Global Warming: Article of Interest

"The Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion—including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—aren’t. These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn’t going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future

...

If we’re truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa. Don’t try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet’s carbon sinks—the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it—that’s the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago.

Source: City Journal

The Vicissitudes of Vitamin D Deficiency

It was probably in October or November of last year when I noticed that I was feeling very tired all through the day, every day. No matter how much rest I got, I was always drained of any physical energy.
I put this tired feeling down to being, well, tired. Sick and tired. I was plagued by neck and shoulder tightness and headaches. By December, my symptoms of aching muscles and tiredness bloomed into complete loss of energy, still aching muscles and now, joints. My mood as well turned south.
In an attempt to explain my symptoms, I began to think that maybe, no, for sure, I was burnt out and needed a break. By January, I decided to take a week off and head south to Florida. I hoped that being away from family demands and work life would help me to re-charge my batteries. Unfortunately, I returned home only somewhat refreshed. My overall symptoms did not improve.
I finally consulted my family doctor, who put my symptoms down to possible depression. It seemed a plausible diagnosis. Achy, tired, lack of motivation, needing to sleep for longer and longer periods of time and the concurrent low mood due to months of experiencing the same old symptoms. But I did not feel sadness, was not especially bothered by any one or constellation of problems. I was not crying but was in fact feeling down because of the annoying physical symptoms I've mentioned.
I went back to my G.P. and he relented and had a slew of tests completed, including an abdominal ultrasound, and an x-ray of my chest. There was only one test which gave any direction to my physician. I had a very low level of vitamin "D".
I was prescribed 1000 iu of Vitamin D3. Still, none of the three doctors whom I consulted gave any indication that my physical symptoms had anything to do with my vitamin D deficiency.
Vitamin D can only be had from a few sources. As I later learned, people with darker skin tend to end up being deficient of the vitamin in northern latitudes during the winter months. I suppose most people get by as I have for the past 35 years in Canada. The two major sources of vitamin D in my life would be egg yolks and milk with my cereal. Unfortunately, neither of these two sources turned out to be enough this winter. Exposure to the suns rays, of course, is the primary mechanism by which people are able to produce vitamin D.
What exactly is Vitamin D good for? It is essential in aiding bone growth and maintenance, however, more recently there has been indications that it may prevent certain cancers, fortify the immune system, etc. Read about it at USA Today or at the CBC website.

Tiny Titan

We walked to Blockbuster today. It's about a half kilometre walk from our house to the store. On the way back young Tarah decided she wanted to pull the wagon with her brother in it. She surprised this pundit by pulling the wagon almost all the way from Blockbuster. The third picture below is the muscle-bound princess close to home and still full of beans! Seth is lying down in the wagon on a comfy blanket.


In her own words: "It's okay dad...I'm a big girl...I can handle it!"


Walking away from me because she still wanted to go around the block and not home.

From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy by Kenan Malik

I think the headline says it all...read it at TimesOnline.

Articles of Interest

Guernica Magazine has an interview with African author and economist Dambisa Moyo on ending western aid to Africa in the next five years.

Dambisa Moyo is a unique voice in the debate over African aid. In a conversation dominated by white, male westerners—and most conspicuously by celebrities such as Bono or Bob Geldoff—Moyo is a black, African woman. Born in Zambia to a banker mother and a father who now runs an anti-corruption organization, Moyo earned her master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Economics at Oxford.

If you follow my blog you may remember me posting an article about Michael Crichton's contrarian views on global warming. Namely, that it don't exist. Now comes an article about in the New York Times Magazine site profiling

eminent physicist Freeman Dyson (who) has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, (America's) most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him.
...
Dyson is well aware that “most consider me wrong about global warming.” That educated Americans tend to agree with the conclusion about global warming reached earlier this month at the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (“inaction is inexcusable”) only increases Dyson’s resistance. Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus.