Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back Onion (martha r)
6 charts that show renewable energy is getting cheaper Grist (furzy mouse)
Why Geoengineering is “Untested and Untestable” Naomi Klein (martha r)
Researcher responds to study claims that cancer risk is a matter of luck MedicalXpress (Robert M)
Robot to probe melted Fukushima reactor Japan Times (furzy mouse). It’s taken them this long to figure out how to do this? This is essentially greatly scaled up technology of the sort Olympus uses in surgeries: snaking miniaturized cameras through veins, for instance. Or were they assuming they could get the Yakuza to round up homeless people who’d wear hazmat suits to do the job and not tell them the protection wasn’t anywhere near good enough?
‘Uncertain Radiological Threat’: US Navy Sailors Search for Justice after Fukushima Mission Der Spiegel. Glenn F: “It appears that the German newspaper cares more about our military personnel’s plight than our own MSM.”
Europeople EUObserver (Swedish Lex)
Los Indignados to Podemos: The Making of a Party Real News Network
Grexit?
Dijsselbloem gives Greece a Feb 16 deadline ForexLive. Jim Haygood: “Jeb Diesel-Boom gives Greece ten days before the plug is pulled and Greek banks go dark.”
Greece intends to reject bailout extension ekathimerini
Greece isolated in Euro zone, ministers to meet Feb. 11 Reuters
A kick in the teeth from the ECB ekathimerini. A must read.
Michael Pettis explains the euro crisis (and a lot of other things, too) FT Alphaville (Jeffrey C). We have cross posted the underlying Michael Pettis article today, so be sure to read it and the comments.
Greece – a Varoufakis Conversion Pieria (martha r)
Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister Financial Times
My, how things have changed in Greece Daily Kos
ECB split points to sensitivity of Greek liquidity curbs Financial Times
Syraqistan
Muslim clerics lash out against Islamic State Japan Today (furzy mouse)
Houthi Rebels Take Over Yemen’s Government Wall Street Journal
Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Black People by the Thousands Daily Kos
Ukraine/Russia
Merkel-Hollande mission ends with promise of more talks Financial Times
Obamacare
Introducing Obamcare Lite: What the new GOP health reform ‘alternative’ really tells us Washington Post (furzy mouse)
SCOTUS at the Front Lines of a Partisan War in Obamacare Case Taegan Goddard (furzy mouse)
How ‘No Nukes’ Obama Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Daily Beast
Critics pounce after Obama talks Crusades, slavery at prayer breakfast Washington Post (furzy mouse). “Offensive to Christians”? Since when did the clearly dominant religion in the US get such a glass jaw?
TurboTax resumes processing state returns after fraud reports prompt halt Washington Post
Oh Sweet Irony: Walker Caught Lying About Removing “Search For Truth” from UW Mission Statement Daily Kos (furzy mouse)
Cuomo Officials Directed State Loan To Cuomo Donor At Center of Corruption Probe David Sirota, International Business Times
Kansas To Issue Bonds and Invest Proceeds to Boost Pension Returns Wall Street Journal. Great. Playing amateur hedge fund.
When Toddlers Kill Selves with Guns in Florida—Guess Which Color Gun Owners Get Arrested Alternet
Troubled overhaul of NYC’s 911 system $700 million over budget: WSJ Reuters (EM)
Protesters Target Municipal Court In St. Louis Suburb That Survives On Traffic Tickets Huffington Post (martha r)
Ferguson Movement Connects With Black Godfather Of Silicon Valley As He Talks About His Passion For Technology, Education, And Racial Justice Hands Up United (martha r)
U.S. judge urges settlement in transvaginal mesh lawsuits Reuters (EM)
Go digital by all means, but don’t bring the venture capitalists in to do it Guardian (david r)
Oil
Low oil prices have yet to rattle North Dakota small businesses Reuters (EM)
Four signs of the improving U.S. jobs situation Pew (martha r)
I was wrong about private equity reform Dan Primack, Fortune. Primack is THE lead beat writer on private equity. This is almost like Andrew Ross Sorkin admitting he was wrong. We see way too little of this sort of public recanting, and good for Dan for being willing to do it.
Pathetic Regulators Watch
SEC, Big Four Accounting Firms in China Settle Dispute Wall Street Journal. Adrien: “I am sure they spend more money on their counsel. It has to be over four long years..and then they have 4 years to get their house in order…”
Pension Funds Criticize Transparency at KKR Wall Street Journal. Notice the inadequate disclosure. Guaranteed the SEC will do nada.
Class Warfare
40 Years of Economic Policy in One Chart Mike Whitney, Counterpunch (Carol B). We’ve featured that chart regularly, but it can’t be emphasized enough.
Only 20% are Middle-Class, Most Don’t Come Close Economic Populist
Antidote du jour:
And a bonus video:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
67 comments
Comments are closed.
“It’s taken them this long to figure out how to do this?”
Initial attempts to put a robot in the reactor failed, as the high radiation interfered with the electronics. The article doesn’t say what is different about this robot. I suspect the ‘lamp at the front’ means they’ll use fiberoptics instead of trying to transmit the images.
It took them this long to figure out how fiber-optic cables work?
A nontrivial engineering problem. Ive alwayS found that the less j know about something the easier it is to do (sarc).
Huge design issues balancing lifespan/shielding// power souce energy/ mobility/telemetry capability ect ect ect. The ionizing radiation is intense and a balance has to be struck
Insight on the challenges. http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/radiation-resistant-circuits-from-mechanical-parts/
That’s a good point.
I suspect that they also wanted the robot to learn how to cook in a radioactive environment as well, so that it won’t starve inside.
Read the article linked below it. Sailors who served on the USS Ronald Reagan disaster relief mission in Fukushima are getting sick with cancer.
What’s novel about this robot is its ability to change shapes. This enables it to crawl through 4 inch openings to gain access, and then reconfigure itself again in order to explore and take pictures of fuel that has escaped the reactor vessel and repair leaks of coolant prior to removal. Another non-invasive method will be used to assess fuel remaining inside the reactor vessel.
Cosmic Beams will be Used to Glimpse Fuel inside Reactor Vessels
Current medical technology, AFAIK, does not have shape-changing capabilities. The robot will still have a 10 hour lifespan limit due to the damage of high radiation levels on electronics.
New ‘transformer’ robot changes shape to access deadly Fukushima nuclear facilities
It took them this long to come up with a transforming robot? Come on Japan, you already know this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZR_lGjtIHM
Thank you, my comment on fiberoptics was conjecture. Both these links are helpful.
Yeah, the comment “this is essentially greatly scaled up technology of the sort Olympus uses in surgeries: snaking miniaturized cameras through veins, for instance” is incorrect- I’ve used all kinds of Olympus, Leica, and Nikon medical imaging/microscopy devices and not a single one of them was hardened against external radiation. You might be able to find something intended for use in radiology units, but probably nothing that will give usable film telemetry.
Two senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and others, plan to shun Netanyahu’s scheduled Congressional address:
One is saddened only that the protest is primarily partisan, rather than rooted in the principle that it’s squalid to degrade the Capitol into a campaign hall for the leader of the world’s last apartheid state. South African presidents weren’t allowed anywhere near Congress during the apartheid era. But then, rich South African sympathizers didn’t buy out our political system either.
+1
Maybe this is the beginning of turning support for Israel and its barbaric treatment of the Palestinians into a partisan issue … instead of the non-partisan, unanimous, reflexive pom-pom waving we have witnessed up to today.
Where is the Israeli André Brink?
That’s the precisely the theme we will hear from Netanyahu in March: Iran as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel’s survival.
It is also the (publicized) theme of the EU. For now. Because it won’t take long for people to realize that Varoufakis has just remedied “sovereignty” by making the ECB the holding company or the bad bank (“bad” since all this bad is only bad for a time and is then good again – lucky for us…or that’s the way it usta be…) for all debts that can be considered stock in Greece. Why not? In the end it is a question of survival and debt doesn’t matter. Only stock matters. It’s the wine.
I hope you are right, but my feeling is that at some point not far in the future, Netanyahu will be replaced by someone slicker, more p.r. savvy, and more presentable to the West, all the while pursuing the exact same brutal policies as the present Israeli government.
The media will talk about “turning over a new leaf”, etc., in US-Israel relations, and reduce the problem to a matter of personalities rather than policy.
+ a zillion
Geoengineering
1. The term includes things line reforestation in articles that I have read
2. It strikes me that this is something that is testable bc either it works or it doesn’t. I get that the left wants to push less consumption as the solution but let’s not pretend that an idea is untestable
“I get that the left wants to push less consumption as the solution…”
Let’s not get caught up in trivialities here. The “solution” to an unsustainable system is that at some point it stops being sustained and thus vanishes. We can either handle that process realistically and possible salvage some aspects of our technology (perhaps mechanical windmills or steam engines or the like) and civilization, or blithely believe the delusions
Well I suppose that if if anyone was in any doubt about the both elected & un-elected European elites total contempt for Democracy, they shouldn’t have any doubts by now. I wonder how bad it has to get before people are pushed so far into a corner that they have to come out fighting. The majority however always believe that they will never be the ones to wear a yellow triangle.
Just a quickie photoshop in support of the only Fin Min in the EU. who is fighting for a good deal for his people :
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0-8/1932583_1022116674469250_9154565073599828461_o.jpg
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/debt-is-money-we-owe-to-ourselves/?_r=0
I wonder how much this guy owes himself
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-young-homeless-man-begging-money-image25961697
and I wonder how much this guy owes himself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Blankfein#mediaviewer/File:Lloyd_Blankfein_CEO_Goldman_Sachs.jpg
but hey, it all nets out to zero…
I read an article recently about the total world debt being like 3 times the global GDP, at around $26 trillion.
I could be wrong about the numbers above, but my question is, to whom does the world owe that money to?
Isn’t Total Global Debt = Total Global Money Lent Out?
Unless, of course, we got the money from the Martians; otherwise, I agree that’s just money we owe to ourselves (collectively, but some are more equal than others, so they together get a bigger cut).
“but hey, it all nets out to zero…”
It will when the Borg get here!
Re the second link about the CC photographer begging for quarters:
Making a Living in the Solidarity Economy
It ain’t easy man…but the thing is, if we would just get in the habit of making small–even micro–donations every time we used a “free” work, content providers for the Creative Commons would have no problem making ends meet.
Well, after following the link, I see it’s not what I thought it was about at all…nope, it’s just more capitalists trying to turn a buck off somebody else’s misery {sigh}
RE: Video “That’s my ball”:
A major case of His bark is worse than his bite !
I love this video! My 2 yellow lab boys do the same thing-one will hold the tennis ball, sitting nicely, just to torment the other. The other will bark and wiggle and bark.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/257000-jobs-are-great-but-those-wall-street-boys-are-really-smart?
“The quit rate is telling us the extent to which workers have enough confidence in their job prospects to tell their asshole boss to get lost and then walk out the door.”
Kudos for the use of “as*hole” instead of jargan such as “non-optimal supervisory decision influencing hierarchical participants” or such by an economist
RE: Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Black People by the Thousands Daily Kos
When our “history” becomes too hard to swallow, we just spit it out and look sanctimoniously “forward,” not back. It’s the exceptional american way. That was then, this is now.
But speaking of now, our enlightened and “civilized” now, what would the response be in the homeland if this sainted Muslim pilot was accused of “terrroristic acts” on American soil at this moment? Far from the canonization he is currently receiving, millions would be vying for the honor of sprinkling the kerosene and lighting the match.
The thing is, we are still doing it.
We make women wear burkas or niqabs around their chests in public.
Thanks to our magnificent propaganda, sorry advertisers, our ladies are only too eager to seek out the latest, fashionable chest-burkas to cover themselves.
So why did they burn that pilot to death? That is something very different as far as I know. I am unaware of the media reporting similiar cases. I can only guess that it was an eye for eye punishment. We tend to forget that 2000 pound bombs dropped from 10,000 feet can also burn people to death as well. I guess it is worse to be intentionally burnt to death in a cage but the results can be the same from a dropped bomb. And the intention is the same in each case, killing people. So maybe there is some sort of twisted logic involved.
I just read that Kos article. The author reminds me of Rush Limbaugh. Extraordinary how quickly he was able to divide the KOS community. One reason the left is unable to achieve anything. I have the sense the author is far more interested in his own advancement than any subject he may discuss.
You don’t think the US is conducting master classes in violence?
Also, just a hypothetical question that occurs to me: are black people even allowed to advance their own interests, or must their advancement always include the advancement of white people too?
It seems to me that the implied answer on the labor left is always no, they can’t. That’s divisive too.
We know what the right thinks.
“Also, just a hypothetical question that occurs to me: are black people even allowed to advance their own interests, or must their advancement always include the advancement of white people too?”
WTF, I think I need a BabbleFish interpreter for this
If an issue is not of concern to white people, it’s not an issue. For example, on the labor left, only labor and only labor issues that “are not divisive,” are legitimate issues. Everything else “is divisive” and/or “is a distraction.”
Equal rights in all spheres, black civil rights, all historical phases of the women’s movement, and the New Left, which sought to unite the former with old labor left, have all been so declared.
The message here is that “unless your efforts with respect to your own advancement contribute to my well being as I define it, then they are not legitimate–and it doesn’t matter how far behind you are, or if someone is going to beat you down before you can even make it in to work (and, anyway, nothing else matters).”
Then the labor left wonders why it is marginalized even on the broader liberal-left. It makes more sense to be a liberal, where you have a fighting chance as an individual or as a “special interest,” perhaps identity based group, than it makes to bed down with a blind, deaf, and dumb– and increasingly marginalized– cult that refuses to even acknowledge your separate existence in its lived specificity.
Hence, this guy’s journalism career and the charge that he is (gasp!) pursuing his own interests by carving out a niche writing about race, which is declared “divisive” because it challenges the labor left’s definition of what version of reality is really important… wash, rinse, repeat…
And what is he writing about? Big shock here– beating black people down before they can even make it in to work. By the time they get there, if they get there, at best they’re up for the roles racists want them to play.
Apparently the labor left is okay with that. Like this guy says, at least the right wingers get in his face and stab him in the chest. They don’t pick up the knife and go behind his back.
The general Kos readership seems to be mild-centerist to me. In my day, Left meant the means of production being in the hands of the workers. Now it seems to mean anything vaguely non-fascist. Neo-liberalism has triumphed totally.
I thought this news item might interest you:
Workers agree to “having microchips implanted into their hands”.
According to the American Medical Association “RFID chips use in health care represent ‘another promising development in information technology’ that ‘raises important ethical, legal and social issues’.”
This reaks of National Stasi Agency (NSA) wet dream come true. RFID sensor range is 20 to 30 feet. Next step: Congress forces all citizens to implant one and all businesses to put RFID sensors at their doors. Hey, they are Keepin Ya Safe.
***k me, taze me, pepper spray me, but don’t tag me dude.
First step, of course, is to give any shopper a discount who wears one.
Get them to ‘want one.’
Get them to ‘desire to wear one.’
After all, we live in a democracy and can trust our government to protect us from harm. So, we hope to ‘educate’ (that’s always the key – education; who said ‘We don’t need no education?’ ‘Step forward now.’) people so they will volunteer to get one. They will do so willingly.
Thus, democracy can be messy or it can take more work to things done, but it’s well worth the price of the extra effort.
Haha. That’s exactly what Progressive Auto Insurance does for their Snapshot (spy) device. They promise you a discount if they determine you are a safe driver. I assume you are screwed if they decide you are a bad driver.
Progressive ships location-tracking devices to volunteer policyholders
By Becky Yerak, originally posted on June 13, 2014, at the Chicago Tribune. An archive is available at the Internet Archive.
Let’s start another new Party. The Tail Party. Not Tailgate, but yes let’s raise our glasses. Tail as in Tail Power – as in tail wags dog. If they weren’t cowards, they would not monitor us in the first place.
“On Wednesday the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debt as collateral.”
So what’s it all about then? If ECB isn’t going to be an CB for Greece, what’s the point of Greece being in the EU?
It’s obvious what Greece needs to do.
Mark Weisbrot’s (must read) “Kick in the Teeth by the ECB” is an understatement. It is preemptive economic warfare by disaster capitalists, and if classic Shock Doctrince domination doesn’t cause the Greeks to sell their birthright, their sovereignty and their souls, then the CIA jackals will follow. Yanis Varoufakis is so far responding brilliantly, letting the Troika knot its own noose. Putin is almost certainly watching this game closely.
“Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Black People by the Thousands Daily Kos”
Glenn Greenwald’s latest piece is about how O-bomb-er’s drones burn alive many civilians and notes it is still very common. Maybe Obama is the greatest practitioner of burning innocent people alive, ever.
But Kos won’t tell you that.
Since we know all behaviour is racially rooted, Its a shame BHO isnt black, ’cause then he wouldnt be doing that burning people stuff… Oh wait this is getting complicated
http://science.howstuffworks.com/napalm3.htm
More boring Fox News worst ever Obama is Hitler meme. You too Optimander, ever heard of napalm? Dresden?
Surprisingly, none of the arm chair generals of well read good intentions even bothers with illuminating the younger generations. Think of the children! I don’t know if I want them exposed to crazed President Obama trauma victims. With all of the freedom killing going on during the Wall St silent coup and banksters enriching themselves, capitalism could well get a nasty reputation. And then, air strikes burning people!! It’s enough to make one so disillusioned!!
Paul
An angel sheds a tear whenever good sarcasm goes to waste.
I second Yves’ assertion that the Michael Pettis post is must reading. As the writer at the FT Alphaville link begins his column, “This is literally the best analysis of the euro area’s problems we’ve ever read.” It’s long but even I, a borderline ADDer, found it compelling to the end. Here are a few of the gut segments:
There’s more; much, much more worth reading. The history of the counter-intuitively adverse unintended consequences the Germans experienced as a result of their demands for the French Indemnity following the Franco-Prussian war is fascinating, as are the descriptions of the various following repetitions of unlearned history.
Thanks for that rec. I hope to read it after I am finished with my grocery shopping this morning.
I just want to now if he mentioned anything about clawing back money Goldman Sachs made from helping Greece to get into the zone in the first place? Maybe $20 or $30 billion, if fines are tacked on. European Parliament can advance the money to the people of Greece while it goes after the squid. And maybe they can to the Hague and get another $40 or $50 billion from the oligarchs and the financial-war criminals who ran the corrupt, captured previous governments of Greece? Maybe the US can advance the people of Greece that amount now.
We have to treat this as a crime, as has been said about another act.
No, Pettis did not mention the scam that Golden Sacks pulled off back in the day, probably because it was past history that, unlike the French Indemnity of the late 19th century, was extraneous to the points he was making.
As an aid to those who haven’t read the piece yet and might conclude that the lack of any mention of Greece in the extract I quoted means it’s not pertinent to that country, Pettis states up front that he’s using Germany as shorthand for the northern European countries who were net lenders during the bubble and Spain (mainly because its the author’s country of origin) as shorthand for the countries of the south (and Ireland) who were the net borrowers. In short, it’s very pertinent to Greece.
Thanks Chuck. Esp. for relaying: “… (there was) no mechanism to insure the quality of its absorption…” End of story.
Yves, thanks so much for the Michael Pettis pieces. Come Judgment Day, you can be sure items like this will far outweigh all the anti-fracking foolishness. NC is well on its way to National Treasure status.
I take it you are unfamiliar with the “War on Christmas”…
And I thought the Dominant Religion in the US was NASCAR or the NRA! Silly me.
WWJD? What Would Jesus Drive? Something American, no doubt…extended cab, 4-wheel drive…
What Would Buddha Do?, by Franz Metcalf
Golfballs
That is one bizarre story. Obama’s mild critique of Christianity and American history was a typically sanitized version of unspeakable evil. But the outraged response of Republican Governor Jim Gilmore reveals stunning ignorance and sanctimony. “[Obama’s comments] are the most offensive I have in my lifetime…He has offended every believing Christian in the United States… Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”
This was a prayer breakfast? Clearly the man knows nothing about Jesus Christ, not the first thing about Christianity, and doesn’t have the slightest clue about American history. Buffoon just doesn’t quite say it, nope, not even presumptuous ass. Where do we find such fools to become governors and what did we do to deserve them? This is one of those stories that inspire one to bang the wall with one’s forehead.
At The Vinyard there’s a post up with Alexander Mercouris’ analysis of the Merkel/Hollande meeting with Putin in Moscow. What’s especially intriguing is that all aides of all three heads of government were not in the meeting, and that for the first time since the end of the Franco Prussian War Britain was not invited to participate in a meeting whose objective was to settle a major continental European conflict. Mercouris suggests that these exclusions were probably agreed upon among the parties in order to minimize leakages of the substance of the discussions to US.
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/talks-in-moscow-two-part-analysis.html
Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to meet with Barrack Obama on Monday after visiting the Kremlin yesterday. Joe Biden is in Europe pushing for an expanded Ukraine war and regime change in Moscow. Has Germany developed second thoughts? This is directly related to the Euro Crisis. Can undemocratic institutions run for the benefit of the few be compelled to do the public good? Or, will Europe be destroyed, once again, along with the rest of mankind?
“40 Years of Economic Policy in One Chart Mike Whitney, Counterpunch (Carol B). We’ve featured that chart regularly, but it can’t be emphasized enough.”
Yes, thank you. Frequent reminders of this are very useful. Conservative Republicans (and conservative Democrats) are fond of complaining that people on the Left try to incite class war when we complain about inequality of income and wealth. Of course, the reality is that the class war has been in progress for decades, and it was started by rich people and conservatives, not by leftists, the poor, or the middle class. The notorious Powell memorandum, which has been mentioned on this site several times (thank you for that, by the way), could be considered the firing on Fort Sumter of the current class war (there have been many class wars throughout history). Things were fairly stealthy until Reagan became President, and after the regulatory cutbacks of the Clinton and Bush II administrations, the war was obvious for anyone who cared to look.
People on the Left aren’t causing class war. We’re just pointing out that this conflict has been in existence for a long time.
Why Geoengineering is “Untested and Untestable” Naomi Klein (martha r)
This article is so misleading. Geoengineering is happening right now. Clouds need condensation nuclei to form. So what is this nuclei coming out of the planes that wee see leaving trails that congeal into clouds? It is toxic aluminum, barium and strontium. Recycled coal ash is used as the base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6r0GqbH9Os
Is trying to move the Earth’s orbit around the sun a few feet further away, in order to counter global warming, considered geoengineering or extra-terrestrial-engineering?
At solar noon tomarrow, everyone should stamp their feet, by my calculation that should progessivly bump us over q bit
Cuomo donor…center of corruption probe.
Look around the world, to get a better view of humans in general, are corrupt governments exceptions or the norm – or more generally, is government corruption, private sector corruption and public-private partnership corruption a bug or a feature?
Is it going to be the heretic Gnostics who believed in the divinity of each of us (empowering the people), or the state supported orthodox religion that claims to have been helping the poor, the needy for thousands of years (let me help you by spending your money)?