This video shows how scientists were misled. They thought the healthy ice was expanding, when it was actually thinning and spreading out over a wider area. I can't wait until all the right wingers who've been triumphantly pushing this as proof there's no climate change acknowledge they were wrong. I'll just sit here and hold my breath:

WINNIPEG–One of Canada's top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world's polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin "rotten" ice that can't support weight of the bears. "It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice," said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.

"Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice."

Permanent ice, which is normally up to 10 metres thick, was easily pierced by the research ship, said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba. The team finally reached what it thought was stable ice, only to watch a crack appear just as researchers were preparing to descend onto the floe.

"As I watched, over the course of five minutes, the entire multi-year ice floe broke up into pieces," Barber said. "This floe was 16 km across. Something that's twice the size of Winnipeg, it just broke up right in front of our eyes."

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(The Berlin Wall - so after 28 years of grief, death and terror, it's over in a few minutes.)

With the relaxation on travel restrictions between East and West Germany, it was only a matter of time before the wall dividing the two Berlins became impractical and a relic of the Cold War. But the speed with which the change occurred took the rest of the world by surprise. As the day wore on and as reports came in as fast as they happened, it was slowly becoming apparent to the rest of the world that the Iron Curtain indeed was evaporating.

Mike Pulsiver (CBS News): "Witnesses are quoted as saying they have seen East German soldiers dismantling a section of the Berlin Wall as an incredible story keeps unfolding at breakneck speed."

The irony was, after so many years of a seemingly impregnable wall dividing the city and the endless attempts to escape to the West and the loss of life that happened during those attempts, the fact that the wall came down so quickly seemed ironic and in some ways strange. But the people of Berlin seized the moment and it became one huge party. The past was gone and there was no turning back.

As a bonus for our German friends, or those of you who want to brush up on your German, I've included a several news reports from German Radio from November 9-11, 1989. They are separated by a few seconds of silence between cuts.

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The clips go as follows:

1. Press Conference with Gunter Schabowski, DDR
2. Radio report
3. Radio DDR – 3 am news
4. Berlin Radio
5. SFB Radio – 8 am news
6. Comments by Walter Momper from Bonn
7. Jugenradio DT 64 – News 5pm.
8. Willy Brandt address
9. Address by Egon Krenz

According to the LA Weekly, via Consequence of Sound, Thom Yorke will debut his solo band featuring Joey Waronker (REM, Walt Mink), Flea (RHCP), and Nigel Godrich (Radiohead/Oasis producer) at the Echoplex in Los Angeles this Friday. The band will be playing songs from Yorke's recent solo effort Eraser.

Yorke has two shows announced for Sunday and Monday at the much larger Orpheum theater in Los Angeles.

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(Catherine Wheel - Couldn't have been the 90s without them)

Don't know about you, but one of my favorite concerts of the 90s was when Catherine Wheel was opening act for The Charlatans (UK) at The Hollywood Palladium in 1995. It took me straight back to the Delicado/Dope/Red Mountain/Orange blossom-scented days of 1968 when the Shrine Exposition Hall concerts in L.A. went on every weekend and people spent hours mesmerized by whoever was on stage at the time - soaking up sounds.

Because of that association, those two bands that night in 1995 will always have a warm place in my heart. It pointed out to me that times don't change - perceptions do. Good music is timeless.

Catherine Wheel were a band with a long history - one that went from 1990 to 2000; the whole decade. And they were always changing and evolving and going in different directions. No two albums ever sounded the same. They had, and still have, a loyal following. So maybe including this track tonight isn't going to be much of a surprise. But it's nice to be reminded if you haven't played them lately.

This track was issued as part of the Show Me Mary ep, shortly after their second album Chrome was released. These Four Walls didn't wind up on an album until their compilation, "Like Cats and Dogs" of singles and b-sides was issued in 1996.

I think you'll get the idea they influenced a lot of bands in the 90s - and those bands would freely admit it.