Fragments From Floyd

** Climate Concessions Bad for US Business, so from the Bali Conference… “The U.N. climate chief warned Thursday that a deadlock between the United States and the European Union over emissions cuts threatened to derail talks aimed at launching negotiations for a new global warming pact. Washington has refused to accept language in a draft document suggesting that industrialized nations consider cutting emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 during upcoming negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.” For shame.

** Word of the day is ululate: to wail in self-pity; howl with sorrow; to utter or emit a long, mournful, plaintive sound. This is one of those words (Latin origin) that is imitative–the word in some way reproduces the sound of the sound named. There was a gal at a recent performance here in Floyd who made this weird yodeling sound with her tongue as a kind of applause or appreciation while listening to some stage musicians. It sounded like this word. So when I came across ululate in a National Geographic last week, having never read it before, I recognized it by the sound of the word.

** Mapophilia: Check out The Weather Channel / Radar Map / Weather layers / Clouds and Radar / Motion. This interactive utility uses Live Maps with transparent weather overlay. It is clickable down to street level and moveable across the country with left-click-drag.

** Here Comes Another Bubble: (YouTube) With apologies to Billy Joel, this is pretty funny–unless you’re holding a lot of tech stocks. UPDATE: sorry, this video has disappeared from the web. Strange–it was such a riot it reportedly had Robert Scoble spewing Diet Coke out his nose. AH well.

** Twinkle twinkle not-so-little star: A diamond bigger than Earth

** No More Sense: Adsense, that is. Or Amazon for that matter. There for a while, the ads were bringing in enough to pay my DSL expenses and then some. And then they weren’t. So at least for now, enjoy an ads-free (also revenue free) blogspace at Fragments. And frankly, I feel better (if a wee bit poorer) not being a part of the omnipresent marketing machinery that commodifies visitors into click-donors.

** If this picture or this one doesn’t make you smile, you’re probably dead.

Stumble it!