Interview of Richard Muller regarding his changed view regarding global warming

Today, Amy Goodman interviewed Richard Muller: The following excerpt is from Democracy Now:

After years of denying global warming, physicist Richard Muller now says "global warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause." The admission by Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, has gained additional attention because some of his research has been funded by Charles Koch of the Koch Brothers, the right-wing billionaire known for funding climate skeptic groups like the Heartland Institute. "We can make the scientific case more solidly than had been made in the past," Muller claims. "I think this does say we do need to take action, we do need to do something about it."

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Standup bass videotaped at high shutter speed

This is pretty amazing looking - a bass photographed at a high shutter speed:

stunning bass-string shot from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Here's the caption at Vimeo:
Frequency of the bass strings and high shutter speed of the camera led to this surprising string-wobble footage. There is no slowmo applied to the take. Sound is original. Video was filmed with a Canon 5D MarkII, Nikon 50mm lens on 1,8f.

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More of my favorite quotes

I've been collecting quotes for decades, and you can find hundreds of my favorites here. Here are a few that I discovered recently: "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." —Thomas Paine "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." —Nelson Mandela "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. " —Bertrand Russell “Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. -Julian Assange If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. -Julian Assange If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whose hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. -Julian Assange The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. -Julian Assange Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.” -Julian Assange Every Organization rests upon a mountain of secrets. -Julian Assange If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth." Julian Assange “The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.” -Mark Twain No man is rich enough to buy back his past. -Oscar Wilde "Science dies without the free flow of information. The same can be said of democracy." -Charles Pierce, of Esquire. “Noah’s Ark: Because the largest and most thorough act of genocide in history makes a great children’s story.” - On Facebook

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Excellent writing

I agree with this observation by Glenn Greenwald:

The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked — really, forced — difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one’s own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.

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Elementary Election Protest Too Muchedness

For the last few weeks I'd been receiving approximately daily post cards protesting the electric company considering a rate hike of more than a few percent in order to finance and build future power plants to replace some of the nearing dangerously obsolete ones. Some mailing came from a very liberal local politician with whom I generally agree. Someone is spending bales of money to encourage people to not-want to spend more for what they are already getting. Seems like sweeping the water downstream, to me. But I'm a Tanstaafl skeptic: Rebuilding infrastructure without incurring crippling debt does not seem like such a bad idea, my knee jerks. Also, local electric rates are lower than when I was in college, when adjusted for inflation, so it seems about time for a rate hike, anyway. Yesterday I finally got a rebuttal mailing that describes the finances behind this odd campaign: PAC affiliated with aluminum corporation at play in state Senate primaries. Yep, an aluminum company fears that it will have to raise prices, because a major part of the process of making it requires megawatts of electricity. Here's how aluminum is made, if you are at all curious: So now we know who has the profitability to outspend a huge power company on a campaign to make people do what they want to do anyway, and things are making sense, again.

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