A ‘smoking gun’ on Ice Age megafauna extinctions ScienceDaily (Chuck L)
Shivering could count as exercise, study finds BBC. Charles Poliquin says the best way to lose weight quickly was a weekend of cross country skiing, and it was clear he regarded the calories spent fighting the cold as a big part of the equation. This suggests that a hormonal response plays into that process. And see? This cold winter in the US is doing you a big favor!
Wellesley College buzzing over lifelike sculpture of man sleepwalking in underpants Associated Press. Bob: ” The “liberal arts” school PC stasi.”
Bizarre video for college students compares masturbation to being wounded in war Salon (AB)
The Kevin Pietersen debacle is a morality tale for our times Telegraph. Chuck L: “Cricket as a window into devolution.”
Six basic human emotions: What if we really have only four? Slate. Methodologically, this strikes me as bogus.
Apple Removes Blockchain Bitcoin Wallet Apps from its App Stores CoinDesk
One Of Google’s Biggest Fans Calls Glass ‘An Expensive Nightmare’ Huffington Post
New York Police Department is beta-testing Google Glass Venture Beat
Target Hackers Broke in Via HVAC Company KrebsonSecurity (Chuck L)
Mining giant under fire for reckless practices DW
Army Refuses Govt’s Request For Troops Khaosod English
Constitution Court asked to nullify Feb 2 election ThaiPBS (furzy mouse)
Suthep says plundering rice warehouse is next step ThaiVisa (furzy mouse)
Quantified negativity and the ECB FT Alphaville. In case the ECB inagurates negative interest rates…
Britain’s new dream is to not have house by the sea Daily Mash
Protecting farms or front rooms? The impossible dilemma that climate change forces upon us New Statesman (Chuck L)
Emerging Markets Meltdown Meets Taper Tantrum
Hedge Funds Rework Positions in Emerging-Market Drop Bloomberg. Translation: Traders scramble to get out of losing trades.
How China’s Slowdown Is Having Ripple Effects All Over the World Business Insider
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
New electronic ‘eyes’ can track your every move Washington Post
Cryptography Breakthrough Could Make Software Unhackable Wired (Chuck L)
DEA teaches agents to recreate evidence chains to hide methods MuckRock (Bob Swern)
Parallel Construction Revealed: How The DEA Is Trained To Launder Classified Surveillance Info Techdirt (Bob Swern)
Jesse Ventura hiding from drones Politico
Obamacare Launch
Health Care Law Still Unpopular, But Slightly More Feel Helped by It Jon Walker, Firedoglake
Obamacare enrollees hit snags at doctor’s offices Los Angeles Times. As predicted.
Judging Hospital Quality and Narrow Networks––Barking Up the Wrong Tree? Bob Laszewski
House GOP stymied on debt limit Politico
A rare look inside the Koch brothers’ political empire Washington Post
Captain Boycott’s children StopMeBeforeIVoteAgain (Lambert)
Maine court: Public has no right to use Kennebunkport beach Portland Press Herald. Note the case was vacated (as opposed to overruled) because the back lot owners joined the suit, so the city can file again on its own. But this still reads like an indirect blow to the time-honored treatment of easements.
CVS becomes first big U.S. drugstore chain to drop tobacco Reuters
Twitter’s sputtering user growth unnerves investors Reuters
Conservative Media Attacks ABC News For Telling The Truth About Kids And Gun Accidents Media Matters
NY regulator opens currency probe Financial Times. Go Lawsky!
Maintaining Ethics in the Move From Regulator to Regulated New York Times. Notes that Shiela Bair hasn’t gotten the usual offers to sit on financial firm boards that usually inundate former top regulators. Neither, by the way, did Arthur Levitt, the longest-serving head of the SEC.
How Eviction Resisters Are Using Stand-Your-Ground Laws To Challenge Fannie Mae TruthOut
JPMorgan nears commodities sale Financial Times. A rare case where media and Congressional pressure made a difference. JPM was supposed to have unloaded this business years ago and the Fed let them pretend they were looking for buyers.
On Breaking One’s Neck New York Review of Books. Literally.
Antidote du jour:
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On the Hawking stuff, Matt Strassler has put out a really good, readable and short overview of the history and current state of the black hole information paradox:
http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/relativity-space-astronomy-and-cosmology/black-holes/black-hole-information-paradox-an-introduction/
Thanks for that — good read. Quantum entanglement is the “illocality” I referred to. It’s weird sh*t!
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…”
I realize I sound like a crank on this, but physics is extremely far into the hole of delusional thinking and the current feuds are like Kremlin insiders arguing over how much glasnost will it take to cure their problems.
For example, ask yourself; Does the earth travel/exist on a fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates?
If you answer the second, you have dismissed the whole ‘fabric of spacetime’ on which the premise of an expanding universe is based. Time then is an effect of action, similar to temperature and correlating measures of distance and duration would be like using ideal gas laws to correlate temperature and volume. It doesn’t make temperature a parameter of volume, anymore than time is a dimension of space.
There is no platonic mathematical, ‘it from bit’ basis of reality. The fact is measures are naturally fuzzy. Whether its an electron, or a moving car, it doesn’t have a precise location, yet information is naturally static, while reality is necessarily dynamic, so trying to construct this static model of a dynamic reality is a bit like sticking postit notes on the wind.
You don’t really sound like a crank to me. I agree with your fundamental intuition that reality, the universe, escapes our complete cognition, and that our models of it are only that: models. This is why I say (not to dredge up an old disagreement with Calgacus – please!) that Kant was right about the “Ding an sich”. To conceptualize is always (at least) partially to falsify.
IMO, it is a mistake to think that one (materialist, mechanistic) model can explain all reality – even all physical reality; and it seems to me that the “weirdness” of the quantum, and its refusal to be compatible with relativistic physics, simply highlights this mistake. Some of the assumptions scientists make to attempt to harmonize the two models (such as scores of dimensions, superstrings, etc.) can seem desperate and absurd.
This is not to denigrate the obvious usefulness that the macro physical model has for mankind; it is only to assert that such utility does not indicate or prove that such a model exhaustively comprehends even the physical universe… Shakespeare had it right about the limits of our philosophy.
Thanks.
Most people seem to be stuck in some kind of frame and it becomes a religion.
Physicists are supposed to be rational, but its almost a point of pride now to be as outrageous as possible.
Devolution in full swing.
From the article: ” string theory (a theory that is a quantum generalization of general relativity, and is a candidate for a theory of the laws of nature in our universe)…”
Quantum theory requires empty space to be full of stuff (at least 50 digits before the decimal point), while general relativity requires empty space to be empty (at least 50 digits after the decimal point). So there are at least 100 orders of magnitude of difference between those theories, which is larger than the difference in size between a quark and the known universe.
So that’s a simple proof that at least one, and perhaps both theories are wrong.
But all our bright heads that didn’t do MBAs or gangsta finance went to do ‘string’ theory, spending their useful time on trying to reconciliate contradictory theories. What a waste.
The Maine court ruling concerning Kennebunkport beach access would cause a riot and possible public execution of the judge if it were to happen in Oz!
Agreed.
The difference is that the US works like an over-grown arm of special interests with no particular interest in “the people’s business”.
Oz works with arms-akimbo and no particular interest in “a mate’s business”.
Α forcible eviction in Spain of crisis
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/02/forcible-eviction-in-spain-of-crisis.html
Pretty sure I have commented here in the past that raising basal metabolic rate (Eg by sitting in or swimming in cool or cold water) is the key to weight loss and that physical exercise is pretty pointless as a technique for same (though it is beneficial for a host of other reasons…) This has been known by numerous people for years….
Maybe not…here’s a comment from me on exactly this from ~2 years ago…tho different site…
http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2012/04/16/26031/obesegens/#comment-500019797
Regular exposure to cold water encourages the body to create an insulating layer of fat that is not necessarily beneficial to health. In particular a layer of fat forming around the kidneys sometimes called surfers syndrome.
There are various ways to weight loss.
Losing a leg or some other organ, cutting hair, shaving off skin, among other things can lead to weight loss.
The path one takes is relevant here (with hopefully pleasant, or unpleasant consequences, such as the one you cited)
The other question, also path-dependent, is how much of the loss is more prone to weight bounce back, which is related to how the weight loss occurred in the first place.
I would have to say that the human body, like Nature, is a product of billions of years of evolution, arriving at this time, however temporary, in a sort of equilibrium among various competing biological factions. And all these modern targeted manipulations of one sort or another, based on some artificial ideals or standards, can set off many butterflies in chaotic directions.
Man’s arrogance is such that among all the distortions and displacements, he channels in on one and says to himself, for example, I need ‘clean energy’ and sticks a windmill on his land (or chugs down a country lane in Illinois with his ever-so-quaint internal combustion engine driven automobile), surveys with his eyes and whatever instruments he has, and thinks, with a change in design here and there, there is no or little ‘environmental impact.’ One hundred years later or a few billion windmills (or cars) later, he may think otherwise.
Whatever weight you carry now results from your lifestyle (all the things you do or don’t do, all your daily or hourly habits) and your biology. If you are OK with how you do things (and not merely what shape or state you have been conditioned into desiring), i.e. your lifestyle, then there you are. You have thusly arrived.
You can lose weight via:
Calorie restriction, although your body adapts and down-regulatates (which is why people who diet gain the weight back, you need to engage in tricks while dieting, like eating a “normal” not pig out calorie level periodically to keep your metabolism from down regulating
Exercise using protocols designed to generate lactic acid, which raises your human growth hormone level and as a result, your metabolism
I wish ABC had demanded that the parents of minors who inflict injury on others or themselves with their parents’ weapons be held responsible in courts of law. Guns should and must be locked up, with the keys inaccessible to children, under penalty of law. This is a common regulation in Europe, where fatalities by guns in all categories are far less than the USA.
The gunnutz must be confronted head on, by actively mocking and rebuking the treacle that they spew out. The numbers are on the side of sensible regulations. Attacking the messenger will not change them. I thank ABC for its attempt to bring sanity to our gun-worshipping culture.
Having grown up in a household of non-moron gun-owners, I was taught that weapons are kept locked in the gun cabinet…and the ammo is kept locked in a different cabinet. Anyone who is found to be keeping a loaded weapon in their house should probably get brought up on “reckless endangerment” charges or something similar…it’s about as bad as getting behind the wheel drunk.
A concerted effort like MADD needs to be mounted to address this social insanity.
I think that David Waldman is doing a great job of weekly reporting on the gun craziness in our country…..you can read his latest here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/04/1272521/-Stand-Your-Ground-even-if-it-s-not-yours-and-actually-belongs-to-the-people-you-shoot-GunFAIL-LV
I know this is KOS but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I would like to see his weekly report get wider readership and become the basis for an effort to shame our country into addressing the ongoing gun stupidity.
Full disclosure: I own a gun, know how to use it and have hunted. But that said, it does not define my masculinity. Nor am I deluded enough to think that I can stand up to the US military with it…..or seriously defend my property if and when we have social turmoil…..I expect and pay the local police department to keep the crazies in check.
A concerted effort like MADD needs to be mounted to address this social insanity.
It MIGHT work. Or not.
“Madd Founder Lightner Takes Job As Lobbyist For Liquor Industry”
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-01-15/news/9401150133_1_madd-board-member-beckie-brown-drunk
Lightner, a leader in changing the public’s tolerance for drinking and driving, began work last week as a paid lobbyist for the American Beverage Institute, a trade group representing restaurants and breweries.
Actually, NC ought to keep the obsessional leftwingnutz culture warring off these pages.
Actually, readers should not attempt to censor the proprietrix or minimize a serious public health issue by calling it “obsessional leftwingnutz culture warring”. The internet is a big place. You should go read other websites if you don’t like what we do here rather than engage in thought-policing.
Guns are not a “public health issue.” That’s flawed framing put forth by people looking for any threadbare excuses to justify their pre-determined anti-gun positions. And I matched my comment to Furzy Mouse’s tone who called for mocking gunnutz.
I love what you do here the vast majority of the time. I recommend your site and work every chance I get. I’ve sent literally hundreds of people here. But in my opinion, you and your contributors are at your best when you focus on the economics and related policies. Which you do most of the time. But every once in a while, it seems like real gems like Strether and Olenick can’t help but launch on foray into anti-gun culture war.
I sincerely apologize for coming across like I was demanding censorship and being presumptuous enough to specify what you should or should not cover.
What I meant was NC ought to keep the culture war off these pages, Because if you do, I believe you can expand your audience far beyond beyond a traditional left-leaning readership and reach more readers with your main points.
There is no law of nature that requires people who support your economic positions to also buy into the constellation of leftist pet causes on matters outside of economics like guns. Gun owners, and socially and culturally conservative people in general, have just as much of an interest in reversing the economic trends that you write about. They don’t care about leftist pet causes or glib snarking about gun nutz that nobody outside of closed leftist bubbles cares about. They do care that their incomes have been stagnant or declining.
So despite how I came across, and I again I apologize for the tone and presumption, I left the comment with good will and out of desire to see you reach more people and not drive away a large pool of potential readers. That’s all I meant.
About a week ago I read an article from TEXAS, I believe. I don’t remember if it was linked to here on NC.
A neighbor called police to report suspected CHILD ABUSE. Two children were out playing during the day AND NO ONE WAS WATCHING THEM. Their mother, who claimed to be watching them while sitting somewhere the neighbor could not see her, was ARRESTED. She spent something like 18 hours in jail.
ARRESTED. FOR NOT WATCHING HER CHILDREN WHILE THEY WERE PLAYING OUTSIDE. As I remember, the children were not toddlers. I guess the logic is that they could get hit by a car and KILLED. Or kidnapped and KILLED.
Sounds pretty reasonable considering what passes for American “logic” these days.
Fair.org’s take on the CVS tobacco story:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/02/05/cvs-tobacco-ban/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cvs-tobacco-ban
Glassholes at NYPD? Figures.
Obamacare as punishment:
Being arrested in Chicago for, say, drug possession or assault gets you sent to the Cook County Jail to be fingerprinted, photographed and X-rayed. You’ll also get help applying for health insurance.
At least six states and counties from Maryland to Oregon’s Multnomah are getting inmates coverage under Obamacare and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal and state health-care program for the poor. The fledgling movement would shift to the federal government some of the more than $6.5 billion in annual state costs for treating prisoners.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/jails-enroll-inmates-in-obamacare-to-pass-hospital-costs-to-u-s-.html
————
Another reason not to commit crimes: you’ll be sent to the exchanges. How you gonna manage them copays and deductibles, makin’ 12 cents an hour in the prison laundry?
Jeee-zus!!!
Another way to get those flagging Obamacare enrollee numbers up. Although not mentioned, I’ll bet those private prison companies are getting a financial boost from this as well.
Who could have known that PRISONERS could be economic gold mines on so many levels?
“It starts to look a little like a scheme by the states and local jurisdictions to avoid responsibilities that are really theirs,” Conrad said in a telephone interview.
A real genius, that Kent Conrad is. Didn’t he have a hand in “reforming” “healthcare” when he was in the senate? Why, yes, I think he did.
“When someone gets discharged from the jail and they don’t have insurance and they don’t have a plan, we can pretty much set our watch to when we’re going see them again,” said Ben Breit, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
I hear ya, Ben. Knowin’ I’m uncovered gives me a powerful urge to bust into somebody’s house and grab a 52-inch teevee, so I can sell it on Craigslist and get back on my pills again.
With the brilliance of Obamacare, recidivism will be only a distant memory.
The prisoners aren’t getting subsidies to buy policies with co-pays and deductibles they can’t afford and wouldn’t pay. They’re being signed up for Medicaid at least for the duration of their incarceration. Prison healthcare will remain unchanged, it’s only who pays for the care that will change. Trust me, those with insurance, even with high out-of-pockets, would never tolerate some of the types of neglect doled out to those who are incarcerated. Only life threatening conditions are sent to hospitals. In my experience from the 80’s, something like a simple fractured leg on Friday night was splinted and placed on the doctor schedule for Monday. Tylenol or advil was provided for pain relief. If a medication caused side effects, too bad. The formulary was extremely limited, to the cheapest alternative for the condition treated. Erythromycin was the go-to antibiotic, and tore up a whole lot of stomachs assuming the course was completed. But laxatives (“bombers”) were passed out and gobbled up like M&M’s. They kept Dulcolax in business. Narrow networks take on a whole new meaning in the context of prison conditions.
Wonderful antidote. My favorites are the ones of wild animals in the wild.
Any Los Angeles Community Garden Council members out there?
Jackson Rising Emphasizes Cooperatives
more like this please.
In case you haven’t heard, there’s an Equitable Development Symposium at GWU next month, sponsored by the University and ONE DC.
Yup, back when Kansas was progressive, farmers starting seizing their distribution back from the banks and conglomerates.
Which is why they’ll be crushed this time around.
Look for an uptick in hypocritical whining from large companies about restraint of trade by co-ops.
The distinction needs to be made between large commercial farmers and small local ones. The latest farm bill edition, if I understand correctly, turns large farmers into TBTF enterprises by providing government insurance that caps losses at 10%. There are no constraints on profits, which amazingly were up 15% despite last years’ record droughts and crop losses. Risky practices are thus encouraged.
“When last year’s drought drove corn prices to record highs, farmers with harvest price option”policies were paid those inflated prices for what they didn’t grow contributing to a record bill for taxpayers and record income for farmers. “There is no social justification for these subsidies,”says Smith. “This is a program that’s fundamentally designed to give money to farmers.”
Crop Insurance: A Growing Problem in a Time of Record Farm Profits
Strongly reminiscent of the ACA, the farm program offers a 62% subsidy for any farmer who applies for a policy, and the government pays the 18 insurers $1.4B to run the program as well as covering excess losses. It costs 7 times today what the program cost in 2000, while commercial farmers have seen their above average incomes and wealth disproportionately rise during the recession. Recipients of payouts are kept secret. Unlike food stamps which were cut, subsidies for crop insurance were expanded. Insurers were guaranteed no reductions in payments for five years, a major coup for them. If the rate of inclement weather climbs, the taxpayer’s burden will rise. It’s become profitable for farmers to plant high risk land and/or crops. How many would pay 10% of a $85,000 income (avg for commercial farmer) in exchange for a 90% income guarantee in today’s economy? This is deeply entrenched high-level welfare for the rich, enacted by our bought and paid for lawmakers.
Small farmers might qualify under the Endangered Species Act.
Oh wait, the Congress is killing that too.
On emotions, from Slate:
Identifying ‘basic, fundamental, essential, primary, biologically anchored, innate….etc.’ emotions is a minor yet prestigious aka now lucrative sport since Darwin at least.
See his book, *The expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals*, 1872. Contemp. research leaves the animals out.
Aristotle made a list of 14 (see link) but he wasn’t concerned with how these emotions manifest themselves or can be ‘recognized’ by others.
The lists have varied from 8-9 (including for. ex. interested attention) down to 4. (No 3’s afaik.)
On the whole, as in this effort, the topic that is addressed is the outward (facial, recordable) expression and its recognition by others, in the spirit of universal description of ‘innate’ biology linked to a clear outward manifestation. The problem posed is thus, what is the link between biological makeup (today, Genes!) and automatic, or at least ‘usual, standard’ reactions as seen in bodily manifestations.
The leap between the two is too wide (imho), which leads to a lot of junk science. Or, if one prefers, interesting conjectures, efforts. But it is an active field … many Profs. world-wide are arguing and paid a lot!
One of the main difficulties is that culture and context modulates outward manifestations and both are usually washed away – think a triumphant American in full joyful self-congratulatory mode (happiness, pride), and a Japanese inscrutable. Or horror (fear) at a snake in one place and not another. Yes, that is immaterial to these studies, of course.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~hauserg/ArEmotList.htm
“One of the main difficulties is that culture and context modulates outward manifestations [snip]…… Yes, that is immaterial to these studies, of course.”
Absolutely. How emotional expression is influenced by externalities can be found extensively studied elsewhere. The field of sociology immediately comes to mind.
I’d interpret Aristotle’s list as a description of the emotional expression seen within his own sociocultural setting.
Yves comments on the link about 6 basic human emotions:
“Methodologically, this strikes me as bogus.”
Well, the Slate article is a narrow pop-psychology shot at a big subject. Here is some background about academic research into human emotions. Somebody here already mentioned Darwin’s writings on human emotion. Yay! The subject was then ignored for roughly 100 years. Psychologist Sylvan Tomkins renewed the study of human emotion in the 1960s. But it was Paul Ekman in the 1970s who classified human emotions into six basic categories. Anger, Fear, Surprise, Disgust, Sadness, and Happiness. That’s what these researchers at Glasgow University are challenging. Ekman’s research spans the last 40 years, is a mainstay of academic psychology, but is finally up for refinement and reconceptualization. As regards the methodology of these researchers, it’s based rather exclusively on expressions of human facial musculature. High speed cameras are used to record people’s facial reactions to various stimuli, usually film clips of some sort designed to provoke emotion. Some good research has come out of this methodology, for example, fleeting micro-expressions of emotion have been discovered, meaning that people can not completely hide and bury emotion. Poker faces do not completely work, there is always some leakage of emotion. See Ekman’s book, Unmasking the Face. Personally, I’m not so sure emotions are restricted to the human face. Current research does seem stuck in Ekman’s paradigm that the face tells all.
There are at least 2 emotions missing.
1. The no-emotion emotion – and you don’t have to be dead to experience that.
2. Compassion.
So, I meant ‘physically dead.’
One can be emotionally dead and feel that no-emotion emotion quite often.
Shame. It’s so obviously missing.
One is temped to joke “where is your shame?” or “have you no shame?” Anyway just because an emotion may not be psychologically healthy is no reason to leave it out.
Probably pride as well.
He prides himself that he feels no shame about anything..
I will just add that the no-emotion motion, zero-emotion, like the number zero, can help in understanding human history.
“He strangles souls, in cold blood, by releasing, non-stop, soul-draining video games.”
Or this – “He assassinates in cold blood and is the best of his profession.”
In case anyone was unable to view the Edward Snowden interview on Turley’s site that was linked to the other day, here is the link to the video on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/85736856
Also, here’s a good report from the recent gathering of worker-owners of Europe’s self-managed factories:
http://roarmag.org/2014/02/workers-economy-self-management-europe/
I had no idea that factory occupation and take-over by workers (a la Argentina) was happening in Europe as well. Let’s hope the trend continues to spread in 2014.
No Jail For Teen With ‘Affluenza’ Who Killed 4 In Crash NPR
The rich are literally getting away with murder.
and what else is new?
In Spain, Fired for Speaking Out
MADRID — FOUR decades ago, I interviewed the New York Times columnist Tom Wicker about the relationship between the government and the press. It was the Watergate era, and journalism appealed to me as a noble calling.
Mr. Wicker told me that conflict was all but inevitable between executive branches and newspapers that did their duty. He observed that where democracy was weak, newspapers that criticized the government would pay dearly for their audacity. “Careful with the Leviathan,” he said. He quoted John Adams: “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing.”
The truth of that statement was confirmed for me last week, when I was fired as the editor of El Mundo, Spain’s second-largest newspaper, which I co-founded in 1989. The paper’s owner, Unidad Editorial, which is part of an Italian conglomerate, praised my tenure but denied buckling to political pressure. Sunday’s issue was my last.
This heavy-handed government, which has been mum about my dismissal, reminds me of 1974, when I interviewed Mr. Wicker. Gen. Francisco Franco was still in power, but Spain’s collective desire for freedom and democracy had taken on a life of its own. He died the next year, and the press was pivotal in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Newspapers linked to the old regime had no credibility. Opportunities suddenly opened for journalists of my generation. In 1980, at age 28, I was named editor of the newspaper Diario 16. It was a crash course in journalism and democracy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/opinion/in-spain-fired-for-speaking-out.html?
Well, logically, the teen believed that he could get away with anything because of his affluence….and than he got away with it. And he got away with it….because of affluence. I mean, if our “legal” system isn’t candidly saying that the rich can get away with crime by virtue of being rich (I would say defacto during the finance fraud this has been going on for years), than words have no meaning.
The thing that is so disheartening is that we accept this. The judge should be impeached because he is too stupid to be a judge. But it is remarkable word play in our society that “poor judgment” is a rationale for not firing someone for poor judgment in jobs whose only task is to make good judgments.
“Protecting farms or front rooms? The impossible dilemma that climate change forces upon us”
The fact that this is being discussed should scare the bejesus out of everyone.
Also this;
http://www.usda.gov/oce/climate_change/regional_hubs.htm
But then again we all have to go to work tomorrow so…….never mind.
It doesn’t matter – the Rapture will come to the chosen…..
!
Well, actually this potential Rapturee has been advocating for a just money system(s) but since Progressives have been less than enthusiastic why should I care either?
That Book can’t be blamed for our present troubles but ignoring it sure can be.
A one (39″) meter rise in sea level in 100 years is nothing to get alarmed about. In many places a dike would have to be raised or built, but that is totally within the range of technology and budgets. The most difficult part would be getting money budgeted for the continuing maintenance.
During summers while in college, I worked on a road survey crew. Hillsides, drainage ditches, and swales much greater than 1 meter were easily filled or built as necessary.
The California Delta is nothing but dikes (in need of repair) that have held the Sacramento river back from farming land for more than 100 years. A one meter rise in water levels would require work to shore up and raise the levees but it is totally doable. Spending money to accomplish that would sure beat sending Northern California water to Southern California like Governor Brown wants to do!
Yea we have to go to work tommorow, so I can’t make that protest. And never even mind if Keystone XL is game over for the climate or the game is already over, I can’t fit your Keystone XL protest into work and commuting – my time and thus my life and thus my values far more than I want to concede, are theirs.
Yea we have to go to work tommorow, so I never even bother to think about whether this economic system necessities the destruction of the world or could somehow be made not to. Because I need the economic system to be propped up for jobs, why it’s hard to even think where I’d be without someone creating a job for me. And my 401k – I wouldn’t want it to tank would I? Prop up those (non-renewable) energy stocks!
Yes we have to go to work tommorow and neither steady state economics or renewable resources is something we can give much thought to, because I’m too tired at the end of the day.
Yea we have to go to work tommorow and if the weather is abnormal, and if it’s June in January, and if the birds never go south, and if the land is dry, and if the trees flower months earlier, I woudln’t notice, I’m locked in this lifeless air conditioned hell.
re: Maine court: Public has no right to use Kennebunkport beach
July 07, 2013
A gust of change blows through Kennebunkport
A development team has been buying and buffing hotels and restaurants, adding ‘oomph,’ new options, but also concerns.
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine —
Harrington says that’s precisely the feeling he wants to cultivate. He began his career building shopping centers in the Boston area and got involved in the hospitality industry eight years ago when he purchased and renovated Kennebunkport’s Cottages at Cabot Cove, a cluster of 16 small homes.
Bolstered by the experience, he bought 60 acres of birch groves and balsam fir near expansive Goose Rocks beach
and built what is now Hidden Pond, with the help of financier Marc Granetz.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/07/06/kennebunkport-gets-facelift-outside-development-team-remakes-classic-maine-town/EMWNjhRf2VLSdVSUp20RsI/story.html
well that did not take too long…eh?
Don’t worry, when the floods come, they will be crying for public rescue and rebuilding funds.
… and they’ll get it.
Web designer stops charging clients, has no regrets ~Huff Post
Are there still laws that ban tobacco sales within a certain distance of public schools? I bet CVS could more than make up that $2 billion /year in sugar water and fried sugar-glazed-refined-flour-and-hydrogenated-vegetable-oil portions … if they were able to plop their stores right next to every elementary, middle, and high school.
Six basic human emotions.
What if we only have 4?
On first glance, it would mean we are closer to being replaced by emotional robots than ever before.
But what if we only have one basic (every humans feels differently about what is basic) emotion – the feeling that we are human? Let’s call that the Human Emotion. Then, I don’t think we are any closer to being replaced by emotional robots…because I think that Human Emotion is not easy to program.
An Open Letter to Sam Zell: Why Your Statements are Delusional and Dangerous
The 1 percent are being pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so. The problem is that the world and this country should not talk about envy of the 1 percent. It should talk about emulating the 1 percent. The 1 percent work harder. The 1 percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society.
– Sam Zell yesterday on Bloomberg Television
Mr. Zell,
I’ve seen clips of you on television several times in the past. I can’t say those appearances elicited strong reactions from me. I can recall being offended at things you have said, and I can remember agreeing with you on other occasions. However, yesterday I found your statements on “class warfare,” “envy” and the “1%” delusional and dangerous. I will address these two points separately.
Why Your Statements Are Delusional
http://wp.me/p2NEyt-2LQ
Yeah, and you ruined the Cubs AND the Tribune just to make a buck, you cretin.
You know, between Zell and the Koch brothers, I find myself actually looking forward to their deaths. Soon I hope.
All that money and malfeasance, and they are going to die naked and broke just like everyone else.
Feel that icy grip around your throat Sam? See you in hell.
Here’s a little pop tune to put a cheerier note in that righteous rage:
When will you die
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2014/02/police-officers-who-shot-two-innocent-women-103-times-wont-be-fired/8323/
Because shooting innocent people in the wrong type of truck and the wrong color is a mistake anyone could make….
Ask yourself this: if one of those people had been killed, would the police have been prosecuted? I doubt they would have even been fired…
Sort of gives the lie to the myths about police bravery and heroism, doesn’t it? Sure, cops may be brave when it comes to rescuing people from burning homes or things like that, but when it comes to confronting armed suspects, the reality of “police bravery” is to outnumber the villain(s) at least eight to one, then break into their house with a battering ram in the dead of night.
Remember Columbine? The cops waited something like 90 minutes to assemble their complete SWAT team before entering the building. In the meantime, students who had found places to hide cowered in fear and the teacher who had been wounded slowly bled to death. Only outrage over the unconscionable delay finally forced police forces to enact “active shooter” tactics which require officers to respond immediately without waiting for the equivalent of the entire 101st Airborne to show up.
The Dorner case showed how whenever cops feel threatened all that “bravery” goes right out the window. This comes as no surprise to me. Having lived in the L.A. area since I was seven years old, I remember clearly what happened in both the 1965 Watts Riot and the Rodney King verdict riot. In both cases, “protect and serve” went right out the window. The only thing the cops protected was their own headquarters (Parker Center) and their local precinct stations. Many cops either abandoned their posts or delayed coming in until they moved their own families to safer locations. And neither riot was put down until the National Guard arrived on scene.
I urge people to look at good photos of that truck.
I can’t believe they didn’t get fired for incompetence. 103 shots (their count, I say much higher) and not one hit anyone?
I looked at that at the time and couldn’t figure out how on earth they could bring that much force to bear with one squad car. 8 cops responding, guns blazing? That’s at least 2 cars worth.
“when they thought the sound of a newspaper hitting the pavement was a gunshot and opened fire on two women ”
8 cops just sitting around, guns drawn? What were they waiting right there for? Donuts? It was a residential neighborhood. Even that bit from the atlantic brings the “blame” down on 1 guy. It was an entire squad.
What saved the people in the truck were the newspapers they were delivering. They were in the back seat of the truck. Better than sand bags for cover.
I wonder if robocops or robot cops are the answer?
For sure, I know robot traffic cops are probably more benevolent, if we can program in ‘realistic tolerances’ – like acknowledging that the fact that everyone is going at 70 MPH, so there is no ‘selective’ ticketing and other ‘revenue enhancing’ scams.
Apparently trigger fingers don’t get less itchy in retirement.
You just don’t get the benefit of the doubt to the same extent when you’re surrounded by civilians who just came out to watch a movie and not a small army of boys in blue.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/05/justice/florida-movie-theater-shooting/
Here is what was arguably the beginnings of the cop mentality… its us against all of them and its a war.
Assault on Precinct 13
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074156/
Among cops, this movie is one massive Wet Dream of victimology, demented paranoia and ultimately uncontrolled violent vengeance. I saw this flick for the first time with a cop and I thought he was gonna have a stroke jumping up and down in his chair screaming “kill ’em.. do IT.. KILL ’em”
To a cop, WE are the enemy. WE are the problem. Not the crooks, not the bad guys.. they’re all lumped into one huge mass of threat… us. They ride around in little black and white tanks, afraid to get out and mingle with the enemy, too lazy to make the effort to differentiate the good from the bad and too self-absorbed to think of anything else but their own survival in what they perceive to be a deadly confrontation between avowed enemies… us and them.
Calling a cop for almost any reason will make that day one of the worst of your life.
If guns are outlawed, only cops will have guns. Also the military. Also CIA sponsored drug cartel shooters also.
Oh, so the cops are falsifying evidence, lying, and hiding their activities from the public?
This is news?
RE: Target Hackers Broke in Via HVAC Company
Naturally, this happened because nearly all monitoring applications (for HVAC, and others) are based on Microswift 60-$$Billion Winbloze, which ten thousand well-paid shills assure us constantly is wonderful and all-but-perfect, NOT. It will never change, despite the recent changes to Microswift, until Billy-Boy is finally gone for good and much better (and far more secure) BSD and Linux software is written to do the the work of these applications.
If you leave the door open, expect burglars!
RE: Britain’s new dream is to not have house by the sea
One would think that that living on a rocky storm-swept island, large or not, in the almost always visible Atlantic, would give people more common sense, but apparently not.
Parts of New England are the same, but there are no delusions there, except in New York City skyscrapers (where foundations are just sopping-wet holes to be drained and pumped constantly) and where people think it can’t happen to them!
RE: Jesse Ventura hiding from drones
Jesse may have satellites, but they don’t just talk to Heaven and St Peter, but to control stations on the ground where snooping is trivial and easy.
RE: CVS becomes first big U.S. drugstore chain to drop tobacco
Good news for convenience stores! Motto: I’d walk a mile for a Camel, Marlboro, etc.
RE: On Breaking One’s Neck
Good observations on the many gaps in a nealth care system, even in a place (Boston) among the best and slickest anywhere.
Also quite obvious is the incipient automation of most docs’ work (even surgery), and nursing, to the contrary, becoming even more important as time progresses.
RE: On Breaking One’s Neck(2)
Why does an old-timer have to be a special friend of the Law Of Gravity (i. e. very lucky) to avoid catastrophic falls?
It’s routine to jump off immensely high cliffs with bungee cords; firemen fall from buildings into special nets, perhaps with a few bruises; NASA sends a tractor (basically) to MARS, which parachutes down, bounces once and is OK. But a doctor in Boston almost dies after falling five feet(!!)
Stair Lifts are a good, if expensive idea, but somebody is not connecting the dots!
Regarding the smoking gun indicating that climate changes caused the ice age megafauna extinctions: perhaps, but climate was probably not the only cause. All over the world, whenever humans moved into a region previously uninhabited by our species, extinction events have ensued. In addition to North America, this had happened in Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand, Hawai’i, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Sometimes our ancestors caused the extinctions directly, by hunting, and other times the cause may have been indirect, such as the spread of disease, or the alteration of an ecosystem by deforestation or fire. See Quaternary Extinction Event and Holocene Extinction for more information.
I can almost hear it now – natural climate change forced humans to move to a previously human-free (or relatively human-free) area and the same natural climate change imposed extinction events.
We were innocent!
Another triumph of correlation is not causation.
I remember reading once the verses of a New Zealand song or poem or something about the Polynesian first-settlers’ extinction of the moas. I can only remember the last few lines.
” You can’t get ’em. They’ve done et ’em. They’ve gone, and there ain’t no moa.”
Health Care Law Still Unpopular, But Slightly More Feel Helped by It Jon Walker, Firedoglake
There you go, Legislative Placebo! Or Hopium Works! Oh, I feel sooooooooo good!
Can we nominate Jesse Ventura on the Skunk Party slate for President? Or start a draft of him?
He who can’t be droned can surely be drafted.
Greek public debt could be more than 80 billion euros lower!
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/02/greek-public-debt-could-be-more-than-80.html
An article on the attempts to merge economic and environmental minded activism:
http://www.thenation.com/article/178242/occupy-climate-justice?page=0,0
But now this is ugly, unless one happens to be in the privatized probations business:
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0214_ForUpload_0.pdf