Friday, July 22, 2011
Called "Screws of the World" for its focus on celebrity sex scandals, the
British tabloid was the top selling English-language newspaper in the
world
when owner Rupert Murdoch permanently closed the paper two weeks ago,
citing its role in the British phone-hacking scandals. Why do I not
believe the worlds best selling newspaper was closed because it used
improper methods to get a story? It was a tabloid for God's sake!
Something much bigger had to be going on here. On 20 Nov 09, just two
weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, a server was
breached
at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK.
Hackers posted thousands of private e-mails and computer files on the web
for the world to see. Climate skeptics claimed the hacked emails showed
climate scientists manipulating data. They showed nothing of the sort.
Nevertheless, the Copenhagen Summit was held in the shadow of an ongoing
investigation into groundless charges. The media focused on the victim:
the Climate Unit at the U. of East Anglia. "Who did the hacking," WN
asked? http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN09/wn120409.html
. The only
crime
was breaking into private files, but the media made scant effort to find
out who did it. For the next eight months neither the media nor Scotland
Yard made any attempt to identify the hackers. WN never let up asking.
Now
we find it was Rupert Murdoch who was behind the climate gate hacking,
having added Scotland Yard to his empire.
One bright note in the midst of all the gloomy news is that an advisory
committee of the Institute of Medicine, third branch of the National
Academies, is calling on the government to provide free contraceptive
coverage. For those not bound by the shackles of religious superstition,
it is evident that there are already more people on our planet than it can
support. We desperately need to reduce the world fertility rate below 2.
The first question came from a female who described herself as an atheist.
She had been turned down for job because she had no religion. The
president carefully reviewed the recent history of First Amendment court
decisions. I went through a mental checklist of declared presidential
hopefuls, asking myself how they would have responded. Sigh!
The Friday votes of the board were a victory for science and the students
of Texas, defeating the far-rights two-year campaign to dumb down
instruction on evolution in Texas schools. Because of the size of the
Texas market, the decision has implications nationwide.
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