Futurist Doug Randall on Abrupt Climate Change

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Randall, co-auther (along with Peter Schwartz) of Abrupt Climate Change [PDF] is interviewed by World Changing Blog:

Their scenaric findings — that the gradual global warming we’re experiencing could plausibly trigger an abrupt climate snap, and that its effects would be massive, perhaps catastrophic, and of direct relevance to the national security of the United States — we’re picked up by media around the world, gathering a snowball of controversy and hype along the way. Their scenarios, freely available on the Web, were termed a “secret Pentagon report,” and their descriptions of possible climate catastrophe taken as bald prediction.
But underneath the hype was a reasoned attempt to judge the seriousness of the threat posed by climate instability. That’s something all of us hoping to change the world have to take into account. So we asked Doug about the implications of that report (now that the dust has settled), the movie The Day After Tomorrow, and how to think about the future of climate change.

More on Madison’s Air Service

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Mike Ivey updates us on Madison’s Air Service (and the possible entry of Southwest):

Livingston said Southwest Airlines has expressed some interest in coming into this market but said the low-cost carrier hasn’t committed to anything. Southwest is one of the few airlines that has remained profitable despite the fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the slow economy and soaring jet fuel prices.
“They aren’t telling us much, only that Madison is one of 350 cities they are looking at,” he said.

Southwest makes a great deal of sense for Madison, both from a cultural and service perspective.

Marine Cpl dove on a grenade to save his Marines

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Recruits at the Corps’ two recruit training depots will know Cpl. Jason L. Dunham. They will know that the 22-year-old Marine lived up to the Corps’ largest legends and laid down his own life ? diving on a grenade, no less ? to save his Marines.
One Marine dubbed it a “selfless” act of valor. Another said it’s destined to make him “everybody’s hero.” A third said it defined him as “something special” ? so special that Sgt. Maj. Wayne R. Bell, the 1st Marine Division sergeant major, believes Dunham may wind up with an honor not conferred upon a Marine since the Vietnam War.

Killing Internet Radio

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Doc Searls on the RIAA’s latest lobbying to maintain its monopoly

First the RIAA successfully lobbies the Librarian of Congress to impose a distribution fee and reporting regime on the infant Internet radio business, essentially preventing it from happening. That was in 2002, though the lobbying started in ’98, right after the same kinda guys got the DMCA pushed through.
Now comes news from J.D. that the RIAA wants to get the FCC to impose a “broadcast flag” on radio as well as TV. It’s creepy shit:
The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.
?
The horror.
And so the RIAA, the music business’s trade and lobbying group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and impose an “audio broadcast flag” on certain forms of digital radio.
On April 15, the FCC bowed to the RIAA’s request and initiated a notice of inquiry, typically a step leading to formal rule-making. The public may submit comments to the FCC between June 16 and July 16.

Travel: Libya?

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Susan Spano takes us along on a US tour group’s (Mt. Travel Sobek) journey to Libya:

Best of all, Libya, like China in the 1970s, remains largely untouched by the despoiling hand of commercial tourism. There’s a prevailing air of naivet? and freshness unlike any I’ve ever felt.
Visitors have been trickling into Libya all along. It received 300,000 foreign tourists last year, mostly Europeans drawn by Libya’s fabled Roman ruins, considered the best outside Italy, and its sandy Saharan south, which in the last decade has taken the place of strife-torn Algeria as a destination for desert treks.
Then he showed me how to cross the street in Tripoli, where the roads aren’t divided into lanes, there are no stop signs and vehicles move in herds. You walk out bravely, with a raised hand and index finger pointing heavenward, as if to say, “Fail to stop at the risk of Allah’s wrath.” It worked.

Lonely Planet has a Libya Travel Guide.

Politicians stick it to us (again!)

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Gretchen Morgenson writes: A Great Fund (for them, not you):

It’s easy to see why the Washington political class feels no need to right the wrongs in the fund industry. Those folks know how to take care of themselves. Low-cost, conflict-free money management is just one of the many special privileges lawmakers have arranged for themselves. Too bad the 91 million ordinary Americans who invest in funds can’t get the same deal. As Mr. Fitzgerald said: “We’ve created one mutual fund world for ourselves that is great and fair and we’ve created another for the rest of America that stinks.”

via Dan Gillmor

2003 Wisconsin Political Lobbying

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Katherine Skiba summarizes state political lobbying spending (data is from the Wisconsin Ethics Board). I was surprised at Wisconsin’s top spender(s):

Big Media & Politics

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OnPoint’s Tom Ashbrook interviewed NBC’s Tim Russert last Wednesday. I listened to a bit of this interview while running errands.
One segment, stuck: Russert described a recent Oval Office visit where the President hosted some baseball greats, and invited Russert and his son to participate. Ashbrook correctly asked Russert if this was an example of a cozy insider relationship (I’m paraphrasing) and therefore, can one be objective in covering politicians. Russert insisted that he of course, can……
This is a great example of a major problem today: the cozy relationships between major media and the political establishment. There’s also this: Meeting the press and surviving it; which describes Russert’s recent interview with Colin Powell. Powell’s press aide pulled the camera away when Russert evidently broke the interview’s ground rules.