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The Cody Blog: The Cody News (April 28, 2005)

Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Cody News (April 28, 2005)

Missile seller guilty of aiding terrorism NorthJersey.com - By AMY KLEIN. After just seven hours of deliberations, a federal jury Wednesday found a British national guilty of illegally smuggling a shoulder-fired missile into Newark to shoot down airplanes. The verdict ...
They should just let him go. Or maybe they can spend millions upon millions for therapy for Hemant Lakhani.

New Berlusconi government approved ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has won parliamentary approval for a new government, ending a week-long political crisis that followed an embarrassing defeat in regional elections. ...
Probably would have been best for the Italian economy if the government had just shut itself down for a while.

Nokia takes aim at iPod marketVNUNet.com - 40 minutes agoNokia is hoping for a piece of the lucrative music player market with a handset capable of holding 4GB of songs and downloading on the fly.
iPod killer? Nah.

Woodpecker Thought Extinct RediscoveredWashington Post - 1 hour agoThe ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, has reportedly been sighted in eastern Arkansas, a Cornell University researcher says in a paper released Thursday.
Millions of species go extinct every year with or without the influence of man. Still, very bitchen that the re-found this pecker.

posted by Cody Willard at 4/28/2005 07:18:00 AM

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like woodpeckers and my cats do too.

4/28/2005 10:55:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Millions of species go extinct every year with or without the influence of man."

First of all, that's just entirely, outlandishly untrue. Not even close to an actual number (I think there are only 10-20 million estimated species.

Second, even though most basic glance at the subject would inform you on the real, measurable impact that mankind is having on known historical exinction trends. We're not talking about a volcano wiping out an obscure, barely-differentiated species of beetle. or an asteroid wiping out 60% of species on earth. In the last 50-100K years, there are large numbers of plants and animals extinct or near-extinct due to resource competition with people.

You're so smart, why would you want to be willfully ignorant on this subject?

4/29/2005 03:25:00 PM  
Blogger Cody Willard said...

Shoulda said "hundreds". Mea culpa.

Still, I think the hype over species extinction is way outta whack with its importance.

For example, if we're going to protect something, how about kids from pedophiles?

Tax spending on protection is a zero sum game. Every dollar spent on protecting wildlife should have been spent protecting a child.

4/29/2005 04:40:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Illusion of choice - why not save the billions spent on farm subsidies and use it to protect kids from pedophiles, protect endangered species, and as a nice side-effect allow hardworking farmers in emerging economies to earn a fair market price for their good?

Not my opinion really, but an alternative viewpoint.

It's an interesting mental exercise to brush up on Information Theory, estimated rates of genetic mutation, the number of base pairs in typical avian DNA, and then reevaluating the value of preserving species....

5/02/2005 03:57:00 AM  
Blogger Cody Willard said...

nothing alternative about being disgusted with farm welfare, corporate welfare and all the other bullshit our government uses to redistribute wealth while kids are starving.

as far as new studies and estimating unestimate-able shit like "evaluating the value of preserving species", gimme a break.

I'm decidedly against all forms of welfare, including that for poor people and starving kids, but kids should certainly feel and be safer than they are while the govt tries to get us to focus on mcguffins like social security and whatnot.

5/02/2005 11:14:00 AM  

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