Quick Reads

While I'm avoiding writing on the impact of the GISS adjusting downward all of America's temperatures after 2000, so much so that 1998, the year that morally justified signing on to the Kyoto Protocols, since it was the hottest year on record, has been bumped down to second after 1934, and all the other "hottest years" since 1998 have dropped out of the top ten, except for 2006, making all surface temperature records worldwide suspect. Because if even America can't get its temperature record correct, how can the whole continent of Africa, and big swathes of central Eurasia hope to? The conservative blogospere is running like they stole something with this story, meanwhile it just proves to me that we are still very much in the data collection phase of climate science, so any modeling that's used to play around with our theories is pretty much servers spinning their hard drives for no good reason.

Anyway, read this. As Zimbabwe has totally fried its agricultural, monetary, transportation, and energy infrastructure, it now sets its sight on dismantling its telecommunications. The fascist policy that all business in Mugabe's crazy house have to be majority owned by Zimbabwe citizens will effectively destroy the largest mobile communications company, which has been trying to get local entities in as majority shareholders for 10 years. The problem: they can't afford it. And with infinite inflation in place, they're not likely to any time soon. When the license is rescinded, the Egyptian owned company will have to stop operation, and we will see the implosion of services like we did when white owners were forcibly removed from their farms. It is not any wonder that the 40 percent indigenous owner can't get any more foreign currency to buy up the remaining 11 percent it needs to keep Telecel Zimbabwe running. The entire country of Zimbabwe is a bad investment.

This story has been getting a lot of play over the weekend as well: Teenage girl overdoses on caffeine from drinking coffee. The trouble with caffeine overdose story is that it took place in England, so I'm very sure laws will be enacted to put cameras in coffeehouses to make sure people don't drink seven double espressos in a row. Just for good measure, they'll put speakers on the cameras so a surveillance operator can yell at the patrons like they do for people urinating on the sides of government buildings.

And finally, Tailwind Sports, the American cycling team formerly sponsored by US Postal and currently Discovery Channel, decided to disband after the 2007 season because the current climate of international cycling makes taking a main sponsor's money a bad investment. Pat McQuaid, the head of the International Cyclists' Union, doesn't blame the American team for pulling out of cycling, especially when you have race organizers making entire teams pull out of their race midway through when one guy tests positive for doping, or telling your team that you can't have one guy on your team race, or broadcasters even pulling television coverage during the world's largest race. Sponsorship is based on seeing the company logo on a guy's jersey on millions of television screens, and if a team can't even guarantee that they can race in one city, or that TV will cover it, or even that national teams will race the Tour de France instead of your team, it does appear that advertising dollars are a bit iffy for spending on a cycling team. McQuaid does add that French race organizers hated Armstrong, so that may have added to his decision as one of the principals in Tailwind Sports to pull the plug on the operation.