“Global warming is doubling the rate of sea level rise around the world, but attempts to stop it by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be futile, leading researchers will warn today.

The oceans will rise nearly half a metre by the end of the century, forcing coastlines back by hundreds of metres, the researchers claim. Scientists believe the acceleration is caused mainly by the surge in greenhouse gas emissions produced by the development of industry and introduction of fossil fuel burning.” (Guardian.UK)

CIA worried case would expose prison network: “The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida, it was claimed yesterday.

Mr Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an ‘enemy combatant’ in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad.” (Guardian.UK)

“So life often imitates art. Yet with the recent uprisings in some French immigrant neighborhoods, this cliché came with a new twist: art, in the form of movies and rap music, has long been warning that French-born Arab and black youths felt increasingly alienated from French society and that their communities were ripe for explosion.” (New York Times )

Baltimore’s Police Are Baffled: “..[S]o far the case of the pilfered poles has stumped the police, and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture.” (New York Times )

“For his entire career, he sought untrammeled power. The Bush presidency and 9/11 finally gave it to him — and he’s not about to give it up.

…The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined.

Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held ‘cabal’ — as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it — wields control.” — Sidney Blumenthal (Salon)

“More and more adults and teens are popping pills for ADD, “generalized anxiety disorder” and other quasi-societal conditions. Is it time to retire our moralistic distinction between “recreational” and “medical” drugs?

…We live in a society where it’s increasingly difficult to differentiate between adults and kids. Go to a mall, squint your eyes, and see if you can tell the difference between the alarming 18-year-olds who seem 35 and the much more alarming 35-year-olds trying to pass for 18. A case can be made that recognizing adult ADD isn’t so much an enlightened leap in Western medicine as a questionable evolution in a culture that recently welcomed the dubious word ‘adultescent’ into the 2005 edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. ” (Salon)

“Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

…”I’m doing a lot of good work with some great clients,” Brown said. “My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me.”” (Yahoo! News)

Confessions of a photocopier repairman: “Photocopier supplier Canon is warning customers to take better care of their office equipment during the Christmas period, claiming that the festive season traditionally leads to a 25 percent hike in service calls due to incidents such as the classic backside copying prank.

Such a stunt, a mainstay of the office party, often results in cracked glass on the copier, with 32 percent of Canon technicians claiming to have been called out to fix glass plates during the Christmas period after attempts to copy body parts went wrong. Tim Andrews, a Canon employee from London, said: ‘We always fit lots of new glass to copiers after New Year due to ‘rear-end copying.” In fact, Canon claims a shocking 46 percent of service calls are in response to non-work-related breakages.

…Partly in response to this trend–or perhaps because of the ‘supersizing’ of the western physique–Canon has now increased the thickness of its glass by an extra millimeter.” (CNET [via walker])