Another round of short takes ...

First, this is the most laughable thing I have ever seen, which had me rolling off my kitchen table seat after turning on my computer and spitting out my coffee this morning: ["President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize"]. I have lost whatever remaining small amount of faith I had in these awards. Barack Obama has done nothing at all to advance the cause of peace. Nothing. The same way he has done nothing to fix the economy. He has continued the fraudulent wars after saying he wouldn't. He has about as much business winning this award as Dick Cheney does. This is simply disgraceful.

Update: Jamie O'Keefe just Tweeted this column which pretty much says it all: ["What has Barack Obama done for peace?"].

I forgot to post this earlier in the week - Kelly Ayotte with more strong poll numbers here in New Hampshire: ["Poll Shows Ayotte With Lead Over Hodes"].

For those of us who love print journalism, take a look at this Village Voice story about the newspaper war going on in NYC: ["How New York City's Seven Newspapers Are (Nearly) Surviving"]. And, BTW, I often see that some of the snarky start-up newspapers in the city are hiring so who knows?

I'm also late posting these two reports about press accuracy and what readers feel about journalism: ["Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low"] and ["SHU NATIONAL POLL: TRUST AND SATISFACTION WITH THE NATIONAL NEWS MEDIA"].

I have been thinking about the issue of climate change lately too, mostly eyeing the so-called free trade system and how creating domestic manufacturing in each country for its own use would be a key way of lowering carbon emissions. But, the more I think about it, the more I realize that lowering birth rates is a wise first step to addressing the issue: ["'Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change'"]. From there, yeah, domestic micro-economies in each country or regions of countries; desalination plants, built like yesterday, to pump unsalted sea water out of the rising oceans and into aquafers [bringing water to areas that have never had water before]; etc. I'll write a bit more about this in the future, especially the silly natural gas campaign about dropping 3 percent of energy usage a year.