Author: The Mound of Sound

There’s no need for any additional commentary.   Here’s the report.  Read it for yourself. Here are excerpts of the report published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society: “…today, for the first time, humanity’s global civilization—the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one

A bit of old William Shakespeare could be just the thing to get your brain tuned up. Academics at Liverpool University found that reading the works of the Bard and other classical writers had a beneficial effect on the mind, by catching the reader’s attention and triggering moments of self-reflection.

What’s the difference between daytime and night time in Beijing?  Fewer cars on the Ring Road. A blanket of toxic air that has blocked out the sun across most of north China is dominating social media and looming as a serious political challenge. Visibility was reduced to a few hundred

It’s bad enough that coastal British Columbia is going to have to cope with countless tons of debris from the Fukushima tsunami but now homeowners are going to take a hit also. According to the Times Colonist, earthquake insurance premiums are going up 25% this year.   Apparently insurers are looking

Moomba, a gas exploration town in South Australia, reached a record, 49.6 degrees Celsius in the noonday sun.   Meanwhile the country is being swept with brush fires and grass fires that have already consumed 350,000 hectares of land. The first nine days of 2013 have all exceeded average maximum temperatures

Americans may endure dreadful healthcare outcomes but at least their kids can go in style.

Salon is reporting that Michelle Bachmann is refusing to pay five staffers who worked on her presidential nomination campaign.  Those who remain unpaid have apparently refused to sign “a nondisclosure agreement that would bar them from discussing any ‘unethical, immoral, or criminal activity’ they witnessed on the campaign with police

The lawyer defending three of five men charged with the recent gang rape and murder of a young Indian woman intends to hold her male companion responsible for her death. Manohar Lal Sharma said his clients would plead not guilty to all charges at their next court appearance. Mr Sharma

Ask any Somali, Yemeni or Pakistani mountain tribesman.   Barack Obama likes his drones or, more accurately, likes to use his drones to obliterate people he thinks deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth.  It seems that not a week goes by that the Americans aren’t whacking some

I recently received an e-mail from Hedy Fry about “how to find Liberals near you.”   Truth be told, I’d rather know how to find Mormons near me because rumour has it they keep a full year’s worth of food stockpiled and that information could come in handy some day.  That

The message from the World Economic Forum is loud and clear:  we’re heading for trouble if we fall back on geo-engineering to save us from global warming. A major drawback to geo-engineering technologies is that there is no “one size fits all” option.   One country may need more water.  In

The CBC News report about lake contamination from Tar Sands operations came straight from the horse’s mouth, an Environment Canada “spokesman.” “Not so bad, no indeedy,” proclaimed EnviroCan spokesman Adam Sweet.   So just what sort of hydrologist or chemist or scientist of any sort is Adam Sweet? Well it seems

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has directed his government to start issuing passports, drivers licenses and ID cards bearing “State of Palestine” in place of  the current “Palestinian Authority.” Israeli officials declined comment, including whether Israel would prevent Palestinians with new ID cards and passports from crossing borders and checkpoints. “Whether