The VENT

It was a strange day browsing around the media world today.  It started with an interview with the author of ‘Liberal Fascism‘ on Squeezeplay on BNN.  He basically comes to the conclusion with a discussion about the spectrum of the Western Democracy’s Politics is that in Canada, the Liberals, NDP, and populist (Reform) conservatives are all the same in essence and only the ‘rule of law’ libertarians (economic conservatives) are worth considering as truly ‘democratic’ consensus dealers.

Basically, he says the acid test for the little tyrants of the future is do they say things like “the debate is over“.

Then I was cruising over to David Frum’s site and I saw a video of a group bullying David Frum into a conversation.  They were the ones who actually posted the video and display their web address’ proudly at the end of the video.  Is civility lost?

I was reminded why I dislike John Edwards constituency and just twinged a little when the other candidates said nice things about him when he dropped out of the presidential race today, but then I find out by going to the video author’s web sites (wearechange.org & infowars.com) that many of these people are libertarians and support Ron Paul (who is against the war in Iraq).  I then discovered they had done the same kind of ‘in your face’ thing to Bill Clinton as the following video link shows.

So then I go and research the many different types of libertarians (classical liberals, individualist anarchists, and others) only to discover a detailed wiki discussion on Objectivism and Libertarianism and how the group (aynrand.com) close to Ayn Rand considered their ideas and associations ‘closed’ (does that sound familiar) and that there was a splinter group of Objectivists that formed The Atlas Society that considered Objectivism an ‘open developing philosphy’ and open to Libertarian thought.

After all this I am mentally tired and succumbing to the defeat of compromise and realpolitik.  I realize, again, the secret is to understand what the essence of what you think is necessary.  For me today’s research convinced me the core of my ‘value system’ lies in the concept of ‘positive liberty’ … “refers to the opportunity and ability to act to fulfill one’s own potential” and as long as that is in essence, maintained in our society, I will pay my pound of flesh without too much complaint. 

Nintendo seems to be on a role with its product line starting with the Brain Training products for Nintendo DS developed by Dr. Kawashima who apparently just pours all his royalty entitlements back into more research facilities at the University he works at.  From the article … “Asked whether he ever thought of taking the royalty money and moving to a tropical island, Kawashima simply said: “I wouldn’t know what to do there. If I had such time to spare, I want to do my research.”"  Right now his efforts are focused on delaying senility by exercizing the brain.  His new research will look at children.

The take up of the Wii is extending into the extended care facilities.  Most popular are the games like bowling and boxing.  In many cases it appears the level of activity obtained with the Wii-mote is perfect for seniors.

As a result of this extension of the gaming market into a new audience, Nintendo’s profit doubled last quarter.

And as the gaming industry grows it is even impinging on Hollywood’s draw on talent by giving older actors a second life and sometimes more fame than they had in their original acting career.

“I’m not a big videogame player,” actor Kieth David said. “But once I was on the set of a film and one of the grips came up to me and said ‘I know you’re the voice of the Arbiter, can I have your autograph’?”

Apparently Jack Thompson has no problem with ‘Mass Effect’ and had this to say about the Fox News Story.  That was after he said he would fight the release/rating of Grand Theft Auto IV in April.

To: Jack
From: Brian (Kotaku.com)
I’m surprised you haven’t been looking into Mass Effect.

To: Brian
From: Jack
“Why would you be surprised? I don’t see any problem with it. The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about.”

Meanwhile, Lore Sjöberg, on his Wired Magazine blog tries to bate Fox News with a number of contrived inventions of his own.  He targets a number of games including this description of Super Mario Galaxy which I gave to nieces and nephews for Christmas

“Super Mario Galaxy
If you bring Rosalina enough “fuel,” she tells you “stories,” helps you learn new “techniques” and eventually invites you into her bedroom to “look at the stars,” all while you’re shaking your Wiimote at regular intervals. Get it? No? Well, there’s also an explicit sex scene involving Mario and a Koopa Troopa.”

It doesn’t stop with Nintento Games, the fast selling WII is being used by Ronald McDonald in this disturbing DDR video …

A new paper summarizes a lot of discussion and comes to the conclusion that the accumulation of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has caused only one notable thing, increased plant growth which has in turn increased biological density and diversity.

Since reducing CO2 will not necessarily reduce our environmental footprint, we are left with two proven methods.  Prosperity in the Western World where the sociological tie between child rearing and wealth are broken and children economically become a luxury, or the ‘one child per family’ policy of China’s.  We won’t talk about the next step where there is economic collapse after birth rates have dropped as in Russia ….

That reminds me of the Russian Scientist that said it is not AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) we need to worry about but another ‘mini ice age’.  Looking through data from the last decade, the Russian Scientist believes the sun’s output will bottom at 2041 and the Earth will hit the bottom of this period at 2055 to 2060 (delayed due to oceans) and the world needs to prepare for it because it will affect 80% of the Earth’s population.  He expects this ‘deep cooling’ period will last several decades.

I guess we’ll see in the next few years as NASA declared the start to the next Sunspot Cycle.  Until that works it’s way through the system (Earth’s Climate) I guess we can enjoy the winters we remember from before the 1980’s

The British Antarctic Survey has discovered volcanoes under the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the water they create under the ice largely explains phenomena like the Ross Ice Sheet shedding due to the accelerated movement this causes.

Combine this with the satelite data that indicates Antarctica is actually growing in mass and you definately have an inconvenient truth.  Antarctica is growing because of increased precipitation and its reduction in suface area is the result of volcanoes.