Archive for October, 2007


Climate Change, Inc.

By: psr, 2007-10-22

What’s hip and cool on the outside, but a blushing lie on the inside? Man-made climate change. It’s the talk of the world. It’s the politically correct thing to say, and it’s also the politically incorrect thing to deny.

Lots of people have jumped on the bandwagon to declare that we are experiencing unusual global warming, and it’s caused by human activity on Earth.

It is worth putting things into perspective. The Earth is a some 4.5 billion year old system, and is far bigger and more complex than any man-made system or artifact. Humans have inhabited this planet for the past 130,000 years only. Human machinery and industrialization began some 200 years ago, at most. Human-produced CO2 emissions (widely regarded as a …

Plagiarism or forecast?

By: psr, 2007-10-19

In Spain, the ruling party (socialist PSOE), presented yesterday a new publicity campaign with its leader (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) as the centre of attention: “Con Z de Zapatero”, (“With a Z as in Zapatero”). It has a strong resemblance to “Z comme Zorglub”, the title of one of the great Spirou comics, from 1960. For those who do not know Spirou, Zorglub was one of the bad guys in the stories.

Therefore, is “With a Z as in Zapatero” a forecast that Zapatero will be the Zorglub (the villain) of our time?

Maybe not, and maybe it is just plagiarism of a comic on the part of the PSOE.

Whether forecast or plagiarism, the new publicity campaign by the PSOE is also a message of praise of a person, …

Tied hands at the European Commission

By: psr, 2007-10-17

Numerous member states make up today’s European Union, and it grows every so often to incorporate new members. All these states pay for the expenses of the E.U., including administrative costs, EU subsidies, and other forms of aid given by the E.U.

In return for their contribution, each state expects to receive an equal share of E.U. aid back, in one or other form.

Funds administered by the European Commission are therefore subject to being distributed mostly according to geography rather than based on merit or need. Because such awarding method is meaningless, this reflects on the efficiency, quality and usefulness of several major E.U. projects.

For instance, the “Eurofighter” and the “Galileo” project have had to assign manufacturing responsibilities of different parts of the systems to different E.U. countries, …