Author: Brian

No one is suggesting turning off the Internet, but you should know the opposite of ‘open’ is ‘theirs’.

David Axelrod:

To put the breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration’s swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined.

U.S. rescue worker Sam Grey, of the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue, holds a monitor showing a woman, alive and conscious, buried under the collapsed University of Port-au-Prince. [MSNBC slideshow here]

Most of Dubai could be underwater by 2100.

Up to 85% of the population and 90% of the infrastructure at risk.

At the request of President Obama.

Winston Churchill:

Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.

One of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009, says TIME, in vitro meat is the brainchild of Willem van Eelen, a Dutch businessman who nearly starved to death in a Japanese prison camp and became convinced that artificial meat would solve world hunger.

Pajamas Media dispels any notions that this is some sort of hoax, citing the very real and very sincere In Vitro Meat Consortium and the Orwellianly-named ‘New Harvest’.

‘Arguably, the production of cultured meat is less unnatural than raising farm animals in intensive confinement systems, injecting them with synthetic hormones, and feeding them artificial diets made up of antibiotics and animal wastes.’

Never part of a living animal, Wiki implies cultured meat could be much cheaper than conventional meat.

Scientists have succeeded in creating 1 cm long strips of meat thus a small pork chop would take 30 days of cell replication in the lab.

If industrial facilities prove possible, experts say growing meat in trays instead of raising animals would do wonders for the environment.

Hanna Tuomisto, who studies the environmental impact of food production at Oxford University said the new meat could theoretically lower greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95 percent and reduce land and water use by about 95 percent.

“There was no effort made to find any answer to the economic problems of the country, and it was just a no, no, no, and no discussion,” said Arlen Specter talking a bit about what he witnessed as a Republican. “But I feel free to tell you that I felt under tremendous pressure.”

1. Get a president elected by the narrowest of margins in a highly controversial manner.
2. Pass huge tax cuts for rich people.
3. Ignore warning signs about an imminent attack on the US.
4. In the wake of the attack, establish that everyone who opposes your policies is unpatriotic.
5. Start a war based on lies.
6. Spend domestically like drunken sailors.
7. Let an American city drown.
8. Ruin the economy.
9. Lose control of Congress.
10. Lose the presidency.
11. Then, once in opposition, make no effort whatsoever to help solve the problems you created, and instead put all your effort into making sure that the people who are at least trying to solve the problems can’t do so, ensuring that they get the blame.

The Hindenburg zeppelin ladders!

Bruce Judson:

How does our response to the Great Recession compare to the age of FDR? To date, the most innovative response to the financial crisis, and the ensuing national misery, has been….TARP?

I refuse to believe that our current situation is the best that America can accomplish.

I refuse to believe that we have truly harnessed the legendary ingenuity and resourcefulness of the American nation. I also believe there is a way to move forward and dramatically revitalize our suffering nation.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences. – Robert G. Ingersoll

The byproduct is a blizzard of budgets and strategies which are substantially meaningless. Everyone does ad hoc things to protect their ass and try to make the best of impossible targets and incompetent, arrogant leaders self-deluded about their own brilliance and control of what is really happening in the organization and the marketplace.

The chief ideologue of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh:

1. “Haiti? You can’t even pick up a prostitute down there without genuine fear of Aids.”
2. “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the US income tax.”
3. The Haitian earthquake was “made to order” for Obama because it would allow the president to “burnish his credibility … with both light-skinned and black-skinned” African Americans.

At a Dominican Republic airport inspection, Limbaugh revealed he was carrying his bottle of Viagra.

This phenomenon known as the “Quarterlife Crisis” is as ubiquitous as it is intangible.

Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.

…
Attempts to manage the Quarterlife Crisis might be as banal as drinking a lot, doing a bunch of drugs, sleeping with idiots and myriad other kinds of self-flagellation, but broader attempts are made to find some sense of purpose.

…
Among the implicit promises made to this generation of twentysomethings was that they would have work that was engaging and creatively fulfilling.

OMB Director Peter Orszag

This afternoon, I will participate in the White House Forum on Modernizing Government. More than 50 of the nation’s leading CEOS are attending today’s forum, bringing their ideas for how the government can use technology to save money and improve performance.

Posted only in case you’re glued to cable, and thereby a member of history’s unattending.

Higher levels of plastic is associated with heart disease, again.

Roughly 10 percent of men aged 60 or older who were among the top third in BPA concentrations developed cardiovascular disease compared with roughly 7 percent of similarly aged men with the lowest BPA concentrations.

Druid’s arch-whatever speaks:

Glance back through American history from colonial times to the present and you’ll discover that the one consistently effective strategy for citizens who seek to change the direction of their society is to organize.

When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America not long after the Revolution, one of the things he found most remarkable about the new republic was the way that ordinary citizens who wanted to bring change to their society did it by organizing societies, lodges, movements, political parties, or any other kind of citizen’s group you care to name. The same thing has been true ever since; glance back along any wave of change in American life and you’ll find an organized group of citizens behind it.

It’s popular to insist these days that such organizations can’t possibly muster the clout needed to overwhelm, say, the power of big corporations. History says otherwise. In the 1880s, for example, corporations had even more unrestricted power in the United States than they do now, and the railroad corporations were the richest and most powerful of the lot. The Grange, an organization of farmers, took on the improbable task of breaking railroad monopolies that were forcing farm families into poverty by keeping the cost of shipping farm produce to urban markets artificially high. The short version? The Grange achieved total victory, and the railroad corporations lost the monopoly status that made their fortunes.

He was separating prime from cull. What’s unknown about him was his pain. Well before the War, Gordon Gibson urged a hundred loggers and you bet most conversations were misery and lament, all the good reasons to fail. Thousands of tons of wooden airplane wings had never been harvested before and never shipped. Nobody believed it was possible. Everybody knew it was impossible. Facts to raise to the roof. But within a year and a half, Gibson invented vertical logging. Floating into Northwest coves, complete with bunks and kitchens, his crowd of gypsy fellers pulled the strongest fir and pine and vigorous spruce downhill to ship to England, to keep the promise of Commonwealth, to fly the Spitfire against Hitler.

Yes. Things can be achieved. Tha’s all I’m sayin’.

LA Times:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said “the public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts”.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas said not.

All 50 states allow cameras in courtrooms, but from the high court on down, cameras have been banned for decades.

‘well’ of course

The brute of reality continues:

In the next 10 years, the United States will use the fracturing technology to drill hundreds of thousands of new wells astride cities, rivers and watersheds. Cash-strapped state governments are pining for the revenue and the much-needed jobs that drilling is expected to bring to poor, rural areas.

This yo-yo dared to run for President of the United States of America:

Pat Robertson claims the reason for Haiti’s misfortunes is that the nation “swore a pact to the devil” two centuries ago.

“They were under the heal of the French… And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French… And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other…”

Robert Frost on the fate of Man on Earth:

We’ll be all right if nothing goes wrong with the lighting.

Step right up. Reset your daily doom here:

Human caused detonation of the Sun !

We don’t really know what lies over the horizon, Financial Times:

The world is now headed towards economic conditions that will entail not only cyclical but structural change: a damaged financial sector, an overstretched consumer base, rising energy prices, and shortages of food, water and other natural resources so severe that they could heighten global and regional tensions. These factors, combined with new external ones like carbon pricing, all point to one thing: a crisis of confidence in growth.

Although resource scarcity will have severe effects, it will also herald a period of creative destruction in which new policies and new entrepreneurs will radically transform the vast complex of energy-related industries.

The Morning After – Earthquake Haiti 2010.

The sun is about to come up. The aftershocks continue. Some more noticeable than others.

There is no way to even begin to share the things we’ve heard and seen since 5pm yesterday. To do so would take hours that we don’t have to give right now. Some of them feel wrong to tell. Like only God should know these personal horrible tragedies.

The few things we can confirm – yes the four story Caribbean Market building is completely demolished. Yes it was open. Yes the National Palace collapsed. Yes Gov’t buildings nearby the Palace collapsed. Yes St Josephs Boys home is completely collapsed. Yes countless countless – countless other houses, churches, hospitals, schools, and businesses have collapsed. There are buildings that suffered almost no damage. Right next door will be a pile of rubble.

Thousands of people are currently trapped. To guess at a number would be like guessing at raindrops in the ocean. Precious lives hang in the balance. When pulled from the rubble there is no place to take them for care Haiti has an almost non existent medical care system for her people.

I cannot imagine what the next few weeks and months will be like. I am afraid for everyone. Never in my life have I seen people stronger than Haitian people. But I am afraid for them. For us.