Saturday, August 29th, 2015
Nina Berglund, - News in English (Norway)
Stephan: Just as I compare states governed by Red value social policies against those governed by Blue value policies, inevitably to the detriment of the Red value states, which have notably inferior social outcomes, so I do the same with countries, and Norway fascinates me. As a a society the Norwegians have decided that creating security and wellness is the function of the state -- a view with which I completely agree -- and, as a result Norway ranks first or nearly first in virtually every social outcome measure.
The corporate media won't touch this story and, as a result, few Americans seem to realize that families in Norway are richer, healthier, and better educated than are Americans. For me the question is why aren't other nations, and particularly why isn't the United States, following this model?
Here is the latest on yet another aspect of Norweigian society, electric cars and the that country's transition out of the carbon age. Here is some data.
Lots of electric vehicles were rolling towards Geiranger for an EV festival this weekend. Norway now boasts one of the largest markets in the world for the quiet cars.
Credit: El-bil Forening
There are now so many electric vehicles in Norway that state authorities will soon run out of the special “EL” license plates made to identify them. A second series of plates is due to be introduced as electric car owners and fans gathered in the fjord town of Geiranger this weekend, to celebrate at an electric vehicle festival and join forces to protect their interests.
Another 17,000 electric vehicles (EV, called el-biler in Norway) have been registered in Norway so far this year, according to new numbers from the state vehicle council OFV (Opplysningsrådet for Veitrafikken). With sales expected to hit 25,000 in 2015, the total number of electric vehicles on the road is expected to rise to as many […]
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Saturday, August 29th, 2015
Brandon Miller, CNN Meteorologist - CNN
Stephan: It is pretty certain now that by the end of the century the world's great coastal cities will be largely destroyed.
According to the latest from NASA, however, the projections the panel made for a rise in global sea levels of 1 to 3 feet may already be outdated.
According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are “locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more.”
This is startling news if you are one of the 150 million […]
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Friday, August 28th, 2015
Michael McLaughlin, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: Several readers wrote me on and offlist telling me how naivé I was in advocating gun control. All them stressed one thing: "if you don't have a gun in your house you are completely vulnerable. You're not as safe." So I went looking for actual data instead of the disinformation put out by the NRA, which I increasingly think should be seen as a terrorist organization serving the greed of the arms industry.
This story covers a newly released study, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use which, based on actual data and not gun lobbyist propaganda tells a rather different story. If you are interested in pursuing this further I suggest that you download the report.
Citation: Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use. Violence Policy Center. http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf
An American gunshow
Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
American gun owners are far more likely to injure themselves or someone else with their firearm than to stop a criminal, according to a new study from a group calling for tighter gun control.
The study, released Wednesday by the Violence Policy Center, found there were 258 justifiable homicides involving civilians using firearms in 2012, compared with 8,342 murders by gun. Even if a criminal isn’t shot down, the study found that civilians rarely use guns to protect themselves. “Intended victims of property crimes engaged in self-protective behavior with a firearm” only 0.1 percent of the times they were targeted by a crook.
The report, titled “Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use” relied on FBI and Bureau of Justice data. The Violence Policy Center said the report disproves the premise of arguments by the National Rifle Association that more guns in the hands of regular people will reduce crime.
“The NRA […]
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Friday, August 28th, 2015
Dana Nuccitelli, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Do the climate deniers really have a case? Is there real science that supports their case? It is an important question and I had been collecting research that would allow me to answer it with data and not polemics when I found this report.
Galileo Galilei
Those who reject the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming often invoke Galileo as an example of when the scientific minority overturned the majority view. In reality, climate contrarians have almost nothing in common with Galileo, whose conclusions were based on empirical scientific evidence, supported by many scientific contemporaries, and persecuted by the religious-political establishment. Nevertheless, there’s a slim chance that the 2–3% minority is correct and the 97% climate consensus is wrong.
To evaluate that possibility, a new paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology examines a selection of contrarian climate science research and attempts to replicate their results. The idea is that accurate scientific research should be replicable, and through replication we can also identify any methodological flaws in that research. The study also seeks to answer the question, why do these contrarian papers come to a different conclusion than 97% of the […]
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Friday, August 28th, 2015
Stephan: I read a lot of Theocratic Rightist web publications and one of the hallmarks of this part of the web is their constant litany of complaints about their persecution, how Christianity is under attack in America "by liberal, faggot, fascists (or, sometimes, communists)" itself an interesting combination of terms revealing among other things that Theocratic Rightists don't seem to know what either fascists or communists actually are -- but they hate them. This story addresses some of the issues around this obsession with persecution. There is no point in saying that no such organized persecution actually exists in the U.S, it is an article of faith for this parallel universe.
Members of the First Assembly of God Church in Waco, Texas, reenact the crucifixion of Jesus.
Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters
Persecution has an allure for many evangelicals. In the Bible, Christians are promised by Saint Paul that they will suffer for Christ, if they love Him (Second Timothy 3:12). But especially in contemporary America, it is not clear what shape that suffering will take. Narratives of political, cultural, and theological oppression are popular in evangelical communities, but these are sometimes fiction or deeply exaggerated non-fiction—and only rarely accurate. This is problematic: If evangelicals want to have a persuasive voice in a pluralist society, a voice that can defend Christians from serious persecution, then we must be able to discern accurately when we are truly victims of oppression—and when this victimization is only imagined.
There are some understandable reasons for this exaggerated sense of persecution. Globally, Christians face incredible discrimination. In North Korea and many Muslim-governed countries, […]
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