News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-K

Why an Asteroid Strike Would Turn Humans Into Nightwalkers
National Geographic



National Geographic

Asteroid Impact Could Deplete Ozone Layer


Space Daily: Ww're all doomed...

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-K

There is no spectrum crisis
ZDNet (blog)

CNET's Marguerite Reardon reports that the FCC is getting all "hair on fire" about the looming spectrum crisis.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-J

From the mother of all fake crisis creators

To bee or not to bee..?
European Parliament

As bees pollinate over two thirds of our food - mainly fruit and vegetables - the bee crisis could soon have an effect on us.

Someone DO something about this, damn it!

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-I

244000 Households in Germany Opt Out of Google Mapping Service
The Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. said more than 244,000 households in Germany's 20 largest cities had formally requested that their homes be blurred before the launch of the Internet giant's Street View mapping service there in several weeks.

John Howard is a One-Man Fake Crisis Management Center

The Australian: NBN a colossal waste, says John Howard

News Digest of the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-H

Saying 'nein' to street view
Macleans.ca

In Guernsey, two of Google's Street View cars were vandalized.

Evidence suggests that the writer doesn't realize that Guernsey is not in Germnay. In fact it is not even in the UK, but is a part of England. Go figure it out. I don't have all day to explain these things to you.

The Fake Crisis Management Center goes all Hollywood on us

REPORTER: David Brill

Journeyman Weekly transcribes hideously bad disaster sci-fi and interviews its' fine theoreticians, which have, after all, been among the brain-softeners used to convince us of however-many Fake Crises which fans of this series (both of you,) find so terribly amusing.

GEORGE NEGUS: David Brill there. I know the 'Armageddonites' can say things that make you just shake your head, but that last comment about going backwards does raise the question of whether everything we call 'progress' necessarily is. If you want to know more about that underground shelter, or becoming self-sufficient, follow the links from sbs.com.au/dateline. The website for that bunker has a handy clock counting down to the end of the world! But, right now, I think we're still OK.

...but there's certainly an asteroid that's headed for Earth that NASA is also aware of...

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-H

Bombing Earth-bound Asteroids a Viable Option, Experts Say
National Geographic

Considering the damage a large asteroid strike could do to humanity, bombing any so-called near-Earth objects, or NEOs, headed our way might be a viable option.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-G

EC Underlines Importance Of Broadband Investment
The Clare Herald

...Speaking in Dublin last evening, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes outlined why European companies and public authorities can and must continue to invest in broadband despite the economic crisis.

Good idea. If something is expanding, becoming cheaper, and is self-sustaining on its own, it's high time taxpayer money (during a recession) was used to slow it down by "investing" in it. One starts in this exercise of attention-seeking and self-importance-building by calling it a "crisis".

Kulturschande 101

Syria: It isn't that way for a lack of skill, ambition, or resources. It's caused by their increasingly de-christianized culture, tempered by half a century of Ba'athist fascistic Socialism.

Homs: a 5 year old boy is married off to a 3 year old girl.

Berlin's B-Z:

For little Khaled (5) and his fiancé Hala, two years his junior, the ceremony in the Syrian city of Homs was probably just a game. But their parents are serious: If the kids are younger than 15 and 13 years old, they can be married according to the will of their parents.

Local and international human rights groups are up in arms against the engagement. In Syria, the marriage of minors is not unusual.

Let's see if those “international human rights” types will, after all of these decades demonstrate their usefulness and efficacy. Don't hold your breath.

Alas, the Foibles of Tax Policy

Heavens to Lexington Steele: in South Korea, penis enlargement surgery is exempt from VAT, but breast implants for women are not.

Noting this could be seen as gender inequality, Kim asked whether the National Tax Service was discriminating against women because all of its directors have so far been male.
Interestingly, Kim also said that 15.4% of Koreans age 17 to 19 get cosmetic surgery.

But here’s the real howler:

Kim noted that medically speaking, the size of a man’s member doesn’t really matter in ones sex life, but since breast size is easily noticeable by others, smaller-breasted women might develop a complex about them.

Un hunh. I tell ‘dat to my bitches that all the time.

News Digest of the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-G

Film features local beekeper
Addison County Independent

Kirk Webster and his mite-free colonies in an effort to share an alternative look at what people are calling a "global bee crisis" currently in effect.

UM researcher identifies possible cause of bee crisis
KXLH Helena News

The mysterious bee die-off hit North Dakota beekeeper James Browning hard. He lost 40 percent of his 20000 hives last year. "To see those bees die and the colonies empty, no bees in there," Browning said, "it's a gut wrenching feeling."

It's a virus, dammit.

Plantu: “I Detest You, but don’t Stop Spending your Dollars Here”

News Digest of the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-G

Renewables - the key to solving the energy crisis

Gerson Lehrman Group

We have made a start with that in the case of broadband (USA, Australia, NZ, NL, UN); the energy issue, however, is a whole new challenge....

Any evidence that the Gerson Lehrman Group, a flesh-peddling work-at-home outfit ever "solved" a crisis - ever -, even if it was a fake one, would be more than welcome.

Mr. Wen’s Rendezvous with Density

News Digest of the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-F

The fake "broadband crisis" meets the actual crisis of actually being broke:

Goals mothballed as financial crisis takes hold
Irish Times

GOAL High-speed broadband of 100 MB/s to all second-level schools by 2012. REALITY Still in pilot stage for 78 out of 4000 schools.

So, You Milk the Bull, yes?

In Spain it is now becoming increasingly difficult to show children the ways in which a man and a woman are different:

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Of course this is just a shrugged-shoulder matter of simply employing logic without any intent, rather than for judicial reasoning. Is the employed husband of an unemployed woman going to run home to attend to the wife’s nursing? Sure he is, right after he stops bitch slapping her.

The new legislation means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child.

The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on Thursday that the Spanish law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

The way to a European’s heart, and EU institutions know this, is for governments to be appearing to give people something for nothing, and this sounds like just that.

News Digest of the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-E

One thing a fake crisis can't bear is common sense and apathy. Case in point: the "broadband crisis"

At the Progress and Freedom Foundation blog, Adam Thierer notes that a recent Pew Center poll shows a slight majority of Americans don't think supplying broadband should be a big government priority.

The anatomy of this "crisis"? It all starts with satisfied people!

there might be a number of reasons that respondents downplayed the importance of government actions to spur broadband diffusion, including that: (1) many folks are quite content with the Internet service they get today; (2) others might get their online fix at work or other places and not feel the need for it at home; and (3) some may not care two bits (excuse the pun) about broadband at all. More generally, I noted that, with all the other issues out there to consider, broadband policy just isn't that important to most folks in the larger scheme of things....

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-D

Czech Republic blocks Google's data mapping feature
Seer Press

Google Street View provides panoramic photos of many streets in cities around the world. Privacy groups are concerned that their activities which they do.


Google Street View: No more privacy for penguins as Antarctica gets mapped
The Guardian

Privacy was not nearly as contentious in the five US cities – New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.

Spaddacus! I loved you Like a Foddah!

So long Signalman SM3c Bernard Schwartz. You’ll always be first rate.

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2010\10-C

asteroid headed for earth


U.N. names Mazlan Othman Alien - UFO ambassador
Right Pundits

... potential issues involving aerospace technologies, as well as what to do if a large asteroid or comet were discovered to be headed straight for Earth.

A Status Report from the Happiest Place on Earth

And I’m not kidding you. Your average garden variety European Ivan Ivanovich really DOES think that a certain country, population, etc., can be objectified in such a way that they will clam being the happiest people on earth, despite the stunning and enduring tradition of having a high suicide rate.

“Danish ghettos ravaged by fire,” alerts the Jyllands-Posten. Every week in troubled Danish neighbourhoods, four fires on average burn down kindergartens, trash containers, cars and motor scooters, reports the Danish daily, based on fire department reports in the country’s three biggest cities.

According to one sociologist quoted in the paper, these acts are perpetrated by a hard core of ethnic youths who want their neighbourhoods to “take on the image of a dangerous ghetto”.

Because in a life where nothing matters, your biggest complaint can be either some detached social issue, a fake crisis of some sort, or the fact that your precious, tidy, overpriced society isn’t enough like a first-person shooter game, or your image of da hood.