Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: February 2006

Chief Republican Who Oversees NSA Calls For Wiretap Inquiry

Heather Wilson

Even after Gonzalez spent all day Monday defending Bush’s illegal wiretap program, more and more conservatives continue to break rank and call for a special investigator. The latest republican to jump ship is no regular congressperson. House Representative Heath Wilson (R-NM) is chairwoman of the committee that oversees all the NSA programs. Yesterday, she called for a full congressional inquiry into Bush’s eavesdropping program. From the NYTimes:

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had “serious concerns” about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush’s father, is the first Republican on either the House’s Intelligence Committee or the Senate’s to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

And the same day Cheney said in an interview with Lehrer that members of congress can question or suggest whatever they want, but “we have all the legal authority we need.” No, Dick. No, you don’t. And even your own people won’t stay quiet about it.

Always Tie Your Shoelaces

Qing Vases

A few weeks ago, a regular visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge tripped on his shoelace and fell down a staircase, breaking three priceless Qing Dynasty vases in the process. Dating from the 17th or 18th Century, the 1948 donations to the museum were among its most well known artifacts. The museum’s assistant director, Margaret Greeves, said, “They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together.”

It turns out that the visitor was Nick Flynn and was luckily unharmed in the accident. Glad Flynn was uninjured and knowing he could never pay for the vases, the museum has asked that he not “visit the museum again in the near future.”

Listen to your mother. Always tie your shoelaces.

Evangelicals Call For Action On Global Warming

Cross and Earth

It looks like Bush might even be losing some of his religious right these days. A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders are supporting a bill that would curb America’s emissions of green house gases. The article pulls a great stat that really puts our place in causing global warming in perspective:

The United States, with around 5 percent of the world’s population, accounts for a quarter of its greenhouse gases and U.S. emissions rose by 2 percentage points in 2004 alone, according to government figures.

Deutsch probably tried to silence those figures.

Exxon to America: Resistance is Futile

Exxon Mobile Fossil Fuel Dinosaur

On the heals of Bush’s claim to reduce our oil dependency on the Middle East 75% by 2025, Exxon replies it is impossible and not worth trying. From Reuters:

“Realistically, it is simply not feasible in any time period relevant to our discussion today,” Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill said, referring to what he called the “misperception” that the United States can achieve energy independence.

The world’s largest publicly traded oil company, however, says hoping to end foreign oil imports is not only a bad idea, but also impossible.
…
“Americans depend upon imports to fill the gap,” McGill said. “No combination of conservation measures, alternative energy sources and technological advances could realistically and economically provide a way to completely replace those imports in the short or medium term.”

Instead of trying to achieve energy independence, importing nations like the U.S. should be promoting energy interdependence, McGill said.

I am sure it comes as a big surprise to you that the largest, most profitable corporation ever in the world says there’s nothing you can do to stop them. But I thought you should know. Your base are belong to us.

Bush’s NASA Silencer Resigns

Blue Marble

President Bush’s appointee at NASA, Geoorge C. Deutsch, resigned yesterday as growing controversy continues to surround his position. As mentioned previously, Deutsch was responsible for trying to gag NASA’s lead climatologist, James Hansen, from disclosing his research about global warming. Not only did he try to muzzle NASA’s scientists, he tried to tell them what to do. He demanded that the lead web designer of the organization put the word “theory” with every mention of the Big Bang. To no surprise, Deutsch believes in intelligent design.

So not only is this whipper-snapper telling our countries most brilliant scientists how to do their jobs, he did not even complete college! Even worse, he lied about it! From the NYTimes:

According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a “Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003.”

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case.

“George Carlton Deutsch III did attend Texas A&M University but has not completed the requirements for a degree,” said an e-mail message from Rita Presley, assistant to the registrar at the university, responding to a query from The Times.

You’re doing a great job, Deutschie!

Dr. James Hansen does a great job of putting this all in perspective:

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch’s credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

“He’s only a bit player,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. “The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That’s what I’m really concerned about.”

“On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed,” he said. “The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.”

Lost Papua Paradise Discovered

Golden Fronted Bowerbird

A team of research scientists exploring isolated jungles of Papua have discovered an untouched paradise They found dozens of new exotic species of insects, birds, and plants in their initial study and say they have barely scratched the surface. From LiveScience:

The team also found wildlife that were remarkably unafraid of humans during their rapid assessment survey of the Foja Mountains, which has more than two million acres of old growth tropical forest, Bruce Beehler, a co-leader of the monthlong trip, said in announcing the discoveries on Tuesday.

Two Long-Beaked Echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal, simply allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied, he said.
…
“There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there,” said Beehler, adding that two headmen from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the Foja Mountains, accompanied the expedition.

The area is so rich in diversity and teaming with life that they barely had to leave their base camp in order to conduct their research. Luckily, the error is protected from logging, but the growing timber demands from China and Japan worries the scientists. Check out their press release.

War Math

$440 Billion: Total bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (so far)
$100,000: Amount the Bush administration spends per minute in Iraq.
53%: Percentage of Americans who believe the administration “deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”

(via ThinkProgress)

Hotlinking: Naughty Naughty

So, it seems as Leaving Only Footprints continues to get more and more popular, so does its images. Last month, I noticed that my visitor stats were kind of funky and discovered dozens of sites linking to just my pictures. This is called direct linking or hotlinking. Instead of hosting an image themselves, other websites and blogs simply link to the images on this site. This equates to stealing because hotlinkers use bandwidth paid for by other people. For example, in the previous month of January, I received thousands of direct links from MySpace.com sites. If the average image size used was 50KB, over 100MB of my bandwidth was stolen.

After doing a little research, I found this website that explains how to prevent other sites from hotlinking your images. Well, the good thing was that these other sites could no longer use my images. The bad news is that no one removed the now broken links to me on their sites so my stats are still getting messed up. Also, I noticed new people continue to hotlink to me even though the images are not showing up on their site. Not too bright.

So, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Switcheroo and Cockeyed.

Not only can I prevent my images from showing up on a hotlinker’s site, I can make any image I want show up on their site. With inspiration from Matt Kelley, J-Luv, and a poster inherited by Alicia, this is what I came up with:

Burt Reynolds Cosmo Holtinking

If they’re going to link to me, I might as well get some free advertisement with a little help from Burt Reynold’s and his famous Cosmo picture. Also, I hope that it encourages them to take down the links.

Check out what it looks like to this MySpace holtinker stealing my squirrel image before:

Hotlinking Example Before

After:

Hotlinking Example After

Check out these other sites. I took screen shots for a permanent memorial.

Spider-Man Official Forums: Before and After
MySpace Person 1: Before and After
MySpace Person 2: Before and After
MySpace Person 3: Before and After

AYDS: The Most Unfortunate Name Ever

AYDS

Diet pills from the 80’s. There’s nothing more I can say. Just watch.

AYDS: New Peanut Butter Flavor

AYDS: America

Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change

Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change

The UK government has just published a book that synthesizes all of the scientific findings presented at the 2005 Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” conference. Entitled “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change”, the book examines the real threat of global warming due to humanity and its future impacts. It focuses on three crucial questions:

1. For different levels of climate change what are the key impacts, for different regions and sectors, and for the world as a whole?

2. What would such levels of climate change imply in terms of greenhouse gas stabilisation concentrations and emission pathways required to achieve such levels?

3. What technological options are there for achieving stabilisation of greenhouse gases at different stabilisation concentrations in the atmosphere, taking into account costs and uncertainties?

Here is a short summary from Treehugger:

Currently, the atmosphere contains about 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas linked closest to climate change and the principal concern of scientists, compared to levels before the industrial revolution of about 275ppm. The European Union adopted a previous target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius, which, according to the book, might be too high — enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Above two degrees, says the report, the risks increase “very substantially”, with “potentially large numbers of extinctions” and “major increases in hunger and water shortage risks… particularly in developing countries”. The book concludes, therefore, that in order to have a good chance of achieving the EU’s two-degree target, levels need to be stabilized below 450 ppm.

In the foreword, Prime Minister Tony Blair writes: “It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.”

The book is free and available for download. For more information on what you can personally do, check out Green-E and TerraPass.