Archive for August, 2010
The Social Crisis in Appalachia
From the World Socialist Web Site::
This article is the first of a series on the history, economy, social and environmental conditions in the Appalachian region of the United States. Part 2 was published on July 24, part 3 on July 27, and part 4 on July 30. World Socialist Web Site reporters recently visited the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia and interviewed residents on their conditions of life. Accompanying interviews are posted in four parts here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.
The region has long suffered a deep economic distress. One-third of the 100 poorest counties in the United States, as measured by median household income, are concentrated in the coalfields. This “pocket of poverty,” as economists sometimes refer to it, has, for decades, recorded extremely high levels of deprivation, unemployment and all the social problems that accompany them. This has been exacerbated by the dearth of government spending on the region and…
Should We Celebrate President Obama’s Birthday?
With Michelle and Sasha on a trip to Spain, and Malia at camp, President Barack Obama isn’t celebrating his birthday with family. Instead, he has a busy itinerary ending with a dinner with ‘friends’ held in Chicago. After a recent poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research it was found that “more than a quarter of the public have doubts about Obama’s citizenship, with 11 percent saying Obama was definitely not born in the United States and another 16 percent saying the president was probably not born in the country.” This raises a lot of questions on his birthday. Keith Koffler of Politico tells us why Obama’s birthday is not a cause for national celebration:
Today is President Barack Obama’s 49th birthday, which the president seems to think is an unhappy day. He has taken to lamenting his fading youth and graying hair, showing all the signs of a midlife crisis — minus the red Corvette.…
Anne Rice: ‘Today I Quit Being A Christian’
Anne Rice tells NPR why she has rejected organized religion:
On July 28, bestselling author Anne Rice officially left the Roman Catholic Church.
The writer has had a fairly tumultuous religious history. Although she was raised Catholic, Rice rejected the church for the first time when she was 18.
But in 1998, Rice — who’s famous mostly for writing steamy, gothic, decidedly un-Christian novels such as Interview with the Vampire — had a religious awakening. She converted to Catholicism and began to write exclusively Christian-themed novels, like Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.
In July, Rice decided she had had enough. She announced her decision on her Facebook page:
“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious,…
Billionaires Donate Half Their Wealth To Charity
Ever wonder what billionaires do with all their money while the nation is struggling in debt? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett launched The Giving Pledge earlier this year, beginning this expensive trend. NBC reports:
More than three dozen of America’s wealthiest individuals and families have joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in agreeing to give away at least half their fortunes to charity.
The announcement was made Wednesday by The Giving Pledge, an effort officially launched by Gates and Buffett earlier this year to persuade the richest people in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice, either during their lifetime or after their death.
In addition to Buffett and Gates — America’s two wealthiest individuals, with a combined net worth of $90 million, according to Forbes — 38 other billionaires are taking the give-it-away pledge. They include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive…
Passive Aggressive Notes: Dark Alley Not The Safest Place To Store Your Personal Belongings
If you haven’t already discovered Passive Aggressive Notes and you are the sort of person who really enjoys FOUND, let me suggest that you check it out now. Here’s a current example of the many joys it brings to the web:
Okay, dude, I really don’t want to kick you while you’re down — getting your scooter stolen definitely sucks. (Also, based on the rage level in your note, I think you’d probably kick back pretty hard.) And yet…I’m not really buying your framing of this as some kind of public service announcement.
For one thing, I’m guessing that if you took a poll of your neighbors (including Alex, our submitter) and asked, “Hey, did you know that if you leave your personal property in this alley, it could get stolen?!” I’m pretty sure most would respond with someone along the lines of, “Uh, no shit.” Just sayin’.
Milgram Experiment Newspaper Ad
Via Twitpic, an interesting historical souvenir: the original newspaper classified ad calling for participants for Stanley Milgram’s obedience study, perhaps the most notorious psychological experiment ever. Milgram pressured his subjects into administering (simulated) electrical shocks to an unseen victim, testing ordinary people’s willingness to comply with brutal commands from authority figures. The payment section should read, “$4.00 and a glimpse of the darkness inside your own soul.”
Cop Pulls Over Congressman During Radio Interview!
Congressman Dan Lungren
Remember Dan Lungren? He’s the Republican Congressman who tried to generate positive publicity by phoning in to a radio show – until the call ended abruptly with the sound of a police officer pulling him over for speeding! (Hear audio of the call here!)
Lungren’s Democratic challenger, Ami Bera, just showed up at Lungren’s office — to give him a hands-free phone set!
Besides being hysterically funny, there’s a big political significance to this race – and there’s a surprising twist that makes this event even more important. “This isn’t the first time Lungren thought he was above the rules,” one blogger explained. “The Bera for Congress Campaign recently released a new website, which details how Dan Lungren exploited a loophole in House ethics rules in order to take a free, lobbyist funded trip to Hawaii.” It culminates with video of ABC News grilling Lungren over a very suspicious meeting funded by lobbyists —…
Consumer Reports’ List Of Unsafe Diet Supplements
Photo: Ragesoss (CC)
Medical News Today summarizes a new report on the dangers of dietary supplements:
More than half of adult Americans take dietary supplements in the belief they will keep them healthy, help them lose weight, or increase vitality and drive, but according to Consumer Reports, they may not realize there is no obligation for manufacturers to show they are safe and effective, and in their latest report they reveal 12 ingredients that consumers should avoid because they have been linked to health risks, including cardiovascular, liver, and kidney problems…
The consumer magazine’s report identifies 12 supplements, which they refer to as the “dirty dozen”, that are readily available in stores and online, but that they think consumers should avoid because of health risks to heart, liver and kidneys. The following list summarizes their information:
- Aconite (other names include aconiti tuber, aconitum, radix aconiti), used for joint pain, inflammation, gout, wounds, is described as “unsafe”…
Indie Game Designers Talk About Their Transhumanist RPG FreeMarket
Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen talk about their new science fiction role playing game FreeMarket. Via Technoccult:
It also sounds like it’s a more intellectual game than most – you’ve said you can, for instance, play the role of a philosopher and have that be meaningful within the game.
Luke: Yeah, but don’t think you can’t play Soulshitter Killfuck and have fun, too. But, unlike many other games that I’ve played, you can play an artist and have serious conflict about what you do. It’s impossible to just make a piece of art in this game and have it sit there, inert. Art is controversial.
Jared: And conflicts (especially philosophical, critical and artistic) are both internal and external and can have wide-reaching and unplanned repercussions.
Right. So you could do a more typical hack and slash scenario, or you could do something where you’re dealing with post-scarcity speculation. Or maybe both.
Luke: Yes. But the “typical”…
President Wyclef
Why not? We had B-movie actor Ronnie Reagan as U.S. president and California has Austrian bodybuilder-turned-action-movie-hero Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. Time reports on musician Wyclef Jean’s bid to become president of Haiti:
Hip-hop, more than most pop genres, is something of a pulpit, urban fire and brimstone garbed in baggy pants and backward caps. So it’s little wonder that one of the music form’s icons, Haitian-American superstar Wyclef Jean, is the son of a Nazarene preacher — or that he likens himself, as a child of the Haitian diaspora, to a modern-day Moses, destined to return and lead his people out of bondage. Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake, which ravaged the western hemisphere’s poorest country and killed more than 200,000 people, was the biblical event that sealed his calling. After days of helping ferry mangled Haitian corpses to morgues, Jean felt as if he’d “finished the journey from my basket in the bulrushes to standing in front of the burning bush,” he told me this week. “I knew I’d have to take the next step.”
That would be running for President of Haiti…
The Fattest States In The Nation
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is warning of a “major public health threat” as it reports that nine states now have obesity rates exceeding 30% of their population (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia). That’s three times as many in just two years. Overall, more than 72 million U.S. adults, or 26.7 percent, are obese. The CDC says:
In every state, more than 15% of adults are obese, and in nine states, over 30% of adults are obese. The medical care costs of obesity in the United States are staggering. In 2008 dollars, these costs totaled about $147 billion.
This echoes the warnings of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona and others in the disinformation documentary Killer At Large: Why Obesity Is America’s Greatest Threat — and it’s getting worse every year. The CDC’s recommendations of what can be done to combat the problem are here — but are they…
Scientists Say It’s Nearly Time To Let Scotty Beam Us Up
Coming soon! Well maybe not that soon, but I’ll settle for just “coming”! Report from NPR:
“Quantum entanglement” may sound like an awful sci-fi romance flick, but it’s actually a phenomenon that physicists say may someday lead to the ability to teleport an object all the way across the galaxy instantly.
The fictional teleportation machine used in Star Trek.
It’s not exactly the Star Trek version of teleportation, where an object disappears then reappears somewhere else. Rather, it “entangles” two different atoms so that one atom inherits the properties of another.
“According to the quantum theory, everything vibrates,” theoretical physicist Michio Kaku tells NPR’s Guy Raz. Kaku is a frequent guest on the Science and Discovery channels. “When two electrons are placed close together, they vibrate in unison. When you separate them, that’s when all the fireworks start.”
This is where quantum entanglement — sometimes described as “teleportation” — begins. “An invisible umbilical cord emerges connecting…
Howard Zinn Investigated for Criticism of FBI
Even after death, Howard Zinn is keeping the FBI on its toes. RawStory has been researching the FBI’s investigation of Zinn:
FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston University for his political opinions.
Those who knew of the dissident historian Howard Zinn would not be surprised that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI kept tabs on him for decades during the Cold War.
But in a release of documents pertaining to Zinn, the bureau admitted that one of its investigations into the left-wing academic was prompted not by suspicion of criminal activity, but by Zinn’s criticism of the FBI’s record on civil rights investigations.
“In 1949, the FBI opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn,” the bureau states. “The Bureau noted Zinn’s activities in what were called Communist Front Groups and received informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the CPUSA; Zinn denied ever being a member when he was…
China’s Public Transportation You Can Drive Under
How could a bus be faster, cheaper and greener? Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Ct., Ltd has the answer. China Hush reports:
A big concern on top of urban transportation planner’s mind is how to speed up the traffic: putting more buses on the road will jam the roads even worse and deteriorate the air; building more subway is costly and time consuming. Well, here is an cheaper, greener and fast alternative to lighten their mind up a bit: the straddling bus, first exhibited on the 13th Beijing International High-tech Expo in May this year. In the near future, the model is to be put into pilot use in Beijing’s Mentougou District. (The official site of the high-tech expo put it as 3D fast bus, which I think is more confusing, for now I’ll just call it the straddling bus.)
Proposed by Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd, the model looks like a subway or light-rail train bestriding the road. It is 4-4.5 m high with two levels: passengers board on the upper level while other vehicles lower than 2 m can go through under. Powered by electricity and solar energy, the bus can speed up to 60 km/h carrying 1200-1400 passengers at a time without blocking other vehicles’ way. Also it costs about 500 million yuan to build the bus and a 40-km-long path for it, only 10% of building equivalent subway. It is said that the bus can reduce traffic jams by 20-30%.
Here is the presentation by Song Youzhou, chairman of Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd.
Read translation here…
U.S. Postal Service Letter Carriers Will Deliver Drugs To Combat Terror Attacks
This is not the most confidence-inspiring example of our tax dollars at work. In fact I’m trying to decide if it’s more scary or sad. Report from USA Today:
The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been trained to dispense medication after a large-scale terrorist attack involving biological weapons.
Six years after the government began exploring the idea of using postal workers as rapid-response medicine dispensers and eight months after President Obama ordered government agencies to develop a plan to do so, efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, the White House says.
The White House won’t name the six cities, and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says she can’t talk about whether more cities…
On The Third Anniversary Of The Crash Of The Economy
We live in the United States of Amnesia and selective memory. As we debate the breaking news, we easily forget the sequence of events that broke the bank and left us broke.
Three years ago, when the idea of an Obama presidency was still a fantasy in polite company, a non-seismic financial earthquake began to rumble in ways we then could barely anticipate. Buildings didn’t fall as they did in Haiti’s nightmare, only a financial system. And, there are still piles of rubble everywhere here, too.
It was August 2007, and I was blogging about the coming economic collapse even as it appeared that our economy had nowhere to go but up.
What began with a few “incidents”–the collapse of New Century Financial, the demise of Bear Stearns–turned into a nonstop month-long drama of economic convulsion as fear turned into panic with calls for intervention. Slowly, like an apple being peeled, the truth…
FBI Vs. Wikipedia: Round One
The New York Times seemingly delights in ridiculing the FBI (careful you mainstream media guys, you may be biting the hand that feeds…):
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken on everyone from Al Capone to John Dillinger to the Unabomber. Its latest adversary: Wikipedia.
The bureau wrote a letter in July to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, demanding that it take down an image of the F.B.I. seal accompanying an article on the bureau, and threatened litigation: “Failure to comply may result in further legal action. We appreciate your timely attention to this matter.”
The problem, those at Wikipedia say, is that the law cited in the F.B.I.’s letter is largely about keeping people from flashing fake badges or profiting from the use of the seal, and not about posting images on noncommercial Web sites. Many sites, including the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, display the seal.
Other organizations might simply back down. But…
Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?
From Discovery News:
The recent decoding of a cryptic cup, the excavation of ancient Jerusalem tunnels, and other archaeological detective work may help solve one of the great biblical mysteries: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The new clues hint that the scrolls, which include some of the oldest known biblical documents, may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime—and may even be “the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple,” which held the Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered more than 60 years ago in seaside caves near an ancient settlement called Qumran. The conventional wisdom is that a breakaway Jewish sect called the Essenes—thought to have occupied Qumran during the first centuries B.C. and A.D.—wrote all the parchment and papyrus scrolls.
But new research suggests many of the Dead Sea Scrolls originated elsewhere and were written by multiple Jewish groups,…
