As neither Susan nor I drive and our kids being 9 and 6 don’t either let’s call our evil, bad, noxious plant feeding something on the order of 40 tonnes per year.

The current Chicago price per tonne for CO2 is $.05 USD.

Er, 40x.05….$2.00 per year to fully offset.

Which suggests that there really is no need to bother.

But, for $50.00 I could offset the next 25 years.

I love markets.

The Islamic militant Hamas is claiming responsibility for a shooting attack that killed four Israelis in the West Bank.

Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida told The Associated Press late Tuesday that Hamas carried out the attack near the West Bank city of Hebron. ap

Could Hamas be any more obvious?

Were I Israel I would politely excuse myself from the Washington talks for twenty minutes and bomb a Hamas HQ to rubble. I would then return to the talks and carry on.

CSE spokesman Adrian Simpson said Monday that the agency only spies on the electronic communication of foreign targets — non-Canadians living outside of Canada. He said that the only way the agency would be able to pick up the communications of a Canadian is if that foreign entity corresponded with a Canadian. montreal gazette

Right. And likely true. But the statement entirely ignores the intelligence sharing arrangements we have with our allies. Echelon springs to mind.

I happen to think that a vigorous signals intelligence operation should be directed at assorted jihadis in Canada. And it is pretty clear one is. Thank goodness. But it is pretty lame to pretend that our spies only read foreign directed material. (And if it is the case then they should be directed and empowered to look at the domestic chatter.)

Hmmmm

Kayhan, an Iranian newspaper, which is under control of the government, called Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy and Isabelle Adjani, the French actress who is campaigning for Ashtina’s release, “prostitutes” in an editorial, while Iranian state television accused the former supermodel of “immorality”. telegraph

If you happen to note that there is a nation which is proposing to stone a woman to death your past is going to be raked up. And Carla, realistically, will not be winning any awards from the Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice. These people are despicable pigs and going after Carla just proves the point.

One more reason to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and initiate “regime change” forthwith.

“The CIC affirms that Canadian Muslims, more than other citizens, are deeply concerned and disturbed about the arrests and especially about psychological, social and emotional impact of these arrests on the well being of Canadian Muslims.” Canadian Islamic Congress press release

As well they should be.

You would think these people would have learned their lesson with the Toronto 18. Canadians support the security and police establishments when they have the gumption to actually go after terrorists. Are the Ottawa/Montreal people terrorists? We don’t know and the Courts have not weighed the evidence.

However, they are most certainly Muslims and, as Blazing and SquareMile Wife have been piecing together, some appear to have been creating rather doubtful charities suspected of funneling money to terrorists.

So, yes, CIC, Muslims have every reason to assume that their fellow Canadians will be suspicious and wary of them. If even a small minority of your community participate in terrorism or the financing of terrorism your entire community will feel the effects? Fair? Nope. But that is a very human response.

If you don’t like it you may be more comfortable in more Muslim friendly places.

Update: Kaffir Kanuck spells it out. And Dr. Dawg sticks his thumbs in his ears and chants “La, la, la…I can’t hear you.”

Up to you to figure our who makes more sense.

I’ve been studying this research for the past three years, in the course of writing my new book The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. But my interest in the subject is not just academic. It’s personal. I was inspired to write the book after I realised that I was losing my own capacity for concentration and contemplation. Even when I was away from my computer, my mind seemed hungry for constant stimulation, for quick hits of information. I felt perpetually distracted.

Could my loss of focus be a result of all the time I’ve spent online? In search of an answer to that question, I began to dig into the many psychological, behavioural, and neurological studies that examine how the tools we use to think with — our information technologies — shape our habits of mind. the telegraph

I spend a good deal of my day in front of a computer and the internet is always there. Dawg barks, Watts Up With That points to another Climate Alarmist lunacy, Blazing Catfur connects more jihadi dots. Pretty girls continue to wear very few clothes. Stocks rise and fall and Garth Turner watches the collapse of the Canadian real estate market. 50 to 100 emails a day. G-mail instant messages, Campfire and Basecamp….Oh, and blogging, did I mention blogging. Craigslist, my sweetie finding beauty on E-bay…The Globe and Mail remains clueless and the Star treasonous.

At a glance, the sheer flow of information is overwhelming. And it may well be rewiring my brain. But on second glance my dog needs a walk, lunch is in the dining room, Max needs to beat me at soccer (and the little bugger is no longer getting a 50 foot wide goal, I have a diary to write and notes to make at my local (where all the servers are pretty and named Sara(h)), there is a delicious dinner to eat, the dog needs more walking. When I am on the phone I wander around my yard if it is not raining. There is the cocktail hour and the happy moment where I pick up Waugh’s Diaries or Martin Amis’ Essays which are entirely hyperlink free.

If anything, I suspect that my eight hours a day of net and computer use is simply a compartment of my larger brain. No doubt that compartment is wired in very odd ways; but it lives under the control of a set of pleasures and understandings which are purely real, or, at worst, analog. My boys can kick my butt at Wii; but even aged as I am, stealth and guile will win on the soccer field or the tennis courts for a few more years. And did I mention gamesmanship? I have yet to actually say to Max, “Look, an eagle.” shortly before curving it like Beckingham and knocking another slat out of the fence which is his goal. But I suspect it will come to that in short order. (Six becomes seven very quickly.)

No doubt if your entire life is digitally mediated your brain will turn to a sort of digital goo. (You can see visions of this speaking on the phone to someone who is casually surfing the net on the other end.) But if you manage some sort of balance and simply walk away from the machine for an hour or two at a time, the damage is wonderfully self repairing.

Vast solar system found 127 light years away
A vast solar system of seven planets orbiting a sun-like star has been discovered 127 light years from Earth. telegraph

An arrest has been made in connection with the murder of a Quebec woman in London more than a decade ago.

The body of Chomedey, Que., resident Fatima Kama, 28, was found at London’s Heathrow Airport in July 1999. Her body was stuffed in a suitcase and left on a luggage rack in a parking lot. vancouver sun

The latest poll indicates Ford has the support of 32 per cent of decided voters, while Smitherman has 21 per cent. cbc

First of the wakeup calls for the “political class”. No one is believing you any more. Immigration sucks. Spending money you don’t have sucks. Global warming is expensive bullshit.

Your time is done.

Ford, win or lose, embodies the revolt of the peasants.

Were I Harper I would be very afraid.

Thousands of vehicles were bogged down Monday in a more than 100-kilometre (62-mile) traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China’s growing road congestion woes.

The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said. yahoovia peter grandich

I really like my walk downstairs commute.