Lefty Blogs
williampfaff ++ ++
Russian News ++
seaton-newslinks. USA expat in Europe ++
bilegrip Asu spleen ++
us-rockstroh a rant, not a blog ++
aboutmyplanet eco ++
sfgate ++
crookedtimber ++
onthecommons ++
sjlendman ++
....
abutamam freeiraq ++
airamericaradio +
amygdalagf +
angryarab ++
annezook +
antiwar ++
norwegianity
terrorism-news
blogspot
ourtomorrow
politickybitch
welcome-to-pottersville
aviraqi
billmon ++ whiskeyB
consortiumnews ++
dahrjamailiraq
dailywarnews ++
drforbush +
english +
fallujahinpictures
freespeechradio
halcyondays ++
healingiraq
hereticalideas ++
icasualties
maru
om
boxspinning boxes

jamaicaobserver newspaper
jameswolcott +
lefarkins +
liberalgirlnextdoor ++
lonehighlander Libya, not lefty
mahablog +++ solid
maruthecrankpot +
indymedia melbourne
messopotamian +7Apr06
monkey ++
motherjones ++
fisk
nocapital +
norightturn +NZ
peakoil ++
pilger +
politicalhumor +
raedinthemiddle
rafahtoday Feb05?
rense w= wacko conspiracies
rigorousintuition x
hegemon ++
ruckus ++
rudepundit ++
satiricalpolitical +
scaramoucheblog ++
secretsinbaghdad ++15Ap06
Energring
aliveinbaghdad ++
riverbendblog ++
sideshow +++
signs-of-the-times +++
slashdot ++techy
talkleft ++
thinkprogress ++
thismodernworld +++
uncapitalist ++
velorution ++ bicycles
org ++Brazil peasants
warandpiece +
warfare.ru +russia military
greenpeace
allhatnocattle
alternet ++
americanpolitics
antiwar
gbruno ++YT
axisoflogic ++
blackcommentator
bobharris +
bradblog +
buckfush +funnies
buggery +
buzzflash ++
changeforamerica
countercurrents
counterpunch +++
crisispapers
crooksandliars ++?
csmonitor
dahrjamailiraqhref="http://www.dailykos.com/
davidcorn
democracynow
democracyuprising
dissidentvoice
earthfirstjournal
earthstation5
empirenotes
foodfirst
fpif
fromthewilderness
geocities
granta
grist ??
gristmagazine
guerrillanews
gulf
hizbollah
huffingtonpost ++
informationclearinghouse
infoshop +
inthesetimes x
iranmania x
ivaw
jihadunspun
juancole ++
kuro5hin ++ notlefty
kurtnimmo ++
lrb ++ Iraqi?
mahablog
lewrockwell ++
marklynas climate change
mnftiu get your war on comics
motherjones
nilemedia
nybooks
occupationwatch
oriononline
palestine
prisonplanet
rall ++ Ted Rall cartonist
ratical
redpepper
rense
robert
rollingstone
scoop
selvesandothers ++
smirkingchimp
snappingturtle
socialistworker
spiked
tblog
theiraqiroulette
theleftcoaster +
thepoorman +
tnr ++ magazine
tompaine ++ mag
traprockpeace ++
truthout +
boondocks ++
crowning3
. . . helix
Base
rain radar
Weather
worldtribunal +
worldwatch ++ $ required
zaman + Turkish news
youcantmakeitup + ?
youngfox ????????????
bareknucklepolitics videos?
popdrain videos??
discovery videos??
cs videos??
aegisIraq video??
mariyaguchi video??
iwilltryit video..
baghdadtreasure
ahram cairo newspaper
felbers
thepartyline
jfaughnan 28/04/2006 10:25AM
shrillblog +
thinkprogress +
marchforjustice + pictures
messopotamian + Iraqi not so radical, but scared (also see IraqTheModel which was a USA front, but is now also scared)
scaramoucheblog +
counterpunch
.............
blogads liberal blogs by CPM $ per view
malakandsky ++ stolid?
republicoft + black gay parent??
dailykos ++
rawstory ++
democraticunderground ++
atrios ++
workingforchange +
leftinthewest +
dembloggers +
talkingpointsmemo +
firedoglake ++
vastleft ++
pamspaulding +
americablog +
washingtonmonthly ++
mydd +
politics1 +
bartcop ++
politicalwire +
sisterstalk black lesbian?
culturekitchen ++
alternet
wonkette +++
billstclair +
freefreedomtoldhere ++ pipe bomb

......
almuajaha defunct
whynot defunct
winstonsmith defunct
samadams dormant
mquinn02 defunct
iraqblogcount ++14Apr06 suspended
iraqicomments most recent: jan2005
iraqidoctor most recent: Aug2005
georgemustgo + moved?
vialls ++Dormant (joe is dead)
warblogging Defunct
hammeroftruth quiescant?
mediastorm quiescant? +
bushwhackedusa defunct
hamasonline defunct
4Jul06

13 December 2006

Mayon, cataphracti

nytimes
floods in Somalia worst in 50 years

Mayon
nasa
Mayon Mudslides
13.16177490801068N, 123.7495566428486E
big picture
nasa
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nytimes
carbon-neutral joyrides
Expedia and TerraPass..Carbon Balanced Flyer $6 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide round-trip flight of 2,200 miles; $17 6,500 miles; and $30 13,000 miles.


It is said that couched lances cannot break a line of foot soldiers,
but the cataphracti of Suren-Pahlav sure dealt with Marcus Licinius Crassus at Carrhae
Some later reports say that Crassus had moltcataphractien gold poured down his throat. He was famously avaricious.
iranchamber
Of the entire force, twenty thousand are said to have been killed; ten thousand were captured, and deported to distant Margiana for hard labor and slavery. Thus ended the disastrous Roman campaign of Carrhae. The Euphrates was firmly established as the boundary between the two.
Despite the crushing defeat of Romans, the Iranians made no attempt to follow up their victory to invade Rome. Romans after Carrhae learnt from Iranians to introduce cavalry into their army, just as nearly a thousand year earlier the first Iranian to reached the Plateau introduced the Assyrians to a similar reform, but the upshot of the debacle was to win unquestioned recognition for Iran as a superior to Rome and return of Iranian Empire.

Crassus
Crassus
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harley501
harley501
a pro RP photographer
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afarensis
A mammal has been found in New Zealand dating to 19-16 MYA.
..more primitive than multituberculates [rodent-like mammals..went extinct in the early Oligocene..some as small as the tiniest of mice, the largest the size of beavers]
some geologists argue that New Zealand was completely submerged during the Oligocene (about 30-25 MYA)-

,

12 December 2006

Licinius Crassus, Gordon Smith, lactose tolerance, Irwandi Yusuf, death squads, Prairie grasses

American Jewish weekly, Forward. It calls for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial "for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them".
......
If we're going as far back as 9 BCE, let's go back even further to Carrhae in 53 BCE where Marcus Licinius Crassus lost an army of forty thousand in the desert to Surena and his Parthian archers, not quite in present-day Iraq, but so close...!!!![beware the "Parthian shot", composite bows could penetrate Roman armour...]
GB43:
I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. ...


noquarter
The CIA's first major covert project was to prevent the communists from winning the Italian elections of 1948. They succeeded, but they had a plan to intervene militarily if they failed. Their fear of democracy ...


photos filched from MSNBC. I would be content to link to them, but they use the execrable Flash
Fact: there is no need to use flash to display photos, HTML does just fine.
It is marginally more difficult to download a 'flash' photo, and impossible to link. This saps the life from the internet.

Fact: there is no need to format using pdf, css & html can do just as well. People have a vague idea that their reports cant be altered if they use pdf. Meantime, no links mean that the internet suffers. And browsers lock if you accidentally click on a pdf. - I use downloadexpress to prevent browserlock.

Bromo
Mt Bromo Java
msnbc
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Chile
Chilean anti=Pinochet protester
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Congo
DR Congo
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jadeja
from jadeja on flickr.. cant link so filched. Also, jadeja dropped one of my faves, so bucket it
milapsinhjadeja
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Dec. 11, 2006 msnbc Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon ..
I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets, in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs, day after day.
That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore.


nytimes .. Phase Change Memories
optical disks are read from and written to with laser beams.
I.B.M...the same effect can be realized by using a small electrical current. .an alloy of germanium and antimony, GS. .. 500 times as fast as flash chips. 3 nm x 20nm..

nytimes December 11, 2006
..East Africa lactose tolerance..genetic changes as recently as 3,000 ybp
..one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. ....
..Such a mutation among an early cattle-raising people, the Funnel Beaker 5 - 6,000 ybp.. north-central Europe. ..
Almost all Dutch & Swedes are lactose tolerant, .. progressively less common ..at increasing distances from the Funnel Beaker region.
...43 ethnic groups in East Africa.. three new mutations, all independent ..that keep the lactase gene ..switched on.
..Nilo-Saharan-speaking groups of Kenya and Tanzania, arose 2,700 to 6,800 years ago..
Two other mutations among the Beja people of northeastern Sudan and..Afro-Asiatic, in northern Kenya.
..an enormous selective advantage .. almost 10 times as many descendants ..one of the strongest genetic signatures of natural selection yet reported in humans,..
.. evidence of cattle in Africa 8,000 ybp NW Sudan...independently from two other domestications, in the Near East and the Indus Valley of India.
..The mutations .. a nearby region of the DNA that controls the activation of the gene..

Ex-rebel leader 'wins Aceh polls .. exit poll ..indicates.
Irwandi Yusuf, who was in jail for treason when the .. tsunami December 26, 2004, took 39 per cent of the vote for governor.

cryingwolf
gbruno
who's death squads?

petrodollarwarfare [PDF}
Jerome Corsi, who wrote an essay in May 2006 entitled, “Iran Signs It’s Own Death Warrant.” Although Corsi is an apologist for the Bush administration (he wrote Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry), at least he admits that a major reason for the US invasion of Iraq was in fact the oil-for-euros policy of Saddam Hussein. Corsi states the following with regard to Tehran’s oil bourse:
If Iran wants also to seriously threaten the dollar's position as a dominant foreign reserve currency, a war becomes almost certain. The Iranian oil bourse may never be mentioned by U.S. policymakers as an official reason the United States decides to go to war with Iran, but it may end up being the straw that broke the camel's back.


physics911 .. Kevin Barrett
As a PhD in Islamic and Arabic Studies, I hate to say this, but I’ll say it anyway. The events of 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror itself is as phony as the latest “Bin Laden tape.” (Guardian 04)


We (can only blame) ourselves for promoting the economies of
the enemies and letting them impose pressure on us whenever
they wish... Today, a big economic war is underway. The political
war is obvious to all but there is an economic war that goes on
undetected.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, January, 2006
energybulletin

7 December 2006
.. Prairie grasses.. suck up a lot of carbon dioxide into roots and soil
David Tilman, U Minnesota, says that purpose-grown monocultures wouldn't be as good for the planet as old-fashioned prairie.
..His work is widely credited with helping to revive the notion, in the mid-1990s, that high biodiversity keeps an ecosystem stable and productive.
He has previously shown that mixed plots produce more plant mass in a given area than monocultures.
..mature prairie plots, planted in what was originally a nutrient-poor soil, can produce more than twice as much bioenergy as a monoculture field.
If you take into account the greenhouse gas emissions produced by growing, harvesting, transporting and converting plants ..prairie comes out 6-16 times better than corn grain ethanol or biodiesel.
..they can grow on land not suitable for agriculture..
500,000,000 hectares of degraded land worldwide could displace about 13% of global petroleum ,,and sequester about 15% of CO2 emissions

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11 December 2006

solar cells, mature forest, Iran, Suvarnabhumi Airport, al-Ishaqi, Pynchon

10 years of popularist-conservative government in Aus.
Some of the effects:
No effective Broadband internet: What offshore company would open an office where there is no broadband?
Solar energy research abandoned - note the UNSW line on the graph below.. it just halts shortly after the 96 red-neck take-over.
Only medical research has survived to some extent. Even rednecks find 'life-saving breakthroughs' appealing.
Oddly, last week the parliament had a 'conscience vote' and voted to allow cloning of embryos for use in research. Ova only, no sperm allowed. This in a land where the RC minister has banned RU486.
the UNSW effort has moved to the PRC where one of Prof Green's students is now a billionaire selling solar cells.
solar
sciam
A tiny chip similar to the solar cells .. Mars Rovers..
..a germanium wafer is spun at high speeds ..between 20 and 30 layers of semiconductor material," .. Spectrolab .. The top layer, captures the energy of blue light while the middle layer absorbs green and the bottom uses red...tuned to work with concentrated light.. 240 suns.
..light-concentrating devices, such as miniature plastic lenses and mirrors. The new solar cell achieved 40.7% efficiency . One cell of just 0.27 square centimeter = 2.6 watts .. similar cells are already widely produced .. electricity 8 to 10 cents per kWh
..giant solar farms in Portugal and China. In the U.S., Xcel Energy plans eight-megawatt solar power plant in Colorado next year
..Of course, its Martian peers have lasted 28 months in that harsh, alien environment.
.."We are also looking at four-, five-, even six-junction solar cells," .... to take the efficiency into the 45% range."..

I suppose the 40% is 40% of 240 'suns'
0.27 cm² = 2.6 Watts .
means 270cm² = 2600Watt 1m² = 96.3kW ca 140 *typical sunlight
so efficiency = 140/240 = 57% ????
or, to get 2600Watt, you need 270 * 240 = 6.5m² which isnt too shabby
but I cant see putting such fierce concentrators on a house-roof.

Old trees still good? .. nature
n Guangdong Province found that the amount of carbon stored in the soil of a mature forest increased by 68% over about 24 years.

Since we may all be expected to provide dated proof of our Lefty™ position
[washingtonmonthly]
Let me state mine. Iran is not a threat to any nation. Iran has the same right to nuclear technology as any other nation. USA & Israel have no right to threaten, blockade or bomb Iran. Fortunately, with the appearance of crying GB41 and his henchmen, it seems that the Iran war is off. Gates has said he wont go.
williampfaff
Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.
The striking thing in Athens, on this occasion, was the total lack of concern displayed for Iran’s threat, real or imaginary, by virtually everyone else in the conference room. The general discussion proceeded on formulating an initiative to stop the fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, and on the bleak future of Israeli-Palestinian relations, neither seeming a subject of Israeli or American interest. The warnings about Iran were greeted with audience indifference and trips to get coffee. No one even bothered to argue.


bangkokairportonline
Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok.
Imagine opening a new airport with no rail link to the city.
It seems to get to Sukhumvit, you will take a shuttle bus to the 'transport centre' where you will get on a regular 553 bus???
This is a major step backwards for Bangkok, almost as bad as the 1am closing time. Ah for the good old days.
Compare with KL airport where light rail comes right into the terminal building.
And back in Manila, family & friends still cant enter the airport building, ticket holders only. Very MilDicktat style.
At least Manila is having such a severe depression, for the last 5 years oil consumption in RP has flatlined, last year it turned down. So traffic in Manila is much less choked than five years ago. Now it only takes an hour or 2 to cross town.
It actually seems clearer now than back in 1991 when Mayor Lim closed Ermita. A lot of the bars that got walled up had great sound systems and decor. A bunch of Aus investors dudded, probably departed for Thailand, where visas are easier.

Dan Nachbar inflatable one-man blimp .. nylon.. hot air from a propane burner .. The motor .. will be electric and virtually silent .. a folding aluminum skeleton that maintains the desired shape. .. 102 feet by 70 feet .. folds and deflates ..


aljazeera
..victims of a US air raid..the bodies of 17 civilians, including six children and eight women, had been pulled from the debris of two houses in al-Ishaqi.

Somalia
Somalia
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leighm
Iran murmurings

Against the day Pynchon
guardian
Pynchon had taken some writing classes at Cornell, and had been taught by Nabokov (whose wife later remembered the student's neat handwriting).
..it will take place between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the aftermath of the first world war, and will move between Colorado, New York, London, Gottingen, Venice, Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia, Mexico, Paris, Hollywood and "one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all". Characters will include "anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses and hired guns", not to mention Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx.
wikipedia Against_the_Day

d&b
where are more duck&birdie?
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