Archive for September, 2010
The United States: Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?
Thomas Friedman makes some good points about the debt-laden nation that leads — or used to lead — the world, in the New York Times:
In recent years, I have often said to European friends: So, you didn’t like a world of too much American power? See how you like a world of too little American power — because it is coming to a geopolitical theater near you. Yes, America has gone from being the supreme victor of World War II, with guns and butter for all, to one of two superpowers during the cold war, to the indispensable nation after winning the cold war, to “The Frugal Superpower” of today. Get used to it. That’s our new nickname. American pacifists need not worry any more about “wars of choice.” We’re not doing that again. We can’t afford to invade Grenada today.
Ever since the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, it has been clear that the nature of being a leader — political or corporate — was changing in America. During most of the post-World War II era, being a leader meant, on balance, giving things away to people. Today, and for the next decade at least, being a leader in America will mean, on balance, taking things away from people…
Ahmadinejad Says We Still Don’t Know The Truth About 9/11
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photo: Jose Cruz (CC)
It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but on 9/11 I think he’s right — we haven’t been told the full story of what happened on September 11, 2001. From AFP via Breitbart.com:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned the accepted narrative of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, saying it was still not clear who was behind them.
“Something happened in New York and still nobody knows who the main perpetrators of that act were,” Ahmadinejad told diplomats and newspaper editors late on Sunday while on a brief visit to Qatar.“No independent people were allowed to try and identify the perpetrators,” he charged.
“They say terrorists were hidden in Afganistan and NATO mobilised all its resources and attacked Afghanistan,” he said.
“They say that in the Twin Towers, 2,000 people were killed. In Afganistan, so far more 110,000 have been killed.”
Ahmadinejad has…
How Much Money Do You Need To Be Happy? $75,000/Year
If you live in New York City it’s going to be considerably more than that! From the Los Angeles Times:
Does happiness rise with income? In one of the more scientific attempts to answer that question, researchers from Princeton have put a price on happiness. It’s about $75,000 in income a year.
They found that not having enough money definitely causes emotional pain and unhappiness. But, after reaching an income of about $75,000 per year, money can’t buy happiness. More money can, however, help people view their lives as successful or better.
In the study, researchers tried to evaluate the effect of money in two ways: One was on how people think about their lives and the other was on the feelings they have as they experience life. Responses from more than 450,000 Americans, gathered in 2008 and 2009, were evaluated.
The study found that people’s evaluations of their lives improved steadily with annual…
Camera-Headed Birds Keep Tabs on the Citizens of Dutch City
No worries, it’s just an art project in the Dutch city of Utrecht reported on by Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com:
Has Big Brother begun dabbling in fringe science? No, it’s just a mutant street art project by the artist duo Helden. Here’s how Helden (a.k.a. Thomas voor ‘t Hekke and Bas van Oerle) describe their camerabirds:
‘panoptICONS’ addresses the fact that you are constantly being watched by surveillance cameras in city centres. The surveillance camera seems to have become a real pest that feeds on our privacy. To represent this, camera birds — city birds with cameras instead of heads — were placed throughout the city centre of Utrecht where they feed on our presence. In addition, a camera bird in captivity was displayed to show the feeding process and to make the everyday breach of our privacy more personal and tangible.
Notes Toward a New Political Taxonomy
Noah Millman writes for the American Scene:
It has become clear to me over the years that one of the causes of persistent confusion in our political arguments is the interchangeable use of taxonomic terms that, while they may have a natural affinity, are not actually synonyms.
Three terms that tend to get used interchangeably are:
Left / Liberal / Progressive
Their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum are treated similarly:
Right / Conservative / Reactionary
The shades of difference among the meanings of the words within the triads, however, are not minor. One can very well be extremely right-wing without being a reactionary in any meaningful sense — think of Ayn Rand. One can be extremely left-wing without being a liberal in any meaningful sense — think of Lenin.
I propose, therefore, to accentuate the differences between the words commonly lumped together, to clear up all ambiguities by assigning technical meanings to commonly-used terms,…
Canadian Automaker Develops Car Made Of Hemp
A group of Canadian companies have come together to design an electric car, dubbed the Kestrel, with a body sculpted from a super-tough composite produced from mats of hemp. A prototype is being tested, and the first 20 Kestrel cars will be delivered next year. No word on what sort of fumes are emitted by the tailpipe. Via CBC News:
Automotive pioneer Henry Ford first built a car made of hemp fibre and resin more than half a century ago. “It’s not an original idea,” Motive Industries president Nathan Armstrong said.
The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies, the company announced.
The compact car, which will hold a driver and up to three passengers, will have a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour and a range of 40 to 160 kilometers before needing to…
Does The Past Exist Yet?
The future has yet to be determined, but what about the past? This recent Huffington Post piece discusses the possibility that what you do in the present shapes both future and past — “historical events such as who killed JFK, might depend on events that haven’t occurred yet.”
Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. “The histories of the universe,” said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking “depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history.”
Is it possible we live and die in a world of illusions? Physics tells us that objects exist in a suspended state until observed, when they collapse in to just one outcome. Paradoxically, whether events happened in the past may not be determined until sometime in your future — and may even depend on actions that you haven’t taken yet.
In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing…
NZ Quake Creates New Faultline
The Earth is looking increasingly unstable — is this a sign of crustal displacement? From the Daily Mail:
The earthquake that devastated a city in New Zealand tore open a new 11ft faultine in the Earth’s surface.
The 7.1-magnitude quake which hit Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, destroyed about 500 buildings and caused an estimated £930million of damage.
But hundreds of lives were saved by tough building rules, it was claimed. Only two injuries were reported.
The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Professor Mark Quigley, of Canterbury University.
‘One side of the Earth has lurched to the right … up to 11ft and in some places been thrust up,’ he said. ‘We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’
The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted…
[continues in…
William Blum on What Americans Should Not Forget About the Iraq War
William Blum writes on Killing Hope:
“They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts,” declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq.
It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.
Enough to make him forget.
But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s…
Intel Developing Computers That Read Minds
Cool news from Intel, so I wonder if Apple is working on an iThink. Richard Gray writes in the Telegraph:
Unlike current brain-controlled computers, which require users to imagine making physical movements to control a cursor on a screen, the new technology will be capable of directly interpreting words as they are thought.
Intel’s scientists are creating detailed maps of the activity in the brain for individual words which can then be matched against the brain activity of someone using the computer, allowing the machine to determine the word they are thinking.
Preliminary tests of the system have shown that the computer can work out words by looking at similar brain patterns and looking for key differences that suggest what the word might be.
Dean Pomerleau, a senior researcher at Intel Laboratories, said that currently, the devices required to get sufficient detail of brain activity were bulky, expensive magnetic resonance scanners, like those used…
8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City Is A Horrible Place To Live
“We’re getting the hell out of this sewer,” entire populace reports … The Onion nails it again. As if the mutant bedbug plague wasn’t bad enough. Via The Onion:
NEW YORK—At 4:32 p.m. Tuesday, every single resident of New York City decided to evacuate the famed metropolis, having realized it was nothing more than a massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants.
With audible murmurs of “This is no way to live,” “What the hell am I doing here — I hate it here,” and “Fuck this place. Fuck this horrible place,” all 8.4 million citizens in each of the five boroughs packed up their belongings and told reporters they would rather blow their brains out with a shotgun than spend another waking moment in this festering cesspool of filth and scum and sadness.
By 5:15 p.m. there was gridlock traffic on the outbound sides…
This Is The End: Podcast Episode 1
Via Diatribe Media:
We’re very excited to finally release our first episode of a new podcast series called “This Is The End!” Though the series will probably branch out to many different topics in the future, right now, much like the zine “This Is The End,” will center around an apocalyptic theme.
Listen • Direct Download • RSS Feed
The inaugural episode features two readings from our “Liquid Burning of Apocalyptic Bard Letters” reading series – one from Ian Randall, a Chicago slam poet and singer of the band Farmer’s Tan Market and one from Brandon Weatherbee, host of the You Me Them Everybody podcast series. You will be able to subscribe on iTunes very soon, but for now either click the link directly or use the player built in on this page.
Jonathan Haidt On the Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives
VIa TED:
Are you a conservative who believes liberals have no moral values? Are you a liberal who believes conservatives have no moral values? Either way, you’d be wrong.
Do you believe liberals have an unbiased grasp of reality? Do you believe conservatives have an unbiased grasp of reality? Again, either way, you’d be wrong.
Watch as psychologist Jonathan Haidt tries to lead a group of (mostly) liberals out of their “comforting delusions” (his exact phrase) at the 2008 TED conference, and wonder how successful he’d be in front of a group of Tea Partiers.
Filesharing “Bully” Lawyer Faces Disciplinary Hearing
A British lawyer’s firm sent thousands of letters demanding £500 ($800) damage payments over filesharing, based on IP addresses obtained from ISPs. But now England’s Solicitors Regulation Authority is referring that lawyer to a disciplinary tribunal after hearing strong complaints from a consumer watchdog group. Which? Magazine had received testimonials from more than 20 different people who insisted they hadn’t actually shared any files, and were being wrongly accused. (”It appears few if any of the recipients have subsequently been successfully prosecuted over the claims…”)
Today the consumer group which publishes the magazine applauded the news of the disciplinary tribunal, “because we’ve received so many complaints from consumers who believe they been treated appallingly by this law firm.” The filesharing could’ve occurred over unsecure wireless connections, the group argues, and they added that the lawyer’s behavior was “both aggressive and bullying.”
Tony Blair Nearly Hit With Shoes and Eggs at Dublin Book Signing (Video)
Via Russia Today:
Police scuffled with demonstrators in Ireland’s capital, Dublin, as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived at a bookstore to sign copies of his memoirs. A shoe, eggs and other projectiles were thrown toward Blair as he emerged from his car, but they did not hit him. At one point, a policeman and demonstrator crashed to the ground as officers struggled to control the protesters, who were demonstrating against Blair’s actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. The protesters were heard chanting “Tony Blair: war criminal” as his car arrived at Eason’s book store.
Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury
As much as I hate to admit it, Sarah Palin is not going away any time soon and I feel forced to try to understand her appeal. Michael Joseph Gross gives her an in depth profile in Vanity Fair that comes as close as anything to describing the human car crash that is the Palin debacle in progress:
Backstage in the arena, a little girl in Mary Janes pushes her brother in a baby carriage, stopping a few yards shy of a heavy, 100-foot-long black curtain. The curtain splits the arena in two, shielding the children from an audience of 4,000 people clapping their hands in time to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The music accompanies a video “Salute to Military Heroes” that plays above the stage where, in a few moments, the children’s mother will appear.
When the girl, Piper Palin, turns around, she sees her parents thronged by admirers, and…
Preparing for World War III in 1925
The “Extraordinary claim” that Barack Hussein Obama, Ahmadinajad and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (the group behind the Mosque at Ground Zero) are setting the world up for World War III can be supported with facts, and therefore is not a conspiracy theory.
Google Trends confirms the U.S. is openly considering a raid on Iranian’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons facilities.
My articles on this subject have resonated throughout the anti-war community:
- August 9 The Maxine Waters Investigation: What is Iran Doing in this Picture?
- August 27 Waxman, Waters and Iran, Connect the Dots
We could be living in the most dangerous times the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis.
Here are the facts:
- A letter written before 1925 (AKA The Pike Letter). Albert Pike, author of “Morals and Dogma” in 1871 proposed the following plan in a letter to Giuseppe Mazzini:
“The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the…
Blackwater’s Back-Channel Deals With U.S. Government
In one of the better pieces of investigative reporting seen in the New York Times of late, James Risen and Mark Mazzetti reveal the continuing close relationship between the U.S. Government and the disgraced mercenary group Blackwater (now re-named Xe, but they’re not fooling anyone):
Blackwater Worldwide created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, according to Congressional investigators and former Blackwater officials.
While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.
The Senate Armed Services…
It’s One Thing To Write About Others Losing Their Jobs, But What Happens When It Happens To You?
"Plunder" Filmmaker Danny Schechter
A Lament For Labor Day
When your life and your work is as entwined as mine has been—fusing the personal and the political over all these years, it may be stretching things to consider yourself unemployed but that’s what I am as Labor Day approaches.
Most of the media focuses on the big companies that have slashed their work forces (even as they hoard cash.) But small companies are also suffering, cutting back, and closing. They don’t get the subsidies or bailouts or the attention.
Companies like ours!
Last May, we decided to close our Globalvision office when the lease was up. Our costs remained too high while revenues had dropped. We realized that we ourselves had become victims of the economic calamity that I had been warning about, and urging who ever would listen to respond to. It was, suddenly, not about someone else’s problems. They had literally come home.
There…
