Many readers rely on this blog as one of the main sources of information. Let's mention some news:
- The US administration does not plan a war against Iran right now. Although Libertarian Girl and others may have presented some arguments supporting such a war (well, the photograph may be one of them), the Reference Frame would consider a war against Iran as a strategic error and a risky and morally controversial decision, especially after the less-than-perfect development in Iraq in the last 2 years. The plans about Iran may change, of course.
- BBC has a new article about the search for the "God particle". Prof. Virdee says that "they don't always like theorists to tell them what they should find". Did you know that the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is large enough to house the Canterbury Cathedral?
- Max Schmeling (the boxer) died at age of 99. He may have been the greatest symbol of the "superior" Nazi race among the sport celebrities. However, from a historical perspective, I think that he was a kind of positive personality. He protected Jews from the Nazi regime, became friends with his old good African American competitor Joe Louis, and introduced CocaCola to West Germany.
- Julia Tymoshenko, an ally of Viktor Yushchenko, became the new Ukrainian prime minister. The situation in Ukraine has been completely stabilized.
The weather has become one of the most politically sensitive topics ;-), which is the main reason why the Reference Frame finds it important to inform about the weather:
- Although most of the news about the Arctic emphasize how warm it's getting and how the polar bears may dislike it, almost no one will tell you that the Arctic's stratosphere has experienced an extremely harsh, cold winter. In fact, this extreme cold is a threat for the ozone layer in Northern Europe. Unlike the "Global Warming", the ozone hole is viewed by the Reference Frame as a potential problem that should be seriously looked at; the UV radiation is dangerous, and its amount reaching the surface depends exponentially on the ozone layer's thickness. Of course, the Global Warming alarmists will blame everything - including the cooling stratosphere - on human-induced global warming, but I hope that most of my readers are still able to distinguish different effects. The ozone layer thinning is caused by many effects, and indirect effects of CO_2 are among the speculative ones.
- Australia has had a record cold summer, too. Melbourne has recorded its coldest February day on record (12.8 degrees). It's been raining a lot. The damage has topped 100 million AUD. Also, a famous glacier in New Zealand had been used as a prime example of global warming - it shrunk by 500 meters between 1999 and 2003. The glacier was named after the emperor of my homeland, namely Austria-Hungary, 100+ years ago: Franz Josef. You won't hear about Franz Josef today because it is growing by 4 meters a day. This fact is apparently politically incorrect.
- Today, it was announced that a new, fifty-kilometer-long iceberg has formed in the frigid waters around Antarctica.
- Four days ago, Moscow was hit by the heaviest snowstorm ever. At the same day, a huge snowstorm also hit Japan.
- Researchers have constructed realistic plans to terraform Mars, by injecting a huge amount of greenhouse gases to Mars's atmosphere. In other words, the scientists plan to use global warming to make another planet habitable. Well, CO_2 would not be enough: they think about fluorine-based gases that can be roughly 10,000 more efficient than carbon dioxide.
Some news from the economy:
- The unadjusted unemployment in Germany has topped 5 million people, the highest number (and rate) since 1933 when Hitler took power: the number of unemployed jumped by 200,000 or so within a month. It may be useful, especially for some of the readers, to mention that it does not yet imply that a new Hitler has to become the German leader in 2005.
- Europe is slightly changing its agenda. According to the previous, Lisbon agenda, various EU commission's governmental projects should have made our old good Europe the world's most dynamic economy by 2010. The new plan - the revised Lisbon agenda - is for Europe to avoid the collapse by 2010. The new commission's boss José Manuel Barroso (former Portugese prime minister) has obviously learned more from the failure of the Soviet bloc than his predecessors. He has made a kind of Larry-Summers-like scandal when he openly supported flexible free markets in his speech! :-) Barroso also wants to establish The Eurochusetts Institute for Technology.
- In the US, the payrolls increased roughly by 150,000, a long-term average number and a disappointment for the economists who predicted 189,000. The unemployment calculated from another survey dropped from 5.4 to 5.2 percent, the lowest number since September 2001.
- Václav Klaus, the outspoken and highly intelligent Czech President, spoke at the Microsoft conference in Prague. He explained that the clichés about the knowledge economy and information society are modern forms of mysticism. The important principles of market economy do not need any updates, and they are not correlated with any particular technology.
- The financial terrorists at Karmabanque.com who believe that by having established a website for similar anti-Coke morons - a website that features virtual antimoney, they would be able to reduce the price of the Coca Cola stock from $40 to $20, must feel surprised. The airplanes do not land. The Coke stock has risen from $40 to $42.50 within the last few months.
