Links Feb 17th 2011

• Sea Shepherd Conservation Society forces Japanese to suspend whaling.  Last year they managed to reduce the total catch by half.  In the absence of a authority able to draw up and enforce fair and sustainable commons use, I applaud and thank Sea Shepherd for the efforts.

• Dalai Llama's nephew killed in road accident in USA.

• Energy firms infiltrated environmental movements in the UK by hiring private firms for espionage.

• Interesting article on Obama's latest budget - the revenge of trickle down economics.

• Go to Sark for real dark night skies.  Love this quote below the contextual paragraph:

Sark joins a select group of dark sky regions around the world, including Galloway forest park in southern Scotland, which became Europe's first dark sky park in 2009. Keith Muir, head of tourism at the park, said the award prompted an upsurge in interest in astronomy and the night sky. Local hotels and B&Bs have started running stargazing nights and neighbouring councils have brought in dark sky policies to reduce their own light pollution. A new observatory is planned for the edge of Galloway Forest Park that will hold lectures and house a public telescope. 

"The interest has grown and grown. We've even had requests from people to come up and renew their marriage vows under the stars. A lot of people don't realise how dark it is and go home early because they get scared shitless"

• Super Megalopolis: China's planning to combine 9 cities into 1.  42 million people in one city the size of Switzerland.

• LARD. This is hard to find in Taiwan but it turns out it even beats butter, health-wise and in terms of cooking (especially for baking). My mum taught me the golden rule for pastry (pies etc) - half fat to flour.  I've bought some and will be using it next time I make pastry.  Interestingly I recently made dumplings - the pastry for the skins is only flour and water, butter having not been a widely available product for much of the Asian continent's history.  It's a lot harder work kneading the dough without fat ...  

• Funny Cartoon sites: The Oatmeal on Valentines Day / 6 Crappiest Interview Questions / and 10 Types of Crappy Interviewees.  XKCD on an alternative energy revolution.

• Alibhai-Brown on the radicalisation of children in Gaza and UK.

• 66 rules of The Fundamentalist Rulebook.

• Green day's American Idiot music video.  Lyrics are interesting.  Pity the form of delivery is uninspired soft-rock ala Avril Lavigne.  Anybody remember the Dead Kennedys?

• Colin Powell is angry at the CIA for being duped, and duping him, into escalating the Gulf War into a full invasion.  Turns out the WMD thing was a complete fabrication.

• North London football doing well in the Champion's League.  What was that you were saying about English football Mr. Blatter (aka Blatherer)?  Yes, the England national team is notoriously inconsistent and we don't raise enough new younger talent and there aren't enough english players in the top leagues but Milan 0 - 1 Spurs and Gunners 2 - 1 Barca are great results.

• Democratic Senate extends Patriot Act powers.

• New study: Global warming made year 2000 UK floods 2 or 3 times more likely.  I have in the past switched from using the words 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change' which I thought to be a safer description given the complexity of the Earth's climate and meteorological phenomena.  I do not regard individual weather events to be on their own indicative of warming or cooling - the real picture is far more complex and stretched out over eons of time.  I do however agree that there has been on average a rise in the Earth's atmospheric temperature and I do believe that human activity has, if not caused this, certainly contributed a great deal to that change.

• The Guardian reviews the most recent Neo-Con / Tea Party / Libertarian / Nimby / Anti-State Spending / Fend-For-Yerself yadda yadda .