Our New Minimum Wage Overlords
So this guy, went to a Taco Bell/KFC and its all done with tuch screens. Soon you will need a masters degree to get even the simplest of jobs. This could spell the end of the mcjob.
Its Almost Official
So a lot of people have said that Iraq is really a civil war, well its all but official now. With the recent attack on the golden dome, and the reprisal on dozens of rival holy sites, you can pretty much assume that the shit has hit the fan. These are not the kind of people that take the destruction of their holy sites laying down, you blow up mine, I blow up yours, then you blow up another one of mine because I blew up yours, so you blow up two of mine and one of my politicians…and on and on and on.
This is not good, we have our hands in the hornets nest, and we are going to continue to get stung until we do something about it. Are young men and women are going to continue to be killed unless we do something soon, and this means we need new leaders. New leaders that have the skills and brains to figure out the problems of this new world, the old “blow it up, steal all the money, hide it all” technique is not going to work.
The day after a bomb on a Baghdad street killed 23 people, another bomb in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra destroyed the golden dome of one of the Al Askari Mosque, one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq. The Associated Press reports that although no one was killed in the blast, the destruction of the mosque’s dome sparked demonstrations and calls for revenge.
“This criminal act aims at igniting civil strife,” said Mahmoud al-Samarie, a 28-year-old builder. “We demand an investigation so that the criminals who did this be punished. If the government fails to do so, then we will take arm and chase the people behind this attack.”
Tens of thousands of furious protesters have staged demonstrations across Iraq after a bomb explosion badly damaged one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.
Dozens of Sunni mosques are reported to have been targeted and six Sunnis killed in revenge attacks after a gang blew up the famous al-Askari shrine in Samarra during a dawn raid Wednesday — destroying the shrine’s famous golden dome.
It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and is certain to enflame tensions between the majority Shiite and minority Sunni populations in the war-torn country.
Iraqi national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told Al-Arabiya television the attack was an attempt “to pull Iraq toward civil war.”
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, appealed for calm and called for a week of mourning.
Meanwhile, angry protests erupted in Shiite parts of Baghdad and in cities throughout the Shiite heartland to the south.
Residents of the holy city of Najaf closed their shops and gathered in the city’s 1920 Revolution Square to vent their anger.
The shrine is one of two tombs in Samarra, just north of Baghdad, for revered Shiite imams and attracts pilgrims from around the world.
Suspicion
No group claimed responsibility for the shrine attack, but suspicion has fallen on Sunni extremist groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraqi television said several people had been arrested in connection with the bombing.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari urged all Iraqis to condemn the attack and urged both Muslim and Christian leaders abroad “to redouble their efforts to help the Iraqi government stop these saboteurs.”
The bombing came a day after at least 22 people were killed when a car bomb exploded in a market in a Shiite neighbourhood of southern Baghdad.
The day before, 12 died in a suicide attack on a bus in the capital’s heavily Shiite district of Kazimiyah.
The al-Askari shrine is one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. A mausoleum contains the remains of the 10th and 11th imams — reputed to be direct descendants of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Imam Ali al-Hadi died in 868 AD and his son, Hassan al-Askari, died in 874 AD.
The shrine’s famous golden dome was completed in 1905.
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Monday Confessional
I noticed that I hardly ever post anything personal on these pages. I will attempt to post a little weekly wrap-up each Monday and see how long I can keep it up.
So here is what has been happening to me lately. I have been trying to find another job, my current job has cut my hours back a bit and I need some spending cash. I have been trying to do a little freelance web design/ computer repair/computer teaching work. But alas it has not been going well. Other than my lack of funds, things are going really well.
I have been working on a new project, that will debut sometime in the middle of the march, and I think its going to be really awesome. Just to give you a taste, it will involve ice cream, Goggle maps api, and lots of pictures. I am buzzing with excitement.
My car needs a tune up, I am going to drive it back to Ohio to trade it in to my local “mother” dealership. Meaning that she is going to give me a great deal on a newish Honda for my piece of shit old Pontiac. She is too good to me. She also promised to start reading my blog more, so if you can see this mom, I love ya. Thats about it for things I want to share with the internet right now.
My life is pretty normal, I have been trying to get a new system for the members of the Sietch so they can manage their profiles easier. Might use some sort of PHP based content system like Drupal. Ohh yea one last thing, the cat that I am watching for this lady, had a turd stuck to its ass this morning. Got right up on the bed with me and started head butting me, I awoke to the lovely smell of shit, scant inches from my mouth. Sweet.
Keep it real.
Shane
Climate Change
I have said it before, and I am going to say it again, global warming is not a gradual process. My theory is that it only appears gradual because we are in the first steps of an exponential growth pattern. Global warming mechanisms tend to “feed” off each other, melting sea ice means more darker water exposed so more heat is absorbed leading to more ice melting, CO released from permafrost due to global warming means more CO in the air leading to more warming, plants suck up CO when they have too much they pump out less water, less water means less water vapor to reflect sun light, less water in the air means more in the rivers and streams which leads to sea level rise, you get the idea… these are but a few of the MANY feedback loops that could throw us into a downward spiral of global warming, and now it seems there is another feedback loop starting. The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than we thought, much faster.
The amount of ice flowing into the sea from large glaciers in southern Greenland has almost doubled in the past 10 years, possibly requiring scientists to increase estimates of how much the world’s oceans could rise under the influence of global warming, according to a study being published Friday in the journal Science.
The authors said there is evidence the rise in flows would soon spread to glaciers farther north on the vast island, whose ice sheet is nearly 2 miles thick in places and holds enough water to raise global sea levels 20 feet or more should it all flow into the ocean.
The study, which compared satellite measurements of the ice in 1996, 2000 and 2005, was performed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the University of Kansas.
“When you have this widespread behavior of the glaciers, where they all speed up, it’s clearly a climate signal,” Eric Rignot, the study’s author, said in an interview. “The fact that this has been going on now over 10 years in southern Greenland suggests this is not a short-lived phenomenon.”
More here.
The study is the first to examine the rate of change in glaciers to establish how much ice is being lost from Greenland.
The Greenland Ice Sheet – a mass of glacial ice and snow covering 1.9 million sq km – is twice the size of France and Germany put together.
It could raise the global sea level by 7m if it melted entirely.
In the past 20 years, air temperature in southeast Greenland has risen by 3C.
Eric Rignot, of the California Institute of Technology, said Greenland could be contributing as much as 0.5mm to the global sea-level rise each year.
Details of the study were also published yesterday in the journal .
Last September, American experts warned if trends continued, the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by the end of the century.
A recent British report warned that melting ice could increase sea levels by 12m unless temperatures stabilised.
And here.
GREENLAND’S glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly the Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century.
The new information, from satellite imagery, gives fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data is mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that sea-level rise threatens widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.
New Abu Ghraib Pictures
This is a video that contains most of the new pictures. Warning strong content. Can things get much worse?
Download Here
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