iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

This post is only for people using Fedora Core 3 Linux and your computer is in the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network – ORION, or one that is connected to the National Research Council of Canada – NRC, over a high speed connection (most Universities in Canada).

Here’s a note in speeding up yum. www.brocku.ca/~mclare/nix/fedoraCoreIII.php

I think we’ll all miss John Paul II in some respect. He remained relevant right up to the end. He recently he opposed the invasion of Iraq and held an audience with the 2004 Ferrari Formula 1 team. All of this while being a very public sole dragging a body.

Still, I will never understand his opposition to women as priests, or even married priests: they’ve proven themselves to be sexual active regardless (both in recent American history and previous decades in Canada – and those are the easy examples). And then there is Africa: There a millions people who are now dead in Africa who would not be had a church 1 billion strong not opposed safe sex.

They have started to dub him the the Pope that was the great communicator. I believe that was the title they gave Ronald Regan, and it makes little sense to have two of the top three men involved in ending communism with the same nickname. (For the record: Regan, John Paul II and Gorbachev). The messages John Paul II communicated that I most appreciate was his apology to Copernicus and his acknowledgment of the Vatican’s inaction during the Holocaust. Similarly the messages I most appreciated where his messages to the people of Palestine (very hard to find on the Internet ) and the one he placed in the Wailing Wall during his millennium visit to Israel:

“God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations. We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.” More here

Last Saturday I was at a bar in downtown Toronto, indulging a friend in the semi-heated smoking section of the bar – and it wasn’t just the smoke I had to indulge. It seems my friend, who works for a car dealership, is trying to get the message out that global warming is just a hoax cooked up by scientists and lefties to fund their causes.

My friend sighted the fact that the earth’s temperature always goes up and down over decades, it seems colder outside than it used to, and the other standard right-wing counter arguments. I refuted these points with the well established fact that the earth’s temperature has never changed this quickly before and global warming affects weather patterns a lot more than it affects the average temperature in your back yard.

My friend, who ironically had a lot more to drink than me because I was driving that night, said ‘How do we know that it’s never changed this much?’ and went on to point out that we haven’t always had thermometers. I gave the simple answer: Ice core samples.

This is when he brought out the big guns, to beat this scientific argument with science: If cars produce carbon, and the atmosphere has CO2 in it, wouldn’t more carbon be good for it?

I tried to keep in my laughter and point out that carbon actually molecularly breaks down the ozone by breaking down the molecules by bonding with them, stealing their oxygen atoms, and then leaving more unbalanced molecules to cannibalize other stable ozone molecule’s oxygen atoms. With the ozone letting all this new UV in the extra carbon in the air helps to trap that extra sunlight in. Raising the amount of energey the earth reatins from the sun.
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Looks like the EU actually approved of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the world bank. That’s like putting a loan shark in charge of unemployment insurance.