greed and the other deadly sins

All systems are flawed:

John Stuart Mill cautioned: “Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works”.

John Maynard Keynes was aware of this: “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

the good guys torture

Some wingnut says we’re accustomed to torture and that’s a good thing:

Without getting into the substance of the controversy, I’m doubting that there will be a lot of popular outrage over any of the allegations of abuse.

Right or wrong, I think the average American assumes that some rough stuff goes on behind the scenes and that’s okay.

Hollywood tells us so…

I’ve long been fascinated with the disconnect between what pundits, politicians and various activist groups complain about and the status of interrogation techniques in the popular culture.

In countless films and TV shows the good guys — not the bad guys — do things to get important information that makes all of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage.

before greed

“We’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.” — Jimmy Carter 1979

trickle-down epitaph

Income distribution really starts to change after Ronald Reagan’s Free Market Trickle-Down propaganda. The policy crashes under George W. Bush, the first administration since 1933 President Herbert Hoover to flatten income gains of the typical family.

[more analysis at economicPopulist]
income distribution

lightning strikes up

Lightning strikes upThat’s a video frame of lightning flashing 50 miles above the top of a thunderstorm.

A giant jet about a hundred to a thousand times bigger than a typical lightning stroke.

The finding totally shocked the research team, since it’s the first clear proof that an electric charge can move directly from the troposphere into the ionosphere, two layers of Earth’s atmosphere.

couch dope

Wired:

The average gamer, far from being a teen, is actually a 35-year-old man who is overweight, aggressive, introverted — and often depressed.

our disease of ignorance

The Washington Post:

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

  1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.
  2. Overseas, care is rationed; limited choices; long lines.
  3. Foreign systems are inefficient, bloated.
  4. Cost controls stifle innovation.
  5. The most persistent myth of all:
    America has ‘the finest health care’ in the world.

We are the people with the most costly, confusing bureaucratic mess. Almost all advanced countries have better health statistics than the United States.

We should learn how our nation can be frozen in lies.

A very important reason companies argue against national reform is that there are currently few regulations over any type of insurance. Congress and the courts have avoided the insurance sector since the early 1800s.

Today, it’s health insurance firms worrying about losing their structure of regional monopoly, a very longtime favor:

Why is the American health system so crazy? Why do Americans spend so much more than anybody else for outcomes that aren’t a lot better? Well, we talk about the health market. We don’t have a health market. We have 50 state markets.

And although there are many, many insurers, in many states there are only one or two who are active.

probably a good thing

George W. Bush most vacated president notes CBS.

977 days of vacation, 2.68 years, 33%:

Yes, that’s 487 days. And Camp David is not even where the president has spent the most time when not at the White House: Knoller reports that Mr. Bush has made 77 visits to his ranch in Crawford during his presidency, and spent all or part of 490 days there.

next-gen fuel refinery

XXXXXXXXXXThe other greenhouse effect.

Continuous multi-nodal biomass, because 80% of all land suitable for crop production is already being used for other purposes.

June 2009:
The Plantagon Greenhouse was elected ‘Most Sustainable Innovation’ at the Globe Forum Investor Conference in Stockholm.

nation

Our junk theology of us:

When you think you are the highest point, you don’t look up.

sloppy killing

There’s more than enough slop to pay for sick.

Here’s an industry that loudly protests the high cost of liability insurance and the injustice of our tort system and yet will not wash their hands.

My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals.

One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

tip to humorzo, o’ talent of diligent conscience

no bulbs to switch

NASA Tech Brief:

Approximately 57% of electric energy generated in the USA is consumed by industrial electric motors.

to beg your carbon

What say a rap performed in Beijing?

Let’s look into the future and see the opportunity
Wind turbines will spin with great velocity
Solar panels will provide a clean revolution
To wean us off coal, and get rid of the pollution
Solar wind geo bio all on the table
But they are missing the tech to enable
A paradigm shift, power grid face lift
Better be swift, clean energy’s a gift
That must be delivered in a different way
Distributed and digitized, wouldn’t you say?

New energy is cool and all but I have to beg your pardon
Cause in the end it’s all about the carbon
We have to account for the emissions we made
Gonna be a carbon price under cap and trade
CDM, CER, AAU, EUA,
It’s a new language, parlez vous carbonais?
Supplementarity caps and additionality
Rising emissions are a solemn reality
So many targets that are yet unmet
Psh, have you ever even bought a carbon offset?

Yo but for real we gotta keep our heads straight
There are so many emissions that we must abate
I’m not sure if we can wait
The earth’s warming faster, we can’t be too late
But the world is changing, now Obama’s leading
It’s the sun’s energy off which we’ll be feeding
Financial crisis here, but we won’t back down
Put a smile on your face, I don’t want to see no frown
Clean energy is the future, we all know that
Global warming’s going down, ‘nuf said about that.

demolition of cornucopianism

William R. Catton Jr., Professor Emeritus, Washington State:

Denial of Chanfe, William R. Catton Jr.Abundant evidence suggests industrial civilization must be “downsized” to curb damage to the ecosphere by the “technosphere.”

Trends behind this prospect include prodigious population growth, urbanization, cultural dependence upon ravenous use of fossil fuels and other nonrenewable resources, consequent air pollution, and global climate change.

Despite prolonged Cold War distraction and entrenched faith that technology could always enlarge carrying capacity, these trends were well publicized. But there remain eminent writers who persist in denying that human carrying capacity (Earth’s maximum sustainable human load) has now been or ever will be exceeded.

Denials of ecological limits resemble anosognosia (inability of stroke patients to recognize their paralysis).

Some denial literature resembles their confabulations (elaborately unreal stories concocted as rationalizations).

Denial by opponents of human ecology seems to be a way of coping with an insufferable contradiction between past convictions and present circumstances, a defense against intolerable anomalous information.

the never choice

Please note. Our issues and protests are generally dumb.

Health insurance is an oligopoly at best and in many states a monopoly with one provider having more than 70% market share.

relaxing with pollution

Burning candles made from paraffin wax — the most common kind used to infuse rooms with romantic ambiance, warmth, light, and fragrance — is an unrecognized source of exposure to indoor air pollution.

American Chemical Society:

“An occasional paraffin candle and its emissions will not likely affect you.

“But lighting many paraffin candles every day for years or lighting them frequently in an un-ventilated bathroom around a tub may cause problems.”

Candles made from vegetable oilCandles made from bee’s wax or soy do not release harmful amounts of indoor air pollutants.

A bespoke design firm in Tokyo is making candles from waste cooking oil.

Filt “waste oil” candles combine recycling with nice packaging to make a product that looks good, smells good, burns well. [story]

lingering stink

If all people could have memories transferred directly into their brain, feudalism could finally end.

loops in the carbon cycle

There’s 2 billion square feet of Self Storage, 10 miles by 7 miles under roof, but the largest single energy bill in the USA is for 3 billion square feet of offices, research centers, and military bases managed by the U.S. government – heating, cooling and lighting about 10 by 10 miles. That’s enough space for 80 million Christmas trees consumed each year which could absorb 1,200,000 tons of CO2. Since carbon emissions are valued at roughly $50 per ton, that’s about $60 billion per year which could fund the annual uninsured portion of health care if all federal employees stayed home. 🙂