Migrant Farm Workers In The Pigs, America, And Elsewhere: Noting A Balance Sheet Correlation Big Picture Agriculture
Rice Farmers in Japan Set Tougher Radiation Limits Bloomberg
Black Death genetic code ‘built‘ BBC
Facebook: Releasing your personal data reveals our trade secrets ZDNet. I’d love someone to sue them over this. The standards for trade secrecy, at least as of when one of my clients won a suit against a former employee, are high and exacting.
Wall Street’s ‘CrackBerry’ Withdrawal New York Times
Europe’s back office nerds at the fore John Dizard, Financial Times (hat tip reader Michael Thomas). From earlier this week, still germane.
Mario Draghi: Fears of Italian debt spiral Ed Harrison
The hysterical (and deceptive) conservative response to Elizabeth Warren Washington Post
New York protest square to be ‘temporarily cleared’: mayor Raw Story. Danny Schechter does not like the sound of this: Bloomberg Vists Occupy Wall Street: Will Order Park Cleared, More On The Plot Or Is It A Pretext? (hat tip Lisa Epstein)
Occupy Wall Street may share fate of Coxey’s Army BreakingViews (hat tip reader Michael Thomas)
OWS: The Risks Facing America Today Karl Denninger (hat tip reader Scott)
Unions add their voice to Wall Street protests Financial Times. Curious that the FT is taking note only now.
WSJ’s Francesco Guerrera says ‘banking chiefs must come clean about risk’ Trust Your Instincts
Wall Street Sees ‘No Exit’ From Woes Bloomberg (hat tip reader Typing Monkey). Read up on the pay expectations, in case you managed to forget them. Great grist for OWS.
The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline George Packer, Foreign Affairs (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck; registration required). Ahem, so where was he when this was happening? A rather sanitized account of the right wing efforts of the 1970s, and cites Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, who miss precisely what most matters, which is corporate politics and money (the real guru, who has been on this beat since at least the mid 1990, is Tom Ferguson). But worth reading as the new leading edge conventional wisdom.
Sandy Levin: the man who co-sponsored the Korean Trade Agreement Liz Berry, FireDogLake (hat tip reader Carol B)
Whose Jobs Are at Risk in Free Trade New York Times
Fed tempted by ‘QE3’ at latest meeting Financial Times
Dick Alford: Did the Taylor Rule Cause the Financial Crisis? Institutional Risk Analyst
US homeowners yet to feel boost from ‘Twist’ Financial Times
Banks turn to demolition of foreclosed properties to ease housing-market pressures Washington Post (hat tip Joe Costello)
Antidote du jour:
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A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/science/10anthrax.html
This led the morning news.
Setagaya is in central Tokyo and it has a spot with higher radiation than Iitate-mura, which is in the vicinity of the plant. What the article doesn’t note is that the only reason we know about it is that a housewife with a geiger counter was testing near her house.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/small-radiation-hotspot-found-in-tokyos-setagaya-ward
The article also fails to note that the Setagaya readings have NOTHING TO DO with Fukushima!
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_41.html
The relevant quote:
“Later on Thursday, the experts found what seemed to be the source of the radiation — 3 or 4 old jars in a wooden box left in a storage space under the floor of a vacant house facing the sidewalk.
The jars were reportedly dirty and black, and measured about 8 centimeters long and about 6 centimeters wide.
The radiation level of the bottles reportedly exceeded 30 microsieverts per hour — higher than the maximum that could be measured with the experts’ devices.”
This morning they’re leading with the development that it’s not Fukushima related. I suppose it’s reassuring that there’s a random, unexplained hot spot with off the chart readings.
Those jars could be the earthly remains of family members who died as a result of those other two ‘nuclear accidents.’
Biological Longevity And Economic Longevity.
Karl Denninger talks about doing the right thing will mean more pain short term.
I have a question.
They say the key to living a long life is not to eat too much. For a lot of people, I imagine that’s like half starving yourself all the time. Basically, living an austere life.
Is that also the key to economic longevity? Do we impose austerity on our economy so it can live a long life?
I should note that I am not talking about the caloric intake in an emergency, but under normal circumstances.
hey sure, strenuous exercise is always good for people recovering from heart attacks….oh isn’t that the right analogy?
Actually (and better sit down because I know this may sound “woo woo” even though it isn’t…), there are people who’ve naturally gravitated toward taking in very low calories, not out of a sense of “austerity,” but out of an organic, spiritual “awakening from within” of sorts. In other words…eating “light” became desirable, and made both body and Soul feel better. (Just a heads-up: I’m vegan and have been for years, and went through a six month period last year when my body didn’t want much except liquid protein…usually under 1000 calories a day. It felt GREAT.)
I sense (global) stress got me back to my former nutritional intake pattern, but no question, my goal is to get back to that state. The lightness, the incredible Lightness of Being…was wonderful. And spiritually more fulfilling (I’m not “into” food chain/predation meme).
Translate to economic system: “Austerity” is about living with less. Yet it’s totally different in comparison to something like a “Contributionism” model, which is also about “less,” but only if you’re talking: less mindless consumerism, less pillaging of resources, less economic hierarchy. And about more: cooperation, sharing, visioning for the well-being of the whole.
Similar meme, but completely different processes and outcomes.
Yeah, austerity has to be voluntary.
Here I am thinking of monks who lead austere lives, being very content and happy.
Of course, anyone, not just monks, can voluntarily do that as well. While not 100% no tech, it involves a lot of low- and no-tech stuff, I would imagine. And if enough people do that, economies become austere as well. The natural result, hopefully, is then longer and healthier living people as well as societies.
Re: Coxey’s Army. At the end of the article it states that this deflation is “technology driven.” Some of it perhaps, but we’ve had half a century of new technology that hasn’t created this much disruption before now–or in countries like Germany or scandinavia. This is a fraud-driven deflation causing similar inequality.
Point-and-click home computing – that is, home computers which even a non-technical person can easily use, those which use windowed operating systems – have only been widely available and affordable since 1995 or so.
The rate of tech change has been accelerating over the past 100 years – and such changes beget yet other and further changes in society, it appears.
When it comes to some classes of traded goods which once enjoyed high profit margins, the technology has effectually ended the era of scarcity – and those once-high profit margins have declined.
Which is, for society as a whole, a very very good thing!
Re Facebook. I wonder whether they have an office in the UK. If so, they must release any personal data they hold on a UK residen to him/her, full stop.
This whole thing just confirms my suspicion that the business model of FB is to become a BigBrother (ideally THE Big Brother), more the reason for not getting on it.
I’ve been noticing that some blogs now use Facebook as a commenting system, so I can’t/don’t comment; they are obviously trying to take over and commodify all human interaction on the internet.
What will make people reject the false utility of FB? Will there be a tipping point?
I thought this complaint was particularly funny and ingenuous, from the linked article: “Facebook is hosting enormous amounts of personal data and it is processing all data for its own purposes.”
Do tell!
Reading about Coxey’s Army and speculation about Bloomberg’s potential plans for the Occupy Wall Street group, reminds me of the Bonus Army march on and encampment in Washington, D.C., in 1932. As the Great Depression gained steam, World War I vets were appealing for early payment of the service bonuses they were promised. How successful were they? Well, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, still a few years away from his Dugout Doug days, led an assault on the vets (under the instructions of Pres. Herbert Hoover). Later, MacArthur disobeyed Hoover’s order to stop (foreshadowing perhaps his snubbing of Pres. Truman) and, aided by that other great American hero George Patton, crossed the Anacostia River and routed the vets, with tear gas, bayonets and fires. Dwight Eisenhower, who counseled caution, later called MacArthur “that dumb son-of-a-bitch.”
I wonder who, should he try a similar assault on the protestors, Bloomberg’s MacArthur might be? See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX89.html
Martin Hutchinson in the piece on Coxey’s Army has the analogy exactly wrong, which isn’t surprising because it’s clear he doesn’t ‘get it’ regarding the Occupation movement. Coxey’s Army, and the Bonus Expeditionary Army of 1932, had specific, economic grievances, and limited specific solutions; principally, ‘they wanted theirs.’ Many in the US didn’t see themselves in the agitators’ shoes. The military dispersed those efforts with little public outcry. Neither of those efforts had much of any liason with organized labor of their times, and it’s quite clear that they would not have sought such alliances.
The Occupiers are taking an entirely different approach. They are manifestly—oh just read what’s online, Martin, since you can’t be bothered to talk to any of them yourself—anti-corporate, pro-community, and hostile to unconstrained capitalism. They are in solidarity to the specific grievances of labor, and hostile to the onslaught of foreclosure against home owners, and incensed by the ‘economy of debt’ which the 1% have promoted, imposed, and now enforce on the 99%. These are _broad grievances_. Many who take no part in the Occupations, including many who are not even yet aware of them, share these grievances. One could sweep away all those presently onsite in the Occupations, and their numbers could be _completely replaced a dozen times over_ by like-minded individuals of identical backgrounds and views.
Unlike Coxey’s marchers and the Bonus agitators, who settled upon one or a few central demands which the powers that be found easy to resist, the Occupiers focus on building out non-cooperation with the debt-corp system into the wider society. In significant party, the Occupiers don’t ‘face the power’ in the capital but ‘face the people’ where they live. A far better analogy for the Occupiers would be the emancipation movement of the 1840s and 1850s, or the woman’s suffrage movement in its earlier stages. Society first has to accept that there is another way; once that understanding is established, the old way is already vestigal because society won’t accept the withered hand of putative power at that point.
Really, though, there is no good, direct analogy in Anglo-American history to the present Occupation movement. I don’t say that to celebrate it unduly, but simply it’s an action of it’s own unique stripe. How much it will genralize into society, and what comes of it _in the near term_ I couldn’t say. Nor do I expect that those on the ground in the Occupations themselves could say, grappling with the hourly issues or organization, maintenance, and official harassment. In the mid-term though, the Occupiers have broken the ‘weird glamour’ of the debt-corp society by refusing to privilege the terms and actors of that rotten ‘society’ of extraction and exemption from community. We will see serious change from that, whether on the 1-2 year timeframe or 10-15 year time frame.
If Hutchinson does have one thing right in my view in his analogy to Coxey’s Army, or the Bonus men, or the Diggers, or the Chartists, it’s that officaldome will at some point, inevitably, resort to armed force to disperse the noncompliant who have the termerity to gather and discuss their views. So all the more, the most important thing that the Occupiers might/must do in the near term is _to convince as may EVERYDAY CITIZENS AS POSSIBLE_ of the comtemptible existence of the debt-corp society and the readily achievable possibility of all the 99% of us revising the terms of the social contract involved. The Occupiers don’t need to convince officialdom at this point—and indeed cannot, because officialdom is on the payroll, mentally and in fiscal fact, of the 99%, and isn’t convincable in its, officialdoms, present configuration. The task of the Occupiers is to first engage the citizenry; y’know, evangelize. Cops with guns and securecrats with writs can disperse agitators but cannot surpress evangelizers. When officialdom mobilizes to attempt to crush the occupations, I don’t know what the response will be in the short term, whether the occupations are simply re-established, they being moving actions (site to site), change tactics, or combations of these and actions not here mentioned. But as in any good insurgency the goal isn’t the troops of the 1% but the hearts of the 99%. Coxey didn’t get that: he was petitioning for redress of grievances. But the Occupiers do have an inkling and more that this is a struggle of beliefe not of gelt nor even of guilt.
Power to the empowerment, on whatever ground it’s holding tonight. And tomorrow. And the morning after tomorrow.
One thing OWS certainly are not – anti-tech. Particularly communications tech.
Luddites they ain’t!
To physically gather in one place is pretty no-tech, compared to posting online, which is hi-tech.
The way I see it, it’s anti-tech in the sense that they are choosing no-tech over hi-tech.
To camp out in open space is as Neanderthalish as one can get in today’s world, I would say.
That’s how this Luddite sees it.
I hope the #OWC movement is big enough to accomodate Luddites.
Oh and one more non-negligible point. The summary of the Depression of 1983, so-called, sidebarred to the piece on Coxey misses the most important thing about the crash of that time: it was deliberately caused. By the 1% of the time, the trusts. I don’t think they knew they’d get a crash as severe out of it as happened, but they were unhappy that the pseudo-democrat Grover Cleveland (the Bill Clinton of his times, yes really) was going to be re-elected. And maybe give in to ‘free silver’ and tarif changes, i.e. increase liquidity and break teh stranglehold on credit maintained by the 1% of the time. So they sucked a bunch of liquidity out of the system during the Presidential campaign in protest—and crashed it. The end result is that Cleveland and all the rest paniced and grovelled completely to the bankers, abandoning efforts to increase the liquidity and hence credit, crushing labor and popular outcries with live fire, and putting aside regulation of the trusts for more than a decade.
Does any of that sound familiar, folks? It should. Substitute 2008 for 1893, and Bush/Bama for the Twaddledumbs of that day, and you have exactly the same ‘money gun to the head of the state,’ i.e. the system will crash, crash do you hear, if you don’t give us everything we demand.
This is what is meant by recurrence in the history of discrete social trajectories. Events don’t ‘repeat,’ but embedded behaviors recapitulate social-institutional parameters. We _are_ 1893; it was only yesterday in the timeframe of societies, of our society. Their behaviors are still current in our memory, actively and the ‘muscle memory’ of our society. Let’s hope we learned something from the last go round and go the way of community and One Big Union this time. Unless y’all are happy licking the debt-corps’ boot that is, in which case keep at it; sucker . . . .
“Depression of 1893.”
So why doesn’t Bloomberg propose a public-private partnership with OWS? Pay ’em to clean up the park! They are, after all, providing an important public service, so why not reward them?
Mr Strether;
As I see it, the real ‘value’ of the OWS crowd to Mr Bloomberg, (I just can’t get myself to call him Mayor, and ‘Boss’ has too many connotations,) is as a group of outsiders for him to demonize, and thus shore up his personal political fortunes. Funny, isn’t it, how all would be autocrats use the ‘law and order’ meme to mask their own personal obsessions with power for powers’ sake.
Come to think about it, “Boss” Bloomberg does have a certain cachet.
“The task of the Occupiers is to first engage the citizenry; y’know, evangelize. Cops with guns and securecrats with writs can disperse agitators but cannot surpress evangelizers. When officialdom mobilizes to attempt to crush the occupations, I don’t know what the response will be in the short term, whether the occupations are simply re-established, they being moving actions (site to site), change tactics, or combations of these and actions not here mentioned. But as in any good insurgency the goal isn’t the troops of the 1% but the hearts of the 99%.”
Your description makes it sound like the 1st Century Christians in Rome. A message that resonates can stand up to Imperial persecution. Might have to go underground for a bit, but it doesn’t die.
Those Christians ended up causing the fall of the Roman empire.
And that fall was NOT an entirely good thing, imho.
“Those Christians ended up causing the fall of the Roman empire.”
How so? The Roman Empire had plenty of problems before Christianity became it’s official religion. The Crisis of the 3rd Century predated Constantine.
And it was only the _Western_ Roman Empire that fell in the 5th century. The Eastern Empire (generally the wealthier and more coveted part) endured for almost another millennium.
Friends;
I thought that it was generally accepted nowadays that the Climate Crisis of 535 AD was the trigger that sent the Western Empire into terminal decline. After all, the Eastern Empire had just as all encompassing a religiosity as the West, and held on for almost a millenium more.
@ambrit… May I add the damnable cannon and its technological trajectory.
Skippy… First on the block was never truer…eh…cannon…computer…bell tones…methinks.
Dear skippy;
Napoleon may have asked how many divisions the Pope had, but the East had a sufficiency of canons to blast his hopes. Further east, a Manichean Dialectic was synthesizing.
First on the block was a finer cut above. Hollrath showed his cards and still prevailed. And as for the Bell curve…it has me salivating. Yum, yum!
two more good links this morning:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/florida-attorney-general-pam-bondi-investigation_n_996541.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/how-to-stop-the-drop-in-home-values.html?_r=1&hpw
I would have thought that we’d be seeing more proposals for reforms – answering the call by the OWS protesters.
Here’s one from me: Operational Review of Regulatory Agencies by Citizen Groups. Not just financial services: food, healthcare, products, oil & gas, etc.
Close revolving doors, fire compromised regulators, eliminate loopholes.
Here’s another suggestion for debate:
Make voting an obligation instead of a right. Decades ago it was impossible to enforce voting as an obligation. With the current sophisticated computer infrastructure, it is easy.
While dissatisfaction with the political system is at an all time high, too many people ignore politics altogether. Many don’t feel that their vote will make a difference so voter turnout is low.
Maybe if more people vote, politicians would focus more on issues and less on raising money. (More public financing of elections would help too.)
What if you don’t like any of the choices?
It happens often in our Congress, in parliaments around the world and with lots of voters who abstain in protest.
Then you go to the polls and turn in a blank or spoiled ballot. Voting is mandatory in Australia. With fines.
Dear MLTPB;
The Russians thought of that one and had, (still have?,) a None Of The Above spot on all ballots. NOTA has won a few elections there as well.
If we give underage high school kids a chance at None Of the Above in their SAT tests, I think it’s only decent to offer grown adults the same opportunity.
OK, I will go along with mandatory voting as long as we have a choice to vote NOTA.
‘Decades ago it was impossible to enforce voting as an obligation. With the current sophisticated computer infrastructure, it is easy.’
So is rigging an election. Yes, make it compulsory but if you want the results to be safe you need either to return to publicly auditable paper trails or to move to online voter registration linked to the votes cast, so that people (or approved proxies) can check to ensure their vote was (a) recorded and (b) not tampered with. This should be on a transparent open source platform.
Then legislate that elections be held on Saturdays and that anyone employed on that day must have leave to vote approved.
Then outlaw the ‘purging’ of voter rolls by any outfit other than say the GAO or some such accountable body.
Allow felons the vote too for God’s sake, and make the penalties for voter harrassment or obstruction severe enough to be salutary.
And throw the electoral college into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
“The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline”
The earlier talk from which the article is based…
Broken America April 13, 2011 George Packer
Broken America, Lecture 2 Audio
Broken America, Lecture 1 Audio
George Packer on the decline of American institutions, from government and business to the media:
http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2011/04/07/broken-america
It’s a bit rich for George Packer to be lamenting the decline of American anything when he was one of the prime liberal enablers of Iraq (fool or knave, take your pick). Not as crucial or as blood soaked as a Hitchens or Ignatieff, but all the same.
I know he’s done some good work recently on rural decline, etc and penance is commendable, but even better would have been not to assist with the crime.
I’ve seen two media reports about cleaning the NY park where the OWS protesters are: The New York Times website and TimeWarnerCable’s NY1.
Each of them mentioned protester concerns about this cleaning as a ruse to remove them but neither of them mentioned that sleeping bags would not be allowed after the cleaning. The new sleeping bag rule (if true) would seem to be a VERY pertinent fact that gives the protesters good cause for concern.
The NYT hints at the rule changes saying: “…protesters would be allowed to return to the areas that had been cleaned, “provided they abide by the rules that Brookfield has established for the park.””
NYT now has posted an article (it shows a time of 2:30pm) that better describes the situation faced by OWS.
Facing Eviction, Protesters Begin Park Cleanup
From the article:
“After it’s cleaned, they’ll be able to come back,” Mr. Kelly told reporters after a memorial ceremony in Battery Park. “But they won’t be able to bring back the gear. The sleeping bags, that sort of thing, will not be able to be brought back into the park.
What’s next – mandatory, but free, flu shots for their ownn good?
You know, the flu season is coming and Big Brother is concerned, out of brotherly love, of course.
“Our” rules have to substitute for the likes of Bloomberg who the public never wanted to begin with.
You knew as soon as you heard the ‘as long as they follow the rules’ that it meant, ‘as long as they follow my, Bloomberg’s rules -as he make them up. Criminals have no rules but their own.
We Americans don’t need no freeking rules from Bloomberg. We have a right to free assembly and free speech. Unless he wants us to fight the revolutionary war all over again. Even those English accents all over the air waves are telling.
We all want free speech and free association rights returned. Bloomberg’s taking advantage of a generation that does not remember the rights that have been removed by the criminals now in power.
Free assembly without police harassment and intimidation with at least as much amplification as any corporation or so-called NGOs have been permitted in Central Park -disturbing the peace for decades.
and that means an end to permits and the fraud of ‘free speech zones.’
Maybe Bloomberg should clear City Hall instead because the stink emanating from there is awful.
As I have previously written, there are stages of response our elites go through with regard to dissent:
1. Ignore
2. Trivialize/intimidate/mischaracterize
3. Co-opt
4. Demonize
5. Outlaw
It looks like Bloomberg is jumping to the end of the list. It’s important to realize that people like Bloomberg didn’t steal their billions without becoming criminals. What we are seeing here is the criminal mentality at work. Did you really think Bloomberg was going to allow some movement grow on his doorstep whose ultimate goal is the return of those stolen billions? Again it is just so critical to understand, our kleptocratic elites have looted trillions from us. They have the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans on their hands who died through their machinations from stunted lives, disease, and neglect. They have imporverished and damaged the lives of the rest of us, the 99%. Did you really think they were going to surrender without a fight? Did you really think, having committed these crimes, they would stop there and not commit others and more? We are in the first skirmishes of a great war which will determine whether we shall have a society based on fairness and social justice or one ruled by greed and avarice. The struggle has only just begun and we all will be participants in it before it is done.
Perhaps Bloomberg is nervous after being outed as a tax evader since
doubtless the banksters’ and their brethren politician crooks’ really
are laughing all the way to banks in Litchenstein, Grand Cayman &
such.
See: “Bloomberg Has $290 Million In Offshore Accounts”
http://gothamist.com/2010/04/21/report_bloomberg_has_290_million_in.php
And:
“The billionaire mayor’s foundation has transferred some $400 million
to offshore funds in widely known tax-sheltering countries like the
Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Mauritius and Bermuda, according to the
Bloomberg Family Foundation’s tax forms.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/22/bloomberg-i-dont-control-_n_548454.html
The following video should dismiss any remaining vestiges of delusions
or hopes that the crookster politicians’ are working for YOU the lowly
booboisie, and validate that they ARE being richly rewarded by the
shysters’ for doing their bidding. See the astonishing exponential
growth in personal enrichment by some of the worst political whores
(Obama – #6 on Democratic list) in the last four years of the Best
Congress the Central Banksters’ can buy:
The Video Congress Does NOT Want You To See!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28818.htm
Any public official found to have offshored monies subject to US tax law in attempt to evade that responsibility ought to be relieved of their duties for however long it takes to establish the truth. If they did it, bye bye, oh and here’s a fine for the same amount as you evaded.
Glenn Greenwald’s on a roll today:
Rather than worry about another banker declaration of war by the US coming from the UN, maybe we can see a silver lining. We’ve run out of young men willing to join up for war; should the gangsters need a draft –
well, let the games begin.
An increasing number of links to Financial Times pay to view links. Is the blog involved in a FT PR campaign ? just asking.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
oops, that was supposed to be in reply to jackrabbit re OWS and reforms.
EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION: Keep Bloomberg and Kelly From Evicting #OWS
http://occupywallst.org/
letter from liberty park legal working group to richard b. clark, ceo brookfield properties, in response to his letter to nyc police comm. ray kelly asking him to clear the park for cleaning (supposedly)–the legal working group write in their letter that the letter to kelly represents a “pretext” for clearing out the protesters and is threat to fundamental constitutional rights; no basis in law for brookfield’s request for police intervention, which would require a court order:
http://wbai.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11452&Itemid=1
This guy will unfortunately never get the editorial space that Steve Jobs got, but his work was far more important and had far broader and longer lasting implications. Long after the iPod and iPad are forgotten accessories lying in garbage dumps arond the country, people will still be programming wonders in C.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/technology/dennis-ritchie-programming-trailblazer-dies-at-70.html?_r=1&hp
As a side note, it’s sort of amazing how important fundamental technological achievement (ie, the underlying nuts and bolts) is to mainstream society, and yet how little it is recognized, both monetarily and otherwise. I remember that when Claude Shannon died, the Economist ran an obituary of some cricket player instead of what is indisputably one of the most important engineers of the 20th century. This time around, the Economist decided to run a story on Fred Shuttlesworth instead of Ritchie. Go figure.