Twenty Things June 28, 2010
High as Fuck
Jon Lajoie
Growing numbers of folks feel that the best way to keep the internet vibrant and free is to rid it of corporate meddling. For those who feel strongly about that, we have scattered about our site "DONATE" buttons that guarantee our freedom of action and expression.
Thanks - you are doing the right thing.
Voices From The Net
" Yeah, I live in the first world, yeah, I'm writing this on a computer, and yeah, I'm sure we can come up with another footprint method to describe how many third world lives I've ruined given my consumer habits. I would still like to know how I can make things better. If people have suggestions of causes I can contribute to that have rational mission statements, I'd like them not to be shouted down. If some politician somewhere says that trade should be something that improves the lives of both people trading, I'd like to know how where they are running for office. "
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
Rather than betting that aid dollars can beat poverty, Romer is peddling a radical vision: that dysfunctional nations can kick-start their own development by creating new cities with new rules—Lübeck-style centers of progress that Romer calls “charter cities.” By building urban oases of technocratic sanity, struggling nations could attract investment and jobs; private capital would flood in and foreign aid would not be needed.
The Spill, The Scandal and the President
Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years. He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP – and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.
A study recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility found that just having books around the house (the more, the better) is correlated with how many years of schooling a child will complete.
The Time We Have Is Growing Short’
I certainly did not anticipate the nature of the crisis that eventually ensued, its complexity, its force, or its impact right across the industrialized world. Subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, CDOs—squared, tranched, or otherwise—were not part of my world. Nor, I can add, had I ever imagined that the financial markets over those frightening weeks in the fall of 2008 would virtually freeze up. The sense of mutual trust upon which operating financial markets depend was lost.
Voices From The Net
" There are six billion people on this planet, and six billion holds a lot of dipshittery and a lot of bugfuck crazy. But I'm pretty confident you could scour the entire planet and not find a single person who would sincerely think that train of thought. "
Psycho - 50th Anniversary
The Shower Scene
Yes, a team that hadn't lost a game in 2½ years, a team that was going to win in a landslide purposely offered to declare defeat. Why? Because Roncalli wanted to spend the two hours teaching the Marshall girls how to get better, not how to get humiliated.
So Stupid it Hurts to Read:
Wind Power is More Dangerous than Coal or Oil
Further refinements on mortality rates for wind energy may show that it is relatively better or worse than this first cut at the estimates. But what we see when we look deeper is that due, in part, to its unreliable nature, wind power is an imperfect and very expensive substitute for conventionally-generated electricity; that it takes huge amounts of land; and it’s not so good for some components of the environment like bats. The argument for forcing consumers to buy increasing amounts of wind power gets weaker the more we investigate its full impacts.".
Voices From The Net
" We just had a funeral for a hometown hero that came back from Afghanistan in a flag draped coffin. He had a wife and three children. He had a mother and father, a brother and sister and many many friends. The sides of the roads were covered for miles with people waving hand held American flags and wondering why a 39 year old reservist died in Afghanistan. "
Elizabeth Warren Discusses AIG and Bailout
Anything EW says is worth listening to
Voices From The Net
" Yeah, I think it's important to remember that this is a "WORLD" issue... and other countries/powers knew that from pretty much the very beginning. ALL EYES are on America, and the Gulf. And have been from the start. There are a couple of "powers" that would love very much to walk in and take America. No doubt about it "
Comedians have rules of their own about joke-stealing. And they impose their own punishments on thieves. The Rogan/Mencia incident was different in one way, however – it was public. Typically, comedians enforce their private rules behind closed doors. But whether public or private, comedians’ determination to deal with joke thieves directly and informally, rather than resorting to the law, is noteworthy.
Completing the Eurozone rescue: What more needs to be done?
The euro’s crisis is not over. Measures taken in May were critical but they were palliatives not a cure. The Eurozone rescue needs to be completed. A new Vox eBook that gathers the thinking of a dozen leading economists on what more needs to be done.
The Demand for the Common Good
A mechanism that was supposed to create wealth, and did for a while, now increasingly turns out what John Ruskin, the 19th century essayist, called “illth.” The tragedy—the Tragedy of the Market, one might say—is that it has to create problems and needs, or the gears will grind to a halt. Not all growth does this, of course. But the balance is shifting, and the result is something new, a period of systemic diminishing returns—diminishing not for a particular product or industry, but for the economy as a whole.
Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench
A graphic is worth a thousand blogs
Voices From The Net
" " People are not entitled to a job. There is no RIGHT to a job. Welfare is not a RIGHT. Food stamps is not a RIGHT. Health Insurance is not a RIGHT. This is where this nation went down hill, everyone expecting something claiming it is their RIGHT. I'm sick of it.
Nassim Taleb
The Black Swan on Bloomberg
Thanks - It helps. A lot. Really.
It’s commonly thought that a market-liberal political economy is best for the rich while a social-democratic one is best for the poor. Some recent research suggests reason to question this. Analyses by Willem Adema of the OECD, by Adema and Maxime Ladaique, and by Price Fishback conclude that the quantity of social expenditures in the United States is similar to or greater than in Denmark and Sweden, two nations long considered large-welfare-state exemplars.
Batshit Craziness for the Thinking Challenged:
If open homosexuals are allowed into the United States military, the Taliban won't need to plant dirty needles to infect our soldiers with HIV. Our own soldiers will take care of that for them.".
Voices From The Net
" " Oil is NOT a pollutant, any more than carbon-dioxide is a pollutant. The entire paradigm of the EPA and Greenpeace, the UN, the Sierra Club, and Dr.Chu in U.S. Energy Department is wrong and based upon junk science and total non-science, group-think, and eco-fraud propaganda.
Hand Picked Books From The Library Of
Aetius Romulous
(Collect the whole set!)
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