Sciolist: A superficial pretender to knowledge.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, after weeks of intensive counselling in the wake of revelations he had dallied with a male prostitute, has emerged convinced he is "completely heterosexual," declared one of the ministers overseeing him.

"That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing," said the Rev. Tim Larkspur in an AP story on CTV.ca.

Congratulations to Rev. Haggard for successfully navigating this journey of self-discovery! :)

Good luck to him as he follows his counsellors' advice to leave Colorado Springs, Col. and move to a quieter place! Here's wishing him well as he also follows their advice to find a more secular way to make a living!

And, as always in these types of stories, file under 'Schadenfreude.'

From an AP story on globeandmail.com:

China will spend more to research global warming but lacks the money and technology to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening the problem, a government official said Tuesday.

China “lags behind Europe and the United States” in the technology needed to clean its coal, which accounts for 69 per cent of its energy output, said Qin Dahe, chief of the China Meteorological Administration.

“It takes time to catch up,” said Mr. Qin, who served as one of China's representatives to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that last week announced that global warming is very likely caused by mankind and will continue for centuries.

His comments at a news conference Tuesday, the first official Chinese response to the report, came as winter temperatures in China's capital hit a 30-year high, state media said.

The China Daily newspaper said Beijing's temperature hit 13 on Saturday – a 30-year high for the date – prompting an early spring, with frozen lakes melting and trees blooming.

Well, when you see a headline like that, you have to link to it, don't you? Author Mai Yamani writes in the Guardian about why the U.S. and Britain must stop propping up 'moderate' dictatorial Mideast regimes.

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Some excerpts from the NYT story:

SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN’S characterization of his fellow Democratic presidential contender Senator Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” was so painfully clumsy that it nearly warranted pity.

There are not enough column inches on this page to parse interpretations of each of Mr. Biden’s chosen adjectives. But among his string of loaded words, one is so pervasive -- and is generally used and viewed so differently by blacks and whites -- that it calls out for a national chat, perhaps a national therapy session.

It is amazing that this still requires clarification, but here it is. Black people get a little testy when white people call them “articulate.” ...

“Look, what I was attempting to be, but not very artfully, is complimentary,” Mr. Biden explained to Jon Stewart on Wednesday on “The Daily Show.” “This is an incredible guy. This is a phenomenon.”

What faint praise, indeed. Being articulate must surely be a baseline requirement for a former president of The Harvard Law Review. After all, Webster’s definitions of the word include “able to speak” and “expressing oneself easily and clearly.” It would be more incredible, more of a phenomenon, to borrow two more of the senator’s puzzling words, if Mr. Obama were inarticulate.

The NYT has a feature on former NY Ranger Brian Leetch, who is in sort-of semi-retirement from pro hockey. The story also talks to three of his former teammates -- Mike Richter, Adam Graves and Mark Messier -- about making that difficult decision that it was time to quit something they loved doing and that had defined them as persons.

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From the BBC:

Google Earth peeps into every corner of the planet

Google is in talks with India about sensitive sites viewable via the Google Earth service.

Citing security worries the Indian government has asked Google to reduce the detail in a selection of images.

The government is drawing up a list of places it considers sensitive, which is expected to include military bases and government buildings.

Many other areas in Google Earth have been blurred by governments keen to stop people seeing sensitive sites.

The BBC has a backgrounder on clean coal technology. It talks about washing coal, gasifying it, capturing particulates and other pollutants and, last but not least, capturing carbon dioxide emissions.