Prepare now to avoid con artists

How do you avoid the next Bernie Madoff? Avoid churches, temples and mosques, maybe?

Good con artists are loved....until people find them out. Trusting someone simply because you like them, is not enough. Also realize that con artists, in the financial field, scout for clients in places like churches and workplaces -- places where they can strike up a friendly relationship.

Earth as a Garden of Eden (the original geoengineering project)

For too long the "controversy" of global warming has centered on:

1. Changing the name to the more neutral "climate change" so it doesn't sound so scary or dangerous.

2. Framing the debate as a choice between doing nothing (because you don't believe there's a problem) or ending all technological progress (because you believe there's time to let Mother Nature fix the damage).

Maybe we can pursue the third option. Maybe we can geoengineer Earth.

The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'.

. . .

The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface.

Trouble is, niether side wants to pursue this option, because neither side trusts the scientists and engineers who would be needed to create the solutions. So geoengineering proponents are planning for a day when the problem is much, much worse.

Salter said that geo-engineering techniques were the only methods that would lower world temperatures quickly enough. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, he said, the world would continue to get hotter for several decades. "Opponents say it would take the pressure off getting the renewables developed. I've been working on renewables since 1973 and stopped because we're too late, we wasted too much time. We may have a panic very soon because of the way the Arctic ice is going."

. . .

Writing last year in a special edition of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions that was dedicated to geo-engineering, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge said: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

The banality of lucidity

Can enlightenment possibly be this boring? Is this why we prefer chaos and destruction?

It's official: train wrecks fascinate viewers!

Apparently, marital train wrecks fascinate viewers more than breeding train wrecks. We've been waiting for years for the Jon and Kate train to jump the rails (enduring hour after grim hour of camera-mugging by their eight children just to catch the antics of the crazy adults), but Kate's super-organization has kept the original Octomom's family on track.

They have so alienated their family and friends that they've had to replace them with off-camera hired help. Now their marriage has fallen apart -- a development viewers, who have watched Kate scream at and berate ditzy, unemployable Jon for years, have long been predicting.

Now the series no longer needs to pretend the Gosselins have a happy family life. Instead it will feature the two of them berating "the media" while they finish destroying their "happy" children -- but apparently that's what their "fans" (with their "strange preoccupation with people who have litters") want!

Maybe TLC can engineer a marital break-up or two in their other evangelical super-breeder show, 18 Kids and Counting (and counting, and counting). When is she going into menopause? Or will they replace perky Michelle with breeding daughers-in-law and rename the show 99 Grandkids and Counting?

I can't wait for the Angelina Jolie-wannabe Octomom or Aussie Octodad reality shows. These two really know how to wreck a train!

Partisan witch-hunting, phase two

Can history repeat? Did Gov. Blagojevich give Obama a "blow job"?

Republicans were ready to pounce, rushing out statements linking Mr. Obama to Mr. Blagojevich within an hour or so after the governor's arrest was reported. They too knew the script and that any opening must be exploited. Politics in this hyperpartisan age, after all, is the ultimate contact sport.

And can the Repubs convince the Gov. to turn "state's evidence" so they can impeach Obama?

Questions are raised. Connections are drawn. Conspiracies are theorized. Guilt is imputed, implied, asserted and very widely associated. And more of the same feckless fingerpointing is exactly what Barack Obama should expect from the Republicans, the right-wing propaganda machine and their enablers in the mainstream media -- even after Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has met whatever fate he deserves.

From the kooky obsession with his place of birth on WorldNetDaily to insinuations about his Chicago pedigree by the Associated Press, all of the attacks launched lately on Barack Obama give off the same familiar smell. Even a quick sniff is enough to bring back memories from a decade ago, when no perfidious accusation against Bill or Hillary Clinton was too crazy to deserve attention.

the pawnshops of Paris

The pawnshops of Paris are busy helping the middle class survive Sarkozy.

Now 500 desperate Parisians a day drop off items ranging from jewellery to haute couture dresses, fur coats and violins, still using the old euphemism "chez ma tante" after a 19th-century adventurer who pawned his watch but told his mother he had left it "at my aunt's".

People can borrow 50%-70% of an object's value and buy it back with interest a year later.

Run by the city hall, the state broker offers a public service, originally set up to counter loan sharks.

Yesterday the queues at the wooden booths ranged from north African mothers with wedding jewellery to cash-strapped pensioners and men in suits. Hidden behind the counter, experts assessed Rolex watches, gold candlesticks, wedding rings and fur coats.

Armageddonists: Celebrate the High Holy Day

It's 4/20. Time to celebrate the High Holy Day:

1. Send 420 letters to Congress asking for Drug Law reform.

2. Ask 420 friends to "just say no" to the Drug War - by decriminalizing marijuana (it would defund the war).

3. Print the names and addresses of 420 drug warriors - outing them to their neighbors and removing them from action.

4. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.