One Stop Thought Shop

While cigars may no longer be passed around, there’s smoke leaking from back rooms of the Whitehouse, an arrogance we haven’t seen such the 1800s that’s hustling red state votes from the farm belt and oil patch to grow and refine corn but providing little strategic policy to help America succeed.

From an editorial at the NYTimes: “The United States should let sound science and sound economics rather than politics drive its energy consumption and policy.” [firewall sub] [emphasis added]

The editorial goes on to say that the economics of corn ethanol have never made much sense.

Rather than importing cheap Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane, the United States slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol from Brazil. Then the government provides a tax break of 51 cents a gallon to American ethanol producers — on top of the generous subsidies that corn growers already receive under the farm program.

Corn-based ethanol also requires a lot of land. An O.E.C.D. report two years ago suggested that replacing 10 percent of America’s motor fuel with biofuels would require about a third of the total cropland devoted to cereals, oilseeds and sugar crops.

Meanwhile, the environmental benefits are modest.

Doug Powell in the thick of the agri-belt at Kansas State’s International Food Safety Network, points out that our food prices are skyrocketing under this President’s crop policy.

There is nothing wrong with developing alternative fuels, and there is high hope among environmentalists and even venture capitalists that more advanced biofuels — like cellulosic ethanol — can eventually play a constructive role in reducing oil dependency and greenhouse gases.

What’s wrong is letting politics — the kind that leads to unnecessary subsidies, the invasion of natural landscapes best left alone and soaring food prices that hurt the poor — rather than sound science and sound economics drive America’s energy policy.

A new report from one of the most trusted consultants to the U.S. poultry industry which competes for corn supplies for use as feed, makes it clear that the so-called free-market policies of the Republicans are an unnecessary sham.

“Ethanol is one of the most profitable enterprises in the United States today, but unfortunately a high percentage of those current profits come not from the marketplace, but from the federal treasury.”

“Federal supports are severely distorting crop prices while adding little, if anything, to the stated goals of the renewable energy program.

“The ethanol program is also increasing the federal outlays and has very little impact on U.S. dependence on foreign oil,

“On a net energy basis, ethanol will not make a significant contribution to overall U.S. energy production. Instead, the ethanol boom will have a huge impact on the worldwide supply of corn and other grains.

“The ethanol boom is driving up the cost of food production, and could eventually cost a family of four about $460 a year in higher food costs.”

“People are fearful of Google’s personalization efforts, they’re worried that they’re getting biased info on Wikipedia, and you just can’t find a good deposed Nigerian ambassador to invest in anymore.”

Kaila Colbin at the vortexDNA blog is asking, “Why is trust so important?”

“Other than the obvious, feel-good, look, I’ll-count-to-three-then-fall-back and you-catch-me sort of team-building aspect of it … trust is not a touchy-feely, airy-fairy commodity.

“Trust is what drives the world economy, and without it, our entire financial system would collapse.

“Trust is worth more than gold online these days.

“I’m going to say it again, in bold: In a world with few boundaries, trust is the only currency worth having.

Adding my broad sweep across the bow of the ship of state, there’s much work to be done in government too, where no web browser or trust certificate is offering us a lock and key.

In keeping with the brouhaha of the times we are living, a February 2007 survey by the Poneman Institute found that while we may trust the Post Office, the CIA, Homeland Security and the National Security Agency are “the least trusted federal agencies when it comes to protecting Americans’ privacy”, while the Department of Justice is on the very bottom of the list of 74 federal agencies!!

The study’s overall findings concluded that Americans remain concerned over a “loss of civil liberties and privacy rights,” “surveillance into personal life,” and “monitoring e-mail and Web activities.”

Astounding rendition with the Harlem Boy’s Choir

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG3Xd7ENuyk]

I was lucky to find this after JP at Confused of Calcutta sent me to Victor Wooten playing Amazing Grace on an electric bass guitar. JP correctly points us to Wooten. His mastery is rare and wonderful as well.

“Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space – said to be a meteorite – plummeted to Earth in a remote area.

“People who have visited the scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases.

They said to the BBC, “That is why we are asking for an analysis because we are worried for our people. They are afraid. A bull is dead and some other animals are already sick.”

Scientists will be arriving soon. Some believe the high heat of impact may have fused compounds in the ground and released nauseating or perhaps toxic gases.

What if a large meteor hit the earth? Here’s an outline from the geology folks at Oberlin College on the effects a meteorite impact large enough to seriously effect earth’s global environment.

Meteors travel at 22 kilometers per second (13.6 miles) or faster, and typically gain speed when they enter a planet’s gravity well.

Meteor craters are also likely reservoirs of crude oil. “More than one part of an impact crater has potential to produce hydrocarbons,” says P. Jan Cannon, who’s been mapping craters since the Apollo moon landings.

Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. – Dr. Seuss

“The life and existence of the Black Panther Party, the ideology of the Party in motion, is a biography of oppressed America, black and white, that no news report, TV documentary, book, or magazine has yet expressed.

“To do so, the media would let the people know what’s really going on, how things have happened, and how we’re struggling for our freedom.

“So before the power structure, through its pigs, attempts to murder any more of us, or take more political prisoners in its age-old attempt to keep us “niggers,” as they like to say, “in our place,” I have put together the true story of the Black Panther Party. – Bobby Seale

Written by the 1970s activist, and co-founder of the Black Panthers militant group, “Seize the Time” is part manifesto, part auto-biography. Released into the public domain by its author with the words “Fuck copyright”.

These guys took so much heat.

We all know the Angels we have heard are high. There’s no other explanation for these way-cool t-shirts, or these Passion of the Tchotchke, or this Cavalcade of Bad Nativities.

They’ve been whispering in Washington that Mexico’s President of six years said that George W. Bush is “the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life.”

Vincente Fox was Mexico’s leader before the 2000 election when he was thinking Bush would never become president. “I can’t honestly say that I had ever seen George W. Bush getting to the White House.”

In most racks of records, it was the same albums over and over… but Village Music took a more intimate approach to inventory becoming important to many in the music business and cherished in its community.

B.B. King brought his bus several hundred miles after a performance in Nevada to spend a few hours shopping here.

Top artists from around the world stopped here, and many of the legends of California music such as Ry Cooder, Santana, Bobby Weir, Bonnie Raitt. Even the continental Mick Jagger. Click here for a larger version of this grand picture.

Now stars and fans are saying a bluesy goodbye to a great, great record store.

Village Music in Mill Valley, California is closing after fifty years, along with thirty-five percent of America’s small record stores that have closed since 2003.

I lived in Mill Valley and spent years enjoying the downtown village culture.

I crafted a retail store across the street from Village Music that sold only custom and used blue jeans, built a stunning nursery store called ‘The Park at Old Brown’s’, plus an espresso cafe nearby known as the “Be Here Now Cafe” – way ‘a-head’ of its time.

It took awhile to find a willing old barn before I brought a truckload of weathered redwood planks to hammer on the walls of the Sweetwater Saloon.

One of the most well-known and relaxed music establishments in the USA, unless outside the door when a famous group or rock star came to town, the Sweetwater desparately needs help – a surprise 30-day lease termination after 30 years of paying rent!

“Bottom line is, I can’t pay the rent here.”
Northern California village culture has taken a beating from development pressures, perhaps more than any similar region as San Francisco quickly and without notice became a global financial center. Local folks in Marin County have paid skyrocketing prices that today only a mono-culture of the very rich can comfortably afford.

Places that five or 10 years ago were empty tundra are now dotted with lakes — a result of thawing permafrost.

As the northern permafrost and tundra come to life, massive quantities of gas will be released as bacteria once frozen in the landscape are revived.

Reuters is reporting that the greatest increase in global warming might be melting microbes mooching mammoth dung – layers and layers of waste from huge herds of prehistoric animals mixed with previously frozen ancient plants, grasses and tundra.

A top regional scientist studying northern soils of Russia, areas the size of central Europe, reports that the warming organic matter will soon come to life. Massive quantities of gas will be released, such as methane, dwarfing mankind’s emissions and accelerating warming irreversibly.

The potential releases of carbon are “so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves”.

Rafe Mair

We always think, with our Mercator map mentality, that Russia is that faraway place with the beautiful former capital St. Petersburg and the intriguing Moscow. But what if we look at the map and see Russia from the North Pole?

The result is astonishing — and not a little scary.

The following countries, former Russian republics and satellites, border this massive country:

1. Finland,
2. Norway,
3. Denmark (through Greenland),
4. Ukraine,
5. Armenia,
6. Azerbaijan,
7. Belarus,
8. Estonia,
9. Georgia,
10. Kazakhstan,
11. Kyrgyzstan,
12. Latvia,
13. Lithuania,
14. Moldova,
15. Tajikistan,
16. Turkmenistan,
17. Uzbekistan,
18. Georgia,
19. China,
20. North Korea,
21. Mongolia,
22. Turkey,
23. Iran,
24. Pakistan via Tajikistan,
25. Afghanistan,
26. China
27. United States
28. Canada.

As the Internet advances, what will be the sequins of vents for the future of newspapers?

And what of journalists and staff that may no longer have jobs?

If it’s Goodbye to Newspapers, what’s next? “The age of the newspaper baron is over, and the media tycoon does not tend to be terribly interested in democracy.

“The loss of advertising and circulation revenue to companies such as Google and Yahoo, which remain uninterested in funding reporting staff; the rise of a Wall Street theory that says profits can be maximized by minimizing the product; and an uncritical deference to power particularly among the Washington press elite have each helped to undermine not just the business models underpinning independent journalism, but also its ability to supply information the citizenry needs for democracy to work.

“Is it so difficult for wizened newspaper men, and their cherished readers both young and old, to test out some new funding models?’

Perhaps we can let journalism drift. Perhaps hiring writers to inform us will become unnecessary.

We could try other methods. Open Access has its promoters. Librarians might lead our media. Why not?

Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world’s scholarly knowledge – as profound a change as the invention of the printing press. Technically, this is within reach.
All that is needed is a little imagination, to reconsider the economics of scholarly communications from a poetic viewpoint.

Any baby boomer worth the desk they once crawled under should bravely study ‘extinction risk analysis’. Every baby boomer is already initiated.

Particularly now, while species drop to warn us, paranoids rush to rule us, while Russia still refuses, and not one industrial foundation isn’t crumbling, baby boomers are the only generation initiated in the study of utter annihilation.

Thus, there’s duty calling, the other calling, the loudest wail humanity will ever hear, in one word, extinction.

But we’re not yet worried.

Though it seems the Defense Department studied little else with the trillions spent on Mutual Assured Destruction, there’s surprisingly few links for ‘extinction risk analysis‘ on Google.

Worry?

Climate change might merely be the opening curtain to the New Green in most pondertoria, an opportunity to invest, gain status and prove once again that expertise is measured merely by an audience.

Worry?

Before extinction, there’s much more to think about, e.g. shortages. We seem to be discussing shortages every day.

Insufficient grain is a soils research issue, genes not admitted. Insufficient water is just another boon for overpaid plumbers. Insufficient housing is dealt new in a new New Deal with higher rates. Insufficient heat will revive sales in solar and 2.7 million 300 foot windmills we’ll find a place for. Insufficient oil will tear us away from both donkey jihadi and donkey dominionists. Insufficient fish is an enforcement issue, a fissure of dietary fashion fixed when we’ve affixed satellite sensors on every nubile salmon and erect fin; Oxley for caviar and Sarbanes for sharks. Insufficient safety and civility we’ll repair with cameras, cameras everywhere, cameras providing speedy enforcement, speedy divorce, speedy recidivism; cameras behind your eye.

In the past, how have humans behaved when they encounter shortages?

As if not listening to the calming effect of a nuclear air raid loudspeaker, the Lifeboat blog continues to look at the sky and studies ‘extinction risk analysis’. There’s not an Alexandrian library of knowledge on the subject. We haven’t been doing much thinking about extinction.

Once you realize that humanity has lived entirely without existential risks (except the tiny probability of asteroid impact) since Homo sapiens evolved over 100,000 years ago, and we’re about to be hit full-force by these new risks in the next 3-15 years, the interval between now and then is practically nothing.

Ideally, we’d have 100 or 500 years of advance notice to prepare for these risks, not 3-15.

But since 3-15 is all we have, we’d better use it.

At least Lifeboat is beginning to look human extinction in the face. Put that under your desk.

Mood music for an extinction

From ‘The Golden Age of Homeland Security’.

As caliphate and global warming rekindle thoughts of doomsday, it’s time to brush up on Duck and Cover and take a serious look at this collection of H-Bomb-era links and artifacts.

Long before duct tape and poly, All things Atomic reveals how to deal with panic in the year zero by offering a “Musical Manhattan Project” with plenty of lyrical memories to accompany deep analysis of whither instant annihilation or slow extinction. [via learning2share]

Robin Williams

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL6SD1IdnzQ]

It’s a well-known story in Berkeley, California that the UK’s Body Shop brand is based on lies, greed and careful counterfeiting. It’s an annoying story that helps cement anti-corporate feelings for which Berkeley has come to be known.

Peggy Short and Jane Saunders started the Body Shop in 1970s Berkeley, a cost-cutting shop – bring your own bottle – that tested the hype in the cosmetics market and made great efforts to assure ingredients were safe, sustainable and humane.

The story here reveals that the name of their highly respected innovative retail venture, The Body Shop, was stolen, their ingredients list was copied, their slogans and descriptions were lifted, and their philosophy was pilfered to become Anita Roddick’s hoist to wealth, fame and false regard.

Jon Entine writes that the Body Shop in Britain has been fibbing for decades; its founder Roddick “could care less about ingredients”. She was a “mythmaker” who fabricated claims and invented stories merely for marketing appeal.

“…natural-sounding cosmetics: cocoa butter inspired by Hawaiian natives; peppermint foot lotion mixed on request of the London Marathon; eye gel developed for a computer firm concerned about worker eye strain.

“The stories were all fabrications.

“The pineapple facial wash – we talked about Anita going to Sri Lanka and seeing the women rubbing pineapples over them. You know, that kind of nonsense.

“Why was it nonsense?

“Because it wasn’t true.”

This article should have been published many years ago. Roddick may have damaged significant efforts to clean up the cosmetic industry, instead leaving a capstone of lies above her tombstone.

“While traditional cosmetic firms peddled beauty in a bottle, under her vivid command The Body Shop took a commodity product and charged a huge “integrity premium”, packaging idealism and hope for a better world, and making Roddick rich and influential in the process.

“Many women idolised her for promoting a feminist business ethic based on “love” and “care” and “intuition”.

While Anita Roddick trumpeted hollow claims about saving whales with Greenpeace or helping workers in the developing world, she sued the California firm she counterfeited to stop using the name she had taken years earlier!

Jon Entine writes perhaps the only honest obituary.

Wise and patient leadership would be nice but…

Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

Alan Greenspan reveals, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

From Dvorak’s blog:

Greenspan, hardly a liberal and not exactly a fan of Clinton while he was in office, now considers Clinton a “political hero” compared to what Bush & Co. have done to the economy since, turning Washington into a place where “[g]overnance has become dangerously dysfunctional.”

Data explosion shakes up IT, by Jeremy Kirk

“In just three years, the bytes of data generated by digital cameras, mobile phones, businesses IT systems, and devices will equal the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches.”

via preoccupations

If I were suddenly to become a hawk, I would still believe the Bush Administration has failed. Many supporters of war are unhappy.

Hoping for the next presidency, the Newt Gingrich stump says “It has been almost six years since the attacks of 9/11, and the United States has yet to confront the threat posed by the irreconcilable wing of Islam.”

“The current strategy, structures, and resources of the American security apparatus are utterly inadequate to meet the challenges confronting the country.

“The United States faces active enemies that work every day to destroy it. Still, the United States does not act with the urgency of purpose required for victory.

“In comparison, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it took the United States and its allies less than four years to defeat Italy, Germany and Japan. In less than four years, the United States built a two-ocean navy, put 15,500,000 men and women in uniform, produced more than 50,000 aircraft a year (and more than 100,000 armored vehicles in 1944 alone) and built the most expensive project, the B-29, and the second most expensive project, the atomic bomb.

“The gap between what it will take for the United States to win this war and what is actually being done is so wide that [war continues to be so invigorating…]

If we want home users to be secure, we need to design computers and networks that are secure out of the box, without any work by the end users. There simply isn’t any other way. – Bruce Schneier

Seuss Bush. These Thobbers are robbers.

Thobs seeth.
“Seething”, said a Saying Thing, “keeps Thobs breathing.”

A Thob’ll lob a boomin’ doomer;
the stickory of the hickory, and that’s a bat, that.
Thobs flay a day wailingly unfailingly.
These acts are facts in flix and fax.
A shown known.
Thobs throb in seethin’-breathin’,
hmmm, a cheese-wheeze:
“Bottle a lottle profit, Prophet.”, said CapiTroll.
“Hell Sells. Make a mint. Go to print.”, EdiThor yells.

No budget will nudge it.
Thobs blather when they gather,
reapin’ the keepin’ of rote in the vote.
Some come to the Tell Ya Regalia to sell ya
a Rightly hat, a Rightly hat is adequate to salute repute.

Will we surmise the Next Exercise? Asia Multi-Phasia?

“So,” said a Saying Thing, “Can’t you see I hear in the ear? A Thob’s talkin’ so I’m walkin’.”

Sluice Bush.

These words, this snippet, sums for me the error of the war on terror, which is launched against

“a criminal menace rather than anything on a par with past strategic threats”.

And there’s much more in this healthy rant.

“While the Islamists may declare their ambition to be a ‘western caliphate’, this is as ludicrously implausible as the dreams of 19th-century anarchists.

“The rantings of Osama bin Laden cannot justify reversing the tide of western liberty.

“Indeed, while arming against communism helped defeat communism, arming against terrorism only feeds the beast.”

Exhibit A: Eisenhower’s thesis.

Spot ’em!
Which 25% think the First Amendment goes too far?

28% believe the freedom to worship does not apply to fringe or extreme groups.

37% say media shouldn’t “freely criticize the U.S. military about its strategy and performance”.

Provocative stats about Americans posted at ablogistan.

The First Amendment Survey is here, painfully.

“The top Google ad is about twice as likely as the top free search result to be malicious,” and “Web sites that display trust certifications are twice as likely to be wicked”.

Google Tech Talk video, Searching For Evil, Professor Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge [link to story]

Awards to a fellow you will enjoy:

1975 Army Commendation medal
1998 American Alpine Club David Brower Conservation Award
2002 Peacemaker Award from Montana Community Mediation Center
2003 Climbing Magazine “Golden Piton Award” for humanitarian effort
2003 Vincent Lombardi Champion Award for humanitarian service
2003 Peacemaker of the Year” Benedictine Monks, Santa Fe, NM
2003 Outdoor Person of the Year – Outdoor Magazine
2003 Salzburg Seminar fellow, sponsored by Microsoft
2004 Freedom Forum “Free Spirit Award” National Press Club, D.C.
2004 Jeanette Rankin Peace Award – Institute for Peace
2005 Men’s Journal ‘Anti-Terror’ Award
2005 Red Cross “Humanitarian of The Year” Montana
2006 University of South Dakota “Alumni Achievement Award”
2006 Golden Fleur-de-lis Award for Peace, City of Florence, Italy
2007 Brookdale Community College (NJ) – Global Humanitarian Award
2007 Rotary Club International – Paul Harris Fellow Award
2007 Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) commencement speaker
2007 Mountain Institute – Excellence in Mountain Community Service Award

Feeding antibiotics to chickens provides no economic benefit.

An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States—more than 24 million pounds every year—are used on farms, mostly in animal feed. Health researchers have long worried that this heavy load of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to evolve that are impervious to the drugs.

Farmers have justified their practice on the grounds that antibiotics help fatten up the birds, thereby increasing profits. But a groundbreaking study (pdf) by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health pulls the rug out from under this argument.

Using data collected by Perdue poultry farms, Hopkins researchers calculated that Perdue lost $.0093 per broiler chicken when using antibiotics.

For each dollar spent on antibiotic feed additives, the return was less than 10 cents. “We were surprised to find no measurable benefit and actually a business loss.” [Discover story]