From Rough and Tumble, a California news site in blog format.

‘California Minutemen’ Begin Patrol — Immigrant rights activists and journalists appear to outnumber volunteers as they attempt to replicate patrols in Arizona. Richard Marosi in the Los Angeles Times Wyatt Buchanan in the San Francisco Chronicle Leslie Berestein in the San Diego Union-Trib Anne Riley-Katz in the North County Times

The Minutemen and the equally noxious SOS have been met with overwhelming opposition every time they try something in California. At both SOS protests in Garden Grove, anti-racist activists out-numbered them 10 to 1 and forced them to leave. Now the Minutemen are at the California/Mexico border and are being faced with well-organized opposition in large numbers. Good.

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Some stories and links on global warming. It’s accepted as fact everywhere except in the White House.

Tasmanian coral reef ‘proof of global warming’

Scientists believe they have discovered proof that global warming has altered Tasmania’s marine environment.

A group of biologists from the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute has found a shallow reef extensively covered by coral at the Kent Group Marine Protected Area near Flinders Island off the north-east of Tasmania.

Coral reefs only survive in warmer waters and are usually found in tropical areas such as Queensland.

Global climate change and its impact on Louisiana’s coastal wetlands

The Louisiana coastline and delta is shrinking at an alarming rate, losing one acre per 35 minutes.

Heat, heavy rains and occasional storms, floods and droughts have always been part of coastal Louisiana’s climate. But global climate change could intensify this historical pattern, damaging the region’s vital but already stressed wetlands.

Warming winds, rising tides: Tuvalu

This island nation may cease to exist if the waters keep rising..

Tuvaluans face the possibility of being among the first climate refugees, although they never use that term.   Former assistant Environmental minister and now assistant secretary for Foreign Affairs Paani Laupepa said he felt threatened. “Our whole culture will have to be transplanted.”

Areas of Florida that could be inundated by sea-level rise if global warming reaches levels it has reached in the past..

Comprehensive global warming links. More links. Even more

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Spinister just launched. It’s an inventive new idea - rate the news and spin based on your political leanings. Then see how those with differing politics rate the same story.

Spinister is a political news site that allows you to gauge the spin and relevance of any given story. If you have ever found yourself reading the newspaper, listening to news radio, or watching the news on television and had this overwhelming feeling that not only are signifigant details being left out of a report, but that you are perhaps even being directly lied to or deceived — then this is the place to express yourself. If you feel there is a slant or bias to the media, we offer you the tools to subjectively rate it.

We amass political news stories from around the Internet, trying to cover every major subject in U.S. politics. Then we allow you to both rate a story’s spin (”SpinRater”) and it’s relevance. We then take these ratings and group it with others who share your political affiliation and compile it into statistics that show the trends and varying perspectives among the major parties. Some will find a story more relevant than others, some may even see a completely different spin altogether.

But the point is, this base-level reaction to a story is for all to see (at a group-level). So instead of just scratching your head wondering what the heck the people affiliated with another party could be thinking — at Spinister you can see it, and get a better idea of what their motivations might be. Better yet, perhaps you’ll even find some level of understanding with a party that might have otherwise just seem alien to you. That’s the ultimate goal of Spinister. We don’t want to see these “divide and conquer” tactics tear America apart, instead we want to see America bridge those gaps we focus so much attention upon. Or as we put it, conquer the divide.

In addition to being a unique and useful site, Spinister is also and well-designed, well-written - a nice piece of data-driven coding indeed.

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