Month: June 2009

we humans are wonderful and weird simultaneously, wot?

provocative article discussing baseline things

“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

Leadership is about creating change.

While many like to see themselves as leaders, mostly they are engaging in three different pursuits that we commonly confuse with leadership:

* rulership
* stewardship
* lemmingship

Rulership is about protecting and preserving one’s position of power and privilege ….

Stewardship is the responsible and intelligent management of established institutions….

Lemmingship occurs when heads of organizations repeat the same practices and strategies…

If the past few months have felt like America’s institutions and maybe society itself are falling completely apart, it could be because that’s exactly what’s happening.

U.S. society may collapse:

Tainter, who heads the department of environment and society at Utah State University, told the newspaper that the current course of the economy and what some believe is a desperate effort to shore up the complex and almost inscrutable financial sector of the economy are manifestations of at least a partial collapse that invariably follows a society’s boom.

“Possibilities range from little effect to a mild recession to a major depression to a collapse.”

“It’s time for a second American revolution in the spirit of perestroika,” writes Mikhail Gorbachev, of all things, in the Sydney Morning Herald June 10, 2009.

Years ago, as the Cold War was coming to an end, I said to my fellow leaders around the globe: the world is on the cusp of great events, and in the face of new challenges all of us will have to change, you as well as we.

Do Republicans even know what Socialism is?

Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don’t have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the people that own the resources. Imagine that.

Hannity: And it went up higher since you’ve been the governor and you negotiated with the oil companies. That all went up so people get a bigger check.

Palin: There was a corrupt tax system up there and we had a couple of lawmakers end up in jail because of the tax system that was adopted so we cleaned it up and said we wanted a fair and equitable share of the resources that we own, and the people will share in those resource revenues that are derived.

politicalirony.com says, “If this isn’t socialism (or at least redistribution of wealth beyond Obama’s wildest dreams) then I don’t know what is.”

Can’t wind for losin’

Yes, people put money in their mattress:

“It was all my money in the world,” she said.

JERUSALEM – An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress she said had almost $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites on Wednesday.

The woman told The Associated Press that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise present on Monday – and threw out the old one.

The next day, she said, she remembered that she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress. “I woke up in the morning screaming, when it hit me what happened,” said the Tel Aviv woman…

New Scientist:
Do you think you’re smarter than most? Chances are, your children will feel the same way about themselves.

A new study of thousands of twins suggests that intellectual confidence is genetically inherited, and independent from actual intelligence.

mature and interesting scholarship, and not a common view

I’ve always promoted life-cycle analysis. We need to know the total picture before we commit to heavy infrastructure. The Bush corn fuel boondoggle points out that we don’t think ahead.

A new study compares the “full life-cycle” emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US.

Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, this one looks beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them. (source: newscientist.com)

“Although mass transit is often touted as more energy efficient than cars, this is not always the case.”

Crisscrossing the US with a rail network, however, creates a different problem. More than half of the life-cycle emissions from rail come not from the engines’ exhausts, but infrastructure development, such as station building and track laying, and providing power to stations, lit parking lots and escalators.

Yuick!

Jellyfish numbers are increasing.

These are Nomura, the biggest jellyfish in the world, which can weigh 200 kilograms, 440 pounds, as big as a sumo wrestler, and 2 metres in diameter

Jellyfish are kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food. Jellyfish feed on fish eggs and larvae, further impacting on fish numbers.

To add insult to injury, nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish can’t. “You can think of them like a protected area for jellyfish.”

Pondering infinity, hell, merely the earthy blip we live on, love is a wonderful thing.

This link points to a wonderfully funny but sad rendition of the History of Everything.

And here’s a link to a wonderful and sober rendition of the Great Tree of Life.

68% of task-force members for upcoming DSM-V psychiatric diagnosis manual report taking money from drug companies, reports USA Today.

found at MindHacks

Trying to be an unbiased reporter or neutral analyst on a heavily biased television program is incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Either you end up fighting the host’s premises and rephrasing loaded questions, or you are tacitly accepting the way the host defines a situation, making yourself an accomplice to a political mugging.

Stuart Rothenberg:

For those of us who enjoy following politics and are interested in the news, there are fewer and fewer options on television. The Sunday shows and PBS programming – “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” for example – remain, and there are a handful of others worth watching elsewhere (e.g., “Morning Joe” on MSNBC is fun, informative and thoughtful, and CNN and C-SPAN have their moments). But too often, caricature and vitriol have replaced reporting and analysis.

The networks continue to present national news programs each night, but politics can’t compete with “American Idol” or “CSI,” so cable stations have filled the vacuum with endless hours of what cable executives seem to think constitutes “news” and “politics.”

America’s cable “news” networks have concluded – on the basis of considerable research and evidence, I’m sure – that most viewers don’t want straight news and analysis as much as they want to hear what they already think or to watch predictable partisan attacks.

The three big cable “news” networks don’t exist to provide a public service, after all. They have corporate officers and stockholders to answer to, which means they need more and more eyeballs to generate more advertising dollars.

Their answer: talk radio on TV.

Arrogant and blind, Bush, Cheney, and their crew…!

In its first report to Congress, the Wartime Contracting Commission presents a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001.

The 111-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.

This is disgusting.

The stumbling bullies, Bush, Cheney, and their crew…!

EXCLUSIVE:
Recently Released Gitmo Detainee Talks to ABC News

Held Seven Years, Former Aid Worker Tells ABC News He Was Tortured

By JAKE TAPPER, KAREN TRAVERS, and STEPHANIE Z. SMITH
June 8, 2009

Reading this made me sick.

Many folks want blood. Others look to Obama to put banksters on the carpet. Most would like to see an overhaul by replacing failed financial leadership, preventing loose policies and invigorating a fair American Dream.

Six months ago, nobody believed that our banking system was well designed, functioning smoothly or properly regulated, so why then are we so desperately anxious to restore that model as the status quo?

Nearly every new program emanating these days from the Treasury Department — the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Public Private Investment Program, the “stress tests” of major banks — appears to have been designed to either paper over or to prop up a system that has clearly failed.

Why is so much effort being put into propping up those at the top of the economic pyramid — the money-center banks, the insurance companies, the hedge funds and so forth — when during a period of deflation like the one we are in, any recovery will come only by restoring the confidence of the people down at the bottom of the pyramid?

Confidence will return only when jobs can be found and mortgage payments are made.

The story continues here.

I’m annoyed when wingers complain of socialism but are unaware of the dominance of oligarchy and remain impotent to counter it’s effects. There are top manipulative players in all sectors, generally unseen, that shape and reshape our world while pundits point elsewhere. Nuts.

Little is gained by keeping a handful of bully leaders. Examples of poor results hit our nation where it hurts. Our marketplace is abused.

After trumpeting the breakup of Ma Bell, after years of heralding a ‘free market’, have we deregulated the communications sector? Ha! That’s a laugh. Lack of competition is the reason why broadband speeds in the United States are not faster and at lower prices. Nuts.

Though often sent through a punitive system, those who live recklessly do not characterize the typical bankruptcy.

US News link: Bankruptcies Caused by Medical Bills

High medical bills, which cause almost 2 out of every 3 bankruptcies, are leading many Americans into financial ruin, the New York Times reports.

The costliest medical conditions are neurological problems, which cost patients $34,167 in average out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, according to a study in Thursday’s online edition of the American Journal of Medicine.

The study found that from 2001 to 2007, the number of bankruptcies caused by medical bills rose by about 50 percent.

Insured Americans bankrupted by health problems had an average $17,749 in medical bills; those without insurance had bills amounting to $26,971, on average.

Insurance seems to escape the total bill?

Carrying Attribution licenses, the Boston Public Library has launched dozens of travel posters at Flickr.

The art and nostalgia is terrific.

Glass-Steagall restrained banks from creating churn, pyramids, and inventing product beyond their means.

Should a bank guaranteed by public funds and the FDIC be active operators in speculative markets? Or should they be confined to the more conservative realms of commercial banks as they were under the Glass – Steagall regime?

We think the answer is obvious, especially given the fact that a great deal of the problems we face today are a direct result of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the mixing of public funds with private greed in a coopted political and regulatory regime.

…and selling product beyond our means.

First there is variphrenia and these days go by:

a meteor could have hit Air France 447 but more likely the fuel tank….

thank god we will run out of oil.

Like Flight 3407’s co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, Capt. Dave Ryter earned around $17,000 in his first year with a regional carrier and flew coast-to-coast just to get to work…

14- to 16-hour duty days, much of that time unpaid and spent waiting in crew lounges.

With no food on planes, pilots grab meals on the run from airport fast-food stands.

…holiday and overtime pay don’t exist.

To earn six to eight hours of pay, “you can come to work at seven in the morning for an eight o’clock departure and park your last flight at nine o’clock that night…”

I wondered if there would be follow up after the commuter airline crash in Buffalo. It’s creepy to think about.

Exhausted, under-trained — and paid less than the bus or cab drivers who’d ferried their passengers to the airport.

“We have been calling for years trying to get the public to understand what their lifestyle is really like,” said Capt. Paul Rice, first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, the nation’s largest pilot’s union, representing 54,000 flyers.

story here

Newsletter at FrontLineThoughts:

“According to the Economist the total US spend on healthcare is 15.4% of GDP including both state and private . With that it gets 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, 3.3 hospital beds and its people live to an average age of 78.2.

“UK – spends 8.1% of GDP, gets 2.3 doctors, 4.2 hospital beds and live to an average age of 79.4. So for roughly half the cost their citizens overall get about the same benefit in terms of longevity of life.

“Canada – spends 9.8% of GDP on healthcare, gets 2.1 doctors, 3.6 hospital beds and live until they are 80.6 yrs.

“Now if we look at the more social model in Europe the results become even more surprising:

“France – spends 10.5%, 3.4 docs, 7.5 beds and live until they are 80.6

“Spain – spends 8.1% , 3.3 docs , 3.8 beds and live until they are 81

“As a whole Europe spends 9.6% of GDP on healthcare, has 3.9 doctors per 1,000 people, 6.6 hospital beds and live until they are 81.15 years old.

“The list goes on.

“The truth is that in many cases as is pointed out the healthcare system is better in the US than in some other countries BUT US citizens must therefore get ill more often than any other country in the West in order to achieve the truly appalling statistic that they are the 41 longest living nation on earth with France, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Andorra, Holland, Greece and Sweden all featuring in the top 20 longest living nations and the UK and Germany at 22.

“This is the big failure of the US system.

“It is unforgivable.

“You may get a better chance of recovering from certain diseases but as a whole you will die younger in the US than most developed countries. …

“Something is severely broken.”

Transcript at whitehouse.gov:

Simply put, the status quo is broken. We cannot continue this way. If we do nothing, everyone’s health care will be put in jeopardy. Within a decade, we’ll spend one dollar out of every five we earn on health care – and we’ll keep getting less for our money.

That’s why fixing what’s wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve – it’s a necessity we cannot postpone any longer.

I wonder how this will transpire.

Transcript of Cairo speech posted at WhiteHouse.gov:

Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.

The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world that we seek — a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God’s children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together.

I know there are many — Muslim and non-Muslim — who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn’t worth the effort — that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There’s so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country — you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort — a sustained effort — to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It’s easier to start wars than to end them.