THE ECONOMIST: “ONE problem with global warming policy that too few people are talking about right now is what should be done with India and China? Together, they have nearly half the world’s population, and they’re growing fast. Worse, they’re growing fast aided by big, polluting coal plants and other inefficient technologies. In less than a decade, China will outpace America as the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gasses. In an ethics paper on distributional justice, this might be fair, but the climate doesn’t care whether greenhouse gasses are emitted by rich Americans motoring to Tahoe for a minibreak, or poor Chinese farmers boosting the productivity of their paddies. It will warm up and flood Bangladesh just the same.” And it gets worse. Read the whole thing.
Archive for 2007
February 19, 2007
MORE ON “FUR CHILDREN” from Ed Driscoll. I think pets are fine — they’re just not kids.
ANN ALTHOUSE IS TALKING TO CAB DRIVERS: But at least she didn’t wind up with this guy. “Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot. Ibrihim Ahmned, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.”
MOHAMMED FADHIL REPORTS FROM BAGHDAD: “As we expected in the last post, the terrorists committed another crime against civilians by detonating two bombs in a market area.â€
BLOGGING A POLITICAL SCANDAL: “The behavior of city officials in this case is really infuriating, though not terribly surprising. After spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in a relentless effort to shut down David Ruttenberg’s business, they’re now spending yet more taxpayer dollars to threaten a blogger for daring to tell anyone about it.”
I LOVE THIS PHRASE: “BECLOWNED HIMSELF.” It fits.
A LOOK AT what the surge is doing.
And Jules Crittenden has more thoughts. And Michael Barone writes: “Last week, we had a couple of object lessons in how to use — or misuse — foreign intelligence.”
SOME SCHOOL LIBRARIANS have issues with The Higher Power of Lucky.
The book gets a good review here, though with the caution that “It’s not your average suburban sit-com novel, and Lucky is no Ramona Quimby, or Junie B. Jones.”
UPDATE: More thoughts here.
It’s a brother-sister novelist act, as we talk to Claire Berlinski, author of last year’s powerful nonfiction book, Menace in Europe and now of a new novel of Internet dating and espionage, Lion Eyes — and her brother, Mischa Berlinski, whose novel Fieldwork, on missionaries, anthropologists, and murder in the hills of Thailand, was published on the same day as Lion Eyes.
The conversation ranges from Internet dating and blogger romance, to the historical conflicts between missionaries and anthropologists, to the advantages of novel-writing over having to hold a real job. Plus, a year-later look at how the predictions in Menace in Europe — which is now out in paperback — have held up. (And last year’s interview with Claire Berlinski on that book can be found here.)
You can listen directly — no downloads needed — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. Or you can download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup by going here and selecting “lo-fi.” And you can always subscribe via iTunes. Why not?
As always, my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments and suggestions.
Music is “Black UFOs” and “Temptation” by Mobius Dick. This podcast sponsored by Volvo Motors USA. Buy a Volvo and tell them we sent you!
SENATOR JON KYL reports from Iraq.
JOHN MURTHA: I AM RUNNING THIS SHOW. God help us.
PAKISTAN’S WAZIRISTAN ACCORD with the Taliban/Al Qaeda remnants has failed, and they’re using the safe haven to reconstitute. Is anyone surprised by this?
StrategyPage has more:
Pakistan is in a tough position. With most of the population either enthusiastic, or supportive, of Islamic radicalism, it’s difficult for the government to declare open war on the tribes providing bases for the Taliban and al Qaeda along the Afghan border. Officers have already reported that up to a third of their troops might be “unreliable” if there were sustained military operations in the tribal territory. Yet, if the government does not go after these bases, the people in them have vowed to continue building their strength until they can topple the government. Such a headache.
Indeed.
ROBOTS, ROBOTS, ROBOTS: A report from the AAAS meeting.
BOB KRUMM: Instead of moving Presidential primaries forward, why not move back?
ANDREW BOLT: Spot the common problem.
EFFICIENT, EARTH-FRIENDLY factory farming? Looks like it: “Organic food may be no better for the environment than conventional produce and in some cases is contributing more to global warming than intensive agriculture, according to a government report.”
“FUR CHILDREN:” I ran across this term — meaning pets you have instead of, you know, real children – a while back and was bothered. I mentioned it to a friend from DC, who remarked that it wasn’t uncommon to see women, and even men, on the street with a cat or small dog in a baby carrier.
Great science fiction plot: Hostile aliens infect humanity with a virus that causes us to lavish parental attention on animals instead of human offspring, as a means of extinguishing the human race without a messy invasion. But it’s just a science fiction plot. Isn’t it?
UPDATE: Stephen Carter emails:
I spotted your item today about “fur children”. In P. D. James’s novel The Children of Men, set in a world in which no children can be born, there are two scenes involving women caring for pets as if they were babies — not only walking them in strollers, but actually having them baptized — and the narrator tells us that this is common behavior. I suppose the symbolism (to say nothing of the psychology) was too complex to risk trying to put this in the film.
What’s funny is that behavior intended to symbolize an apocalyptic state has now become semi-normal.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Pat Dooley says forget the aliens — the infection comes from cats.
I, for one, welcome our new feline overlords.
PAT DOLLARD says he’s got the Petraeus plan.
MORE ON THE KATHRYN JOHNSTON SHOOTING, from Radley Balko.