Friday, January 29, 2010

for Salinger fans

At this point everyone knows of the passing of J.D. Salinger yesterday. Honoring the literary great, The New Yorker has published the 13 stories which it ran from 1946 - 1965. Note, you do need to subscribe online to access the texts.

J. D. Salinger has died. From 1946 to 1965, Salinger published thirteen stories in The New Yorker, including such classics as “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” There will be much more to come online and in next week’s magazine, but for now, read Salinger’s stories, available to subscribers through our digital edition:

Slight Rebellion Off Madison” (December 21, 1946)

A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (January 31, 1948)

Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut” (March 20, 1948)

Just Before the War with the Eskimos” (June 5, 1948)

The Laughing Man” (March 19, 1949)

For Esmé—With Love and Squalor” (April 8, 1950)

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” (July 14, 1951)

Teddy” (January 31, 1953)

Franny” (January 29, 1955)

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (November 19, 1955)

Zooey” (May 4, 1957)

Seymour: An Introduction” (June 6, 1959)

Hapworth 16, 1924” (June 19, 1965)


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2010/01/postscript-j-d-salinger.html#ixzz0e0tLNY2n


hat tip: Rachel Maddow

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Babybot from Hell

Clearly a doomsday sign, and perhaps the creepiest.

Copenhagen reconsidered

I realize the climate summit was a zillion years ago. However if you want a break from the vultures circling the DNC, this interview between Lindsay Beyerstein at UN Dispatch and Tom Hilde may provide some perspective on that other crisis.

The Copenhagen Accord was a disappointment to many who believed that the conference would result in firm commitments to emissions reductions, climate aid, and maximum temperature increases. Nevertheless, Hilde argues, real progress was made during the final days of negotiations. He believes that Copenhagen may have laid the groundwork for a binding agreement next year at COP16 in Mexico City.

UND: The media have painted the summit as a failure because the Copenhagen Accord was not unanimously adopted. You have argued that real progress was made in Copenhagen, nevertheless. Can you elaborate?

TH: The Copenhagen Accord is admittedly vague. It is nonetheless an agreement between all of the major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), nations that are essential to any effective climate treaty. That in itself is crucial – this is a global problem requiring a near-global effort among parties who disagree on many issues. This is also the first time since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 that generated the UNFCCC that the US has committed to anything concrete in the United Nations climate change regime. The countries have agreed to implement emissions reductions targets for the year 2020, which are to be listed by each party in the appendices to the Accord. The deadline for this is January 31st. Brazil paved the way by recently announcing a significant emissions reductions effort. We’ll have to wait until the end of the month to see what other countries will do.

Disappointment with the Accord stems in part from expectations that Copenhagen would yield a legally binding agreement as outlined at the Bali meeting in 2007. In the run-up to COP15, however, Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen outlined a two-step process. Copenhagen would be a “political agreement.” COP16 in Mexico City in a year’s time would draft a legally binding agreement, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said he will push. This may seem like a constant deferral of real action, but it’s not that extraordinary if you look at other international environmental treaties.

Continue reading here


Tom Hilde is a professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland. He attended the Copenhagen Summit as a delegate with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and covered the conference for the Center for American Progress and Climate Progress. UN Dispatch caught up with him in early January.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

2009 - second warmest year on record


Maybe someone in your life recently has cited the cold winter weather as a "sign" about the question of climate change. I mean it is winter and how strange it is to have winter weather right? In case you feel the need for recent evidence (to share the obvious to these dear deniers), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirms that 2009 was the second warmest year on record and the 2000s the warmest decade in modern recorded history.

Continue reading
here.



hat tip: Phronesisaical

your State by the population numbers


I new call for the popular vote and a new mapping of population trend in the U.S.

The electoral college is a time-honored system that, has only broken down three times in over 200 years. However, it's obvious that reforms are needed. The organization of the states should be altered. This Electoral Reform Map redivides the territory of the United States into 50 bodies of equal size. The 2000 Census records a population of 281,421,906 for the United States. The states ranged in population from 493,782 to 33,871,648.1 In this map, new states have formed, all with equal populations of roughly 5,617,000.2




hat tip: Timothy Buckwalter

Sunday, January 03, 2010

the known universe

I promised myself that in 2010 I would think big. So why not start with a tour of the known universe.

The movie titled "Known Universe" takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

Every satellite, moon, planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and its correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date.

Watch the video below.







hat tip:
information aesthetics.Where form follows data.