45 members) and NOT ONE is pro-life. Not even one. Nor is the President. In fact, many of them (including the President) are not just pro-choice but rabidly pro-choice with 100% ratings from NARAL and blocking legislation that would ban minors from crossing state lines without parental permission to obtain abortions and voting no to partial birth abortion bans…

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) Pro-choice/Pro-partial birth abortion
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver Strong Pro-choice rating (voted NO on stopping minor from crossing states to get an abortion)
Rep. Donna Christensen Strong pro-choice rating
Rep. G.K. Butterfield Pro-choice voting record
Rep. Yvette Clarke pro-choice voting record
Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. Pro-choice for the first trimester
Rep. Corrine Brown Voted 100% by NARAL -voted NO on banning PBA
Rep. Roland W. Burris Pro-choice but not federally funded
Rep. André Carson pro-choice
Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, Jr. Rated 100% by NARAL
Rep. James E. Clyburn Pro-choice
Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (Founding Member) 100% NARAL rating
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings Pro-choice
Rep. Artur Davis Pr-choice (but did vote to outlaw PBA and cross-state minors)
Rep. Danny Davis 100% by NARAL
Rep. Donna Edwards Pro-choice
Rep. Keith Ellison Pro-choice (CAN you be Muslim & Pro-choice???)
Rep. Chaka Fattah Pro-choice
Rep. Marcia Fudge Pro-choice
Rep. Al Green Pro-choice
Rep. Alcee L. Hastings Pro-choice
Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. Pro-choice
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee 100% NARAL rating
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson Pro-choice
Rep. Hank Johnson Pro-choice
Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick Pro-choice
Rep. John Lewis 100% NARAL rating
Rep. Kendrick Meek Pro-choice
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks Pro-choice
Rep. Gwen Moore Pro-choice (actually has a 0% pro-life rating)
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton Pro-choice
Rep. Donald M. Payne Pro-choice
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (Founding member) Pro-choice
Rep. Laura Richardson Pro-choice
Rep. Bobby L. RushPro-choice
Rep. David Scott 100% NARAL rating
Rep. Robert C. Scott Pro-choice
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson Pro-choice
Rep. Edolphus Towns 100% Planned Parenthood rating
Rep. Maxine Waters 100% NARAL rating
Rep. Diane E. Watson Pro-choice
Rep. Melvin L. Watt 100% NARAL rating

“Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We’re bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you are going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people [sic] in different ways, it takes a long time to to [sic] do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people. Our republicans have spent a long time not participating, not helping, harping and delaying, but at the same time they have contributed nothing to this and made no offer whatsoever as to what it is they want or what they stand for…” Rep. John Dingell, March 24, 2010 (source)

Article Tags: Mark Landsbaum

It has been tough to keep up with all the bad news for global warming alarmists. We’re on the edge of our chair, waiting for the next shoe to drop. This has been an Imelda Marcos kind of season for shoe-dropping about global warming.

At your next dinner party, here are some of the latest talking points to bring up when someone reminds you that Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won Nobel prizes for their work on global warming.

ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain’s East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics’ views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the “science is settled?”

FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff’s so solid, why the secrecy?

Click source to read FULL report by Mark Landsbaum

Source: ocregister.com

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With Google Chrome getting extensions a few months ago, it looked like the battle was finally heating up between the two biggest ‘alternative’ web browsers on the market. The number of extensions for Google Chrome has been growing steadily, it’s now close to 4,000 extensions, but it’s still nowhere near the number of Firefox add-ons. Still, some Firefox u… (read more)

Article Tags: CO2 Level, Comment

More evidence that a climbing CO2 rate is the result of warming, not the cause. There are two other ramifications as I see it.

1. Results like this mean that the anthropogenic fraction must be readjusted. Is man’s annual contribution 4%? 3%? Less?

2. This latest natural emission estimate shows that previous source/sink models have been inadequate, as usual. – AS

Even soil feels the heat: Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms

Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in today’s issue of Nature

Click source to read FULL report

Source: physorg.com

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	GM unveils three futuristic, urban EN-V concepts A typical GM vehicle this is not.		Customer ignorance convinces BMW that front-drive is OK Eighty percent of 1 Series drivers thought the car already had front-wheel drive.
	Two wheels to the front: Arizona to legalize lane splitting, maybe? Arizona lawmakers could allow it for a one-year “trial period.”	Other news: Report: Cadillac XTS plug-in hybrid confirmed for production Aptera lays out vague plan for 2e production, sales – more info coming next month Super wheel motor from stealthy Australians soon to surface?

AutoblogGreen for 03.25.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 05:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Article Tags: Calem Smith, [email protected], Via Email, World Temperatures

Click for bigger image

I’ve noticed that BOM uses different stations for measuring annual
mean temperature then what stations they use for daily and monthly
readings.

There seems to be a few more used for the annual stations then daily.

The thing that has my curiosity is that, would placing greater stations in areas of greater warming effect the rate of graphed
warming?

I’ve put it all into one image with each map layered over each other and noticed an imbalance.

Not to mention a station missing in the only place to have a negative trend.

Here’s the original links from BOM.

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We don’t mean to rain on the stockmarket parade (we’re enjoying it, too), but we’ll confess to being astonished by it.

We understand that the world’s governments are pumping money into their economies.  We understand that that money has to go somewhere.  We understand that, right now, that somewhere is often stocks.

We also recognize that the stock market is “forward looking,” meaning that stock investors couldn’t care less about 10% unemployment and other depressing facts about the economy.  As far as stocks are concerned, as long as the situation is improving, it doesn’t matter how bad the present is.

But we’re looking forward, too, and here’s what we’re seeing:

The housing market, a huge engine of the U.S. economy via both direct spending and the wealth effect, is rolling over and heading for a double-dip.  This despite the fact that the government is still spending money hand over foot to keep house prices propped up. 

In a week or so, the Fed is supposed to begin withdrawing some of this housing subsidy by winding up its mortgage-buying program.  The Fed may or may not actually do this, but if it does, this move could further depress the housing market.  And that, in turn, could put more pressure on strapped consumers who can no longer borrow from home-equity lines to fund current spending, no longer feel rich, don’t have much borrowing capacity, and, often, no longer have jobs.  (And consumers still account for more than 70% of spending in the economy).

A falling housing market will also likely lead to more underwater homeowners, more “shadow” inventory, more foreclosures, more pressure on house prices, and, possibly, more bank write-offs.  The more banks are worried about future write-offs, the less likely they are to lend, and bank lending has already fallen off a cliff.

So, basically, we think the apparent double-dip in the housing market is a big deal, and we’re surprised that the market is whistling Dixie in the face of it.

If stocks were cheap, we wouldn’t worry about it.  We would just assume that the market was so forward-looking that it was gazing beyond the double-housing-dip to the eventual recovery.  But stocks aren’t cheap.  In fact, measured using our favorite valuation technique, Professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted PE analysis, they’re getting downright expensive.

Check out the chart below, from Professor Shiller’s web site.  The blue line is the cyclically adjusted PE ratio for the last 130 years. 

Note a few things:

• The long-term average for the cyclically adjusted PE is about 16X.  Obviously, that’s only an average.
• Stocks have spent vast periods above the average and vast periods below it, usually in multi-decade cycles
• We’ve just descended from the longest period of extreme overvaluation in history, suggesting (to us, anyway) that the next multi-decade cycle is likely to be below the average
• At today’s level, 1160 on the S&P, stocks are trading at a 21X CAPE, about 30% above the long-term average

Now, also note that this apparent overvaluation doesn’t tell you anything about what will happen next.  As the blue line shows, stocks can get a great deal MORE overvalued than they are today.  And they can stay even more overvalued for a decade or more.

But what the apparent overvaluation does tell you–or, at least, HAS TOLD you in the past–is that your future returns are not going to be very good.  There’s a strong correlation between starting valuations and ending returns (high valuations lead to low returns and low valuations lead to high returns).  And today’s valuations can now be described as “high.”  (Not extreme, but high.)

Yes, you can argue that “it’s different this time.” You can argue that, since stocks have traded at an average CAPE of more than 20X for the past two decades, we’re in a new normal.  And you might be right.  But they don’t call “it’s different this time” the “four most expensive words in the English language” for nothing.

You can also argue that “interest rates are low, so P/Es should be high.”  That argument is in vogue right now, because there’s been an inverse correlation between P/Es and interest rates for the last couple of decades.

But take a look at the RED line in Professor Shiller’s chart.  The red line is interest rates.  As you can see, if you go back more than a couple of decades, there’s not much correlation.  (In fact, as the great UK economist Andrew Smithers has observed, there’s none.)

Again, Prof. Shiller’s chart doesn’t tell us what stocks are going to do in the near term.  As owners of index funds, what we’d like stocks to do is what they have been doing, which is keep going up. 

We’re not expecting we’re going to get excellent long-term returns from this level, though.  And we’re really worried about that housing double-dip.

Join the conversation about this story »

from decommisioners, 24 March 2010: “The EDO Decommissioners always intended to go to trial – now set for May 17th – Not as the accused but as the accusers making the case that their action was lawful because they were disarming an arms factory which is complicit in war crimes. Postponed from last autumn, the trial of the six people charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage at the ITT/EDO MBM offices in Brighton in January 2009 now begins on May 17th…” more

The real proof that online video is maturing is that it’s taking a life of its own becoming more than just a ‘poor man’s TV.’ Artists are increasingly turning to online video, especially on YouTube, to promote their music, with the TV taking the back seat. The latest numbers from video analytics company Visible Measures are a great example. The com… (read more)

We’ve talked about smart filmmakers learning to embrace file sharing to enlarge their audience and to improve their business model, but it appears that some filmmakers are getting the wrong kind of message. TorrentFreak has the story of how some filmmakers in Denmark, who had a total flop on their hands, pretended that the local Piratgruppen organization literally broke into the studio, stole (used correctly, for once) the film, and were threatening to put it online. Of course, the whole thing was completely made up in a weak attempt to get publicity. Little actually came of it until it was exposed as totally made up — but it’s a pretty serious issue. The studio was blatantly lying and accusing people of out-and-out criminal behavior, knowing that it was false. And this is in Denmark, where the local anti-piracy group has been quite aggressive in going after anyone for copyright infringement. Shameful.

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Security is always a concern online and, as the methods of attackers get more sophisticated, so do the tools to combat them. Google is now introducing a new feature that may help in cases where a Gmail account has been compromised. Whenever Google detects what it deems as suspicious login activity, it will notify the user that the Gmail account has b… (read more)

Pope Nixon the One

Because it appears that we know what would happen if Nixon became Pope … or if a whole “College of Nixons” ran the Clergy:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

This, of course, is after several years of American Church authorities not acting on the case.

And these are the folks that dictate … and sadly, have the political muscle … over reproductive rights in major health care legislation because of their “moral authority”.

Tags: The Vatican