As BooMan is doing Important BooMan Stuff in Los Vegas.  Hob-knobbing with political leaders, the Movers, the Shakers ------

I thought that sect had, more-or-less, died out?

It's a gift to be simple,
It's a gift to be free,
It's a gift to run around naked
and make whoopie in June.

H'mmm.  Somehow I don't think that's right.

Anyway!

THIS IS OUR MOMENT

   1.  Were large commercial companies prejudicial to the public interest?

   2.  Should all the commercial companies be disbanded, or their activities merely limited?

   3.  How could this limitation be achieved and the abuses by the commerical companies suppressed?

All over Sweden the holiday season officially begins with Sankta Lucia or Saint Lucia's Day on December 13th. Just how Lucia became an honored saint in Sweden is a mystery, for she was born in Italy in the third century (ya take your saints where you can get them I suppose).  St. Lucia died as a virgin and martyr with the former being a somewhat odd recommendation as we will see, below.

Because she died at the turning point of the year, when the nights begin to get shorter and the day's light lasts longer and longer, she became a symbol the sun.  The Sun, as you may or may not know, is slightly scarce during the winter in Sweden.  Lucia imagined as a shining figure crowned by a radiant halo.

This came from an e-list I'm on and I thought it might be of interest to some and a break from Plame'ing to others.

Update [2005-10-11 14:18:23 by ATinNM]: Yet more information coming in, via Keith Olbermann's MSNBC Countdown newsletter:

In a "special report" tonight and tomorrow, Olbermannn will be going through the 13 false alerts that were oddly timed with political problems.

Yesterday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police would be "slowly winding down'' the intensity of subway patrols, after the target date cited in a federal warning about a possible terrorist attack passed without incident. See this.

As Pete Williams said in his report last night, those arrests in Iraq turned up nothing. "Law enforcement officials say today that investigations in the Iraqi city where three men were arrested last week, in response to a tip ... turned up no evidence whatsoever of any plan to attack New York. That includes giving the three men lie detector tests, searching their computers, and checking their phone call records."

Tonight... a postmortem on this latest terror threat, which officials at Homeland Security had said was of doubtful credibility.

And on Wednesday, Keith takes a closer look... As he said yesterday, "...we spoke of at least thirteen [13] coincidences of timing, between bad political news for the government, and a terror or terror-related event... We will be presenting a special report detailing those coincidences on Wednesday night's edition."

-------------------------------

CNN has a banner headline:

"Informant in Iraq admits information about a terror plot against New York subway was a hoax, sources tell CNN"

No details are available as of 9:45 MST.

Too funny. MORE below:

OK, fair enough.  The evidence for Global Warming has been extremely difficult to achieve, mathematical models of climate continually run into NP-Complete (not computable) and Chaos (everything goes wierd), and the historic baseline of baseline is not only short but incomplete.  Climate is Sensitive to Initial Conditions so a slight change of value assignment (quantification) to the variables in a model lead to drastic changes in the behavour of the system.  The flow of recursion - which equation is processed when - can also have a dramatic affect.  

On a scale of earth shattering importance this ranks very low but to me it is a sad day.  

The blast created a depression at the center of which, approximately where the gantry stood, is a small obelisk with a plaque reading "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945."

Attaching the bomb to the 100 foot gantry.

Oddly enough the area in which "Gadget" - the name of the Trinity bomb - was exploded is known as Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death.)

... at what point do we cross the line from maintaining a healthy optimistic outlook to cynically manipulating data in boldfaced contradiction of reality?

I'm trying to get a handle on this but anyway you look at it this is stunning and exciting news.  If this is supported by further experimental evidence implications start with a revolution in evolutionary biology and go on from there. Read the link and be prepared for a shock. Teaser quotes follow: