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Random Rants 8

Entry 773, on 2008-05-19 at 21:42:24 (Rating 3, Comments)

You can never have too many random rants in your blog. That's why I present, for your edification, random rant number 8. Sometimes there is no overwhelmingly obvious candidate to blog about but there might be a series of smaller but still interesting tidbits. So, without further preamble, here they go...

The latest research on global warming indicates there will be less but more intense hurricanes as a result of global warming. This contradicts earlier evidence that hurricanes would increase in number. I guess the global warming deniers will use this as further evidence that global warming isn't real but I think we should look at their claims carefully.

Most deniers have switched from denying the phenomenon in general to denying it is of human origin. If they accept the phenomenon but not its origin then evidence against its reality is also against their current thinking. I don't think many climate scientists would claim that all the predictions of this phenomenon are certain because a lot of the modelling has a significant uncertainty. This doesn't change the basic finding though, that warming is real and significantly caused by human activity.

An American sniper has been sent home from Iraq after using the Koran for target practice according to the US military. A copy of the Muslim holy book was found full of bullet holes and with offensive graffiti written inside its cover.

Obviously this as stupid thing to do because the US military are supposed to be there to help the Iraqi people who are mostly Muslim. Why would a soldier do something like this which was certain to cause trouble, and why was he careless enough to let the Iraqi police discover it?

On the other hand, its just a book. Muslims must already know that a lot of people who don't believe the same thing as they do have no respect for their religion, so what is really different here? If God is going to be offended about this I'm sure he would arrange some suitable punishment for the soldier involved. The Muslims should just be saying: you will regret that sacrilege in the next life! The same applies to the cartoons they grossly over-reacted about a couple of years ago.

On a completely different topic I see that Steven Spielberg has said he would make another Indiana Jones movie if fans enjoy the latest release: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The first 3 Indy movies were great entertainment and I'm sure the 4th will also be good but I wish Speilberg would stop doing this or we will end up with more of the "Star Wars effect" where a moderately entertaining movie series starts to become rather tedious after being completely overdone. Well most movies are more about money than art so I suppose he will keep making them whether I like it or not.

And in another news item on pop culture, a 47-year-old Swiss ex-military pilot, Yves Rossy successfully (by successful I mean he didn't kill himself) flew his jet powered wing at an altitude of 2500 meters and at speeds up to 300 kph over the town of Bex in western Switzerland recently.

I'm not sure how you control this thing and landing by parachute sounds a bit tricky but it sure would be fun if it could be adequately controlled. I would suggest a computerised feedback system like the Segway uses to enhance stability. Now that would be a great way to get to work in the morning!

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