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Is John McCain pro-life?
That is the question posed by a post over at the CNS News Hub, which links to articles in the other NCR (the Register) that say, first, that McCain is not, then with a response from Senator (and convert) Sam Brownback saying he is. This is likely to be an ongoing debate, and McCain would seem compelled to address these concerns to shore up the right (and the "Catholic" vote?). Then again, McCain doesn't like to be pushed.
About the Author
David Gibson is a national reporter for Religion News Service and author of The Coming Catholic Church (HarperOne) and The Rule of Benedict (HarperOne). He blogs at dotCommonweal.
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I found two things of interest in the linked article.First, no mention is made of shutting down or regulating fertility clinics, a major source of embryos stem-cell researchers use in their research. It does not seem to be a concern of the "pro-life" movement that human embryos are created and disposed of routinely. They just don't want them used for stem-cell research. Second, this paragraph has me baffled:McCains reluctance to extend legal protection to unborn infants should not be a surprise. The grandson and son of Navy admirals, McCain at his core is a nationalist. He views defense of America and her interests as his calling in life.What is it supposed to imply?
Whatever McCain believes, our own task as Catholics is clear. We have a moral obligation to vote for the pro-choice politician who says he's pro-life and not vote for the pro-choice politician who says he's pro-choice.
I'm still back in the dark ages. I haven't figured out what Pro Life means. Is pro life only protecting the unborn? That seems to be the major concern. Does pro life ignore the people who are born? Does war have anything to do with pro life? Does universal health care have anything to do with pro life? Does immagration in order to feed your family have anything to do with pro life? Does a living wage have anything to do with pro life? I need help. I haven't found anybody who's pro life.
Andrew: As one who attended last April's conference in D.C, hosted by the USCCB's Justice For Immigrants Campaign, I can attest that many of the people who attended there agreed that immigration should always be consider a pro-life issue as it has to do with honoring the dignity of other people.Having said that, I and many of my colleagues from that conference went to our respective homes and stated what we agreed upon. We received many replies of "How dare you make that a pro-life issue!" It was not uniform and unanimous, but it was significant.
Pardon. I tapped the "submit comment" button too soon.I have no reason to doubt Sen. Brownback. The only sitting down that Sen. McCain might be doing with this is sitting down on Mr. Stricherz's litmus test.
Hello Andrew (and All),I for one don't think you are still back in the dark ages. I don't blame you for being puzzled. My impression is that many who refer to themselves as "pro-life" are committed to working towards the end of criminalizing abortion, but not necessarily to pacifism, opposition to capital punishment, provision of health care for those who cannot afford it, or any other position with respect to the deliberate killing of and preservation of human lives. This is one reason I do not use the term "pro-life", either with my students or outside the classroom. Like you, I think a literal reading of "pro-life" suggests a commitment to protecting and preserving human life in general (and some would extend the commitment to part of nonhuman life as well). On your understanding, "pro-life" people might be somewhat hard to find, indeed.Another reason I won't use the term "pro-life" is that this term is loaded. If one uses this term, one suggests that there is something wrong with anyone who disagrees. (Users of the term seem to suggest that no one would be "anti-life" unless he were either evil, crazy or both.) For similar reasons I will not use the term "pro choice".
Father O'Neal,I suspect if you had told me of your decision, I would have objected as well, and here is why.The Church teaches us that we must treat all people with charity and dignity. I absolutely assent to that teaching. Nonetheless, while I agree with many of the goals of the Justice For Immigrants Campaign I do not agree with many of the positions taken by some of the bishops and the priests about how to achieve those goals. Too many people, including many in the Church, decide to slap a pro-life lable on issues that are not strictly life and death issues - like abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty - either to infuse them with a moral certitude they don't have, or to water down the term so they can be pro-life at the same time they are pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia.
Sean: I wish that many of the people who confronted either me or my colleagues spoke in opposition as calmly as you have now.You are accurate in regard to the degree of moral certitude in which we can (and cannot) associate immigration policies alongside a teaching that is as clear as we have concerning abortion. The last part of your comments in your last paragraph are also accurate.In my own presentations, I make sure to include information about the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and inform people about their very thorough document "A More Perfect Union: A National Citizenship Plan". I wish that more pro-immigration supporters would know more about CLINIC's work; also, if more anti-immigration Catholics were familiar with CLINIC's work, they would see that offering amnesty would be strictly a short-run gain but not an infrastructure solution.
As Catholics, pro-life should mean commitment to the consistent ethic of life (a/k/a seamless garment). There should be "a linkage of all life issues" that cuts across all political ideologies:"What is the consistent ethic of life? It is a comprehensive ethical system that links together many different issues by focusing attention on the basic value of life. In his attempts to defend life, Cardinal Bernardin first joined the topics of abortion and nuclear war. He quickly expanded his understanding of a consistent ethic of life to include many issues from all of life. Already in the first of a series of talks, this one at Fordham University, Cardinal Bernardin stated: 'The spectrum of life cuts across the issues of genetics, abortion, capital punishment, modern warfare and the care of the terminally ill.'Cardinal Bernardin also acknowledged that issues are distinct and different. Capital punishment, for example, is not the same as abortion. Nevertheless, the issues are linked. The valuing and defense of life are at the center of both issues. Cardinal Bernardin told an audience in Portland, Oregon: 'When human life is considered 'cheap' or easily expendable in one area, eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy.'Along with his consistent linking of distinct life issues, Cardinal Bernardin acknowledged that no individual or group can pursue all issues. Still, while concentrating on one issue, he insisted in another address, the individual or group must not be seen 'as insensitive to or even opposed to other moral claims on the overall spectrum of life.' The consistent ethic of life rules out contradictory moral positions about the unique value of human lifeand it would be contradictory, for example, to be against abortion but for capital punishment or to work against poverty but support euthanasia.This linkage of all life issues is, of course, the very heart of the consistent ethic of life. This linking challenges us to pull together things that we might have kept apart in the past. Often our convictions seem to cluster around 'conservative' or 'liberal' viewpointsas in the above examples. But the consistent ethic of life cuts across such divisions, calling us to respect the life in the womb, the life of a criminal, the life on welfare, the life of the dying." http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0798.asp
Thank you, William. To add to the second paragraph in my previous comment, although there might be differing degrees of moral certitude, these differing degrees do not prohibit a linkage to other issues.I thank everyone for your patience with my multiple posts. I'll ease off.
"Whatever McCain believes, our own task as Catholics is clear. We have a moral obligation to vote for the pro-choice politician who says hes pro-life and not vote for the pro-choice politician who says hes pro-choice."Now ain't that the truth?
Father O'Neal:You said:"I wish that more pro-immigration supporters would know more about CLINICs work; also, if more anti-immigration Catholics were familiar with CLINICs work, they would see that offering amnesty would be strictly a short-run gain but not an infrastructure solution."It is always helpful to make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration when discussing these issues. People who, like myself, consider legal immigrants as being the pride and glory of our Nation tend to get annoyed when the water gets muddied by charges that they are "anti- immigrant". So please, in the future do us all a favor by adhering to this very straightforward protocol. I'll be happy, you'll b happy, we'll all be happy. Thanks!
I thank everyone for the responses. I sometimes feel i'm looking for the next Mahatma Gandhi. I wonder if he could win.
Regarding what Andrew says above, did everyone see Pat Buchanan, on the Today show, say that regarding Iraq, the war, and Islamic extremism, if McCain is elected, he will "make Cheney look like Gandhi"?http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/
Sean,Can you give me one issue in addition to abortion about which the Church's moral teaching is crystal clear and the Church's teaching about how the law should deal with that issue is also clear, too? Or is abortion the one and only issue on which voters and legislators have no "wiggle room"?
Bob: Fair enough. I revise my statement to say: "also, if more Catholics who claim to oppose to the present immigration activity were familiar with CLINICs work, they would see that the US bishops do not advocate for the government to offer amnesty as it would be strictly a short-run gain but not an infrastructure solution."
"...if more Catholics who claim to oppose the present immigration..."
In general, I'm with Andy, but Bil Collier did a beautiful job of getting past the one issue approach.(I'm not sure what "crystal clarity" has to do with this - I gues I think Matthew 25 is "crystal clear.")So I agree with Andy that if we all tried to live the Gospel message to the fullest and stopped harping on one thing only, we'd be better off for being less divided and better witnesses.The problem is I don't think it will happen.
I second Bob's comment: Bill Collier did offer us a great summary of the consistent ethic of life approach enunciated by Bernardin and others. The prolife hypocrisy meme gets huge airtime in progressive Catholic precints while the seamless garment gets little play. Why is it hypocrisy worthy of resounding condemnation to focus on abortion to the exclusion of immigration, for example, but not particularly remarkable to focus on immigration to the exclusion of abortion? There is tension between progressive orthodoxy and the consistent ethic of life. This cognitive dissonance often seems to be resolved in favor of the former over the latter both among my liberal Catholic cohort and these comboxes. Why? Could it be the prolife hypocrisy meme serves the useful purpose of enabling us to go with the zeitgeist?


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The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines arson as any willful or malicious burning or attempting to burn, with or without intent to defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor vehicle or aircraft, personal property of another, etc.
Only the fires that investigation determined to have been willfully set—not fires labeled as suspicious or of unknown origin—are included in this arson data collection. Points to consider regarding arson statistics include:
The number of arsons reported by individual law enforcement agencies is available in Tables 8-11, arson trend data (indicating a year-to-year change) are in Tables 12-15, and arson clearance data (crimes solved) can be found in Arson Table 2 and Tables 25-28.
Expanded offense data are the details of the various offenses that the program collects beyond the count of how many crimes law enforcement agencies report. These details may include the type of weapons used in a crime, type or value of items stolen, and so forth. In addition, expanded data include trends (for example, 2-year comparisons) and rates per 100,000 inhabitants.
Expanded information regarding arson is available in the following tables:
Trends (2-year): Tables 12, 13, 14, and 15
Property types: Table 15
Arson Table 1, "Arson Rate, by Population Group, 2009"
Arson Table 2, "Arson, by Type of Property, 2009"

subset: commoncrawl


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Keeping Pace« Back to Stories
Related Links
HONOLULU, Hawai'i-- The Azusa Pacific women's basketball team kept pace in the Pacific West Conference race with an 82-76 win over Hawai'i Pacific on Saturday in Honolulu. The Cougars built up a 19 point lead late in the first half, and never relinquished their lead after Allison Greene hit a jumper in the opening minute to win their fourth straight game and improve to 11-1 in PacWest play.
Azusa Pacific (13-5), which trails Academy of Art (12-1) by just half a game in the conference standings, had four players score in double figures, with Greene's 22-point effort helping the Cougars tab their second straight 80-point game.
Greene went 6-of-11 from the field, and shot 8-for-11 from the free throw line, while adding five assists and two steals. Kelly Hardeman logged a double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds, while Sullivan Ziegler and Sendy Valles each finished with 11 points.
Lisha Elsenbach came off the bench to score eight points, and Maggie Dumphy continued to show off on the defensive end with four blocks. She also added nine points and five rebounds.
In the second half the Cougars led by as many as 14, but a six-minute 14-1 Hawai'i Pacific run nearly erased Azusa Pacific's lead, cutting the Cougar advantage to 60-59 with 8:40 to play. Azusa Pacific, however, responded with a 13-3 spurt to go back ahead by 11.
Free throws from Hardeman and Greene pushed the Azusa Pacific edge to three points, and after a Dumphy jumper, Greene hit two more free throws to make it a seven point contest. After an HPU 3-pointer Ziegler made it a 70-62 game with a layup, and Hardeman buried a trey to give the Cougars a 73-62 lead.
Then, after Azusa Pacific held a 10 point advantage with 3:46 to play, HPU went on a 7-0 run with a triple and two layups to get within a possession with just under two minutes to play. Three straight Cougar free throws extended the lead to six points, and after trading free throws over the next minute, HPU cut the deficit to three points with 47 seconds to play.
That, however, was as close as Hawai'i Pacific would get as the Cougars nailed three additional free throws down the stretch to post an 82-76 win. The Cougars earned a 34-16 advantage in free throw attempts, burying 23 of those, while HPU went 13-of-16 from the stripe.
Azusa Pacific will close out its three game trip to Hawai'i on Monday night against Chaminade, looking to move into a tie for first against idle Academy of Art. The game is scheduled to tip at 5:00 (HAST).


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Main Content
All you wanted for your birthday was that soapbox racer car, remember? But your mom refused to let you do something so dangerous, so they got you a skateboard instead. That ignited your passion for skateboarding, so you can't be totally mad at her, but you're not above rubbing it in, just a little. Remind the 'rents about your childhood desire to speed down the hill with this Juggers tee from Ambig. It features a mustached monkey in a gnarly toilet bowl with wheels racing above a brand banner. Before you know it, you'll be opening up the packaging to your own racing toilet bowl!
- Screen print graphics
- 100% Cotton fabric
- Imported
- Four A, featured artist series
- Tagless collar
- Short sleeve
- Imported
- Brand: Ambig
Ambig Customers also liked:
Special event items are produced by manufacturers only after the outcome of a game or event. These are advanced sale items and will ship immediately after they are received in our warehouse.
Manufacturer direct items are shipped directly from the manufacturer. These items are not available for international or expedited shipping.
Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite number, and/or designs. Some options may be limited by league rules.


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How did this brand name Superdry. 極度乾燥(しなさい) come about? Is there any deep consideration behind it? Are the customers having some thoughts?
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The answer is in this BBC documentary called "Secrets of the Superbrands".
The owner of the Cheltenham based British company that developed the brand simply went to Japan, possibly as far back as 1985, was inspired by Japanese packaging, and used that to develop their graphic images.


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Perfect suit for the occasional swimmer!
Comfortable, soft with a smooth finish provides a great fit!
Front and back liner!
85% Polyester/15% Spandex.
Posted by Unknown on 3rd Feb 2014
I love Speedo, because it's great quality and never regretted it. I bought this swimsuit using as reference the same size of another I have size 34 for about 10 years. This one is a little bit smaller, but I believe is because it's new and it will stretch like the other. I wore it thinking that was going to bother my shoulders, but guess what? It was perfect! I felt nothing after I finish my swimming workout.
Posted by BB on 9th Dec 2013
Great cut and comfy! A black suit is a a basic must for every swimmer!
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9 Major Stories Everyone Got Wrong This Year
#4. Project Natal/XBox Kinect
The way we heard it:
Project Natal was announced late in 2009, and for most of the next year, the Internet creamed its collective jeans over it. This isn't a motion-sensing controller, like the Wii -- this is fucking body recognition! Facial recognition! Voice recognition! This is your Xbox coming to life, becoming best friends with you and then taking you on fantastic adventures! It's not going to be a toy or a novelty item; it's going to be the future of gaming itself!
Which happens to look exactly like the present of gaming.
Then, Project Natal was finally released as the Kinect, and we got exactly what we didn't want: Another Wii built around the cheapest, shallowest gimmick possible. Just look at each system's bestselling games:
Wii: Wii Sports, Wii Party, Just Dance, Wii Fit Plus, the Petz series
Kinect: Kinect Sports, Kinect Adventures, Dance Central, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Kinectimals
Because there's nothing kids love more than dead-eyed animals.
Kiddie bullshit and housewife fodder, all of it. We wanted to lightsaber duel in a fully interactive digital environment -- perhaps a bar fight, so we could pick up in-game chairs and bash virtual Chewbaccas to death with them -- and instead we got to molest virtual tigers and go bowling. Again.
The scenario shouldn't have been a surprise: This is what nerds do. We get way too excited about the potential of something, then, when faced with the disappointing reality, we howl in impotent rage and set out to destroy it. We put these things up on a pedestal, then immediately stand at the bottom of that pedestal with an ax, just waiting for the moment we get to chop it down. And the Kinect definitely deserved it.
"What do you mean it can't make me coffee?"
But the truth is...
In the right hands, the Kinect actually does all it promised and more. You just have to head out to the fringes to see it:
For starters, it's effectively changing the future of graphic user interfaces. The medical field is making use of Kinect's software to enhance and tweak how technicians interact with radiological scans. Instead of awkwardly manipulating a 3D image with 2D tools like a mouse and keyboard, a Kinect-driven interface uses voice recognition, body position and hand gestures to attain an entirely new level of precise, intuitive control.
Above: Medicine.
And all without any sort of physical controller -- hell, even Minority Report had to use gloves to accomplish the same thing.
"Ha! Look how primitive! This shit's like watching somebody use a cell-phone in the '90s."
The current Kinect games mostly recognize only a few predetermined gestures and broad, sweeping movements, but it's not the software's fault. For example, this Japanese gamer built a full-body 1:1 motion recognition mod. Every single movement he makes, his avatar makes in kind. Of course the Japanese guy uses it to inhabit the body of a slutty anime schoolgirl -- that's the endgame of literally every technological development Japan's made in the last century -- but think of other potential uses for this: With some collision detection, this could easily bring about the aforementioned lightsaber fantasy that takes place in a fully interactive digital environment.
Kind of like this: A fully rendered (if glitchy and unintentionally hilarious) environment with two-way interaction. He lifts up, moves and repositions digital objects inside the space, and the space, in turn, renders the real objects he places in it -- his chair, for example, is present in both reality and the game. And that's just what the Swedish version of Kip from Napoleon Dynamite here can do; if you throw some real funds and a professional development team behind it, you've got the closest thing we've ever had to true virtual reality.
Oh, and what's this at the end? Yup: lightsaber duel. Fucking told you.
We have literally been waiting our entire lives for this.
Finally, as if that wasn't enough to foster painfully fierce nerd erections around the world, there is the inevitable end point: VR porn.
For now, all ThriXXX does is render a virtual hand that you can use to cavity-search dead-eyed whores in a shady motel, but again, these are the very early stages of a completely new technology. With the right amount of money and expertise behind this kind of software, you could be standing in an empty room that, at the touch of a button, fills with your virtual office. You could manipulate programs in the air in front of you. Come break time, you could play a few holes working on your actual, physical golf swing. Or, if the mood strikes, you could just lock the doors, turn the lights down and air-hump some digital poon until the shame overcomes your horniness.
Air sex will never be the same.
#3. Inception
The Way We Heard It:
Inception was entirely about characters not knowing the difference between dreams and real life. In the final scene, Leo DiCaprio is reunited with his long-lost children, and as he greets them, he spins a top (it's established earlier that if in a dream, the top spins forever, while in reality, it eventually topples). The camera hangs on the top for a few seconds and then ... cut to black. The audience groans. What happened?
Ever since, the Internet has been on fire with analyses to find out how the film "really" ended, picking apart every detail. Someone floated the theory that because DiCaprio's children are wearing the same clothes in every scene, it must all be in his head, so someone interviewed the goddamned costume guy to find out if they were wearing the same outfits (they weren't). The conclusion:
"That's huge. If the kids, clothing really is different, then Cobb, who always imagined them the same way when in a dream, is no longer in a dream and actually in reality. On my second viewing of the film ... the clothing looked identical. But Kurland dressed them, and ... I'm inclined to take his word for it."
There was also a bitchin' train crash, but for some reason no one wrote essays about it.
Someone else pointed out that the children don't age in the film. Immediately the Internet scrambled to find out who played the children and determined that different, older actors were cast for the later scene.
On our own forum, we actually had to moderate pages of discussion extensively analyzing the exact spin of the fucking top to determine whether the lean exceeded the amount allowed by gravity and thus whether, by the laws of physics, it was destined to topple after the final frame.
And on and on and on.
Tens of women went unsatisfied as the debate raged.
But the truth is ...
Christopher Nolan did not run out of film. It was scripted, and shot, to end exactly the way it did. It's an ambiguous ending. Lots of movies have them. Not an "encoded" ending or a "secret" ending or a "hidden" ending. Ambiguous. On purpose.
We're not trying to be dicks here, but to this day, fans act like we were watching a live news event when the feed to the camera just got cut, and we're just waiting to hear from somebody else who was on the scene with additional information. But the movie didn't cut to black because the power ran out, or the budget fell a hundred bucks short of what they needed to shoot the whole final scene. The ending wasn't left up in the air. What you saw was the ending.
"We wanted to shoot a more satisfying ending, but Leo wanted to play flag football instead."
Again, we are not mocking nerds for overanalyzing pop culture. We're professional nerds who overthink pop culture for a living. But we're kind of disappointed that even the hardest of the hardcore movie geeks seem totally unfamiliar with the concept of an ambiguous ending. Nobody has seen The Thing (where the credits run with it still unclear whether the main character is the shape-shifting monster)? Or Total Recall (was everything part of the virtual reality fantasy)?
Nobody had to read The Lady, or the Tiger in school?
Somebody has to remember Pat.
It's a common, age-old technique. The idea is to make you feel uncertainty, in the same way horror movies make you feel scared or pornos make you feel a boner. Asking what ending the director "really" intended is a total nonsense question, and it's kind of ruining your own enjoyment of the film. It's like refusing to accept the events of Lord of the Rings until somebody tells you exactly where Middle-earth is located. If Chris Nolan wanted you to leave the theater knowing it was a dream, he would have goddamned filmed that. He didn't. He wanted you to leave never knowing, because the main character himself doesn't know.
That's the point.
The whole thing is threatening to turn into another Blade Runner "is he a robot" debate, which continued for two decades. If only the filmmakers would just tell us!
Good news, gang -- they totally have! Harrison Ford and Michael Deeley (the film's producer) both have come forward and said Deckard is a human. There's your answer! Oh, wait. Ridley Scott, aka the director, aka the guy deciding every shot and edit and how the overall story is told, says he was a robot. Because even in the minds of the people who made it, there is no answer. Because it's an ambiguous ending, and that's exactly how they intended to tell the story.
#2. LeBron James
The way we heard it:
"LeBron James ditching Cleveland for Miami Heat is the worst thing that has ever happened to the NBA, he should be ashamed of himself."
Freakishly giant and impossibly talented basketball star, LeBron James, did what a lot of players do every single year: He went from one team to a different team with the hopes of winning more basketball games. But Cleveland was LeBron's first team, located in the same state where he grew up, and he intended to treat them with respect and fulfill his promise to bring a championship home ... right up until he ditched them in favor of a stellar team of superstars in Miami. Just as sports fans had been fearing all along, it wasn't about heart, or loyalty -- it's strictly about LeBron: The Brand. And LeBron's brand needed LeBron to win a ring for LeBron.
That one alone is just a little too subtle.
It didn't help that he drew the process out over months. He dodged direct questions and gave misleading answers about his upcoming free agency. He flew around the country, flirting with New York, Chicago and any other city hoping to win a title. Finally, he reserved an hour of time on ESPN to deliver his horrifying decision in the most douche-chill inducing sentence possible: "In this fall I'm going to take my talents to South Beach."
Seriously, who's writing this shit? Is it Disney?
When that wasn't enough, he came out with that irritatingly long Nike commercial wherein he implies, among other things, that he is in no way sorry for his behavior. Nike even includes a pretty damning visual bit where LeBron literally destroys a basketball court by driving a forklift through it.
And that's basically what he did to the game, if you listened to basketball purists shouting on ESPN about how Jordan, Magic and Bird never would have done this. It was like LeBron was an NBA manchuriancandidate, programmed to make everyone love him, only so he could tear their hearts out and make them abandon the sport he'd made interesting again.
But the truth is ...
LeBron's move, including and especially "The Decision," was the best thing to happen to the NBA since Michael Jordan retired (the first time) 14 years ago. Sports are entertaining, but not as entertaining as sports movies. Anyone who would tell you otherwise hasn't seen Rudy.
People love a good story. Sure, every team has an army of loyal fans that will watch and support no matter what, but if you want to get the rest of the world to pay attention, you need a story.
Above: A story.
It's why the New York Giants defeating the New England Patriots a few years ago was so exciting -- it could have easily been a sports movie. You had your undefeated yet morally bankrupt Patriots, with their smug quarterback, and their scrotum-faced coach. Meanwhile you had your quintessential underdogs, the wildcard Giants, featuring Eli "The Other Manning" Manning, and a coach that, swear to God, might be Mick from the Rocky movies.
Whose face, strangely, also appears to be made from scrotum skin.
The Patriots became every blond, strong-jawed, arrogant 80s movie bully to the Giants' scrawny, "aw shucks," wacky best friend who it turned out you were in love with the whole time. When the Giants beat the Patriots at the last minute, the world celebrated, not because America was suddenly a Giants fan, God no, but because America loves an underdog sports movie, and this one happened in real life.
But every such story needs a villain, and LeBron James created one for the NBA. Why else would anyone be paying attention to basketball way back in July? And not just paying attention, but actively thinking about it? Basketball fans and nonfans alike all had an opinion about LeBron's decision. Everyone had something to say. If it didn't work, you wouldn't be hearing so many of your coworkers say things like, "Can you believe that LeBron James fellow? I just think it's shameless, whatever it is that he did." If it didn't work, would Christmas Day's Lakers-Heat game have drawn a 45 percent ratings increase over last year?
For the first time since the early 90s Pistons, basketball had a villain, but not just any villain, the worst villain. He turned on the hardworking, blue collar people of Cleveland, lied to them and then rubbed their faces in his betrayal on national TV! The Heat staged an elaborate introduction ceremony so LeBron, Wade and Bosh could show off because they think they're so great. He only plays basketball for the money and fame, and not the love of the sport. What an asshole. LeBron James stole your girlfriend.
What sport is this again?
The entire ordeal could've been scripted by the WWE, and the NBA couldn't be luckier.
#1. The iPhone 4 and iPad Disasters
The way we heard it:
It was hard to find a beloved figure who got more bad press than Steve Jobs this year, which is pretty remarkable, since 2010 saw Michael Jordan try to bring back the Hitler mustache.
Yep. This happened.
The great unraveling of Jobs' mythos started almost immediately after the keynote address in which he unveiled the much-hyped iPad to a unanimous "Whaaaa?" Depending on which tech blog you read, it was either the least-powerful laptop released in years or it was a giant iPod Touch that didn't fit in your pocket unless you were a kangaroo. What was supposed to be yet another of Jobs' spellbinding magic shows created such bad buzz that Apple's stock price went down before it was even over.
With the stink of his last brain fart still hanging thick in the air, Jobs tried to reset the stage by releasing the iPhone 4 well ahead of schedule. The day it hit shelves, reports began pouring in that it was about as good at being a phone as the iPad. If you picked it up with your left hand, it dropped calls.
Rather than admitting he'd made a mistake and recalling the product, Jobs stuck his fingers in his ears and then his head in the sand. Tasting blood in the water, the tech blogs rushed in, forcing Jobs into one embarrassing news conference after another until he admitted he was wrong.
But the truth is ...
If you read only the headlines in the days before and immediately after the launch of the iPad and the iPhone 4, that's the story you got. It might still be what your brain pulls out of the filing cabinet when you hear either mentioned. Well, it turns out that both products did all right for themselves. And by all right, we mean that they were the most successful products in the history of Apple. They beat the shit out of the iPod and the original iPhone.
The real problem was something that social scientists, borrowing a phrase from movie theater racism, call the loud minority. The idea is that a small group's niche point of view is overrepresented simply because that's the group that's more likely to share it. In the case of the iPad, the loud minority were tech bloggers -- people who write and think about cutting-edge technology. The problem is that the more they know about technology, the less they're like most Americans.
"Why won't the Internet box let me Internet?"
If you trust census data over Whitney Houston lyrics, old people are the future of America, mostly thanks to the post-WWII baby boom. And according to an informal survey conducted in line at a Best Buy, not a single damn one of them knows the first thing about operating a computer. The iPad was a computer that finally made sense for people who didn't know how to use a mouse. It responded to your touch in exactly the way you, or even a marginally intelligent orangutan, would anticipate. Push the page you're reading left, and that's where it moved. If the link at the end of that gypsy-cursed email leads you to a scary page full of dicks, you just had to hit the only button on the machine to get back to your pretty, tiled home base.
But if the iPad launch showed that the loud minority had lost touch, the iPhone 4 was the point at which the loud minority found itself shaking a stranger by the neck while screaming "look what you make me do." As Jobs pointed out, they seemed to be willfully ignoring a few things: All smartphones have places you can touch that will make them lose a bar or two; it couldn't have been that big a problem, since Apple was selling more of the iPhone 4 than any iPhone ever and seeing fewer people return them.
Meanwhile, the iPad ushered in the greatest revolution in masturbation since the birth of Internet porn.
Of course, when you're arguing with someone who's already made up his mind to disagree with you, logic only makes him louder. This time, they got so loud that Apple's stock dropped nearly eight percent. For weeks, it was all the Internet was talking about, and then, with a suddenness that was almost startling, the Internet shut the fuck up about the iPhone 4. Jobs had agreed to waive the restocking fee if people wanted to return their phones, and nobody returned them.
They were too busy playing Plants vs. Zombies.
In a rare moment of candor, the blog CrunchGear, which had been one of the leaders of the scandal dubbed Antennagate posted an apology titled: "We have met Antennagate, and it is us" in which they admitted that they were "grasping at factual straws and thrusting them into the faces of everyone we encountered " because "controversy generates traffic." Of course, this was a marginally popular post on a site whose most popular iPhone 4-related post is still "The top four iPhone 4 hardware issues so far."
The rest of the silent majority, and even The New York Times just shuffled their feet around and avoided making eye contact by playing with their iPads and iPhone 4s.
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text:
NY Times Bombshell: "The latest scientific research suggests" climate change is "helping to destabilize the food system"
"PRICE SPIKES: Have increased the number of hungry people worldwide in recent years, and led to food riots in several countries."
Okay, the fact that climate change is helping to destabilize the food system and cause major price spikes is not a 'bombshell' to Climate Progress readers. We've been writing about this for a long time (see "how extreme weather, climate change drive record food prices" and links below).
The bombshell is a 4000 word front-page story in the Sunday New York Times (above the fold!) headlined:
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
Let me extract the key parts and best quotes for you, though I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It is quite thorough.
UPDATE: At the end are two featured comments, including one by long-time poster Wit's End (aka Gail) where I've copied and activated the link to her website, another new feature I'm adding for select comments as an end-run around the lame FB system.
The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.
Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.
Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.
Bizarrely, some criticized me for my analyses from earlier in the year that price jumps were contributing to clinical instability in food riots, but it was always pretty obvious and has now become fairly standard wisdom (see The Economist: "The high cost of food is one reason that protesters took to the streets in Tunisia and Egypt").
As for whether climate change and extreme weather were contributing to the food price spikes, again I took some flak for stating the obvious, but now, as the NYT piece makes clear, this too is something widely understood:
Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.
Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.
Temperatures are rising rapidly during the growing season in some of the most important agricultural countries, and a paper published several weeks ago found that this had shaved several percentage points off potential yields, adding to the price gyrations.
Characteristically — and unfortunately — the New York Times does not provide a link to that paper. You can read about it here ("Crop yields fall as temperatures rise"). The study itself is in Science, "Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980."
As the NYT reports, this is surprising news to some, who bought the myth that rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere would somehow be an unadulterated benefit to crops — which requires ignoring the increased heat as well as the increase in weather extremes, including heat waves, droughts, and deluges.
For nearly two decades, scientists had predicted that climate change would be relatively manageable for agriculture, suggesting that even under worst-case assumptions, it would probably take until 2080 for food prices to double.
In part, they were counting on a counterintuitive ace in the hole: that rising carbon dioxide levels, the primary contributor to global warming, would act as a powerful plant fertilizer and offset many of the ill effects of climate change.
Until a few years ago, these assumptions went largely unchallenged. But lately, the destabilization of the food system and the soaring prices have rattled many leading scientists.
"The success of agriculture has been astounding," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a researcher at NASA who helped pioneer the study of climate change and agriculture. "But I think there's starting to be premonitions that it may not continue forever."
A scramble is on to figure out whether climate science has been too sanguine about the risks. Some researchers, analyzing computer forecasts that are used to advise governments on future crop prospects, are pointing out what they consider to be gaping holes. These include a failure to consider the effects of extreme weather, like the floods and the heat waves that are increasing as the earth warms.
A rising unease about the future of the world's food supply came through during interviews this year with more than 50 agricultural experts working in nine countries.
These experts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it while reducing the considerable environmental damage caused by the business of agriculture.
This NYT story was slightly preempted by the Oxfam paper that we wrote about a few days ago, which made clear we weren't gonna have to wait until 2080 to seafood prices double driven in large part by climate change (see Oxfam Predicts Climate Change will Help Double Food Prices by 2030: "We Are Turning Abundance into Scarcity").
Here's more on the new science from the NYT:
For decades, scientists believed that the human dependence on fossil fuels, for all the problems it was expected to cause, would offer one enormous benefit.
Carbon dioxide, the main gas released by combustion, is also the primary fuel for the growth of plants. They draw it out of the air and, using the energy from sunlight, convert the carbon into energy-dense compounds like glucose. All human and animal life runs on these compounds.
Humans have already raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and are on course to double or triple it over the coming century. Studies have long suggested that the extra gas would supercharge the world's food crops, and might be especially helpful in years when the weather is difficult.
But many of those studies were done in artificial conditions, like greenhouses or special growth chambers. For the past decade, scientists at the University of Illinois have been putting the "CO2 fertilization effect" to a real-world test in the two most important crops grown in the United States.
They started by planting soybeans in a field, then sprayed extra carbon dioxide from a giant tank. Based on the earlier research, they hoped the gas might bump yields as much as 30 percent under optimal growing conditions.
But when they harvested their soybeans, they got a rude surprise: the bump was only half as large. "When we measured the yields, it was like, wait a minute — this is not what we expected," said Elizabeth A. Ainsworth, a Department of Agriculture researcher who played a leading role in the work.
When they grew the soybeans in the sort of conditions expected to prevail in a future climate, with high temperatures or low water, the extra carbon dioxide could not fully offset the yield decline caused by those factors.
They also ran tests using corn, America's single most valuable crop and the basis for its meat production and its biofuel industry. While that crop was already known to be less responsive to carbon dioxide, a yield bump was still expected — especially during droughts. The Illinois researchers got no bump.
Their work has contributed to a broader body of research suggesting that extra carbon dioxide does act as plant fertilizer, but that the benefits are less than previously believed — and probably less than needed to avert food shortages. "One of the things that we're starting to believe is that the positives of CO2 are unlikely to outweigh the negatives of the other factors," said Andrew D. B. Leakey, another of the Illinois researchers.
Other recent evidence suggests that longstanding assumptions about food production on a warming planet may have been too optimistic.
Two economists, Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University and Michael J. Roberts of North Carolina State University, have pioneered ways to compare crop yields and natural temperature variability at a fine scale. Their work shows that when crops are subjected to temperatures above a certain threshold — about 84 degrees for corn and 86 degrees for soybeans — yields fall sharply.
This line of research suggests that in the type of climate predicted for the United States by the end of the century, with more scorching days in the growing season, yields of today's crop varieties could fall by 30 percent or more.
Though it has not yet happened in the United States, many important agricultural countries are already warming rapidly in the growing season, with average increases of several degrees. A few weeks ago, David B. Lobell of Stanford University published a paper with Dr. Schlenker suggesting that temperature increases in France, Russia, China and other countries were suppressing crop yields, adding to the pressures on the food system.
"I think there's been an under-recognition of just how sensitive crops are to heat, and how fast heat exposure is increasing," Dr. Lobell said.
Such research has provoked controversy. The findings go somewhat beyond those of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that episodically reviews climate science and advises governments.
That report found that while climate change was likely to pose severe challenges for agriculture in the tropics, it would probably be beneficial in some of the chillier regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and that the carbon dioxide effect should offset many problems.
In an interview at the University of Illinois, one of the leading scientists behind the work there, Stephen P. Long, sharply criticized the 2007 report, saying it had failed to sound a sufficient alarm. "I felt it needed to be much more honest in saying this is our best guess at the moment, but there are probably huge errors in there," Dr. Long said. "We're talking about the future food supply of the world."
The NYT story has a somewhat ironic section — though whether it is intentionally ironic or unintentional is not clear:
'The World Is Talking'
Sitting with a group of his fellow wheat farmers, Francisco Javier Ramos Bours voiced a suspicion. Water shortages had already arrived in recent years for growers in his region, the Yaqui Valley, which sits in the Sonoran Desert of northwestern Mexico. In his view, global climate change could well be responsible.
"All the world is talking about it," Mr. Ramos said as the other farmers nodded.
Farmers everywhere face rising difficulties: water shortages as well as flash floods. Their crops are afflicted by emerging pests and diseases and by blasts of heat beyond anything they remember.
In a recent interview on the far side of the world, in northeastern India, a rice farmer named Ram Khatri Yadav offered his own complaint about the changing climate. "It will not rain in the rainy season, but it will rain in the nonrainy season," he said. "The cold season is also shrinking."
Well the whole world is talking about climate change and climate change impacts — other than the United States that is. Here, President Obama and many other politicians and environmentalists tried to pass legislation to help address climate change — without talking about either of those things (see "Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?")
The story tries to conclude on both a realistic and upbeat note, but that really isn't possible:
The United Nations recently projected that global population would hit 10 billion by the end of the century, 3 billion more than today. Coupled with the demand for diets richer in protein, the projections mean that food production may need to double by later in the century.
Unlike in the past, that demand must somehow be met on a planet where little new land is available for farming, where water supplies are tightening, where the temperature is rising, where the weather has become erratic and where the food system is already showing serious signs of instability.
"We've doubled the world's food production several times before in history, and now we have to do it one more time," said Jonathan A. Foley, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. "The last doubling is the hardest. It is possible, but it's not going to be easy."
Well, it may be possible, but not in a world of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, where the temperature rise of 10°F by centuries end is not even the worst case, but just business as usual.
Related Food Insecurity Posts:
- The Coming Food Crisis: Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia's fires and Pakistan's floods are making a bad situation worse.
- Reports: Egyptian and Tunisian riots were driven in part by the spike in global food prices
- Expert consensus grows on contribution of record high food prices to Middle East unrest
- UN food agency stunner: World loses one-third of total global food production
- Grantham's "Things that Really Matter in 2011 and Beyond": "Global warming causing destabilized weather patterns, adding to agricultural price pressures"
Wit's End · The following information comes from an article about the United Nations Environment Programme. Tropospheric ozone including near-surface ozone is a major greenhouse gas, harms human health and is linked to significant damage to crops and ecosystems.
A regional assessment report by the UNEP Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud cited annual losses from the wheat, rice, corn and soya bean crop in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea alone-linked with ground level ozone-may be $5 billion a year. Another study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that five per cent of cereal production in the United States is lost to ground level ozone and that by 2100 crop yields globally could be cut by 40 per cent.
Up to a fifth of all summer-time hospital visits in the north-eastern United States related to respiratory problems are linked to low level ozone, sometimes referred to as smog. Researchers at the University of Illinois are suggesting that tree growth in the United States is some seven per cent less and that this will climb to up to 17 per cent less by 2100 as a result of low level ozone pollution.
Tropospheric ozone, which occurs from the ground up to 15 kilometres in altitude, is generated by substances such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides mixing with emissions of petroleum products like volatile organic compounds and solvents in the presence of sunlight.
Researchers estimate that the contribution of tropospheric ozone to the greenhouse effect could range from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, of the CO2 warming….
[For more, go to Gail's website here.]
Another denialist delusion on food supplies worth contemplating: The shifting climate zones just mean that subtropical food plants will be able to grow in temperate zones even if they are struggling in their current cropping areas due to heat or water stress. Except that even if temperate hots are hotter and cold seasons are shorter, the latter don't disappear entirely. Even just one good frost will knock out a banana plantation.
Below are the earlier comments from the Facebook commenting system:
Nice to know the Grey Lady reads Climate Progress, where this stuff is reported every day instead of century.
My goal has always been to get readers the story before the MSM.
June 5 at 12:50pm
the goal of the "right" has always been to get the lie started before the facts. Accuse the opposition of the very underhanded tactics that they have deploying in spades. Up front with the truth requires a few facts to counter. (Short supply on the GOBP front.) Not just a few well places sound bite to drown the background.
· June 5 at 3:06pm
Crisis meeting is called as drought leaves crops dying in the fields.
Rising food prices and restrictions on power and water use are likely to result from a lack of rain in the south and east of the country, experts believe.
Prices are up on everything, from OJ to pet food. It makes me wonder what is next in the climate change road to disaster.
Another report on the growing evidence of the deleterious effect climate change on world food production.
Meanwhile, over at TP:Security – and at every other national security and foreign policy punditry outlet, left or right – you'll find only an occasional mention of climate change, despite it being the greatest international driver of instability in the coming century. It's as if they're scared it will make their knowledge, and thus they themselves, obselete. The last decent study of global warming's effect on national security was by CNAS in 2008, and this week we heard we've blown past the carbon release that woul put us into their "serious climate change" model, with a temperature rise of 2.6 degrees C or thereabouts.
Joseph Romm · Top Commenter · Center for American Progress
I will work on TP: Security.
June 5 at 1:18pm
The New York Times may be waking up, and this could be related to Keller's departure. We have seen many embarrassing stories in the last few years, from the likes of Tierney, Broder, Rosenthal, and Revkin, usually featuring equal time for people like Christy, Watts, and Lindzen.
If the Times decides it's actually going to report scientific truth- even if people get pissed off- we may finally be moving forward.
BEIJING, June 5 (Xinhua) — Torrential rain has greatly eased the severe drought in central China, it also caused flooding in some regions as well.
Most of the western, central and northern parts of Hunan Province have been battered by moderate to heavy rain since June 2, the provincial meteorological center said Sunday. The Fenghuang County of the province had recorded the largest precipitation of 231.5 mm by Sunday morning……………….. The provincial meteorological center in Jiangxi forecast the torrential rain to last till June 12.
Climate Chaos
UK's second driest spring in 100 years left soils concrete hard.
Government calls in farmers for crisis talks as Home Counties dry spell threatens environmental disa.
Farmers, supermarkets and water companies will meet ministers for talks this week after the UK's second driest spring in 100 years left soils concrete hard.
I read this over at the Guardian
It seems our problems are beginning to act in a Domino like cascade.
What happens when the ice cap is totally gone?
· June 5 at 1:27pm
What happens when our existing climate is totally gone?
We actually dont have climate any more.
The climate (weather pattern) is changing so rapidly and constantly now, moving towards a more extreme state that the definition of climate (ave weather over a given period) doesn't hold any more.
· June 5 at 1:45pm
food prices will be doubling in the next couple of years….
The pattern we see is a very wet, soggy plant season (if not flooded). Farm machines often cant get out in to the fields. Extremely dry, hot growing season. Or vi si versa.
And now they appear to be occurring in sync.
Agriculture gets hammered from both ends… constantly now.
Joe missing the tag sections for posts. Can find old articles like I use to. I think this is a necessary service of any serious blog. Paul.
ok found it….paul
June 5 at 1:42pm
I will create a more useful archive of best posts. It may take awhile.
June 5 at 2:46pm
ops. Take that back. found them…
Joe: I hope you'll comment on Gillis's blog that came online today, too. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/damaging-the-earth-to-feed-its-people/
I'll see if I can Monday.
June 5 at 2:44pm
"A scramble is on to figure out whether climate science has been too sanguine about the risks. Some researchers, analyzing computer forecasts that are used to advise governments on future crop prospects, are pointing out what they consider to be gaping holes. These include a failure to consider the effects of extreme weather, like the floods and the heat waves that are increasing as the earth warms."
I think youll find that in all areas… visa vi nuclear! SLR. I think it is a psychological human(male) thing which edges us forward to take chances. In the back of our mind common sense aught to prevail over some decisions like Japan building Nukes just off the coast from a major fault line.
We need more female input in big decisions and politics….
The future is female: Why the business world wants a woman's touch.
blogbob forsooth
This does not, however, mean that we should elect Sarah Palin president.
· June 6 at 6:33pm
"The United Nations recently projected that global population would hit 10 billion by the end of the century, 3 billion more than today."
This is a totally inaccurate statement. The world population is not going to be anywhere near 10billion in 2100.
That's what happens when you mindlessly project past trends into the future without consideration for reality.
· June 6 at 10:26am
Disastrous spring costing Mo. billions of dollars.
Good article. There's a typo about a third of the way in,
" seafood prices" -> "see food prices".
Mike twotwo
"Here's more on the new science from the NYT:" Hardly new, Schlenker, Lobell, Roberts, Long, etc have been publishing on the main conclusions here for several years. Schlenker http://www.columbia.edu/~ws2162/ Lobell http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/publications/davidlobell/ Roberts http://www4.ncsu.edu/~mjrober2/main/Publications.html.
Long http://soyface.illinois.edu/publications.htm.
Yes it isn't new for those paying attention — but I consider any major findings since ipcc report to be new for CP purposes.
June 5 at 3:02pm
The arctic needs our help… we need a response plan….petition to sign…
Times took a big step today with this huge front-page article–part of a series–on the already-in-progress threats to basic human security coming from climate change. Kind of unforgivably late, but essential. Let's keep pushing!
The following information comes from an article about the United Nations Environment Programme. Tropospheric ozone including near-surface ozone is a major greenhouse gas, harms human health and is linked to significant damage to crops and ecosystems.
A regional assessment report by the UNEP Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud cited annual losses from the wheat, rice, corn and soya bean crop in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea alone-linked with ground level ozone-may be $5 billion a year. Another study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that five per cent of cereal production in the United States is lost to ground level ozone and that by 2100 crop yields globally could be cut by 40 per cent.
Up to a fifth of all summer-time hospital visits in the north-eastern United States related to respiratory problems are linked to low level ozone, sometimes referred to as smog. Researchers at the University of Illinois are suggesting that tree growth in the United States is some seven per cent less and that this will climb to up to 17 per cent less by 2100 as a result of low level ozone pollution.
Tropospheric ozone, which occurs from the ground up to 15 kilometres in altitude, is generated by substances such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides mixing with emissions of petroleum products like volatile organic compounds and solvents in the presence of sunlight.
Researchers estimate that the contribution of tropospheric ozone to the greenhouse effect could range from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, of the CO2 warming.
Meanwhile nitrogen compounds, emitted from sources including animal wastes, sewage, inefficient use of fertilizers, sewage and vehicle emissions are being linked to a wide range of impacts and not just climate change. The rising number of dead zones-deoxygenated areas of seas and oceans-is raising concern over already vulnerable and depleted fish stocks. Meanwhile nitrogen compound emissions are also contributing to changes in vegetation and ecosystems as a result of their artificial fertilizing effect.
In the European Union more than 21,000 premature deaths annually are associated with ground level ozone according to the European Environment Agency. It is estimated that in 2000 in the European Union, well over Euro 6 billion-worth of crops were lost due to ozone. Besides health concerns, the effects of air pollution on crops are closely linked to the fundamental conditions of man in society. An adequate supply of food and water is instrumental for the survival, functioning and development of mankind. Thus, safeguarding agricultural production against the impact of air pollution must be a strong driving force for policy interventions, not least in developing countries. Studies in Europe, Africa and Asia suggest that agricultural output may be dramatically reduced by air pollution, above all ozone (formed by chemical reactions with nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight).
The Sida funded programme on Regional Air Pollution in Developing Countries (RAPIDC) includes studies in e.g. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as in southern Africa, which indicate that the crop yield of wheat may be reduced by some 30% due to air pollution (based on European dose response functions). Investigations in these countries and in Sri Lanka suggest a potential yield loss of 50-80% for mung beans, spinach and potatoes. It has been indicated that rice yield in Japan has been reduced due to the influence of long- range transport of air pollution. The impact of air pollution on agricultural crops and quality of produce and ensuing food security has hitherto been largely ignored by policy makers. The ubiquitously rising ambient ozone levels are a matter of serious concern in a world with growing food shortages and increasing food prices. Some 75% of the world's cereal is grown in areas which are exposed to damaging ozone concentrations. In the ongoing debate on the effects of climate change matters such as floods and soil erosion, drought and desertification are seen as detrimental to sustainable livelihoods, including falling agricultural production. It should be kept in mind though, that air pollution, and above all ground level ozone, may also lead to the impairment of such production where the conditions for agriculture and food production are otherwise excellent. http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/02/rude-awakening.html
Thanks for the update Gail. You are our tropospheric ozone guru!
June 6 at 4:21am
Hi Richard! It always perplexes me that news reports about food shortages never include the percentage of crop yield and quality lost to air pollution, when that percentage globally every year is greater than any isolated weather events (so far…).
· June 6 at 6:44am
I made this a featured comment — and activated the link in the text!
· June 6 at 7:24am
It seems to me that the peaks and troughs follow the trends in oil prices rather than increases in temperature/time.
Joseph Romm
Actually, I see analysis that suggests oil prices follow food prices. But in any case no one said food prices would rise linearly with greenhouse gas emissions. Heck, even temperature doesn't do that. But climate change is exacerbating increasingly tight market and leading to higher highs and higher lows.
June 5 at 8:17pm
By what mechanism do oil prices follow food prices?
· June 6 at 6:16am
Not sure. Most commodities rise in tandem, roughly. Food may be a leading indicator. Also, high food prices drive riots, instability that fuel oil speculation. Obviously, high oil prices drive up food prices.
June 6 at 7:29am
Failed crops wouldn't destabilize the food markets if they were a predictable percentage of loss; it is loss of prediction itself that seems to contribute to price volatility.
Farmers can't afford to bet on wildly inconsistent rainfall patterns. They refrain from planting crops if the window of time for a growing season is constrained by wet or dry soils at the beginning of the season. US farmers who rotate corn and soy had a wet spring this year and some either planted alternate crops or will take a an insurance payment.
Back on May 5, they were holding on to a late planting:
Commodity futures were getting major readjustments by mid month.
By June, Purdue University had published quite a list of suggestions about what could be done with late planting of corn and soy.
The IPCC (2007) Chapter 5, p 293 has a color-highlighted unit on pastoralists' adaptations to "high spatial and temporal variability in rainfall." www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter5.pdf.
Agriculturalists need their own strategic adaptations to "high spatial and temporal variability in rainfall.".
If I can do a stump speech to those who know this: Variability is a huge part of the climate change prediction, the predictable unpredictability. It seems almost misleading to have thin lines on the climate change models; they would be more self explanatory if they were shown as thick messy bands of destabilizing variability.
Thanks for highlighting this, Joe.
I would urge everyone here to download the free PDF of Lester Brown's latest book, World on the Edge from the EPI web site. He has been relentlessly talking about how co2 emissions lead to not just climate change and food insecurity but failed states.
poitsplace burt
Its so sad to watch people talking about the weather we experienced in the cold period from the 1950s to the 1970s as if it was somehow new. Its even more sad that they don't realize that the reason this weather is back…is that the climate subsystem has switched back to the state that caused that.
The "extreme" weather then and now is largely the result of the less stable polar vortex. As the vortex lashes out across the continents it causes more pronounced local temperature variations and this fuels storm/snow production, just like the wintery weather we had during the 50s, 60s and 70s and were (initially) told we would not see again due to global warming.
It should be noted that global warming would weaken this effect by reducing the gradient between the tropical and polar temperatures…part of the reason many meteorologists doubt the gloom and doom prophesies is their knowledge of these facts. A warm world should be a better world in almost every respect…and pretty much all of history and real-world data supports that.
The weather of the 1950s to 1970s is NOT back. The scientific literature did NOT say we wouldn't see big snow storms again. Quite the reverse. And all of paleo-history shows that the warming we are facing would rain multiple catastrophes on a planet headed toward 9 billion people.
June 5 at 9:56pm
The climate doesn't "switch states". It responds to forcing by the sun according to the absorbing and reflecting gases, clouds, and land surfaces. Those, especially the CO2, have certainly not "switched" back to 1950s levels.
· June 6 at 8:13am
Burt, give a thought to an Arctic warming and its tundra and permafrost melting and releasing stored CO2 and methane. Then, try to convince us you have something new to offer.
John McCormick
June 6 at 8:59am
Yes, but the commodities speculators love it.
So, there is certainly no pressure from the financial quarter on Republican politicians to acknowledge the existence of AGW and do something about it.
If it's good for Goldman Sachs, it's good for the entire country, right?
Great coverage…I'm amazed that the mainstream media hasn't picked up on this sooner. This all ties in to peak oil as well…today's agriculture is already so petroleum intensive.Throw in climate change pressures and we're looking at a problem of cataclysmic proportions.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer has a great piece on the effect of peak oil on agriculture in his piece "Eating Fossil Fuels" available here: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html.
blogbob forsooth The MSM is owned by corporation conglomerates, which have a vested interest in NOT raising the alarm.
· June 6 at 6:34pm
This is not difficult to understand…you simply can not sustain this on a planet that is finite and has finite resources.
Of course regular Climate Progress readers are aware of Lester Brown and his Plan B book series that has been alerting us to these issues for years. We used that series in our NASA-sponsored climate change class and so I was quite familiar with it when Alexander MacDonald, the founding director of NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory, told me these food issues were his primary big-picture concern as well. Sandy, as he is usually called, answers to NOAA Director Jane Lubchenco who answers to the new Commerce Secretary who answers to Obama, so hopefully everyone in that chain of command and others can get on the same page and address this most critical issue.
Moderating a panel titled "The Future of Food" I realized that many of the best experts on Climate Change, aquifer and glacial run-off depletion, water infrastructure, topsoil loss, Peak Oil, Natural Gas and Phosphorus as well as pollinator loss and Wit's End's tropospheric ozone killing plants including crops each wonder how we're going to feed 7 billion people with their concern alone, let alone over 10 billion the UN recent revised projection predicts we'll have by mid-century. Each of their concerns are synthesized in ways that might often come closer to multiplying than merely adding their impacts.
There's a reason Thomas Malthus, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Al Bartlett and the MIT Limits to Growth folks (all fairly bright, by the way) thought we'd have the problem we're now having for decades (the last three groups) or centuries (the first three individuals).
It was only cheap and abundant fossil fuels that temporarily delayed their predictions. It is far past time to wake up, pull our heads out, and address their warnings the best we can. And anyone who thinks Malthus was too Malthusian is too Dunning-Krugerian to know that they're incompetent to comment.
Maybe someone already mentioned it, but why not link to the chart showing the correlation between the price of food and the price of oil — something you, yourself, have covered in the past? I'm in total agreement that climate change is going to destabilize the food system, but let's not forget the exacerbating impact of peak oil. http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Oil_Food.html
thank you so much for digging that up. I will definitely do a post on it.
June 6 at 11:50am
Perplexing to understand the close coloration in short time scales. The only thing the I can think of is that for the most part, food travels so far to reach our table that oil then becomes a large source of food price over night. Coming from a farm background the price to the farmer is usually set far in advance to the harvest. His production costs are "SEP". The wholesaler and retailer will have to pay those costs on shipment and often even up-charge stuff already on the shelf for the trouble. Grow a garden, eat local, would appear to be the only remedy. Even then local suppliers are required to surcharge their delivery costs as well, so store prices instantly represent farm stall prices. Fossil fuel makes out just fine.
· June 6 at 7:21pm
I agree about the irony of this article. I've been scratching my head about why any of this is news. I was learning about the food system impacts of climate change back as an urban planning master's student in 2007, and even then it was clear there was only going to be a modest positive impact from CO2 fertilization, if any; and that it would be quickly overwhelmed by extreme weather events.
I don't see any conceivable way for us to double food production again. Maybe if people cut meat out of their diet we can feed a world of vegetarians/vegans.
We should probably prepare ourselves mentally for a massive die-off in the global population. Unfortunately, it likely will be concentrated among those who are least responsible, particularly in Africa and Asia.
We need more fact based information like this shared with the general reading public so people understand the significance of what is happening now and will to a greater extent in the future. And then take action to slow the production of CO2.
blogbob forsooth
"NY Times Bombshell: 'The latest scientific research suggests' climate change is 'helping to destabilize the food system' ".
Talk about a "No $hit Sherlock" moment…
What wasn't mentioned in the article is that the research showing significant decreases in agricultural yields due to climate change was published in 2005, see http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7310-climate-change-warning-over-food-production.html.
Despite that, the nyt published slews of stories about the winners and losers along the climate change trajectory, and North America and Europe were routinely described as winners in agricultural production.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Australia, there are idiots like Chris Berg from the Institute of Public Affairs (a right wing think tank) putting out articles like this. It was published in the Melbourne "Age" 10 days after the NYT article.


text: Thurston Style: #SMRF1THU $100.00 $100.00 BLACK/VINTAGE GREY CLEAR/ METEOR GLO TORT TORT BLACK Color Size View Size Chart View Size Chart Oout of Stock Add to Cart Add to Wishlist Details: This is a reminder... It's a great big world with lots of places to run to. Do yourself a favor, keep moving on and make the scene fight for your right to be free and show them stars they could never see in VonZipper Thurston sunglasses. Specs: Materials: 100% UV protectionBase 6 spherical lensMade in ItalyImpact resistant polycarbonate lensNylon grilamid frameStainless steel optical hinges


text:
Beyoncé Walks in Top Secret Tom Ford Runway Show
Jemal Countess/Getty
Much has been made of Tom Ford's long-anticipated return to womenswear, and it seems the wait was more than worth it! In true Tom Ford fashion, the former Gucci and YSL designer secured none other than Beyoncé and a slew of other iconic faces to parade down his ultra-exclusive N.Y.C. runway on Sunday evening. According to WWD, Ford described the high-wattage models, who also included Julianne Moore, Daphne Guinness and catwalk queen Chanel Iman, as "the world's most inspirational women." And one in particular, certainly enjoyed storming the catwalk. "It was so much fun," Beyoncé told WWD after the show, which Ford personally narrated. "It felt like a performance. It had the energy of a live show. It's great to see people have fun in fashion." Although access to the refined affair was so private that only one photographer was present and no photos were released, some lucky style-savvy guests took to their Twitter to provide a glimpse of what is sure to be one the most talked about events of New York Fashion Week. "Tom Ford gorgeousness: silk fringe gown, crisp tuxedos in blk and white, leopard pantsuits, corsets under peekaboo gowns and lace kneeboots" Tweeted Elle creative director and The City star Joe Zee. And while it may be awhile before we get to see the glamorous designs Tom has in store for spring, we're happy to wait just a little bit longer. –Gillian Koenig


text:
15 Oct 2012 7:34 AM #31
Okay, we have a support agreement so that isn't a problem. However what concerns me is the change. We need a consistent approach for accessing GXT releases going forward. I can't ask the guys that manage our Nexus server to make this change and then change it back or change it to something else for the next release.
So can you guarantee me that if i switch to this new approach I will ALWAYS have access to the latest GXT releases/builds?
If I don't change anything, when will 3.0.2 be available using the other/older approach? I.e. is this a required change or only a needed change if I want to get new releases right away.
15 Oct 2012 8:06 AM #32
Thanks for the feedback - I'm cautiously optimistic I'll be able to set your concerns at ease.
The public releases will continue to be available in the /commercial-release/ and /gpl-release/ repositories going forward - this will continue to include 3.0.0 and 3.0.1, and will eventually also include 3.1 and 3.2, etc. These are the public artifacts, accessible without a support contract.
Support releases, starting with 3.0.2 (the first support release of the 3.x series) will also be made available in our maven repository, but will require active support credentials to access. My understanding is that 3.0.2 will be a support-only release, and will only be available through the support repository - not through the regular /commercial-release/ or through maven central.
Please note also that now that the support repository is active, it will contain all public releases as well, so this change to requiring support credentials will only have to be made once. Also note that using these same credentials, the /support-commercial-snapshot/ repo is now available, with nightly snapshots (which can also be found in the support portal itself).
Again, thanks for expressing your concerns with our process, and please feel free to continue this discussion here or to contact Edmund or myself directly with any other concerns.
15 Oct 2012 8:49 AM #33
Wow, could you make this more complicated? When I point my browser to https://maven.sencha.com/repo/gxt-su...encha/gxt/gxt/ (after logging into your artifactory) I don't see anything but 3.0.2...but you say they are all there, hum?
I suppose I can ask my Nexus guys to proxy both gxt-commercial-release and gxt-support-commercial-release but not clear yet if that's needed.
As for /support-commercial-snapshot repo, I don't find that at all in Artifactory? Did you mean gxt-commercial-snapshot? Not sure if that requires a login or not.
15 Oct 2012 9:49 AM #34
The url you started with is the repo that we push to, the support-only repo - this has to do with how artifactory manages permissions:
Using the artifactory site is useful to see what objects are in what real repos, but little else. When feeding information to your pom, please use the ones we've posted. Here's the full list of important repo urls, with and without support, gpl and commercial, snapshot and release (and please again note that if you aren't authenticated, the support- repos will be missing artifacts through the web interfaces):
Standard GPL release artifacts:
15 Oct 2012 10:13 AM #35
Okay thanks, that's the first good consolidated statement of how this works going forward with Maven. (All the rest are more or less confusing). I will get our Nexus guys to make the changes on our end.
15 Oct 2012 10:57 AM #36
Thanks for the feedback - I'll see about putting together an article on commercial/support maven usage for releases and snapshots that we can reference instead of a network of comments and posts.
20 Aug 2013 10:11 PM #37
Any ETA on the Maven guide?
21 Aug 2013 6:39 AM #38
@stigrv, what exactly are you looking to do? We have an in-house Nexus server we've configured to pull commercial releases from Sencha's repo so perhaps we can help answer your quesitons.
22 Aug 2013 3:01 AM #39
I'm looking for a step-by-step guide to setting up a Nexus instance to poll artifacts from the commercial Sencha repository. I have not been successful in deciphering the snippets I've found in these forums. I guess the main problem is authentication, but that is only a guess. I've tried with all the username and password combinations we've been given, but none of them seem to help at all.
22 Aug 2013 7:53 AM #40
The credentials you should use are the same ones that log you in to https://support.sencha.com/ or into our artifactory server itself (available at https://maven.sencha.com/repo/, though you shouldn't need to use this web interface for anything other than verifying that the creds do indeed work). These are the same that you would use in your own settings.xml file when referencing our repo from within a project on your own computer. If the credentials work in those cases, then they should also work in your maven server, unless something is misconfigured there.
Unfortunately, we can't support your nexus server and more than we can support your internet provider, but if you can confirm that your support credentials work correctly and describe the other steps you have taken, then we can at least start to rule out possible problems you might be facing.


text:
New Challenges During Pregnancy That Can Interfere with Being Active
In This Article:
Managing back pain; exercise clothing; third trimester precautionsManagement of Back Pain in Pregnancy
- Posture maintenance
- Lumbar and support cushions for sitting
- Wedge-, J-, or C-shape pillows for sleeping on your side
- Frequent repositioning
- Sacroiliac belts or maternity supports
- Ice packs
- Lukewarm baths with Epsom salts
- Relaxation
- Physical therapy
- Moderate exercise
- Pool exercises
- Stretching programs
- Massage on your side or in a chair
- Occasional Tylenol (acetomenophen) tablets
Exercise Equipment and Clothing
To accommodate for temperature changes during exercise, you should wear layers of loose, breathable clothing. The newer synthetic materials are excellent to exercise in as they "breathe," preventing heat from getting trapped inside the clothes. Be aware that wearing a hat keeps heat in. Switch to a visor to keep the sun out of your face but let your heat out.
As your breasts increase in size, you will need more support. Most athletic stores have a range of sizes of supportive athletic bras; you can also order from the manufacturers.
Your shoes should be well cushioned and supportive. You might need a half or full size larger to accommodate to fluid retention. Too tight shoes can cause unnecessary numbness, tingling, and pain. Be careful not to have shoes that are too big, however, as shoes that are loose can cause you to trip and fall. Getting a few bigger-size pairs of shoes in pregnancy is a very worthwhile investment. If you have trouble finding wider sizes, consider looking in the men's or boy's department, as their shoes are wider throughout.
Special Situations in the Third Trimester
WARNING: Lying on your back for more than five minutes in the third trimester can compromise blood flow to the baby.
During the third trimester, your body size is growing to its maximum. Due to your expanding size, you might find engaging in high-impact activities or brisk walking uncomfortable. It can be more difficult to get around as quickly as you did before, so slow down! You should eliminate any activities in which you might fall or where quick stops and starts are needed such as in tennis or field sports. Balance is challenged by your new size, looser ligaments, and loss of sight of your feet. Your added weight can further stress your joints in your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and, of course, back.
Organs can become crowded by the size of your baby. Because the space for your lungs is compromised, you might feel more easily short of breath. Your bladder cannot hold as much urine as before, and pressure from the expanded uterus might cause you to urinate more frequently. You might have trouble holding in your urine with coughing or if your bladder gets too full. Do not let this stop you from drinking enough fluids. Even if you have to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes or wear mini pads, keep drinking.
Sleeping can become a challenge due to difficulty getting comfortable and frequent urination. Let yourself take naps, and remember that rest is essential to your and your baby's health. Try to lie on your left side as much as possible; not on your back. If you are too tired to exercise due to a bad night's sleep, rest.
Braxton-Hicks contractions are mini-contractions that help reposition the baby, but if they become frequent, they are a sign that you need to rest. If you get them while being active, stop and rest. Drink an extra glass of water, and if they do not stop, lie on your left side. If they last longer than 30 minutes or are closer than 10 minutes apart, call your doctor.
More on: Postpartum
excerpted from:
From The Active Woman's Health and Fitness Handbook by Nadya Swedan. Copyright © 2003 by Nadya Swedan. Used by arrangement with Perigee, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
To order this book visit Amazon.


text: Let me step back for a moment and get this last easy lesson out of the way. I wanted to submit another tutorial that could show novice artists "how to draw an angel for kids", step by step. Angels are very popular figures to draw and when you don't know how to make one well enough to give the drawing to someone else, you might start feeling low. When I received a request to make a really easy angel, I knew that I needed to make a tutorial on an angel and place it in the for kids section. This is going to be such a simple angel to recreate, and the best part is about the design is, she is super pretty, and even cuter when colored in. There are only a handful of steps which means you will have a blast as you tackle this lesson on drawing an angel for kids. That is basically all I have to say about this submission, I have to get busy working on some other stuff so you can either hang around here, or come back in a few. Adios people and peace out!


text:
The 5 Ballsiest Lies the Mainstream Media Passed Off as Fact
Look, we here at Cracked aren't cockeyed optimists (or cockeyed anything, for that matter). We've lived in this world long enough to understand that some folks just aren't "on the level" and the things they say should be "taken with a grain of salt" because they're "completely full of shit." But even jaded, cynical bastards like us should expect more from reputable news organizations. Shouldn't we?
Nope! Just take a look at a few of the more blatant lies that once passed for journalism.
(The news isn't the only thing you can't trust. Jean-Jacques Rousseau lied about Marie Antoinette, and that's why you think she said "Let them eat cake." And as for Hitler? His whole "badass supervillain" image was all PR bullshit. You'll learn more in our De-Textbook. Your favorite book sellers are now accepting pre-orders!)
#5. The New York Sun Reports the First Transatlantic Flight -- in 1844
Picture yourself living in 1844. The American Civil War hasn't happened yet, no one has electricity or flush toilets or phones or even T-shirts with ironic slogans on them -- you're pretty much living in a cave in the shape of a house and waiting for death. One day you wake up, open your copy of The New York Sun, and see this:
1844 didn't half-ass it with the fonts.
Your first thought was probably "Oh my stars and garters!" (or whatever the Victorian version of "What the actual fuck?!" was). People call the priest when they have a toothache, and yet they're flying across the Atlantic Ocean? Huzzah! The age of miracles has begun! Maybe this stubbed toe doesn't have to be a death sentence anymore! Reading the article closer, you find out that a European gentleman and his seven friends were attempting to steer their coal-powered hot air balloon from Wales to Paris when a sudden gale launched them toward the Atlantic Ocean. Seventy-five hours later, one of the aeronauts recorded the following in his journal:
"We are in full view of the low coast of South Carolina. The great problem is accomplished. We have crossed the Atlantic -- fairly and easily crossed it in a balloon! God be praised! Who shall say that anything is impossible hereafter?"
New Yorkers practically trampled their neighbors to get a copy of the paper, because they all wanted a piece of that sweet, tangy history.
Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty
"We were on our way to Flugtag and thought, 'Fuck it -- transatlantic voyage.'"
But Actually ...
The New York Sun had been fed a hoax. Giggling coquettishly while the world ate up a complete fantasy was none other than this guy:
Via Wikipedia
A press release that used the phrase "Chilling tale of horrors most foul and unnatural" should've been a clue.
Yes, the hoaxer was none other than Edgar Allan Poe. At the time, Poe's wife was terminally ill and he was struggling to make a living as a writer -- two things that left him spiritually and financially bankrupt. So, by combining his powers of storytelling with a few real names and details, he had the makings of a potent hoax (and perhaps a future best seller?). Poe sold the story of the balloon ride to the Sun and watched with glee as people quickly went seven shades of crazy. Obviously, the paper had to retract the story after two days due to lack of evidence and common sense. No charges were filed because, well, just look at that li'l jokester's hangdog expression! He's clearly learned his lesson.
#4. The Daily Mirror Published (Faked) Torture Evidence
As a comedy site, we try not to bring up the Abu Ghraib torture scandal more than once a week, but in this case it's a good reference point for what the British tabloid Daily Mirror published in 2004. Only a few months earlier the world had found out that American soldiers were playing a rousing game of Muslims and Torturers with Iraqi prisoners of war.
Fresh on the heels of Abu Ghraib, the Daily Mirror claimed to have a whole new set of torture pictures, this time perpetrated by the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, no less. Among the pictures published by the paper was a photo of a soldier urinating on a hooded prisoner. For one steaming moment, we started to wonder if the British weren't as nice as their adorable slang implied.
Michael Blann/Photodisc/Getty Images
It was the worst blow to British stereotypes since the queen's corgis mauled the Dutch ambassador.
But Actually ...
The British military was not about to let the accusations go without a fight and immediately started an investigation. Media around the world examined the photos as well, right down to the authenticity of the piss streams, which just goes to show that there's a thriving job market out there for virtually every fetish.
Don't you hate it when clear fluid casts a pitch black shadow on absolutely nothing?
Their unanimous conclusion? The pictures were total fakes, as shown by no less than 14 errors pointed out by experts, including the wrong type of rifle and the cleanliness of the "prisoners." But how could this have happened? You'd have to be a real dipshit to publish mysterious, unverified photos from unknown sources, right?
Via Wikipedia
That's the Duke of Douche himself, Piers Morgan, who at the time was the chief editor of the Mirror. Not only did he try to smear basically his entire country for no more than a few bucks and a moment in the limelight, but he refused to apologize when called out. Fortunately, the scandal ended up getting Morgan axed from the Mirror. Thus freed from the straining integrity of notoriously steadfast British journalism, Morgan went off to pursue his true calling. On CNN.
Hey, speaking of ...
(Cracked here, shamelessly plugging our new De-Textbook. Thanksgiving was invented by a women's magazine, pre-order our book to learn more.)
#3. CNN Claimed the U.S. Used WMDs on Our Own Defectors
Via Wikipedia
These days, CNN is seen mostly as some kind of avant-garde comedy improv troupe that delivers news while performing wacky stunts and trying to keep a straight face. If we look further into their past, though, the journalistic decay may have started back in 1998, when CNN reported a hot new tip on the Vietnam War.
Via Wikipedia
Hang on -- we need to go get our "Fortunate Son" mix tape.
Up until 1998, the conventional wisdom on the 1970 covert operation Tailwind was that a small team of special ops American soldiers and about a hundred Vietnamese allies sneaked into occupied Laos to distract the North Vietnamese Army long enough for local forces to recapture a strongpoint from the commies. Despite heavy losses, the mission was a success -- not only did the Tailwinders keep the enemy distracted for a few days, but they also stumbled on a ton of secret maps and intelligence at a North Vietnamese camp.
So you can imagine everyone's shock when, 28 years later, CNN aired a report dramatically titled "Valley of Death." According to CNN, Operation Tailwind was actually a mission to punish American military defectors hiding out in Laos. Because we're gentle, noble, and forgiving America, those defectors were punished with a stern talking to followed by 10 minutes in the time-out corner.
And by time-out corner, we of course mean sarin gas.
Why does "time out" always seem to translate to "grim look into the darkest depths of the soul"?
So, to recap: In 1998, CNN accused the U.S. military of using a bioweapon of mass destruction against its own former citizens. Obviously CNN had some watertight sources to back up such outrageous claims.
But Actually ...
Those sources, uh ... went to another school. In Canada. You can't see them, but they're really hot, we promise.
It turned out there were two sources. One was a former officer who was taking medication for a nervous disorder and had previously written a book on Tailwind where he never once mentioned nerve gas. The other, Admiral Thomas Moorer, claimed that CNN took his words out of context and that a lot of the seemingly positive answers he gave regarding the use of nerve gas were just hypothetical thoughts. He was just rambling and spitballing about using nerve gas on defectors -- you know how former heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff do.
Via Wikipedia
"Wacky" and "admiral" are words not typically heard together.
The Pentagon launched their own internal investigation, which ended in them taking several thousand words just to say that CNN was full of shit. The report also noted that gas was deployed during Tailwind, but it was just tear gas. The final straw came when CNN's then-military adviser publicly resigned, saying that he'd already looked into the Tailwind story and found it to be worthless, but had been overruled by the network.
Eventually, CNN retracted the story, fired the producers responsible, and moved on to a much more credible career of novelty "holograms" and being Jon Stewart's bitch.


text:
What are some general clues that indicate if someone is playing the role of saboteur? Obviously if player is going to put a troublesome dead end on the only path he's a saboteur. But some players are more subtle, and they come out of cover late in the game. How can I spot a saboteur early on in the game?
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Another way not mentioned by @Bazzz is to keep an eye out for when people make rockfall spots. As a Saboteur, it's useful to place paths in a way which you can claim to be good for the diggers, but with the real reason being that with a correctly timed and placed rockfall, the gap is harder to fill. Call out people who create these spots and encourage actual diggers not to do this.
This is something new players often have trouble grasping.
This flowchart is how a computer AI would decide(from here), but is pretty useless to humans. I'm just putting it here because I thought it was kind of cool:
And if you still don't know, just call them a "saboteur" and see what the general reaction is. :-)