It's feeling a little Weimar today. Here's our ever-increasing supply of money. Soon, we'll all be millionaires!
Some links:
Wretched puff-piece about Hydrogen Cars from the UK indo. Read the article for ONE critical question about this amazing gizmo: cost; technical problems; battery technology (the weak link). None will be found. This is a PR document maskerading as journalism. Lesson #1 in hack school these days is CTRL C - CTRL V, apparently.
Thankfully, one of the commentators on the site is a bit more savvy than the journalist:
Unfortunately there is no hole in the ground from which one can extract hydrogen. It has to be produced, usually by splitting water into its two components. It is expensive to do this, using huge amounts of electrical energy to generate the hydrogen. The best way to view hydrogen is as an energy carrier. It is not a source of energy.
The second problem is that hydrogen, transported as an extremely cold liquid, does funny things to metal. Pipes, tanks and other equipment are not easy to make or maintain, either in the vehicle or in the supply infrastructure.
The third fly in this expensive ointment is that experimental hydrogen based power cells are really old hat. They have been developing them for years. Full of promise, not one of them has actually proved economically useful.
Other than that, what a wonderful idea. Will it still be around in two years, doubt it very much. Put it on the list of other good ideas that have sunk without trace.
The US concern with the Iranian election is amusing, no?
OMG! Riot police attack pro-democracy protestors!!! In Georgia, a US ally. Expect round the clock coverage and a constant drumbeat about the evils of tyranny in Georgia, a US ally. Wink, wink.
Masked police beat dozens of opposition protesters in the Georgian capital on Monday in the latest flare-up during a weeks-long street campaign against President Mikheil Saakashvili, witnesses said.
Dozens of black-clad police officers armed with truncheons confronted a protest of about 50 people at Tbilisi's main police station demanding the release of six opposition activists detained since Friday, a Reuters photographer said.
He said several protesters and a photographer for the European Pressphoto Agency were severely beaten. Senior opposition official Zurab Abashidze was admitted to hospital.
It also has been curious to see U.S. news organizations care suddenly about legitimate elections when most of them ignored, ridiculed or covered-up evidence that George W. Bush stole the U.S. presidential election in 2000 and possibly in 2004 as well.
In Election 2000, Florida – a state controlled by Bush’s brother Jeb and Jeb’s cronies – was the scene of widespread election irregularities. Then, when a recount was attempted, the Bush campaign sent well-dressed hooligans from Washington to Miami to stage a riot aimed at intimidating vote counters. Finally, Bush got five partisan Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes and award the White House to Bush.
Yet, the U.S. press corps was extraordinarily passive about this well-documented election theft. Even when it became clear that Al Gore won the popular vote and would have carried Florida if all legal ballots had been counted, major U.S. news organizations, including the New York Times and CNN, misrepresented the facts to protect Bush’s “legitimacy.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Gore’s Victory.”]
Badastronomy.com has some links to HD videos of the moon taken by the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya.
The sad truth is it's too late now. But the additional sad truth, at this point, is that Californians (and US public in general) would benefit tremendously from normal rail service on a par with the standards of 1927, when speeds of 100 miles-per-hour were common and the trains ran absolutely on time (and frequently, too) without computers (imagine that !). The tracks are still there, waiting to be fixed. In our current condition of psychotic techno-grandiosity, this is all too hopelessly quaint, not cutting edge enough, pathetically un-"hot." The fact that it is not even considered by the editors of The New York Times, not to mention the governor of California, the President of the United States, and all the agency heads and departmental chiefs and think tank gurus and university engineering professors, is something that will have historians of the future rolling their eyes. But for the moment all it shows is that we are collectively too stupid to survive as an advanced society.
He's right of course. Whenever I repeat this point to people, I can sense their disagreement...but they don't articulate it. They suffer from the post-Apollo techno delusion described in this paragraph. For them, it's high speed rail or nothing. Well, I ride the rails as-is, and JHK is correct: the current trains take 30 hours to travel from LA to Portland, Oregon. 10 or 11 from LA to San Francisco. We're lucky if the train goes faster than 50mph, and for some spots has to pull over to wait for others to pass. Halving that transit time (making trains competitive with cars, not planes) is doable. This isn't a grandiose enough goal in the modern age of course, so we twiddle our thumbs and do nothing instead. Madness.
Oil reserves totaled 1.258 trillion barrels at the end of 2008, compared with a revised 1.261 trillion barrels a year earlier, BP said in its annual Statistical Review of World Energy posted on its Web Site today. The world has enough reserves for 42 years at current production rates, BP said...
Whenever you read the words "at current production rates", beware. The world economy grows at 3% a year - meaning that it will roughly double every 20-25 years. To find the double time, divide the growth rate into 70 (the Rule of 70). "At current rates of consumption" is one of the most deceptive phrases in the field of energy.
“Our data confirms the world has enough reserves of oil, natural gas and coal to meet the world’s needs for decades to come,” BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said in his introduction to the report. “The Challenges the world faces in growing supplies to meet future demand are not below ground, they are above ground. They are human, not geological.”...
If so, then why was the peak of US oil discovery in the 1920s? Why was the peak of World oil discovery in the 1960s? Why was the last year in which we found more oil than we used 1980?
Saudi Arabia’s reserves, the world’s largest, stood at 264.1 billion barrels, little changed from 264.2 billion a year earlier, BP said. The Middle East as a whole holds 754.1 billion barrels, compared with 755 billion barrels last year...
Firstly, Saudi reserves are UNKNOWN. They are a closely guarded state secret. Second, in the late 1980s most OPEC producing nations "discovered" miraculous new reserves - largely regarded as imaginary - in order to meet OPEC production quotas. This makes it likely that Saudi's reserves are half those mentioned here. Third, Ghawar (Saudi's massive oilfield, the world's largest) seems to be peaking.
Including Canadian oil sands deposits of 150.7 billion barrels, total global reserves stood at 1.409 trillion barrels, the review said...
Ahhhh - this is how you came up with the "42 years" of oil supply - by classifying sludge like Tar Sands as oil. Hell, why don't you classify asphalt roads and roofs as oil while you're about it? That way, we'll be saved forever!
Even a glut doesn’t change the nature of a finite resource, just how fast it’s depleted. One reason oil companies journeyed to second-tier sources is that formerly prolific fields are drying up. The most spectacular example: Mexico’s relatively young Cantarell field. Only a few years ago, it provided more than 2 million barrels a day, but 2009 estimates have tumbled into the 600,000 range.
If the realities of geology are disturbing, geopolitics present another kind of risk. In Nigeria, a guerrilla war poses a chronic threat to exports, and saber rattling in the direction of Iran still dependably hikes the price of crude.
American politics bores the shite out of me. Irish politics has many defects, but at least we can elect Trotskyists to the European Parliament without the roof falling in. Go Joe!
# LRO's imagery will help show detail on the condition of all six Apollo landing sites and the Apollo flight hardware left on the moon by 12 American astronauts between 1969-72...
# Lunar Mission Mysteries: LRO's new images should help solve some old mysteries, like where did the first Soviet Lunokhod rover end up. The eight wheeled, 1 ton marvel drove for 322 Earth days and about 6.5 miles before dying so suddenly that its control team was unable to configure its laser retorreflector that would have yielded an exact location.
The images may also show what ever happened to the U. S. Surveyor 4 lander that in July 1967 stopped transmitting just before landing and presumably crashed-but nobody knows.
And LRO may show what happened to the Soviet unmanned lunar sample return spacecraft that crashed in mid July 1969 trying to beat Apollo 11 with the return to Earth of at least robotically obtained Moon dust.
If the Apollo 14 astronauts scuffed up the soil enough, LRO may also show how close Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell got to the rim of Cone Crater. Exhausted they were forced to turn back only an estimated 100 ft. from what would have been one of the great scenes of Apollo, but invisible to them due to the looming drop-off.
I've been too busy/tired/lazy to post recently, having been occupied with a particularly tedious job in LA for the last few months. You can read a tirade about this wretched project here. Having spent 21 years in the animation industry, it's a bit much to earn the princely sum of $400 a week on an animated safety film for a dismal Florida roller coaster. A final escape from the animation industry beckons.
At the moment, I'm visiting clients & friends in San Jose. Saturday, to Eugene Oregon, and a belated return to Portland sometime on Monday.
Once back in my cell, work on personal projects will recommence.
That $200 billion is in addition to the $599 billion that the 19 stress-tested banks could face if the adverse stress test scenario comes true.
Given the baseline scenario was more like a cake-walk than a stress test, it is reasonable to assume another $800 billion is going to be needed by banks. 58 banks have been seized since 2008, 33 of them this year. More are coming and the FDIC is preparing for them.
Common knowledge about coal is that major producing nations like China, the United States and Australia, have enough to last hundreds of years, far beyond the reach of oil, which may already be in its twilight years. But worldwide coal production could plateau as early as 2025, according to one new estimate, and a growing group of scientists are concerned that fossil fuel supplies may begin dwindling by mid-century.
For those who don't keep tabs on UK politics, this bears watching: the MPs expenses scandal might have the potential to wreak actual change on the British electoral map. The UK Telegraph acquired a hard drive containing the expenses claims of MPs, going back four years. Suffice to say that the claims made by MPs (including several cabinet ministers) range from the ludicrous to the outright criminal. Were you or I to behave like this, we'd be in jail. Our neo-Fuedal overlords however, live by different rules.
How, the paper enquired, had the care services minister Mr Hope managed to squeeze £37,000 worth of refurbishment into his modest flat? The haughty tone of MPs' letters to the Fees Office betrayed the assumption that allowances were theirs by right; the indignant response when a claim for a cot was knocked back; the reference to "natural justice" in support of an appeal against the rejection of a claim for a £2,100 TV...
...When millionaire Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward [blamed the system] on Newsnight on Monday, to help explain his £100,000 mortgage claims – as well as the 38p Muller Crunch Corner yoghurt and £1.06 pizza from Asda – an incredulous Jeremy Paxman replied: "So you are victims of the system?"...
...the Telegraph finally trained its fire on the Conservatives. Michael Gove had "flipped" his Commons allowance and claimed £13,000 in moving costs. Francis Maude had claimed £35,000 in two years of mortgage interest payments on a flat a few hundred yards from his London home. David Willetts claimed for hiring workmen to replace light bulbs at his second home. Oliver Letwin charged £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under a tennis court...
...Labour MPs Elliot Morley and David Chaytor have been suspended from the party over claims worth thousands of pounds for "phantom" mortgages". Justice minister Shahid Malik became the most senior victim on Friday after revelations of secret cut-price rental deal on his constituency home, which he designated as his main home. Mr Malik insisted that he had operated "one million per cent by the book" and added: "I am as straight as they come." Three hours later, he was gone...
...Clare Short – whose noble account of her departure from Tony Blair's cabinet was entitled An Honourable Deception? – was among those embarrassed, claiming the full cost of her mortgage. Norman Baker, a vocal critic of expenses abuse, admitted claiming £20,000 to rent an office he already owned.
What's striking about this is the reaction of the electorate. The usual apathetic reaction of "I'm not voting for anyone". However, a substantial chunk of the voters are planning on voting for the smaller parties - UKIP (a right wing anti-immigrant party), the BNP (fascists), and the Greens.
The figures presented on the front page today are percentages for the entire electorate, and so include the 23 per cent who say they will not vote in the Westminster elections. They also include 17 per cent who will consider voting for a minor party – and that could prove a big opportunity for the Greens and Ukip at the forthcoming European polls, where they would be expected to do much better than in the first-past-the-post system.
The 40 per cent for "none of the above" is compared with 31 per cent for the Tories, 16 per cent for Labour and 13 per cent for the Lib Dems.
The European Elections in early June will be the acid test.
Some links:
A classic piece from the War Nerd - the tale of Carl Gustav von Rosen. As the Nerd says, it's amazing that this hasn't been made into a film. Hollywood is too busy hacking out "remakes" and crappy superhero films, apparently.
The best example, one of the few real heroes you'll get in this sleazy world, was a Swede, believe it or not. A Swedish aristocrat, no less. Count Carl Gustav von Rosen volunteered to do close air support for the Biafran army, hosing down government troops and raiding their bases, flying tiny civilian prop planes like little Swedish Cessnas.
Is that glorious or what?
Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: "The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks," he says. "This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same."
This time, the difficulties include the huge global trade imbalance and the nationalisation of much of the US banking system. That resembles the US depression and also the 1970s UK crisis. The current massive US and UK budget deficits and monetary expansion are peacetime firsts. The scale of pre-cash financial excess is reminiscent of Japan's real-estate and stock market bubbles.
At least the world doesn't look like it is heading towards a mess of 1930s proportions. There has been no surge in global protectionism and no price deflation in the West. Thus the bottom is probably above 170 on the S&P 500, the equivalent of 1932's low.
Nevertheless, if history teaches lessons, they are sobering. A 70pc overall market fall is possible. That would bring the S&P 500 from the current 909 down to 470.
I’m sticking to my assessment that it’s going to take some kind of wildcard event to move the show on to the next act. Something big. I don’t know what, but it will probably involve a reduction in the number of national currencies or the use of some new global confetti currency. The crimes that the Fed undertook during the end of the Bush regime and the beginning of the Obama regime bought the system as we know it some time. We’re in the eye of the storm, in other words.
Trillions of dollars worth of funny money is now hiding somewhere out there, nobody knows where, but that confetti bomb is eventually going to burst into the wider system. When it does, we’ll be in for another round of chaos and probably hyperinflation.
Ouch. I just finished the Job from Hell. It was supposed to last 6 or 7 weeks, but ground on for 14. As tedious a project as I have ever endured. Banality raised to a zenith. Finally, to be cast into the dust of my life. Get thee behind me, Stan.
A macabre traffic associated with poor countries in Asia and Latin America has sprung up for the first time in western Europe as the credit crunch reduces Spaniards to selling organs to “transplant tourists”. Spanish “kidney for sale” advertisements have proliferated recently on the internet as people struggle to make ends meet in a country whose 17% unemployment rate is the highest in Europe.
“It’s a sham. The banks are insolvent. The US government is trying to sedate the public because they are down to the last $100bn (£66bn) of the $700bn TARP funds. They think they’re doing this for the greater good of society,” he said, speaking at the Qatar Global Investment Forum.
Foreclosure filings in the U.S. rose to a record for the second consecutive month in April as banks increased efforts to seize homes from delinquent borrowers.
A total of 342,038 properties received a default or auction notice or were seized last month, RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine, California, said today in a statement. One in 374 households got a filing, the highest monthly rate since the property data service began issuing such reports in 2005.
But wait! Stop for a second. This all sounds too weird. If "Hitler" is "Hitler", how can there be an election? How can the outcome be in doubt?
That is precisely the point. That is why we are hearing nothing about the approaching election coming out of the White House. That is why there is not a word about it in the corporate press. If Ahmadinejad really were a "Hitler", there would be no election. There would be no campaigning. There would be no last-minute efforts to win over Iranian voters. If the man were another "Hitler", his political opponents would be shot on the spot...
...Indeed when it comes to matters of war and peace, the president of Iran has as much power as US house speaker Nancy Pelosi. That is, none. Nada. Zero. Zilch. He's not the commander-in-chief.
The recent large inventory build of petroleum, under a steep contango which now is flattening, within the big oil consumers (like the OECD countries and China) have left some with the expectation that major economies soon will begin to grow again, and that the contango now signals increased oil demand and higher oil prices in the future.
My analysis indicates that in recent months, as much as 2 -3 Mb/d of global petroleum supply has been used to build inventories. This is about to come to an end, because available storage is getting closer and closer to full and contango has begun to flatten. When additions to storage cease, the resulting drop in demand can be expected to lead to substantial downward pressure on oil prices.
He said the officers yanked Cantisani from his seat and dragged him off the plane, injuring his hand, which was gripping his seat belt . Then they forced him into a wheelchair.
At one point, an officer held him “by the throat,” he said.
Vanore said that Cantisani had been asked several times to leave the plane but continually refused.
A U.S. Airways representative said Cantisani was an unruly passenger who had refused to exit the plane.
During the struggle with police, Cantisani said, he lost his retractable walking cane, making him unable to navigate.
Officers told him they had done the “blind test” and didn’t believe he was blind, he said.
Vanore said he knew of no “blind test” administered by police.
Pigs won't fly, but they will lie. "Blind test". Bastards.
American Swine come in three main varieties: the Hog, the Bankster, and the Neocon. The Hog is often a public safety menace, because factory farming practices result in large groups of immunocompromised animals confined in conditions that are perfect for incubating new diseases. These practices should be banned, and banning American pork around the world seems like a step in the right direction.
Now the world's largest gold producer, China would benefit tremendously from a shift away from the US dollar and toward gold. She is clearly interested in world leadership, but would never dream of challenging the US militarily. However, in the 21st century, the weight of economics renders martial might largely irrelevant. Still, she can't afford to act irresponsibly.
There are a few considerations that should temper her ambitions. Even with the 600 metric ton increase over the past five years, China's gold holdings amount to only 1.6% of its total monetary reserves. Also, at 1,050 metric tons total, China's holdings are still dwarfed by the 8,132 metric tons held by the US.
Nevertheless, the Chinese call for a new, gold-linked reserve currency, combined with the near doubling of their own gold reserves, points to a major strategic trend that can be expected to spread to other surplus nations. The biggest winners, personal or governmental, will trade their dollars for gold before there's a rush for the door.
Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, said: "The fact is that for all the injections of taxpayers' money, the credit markets are still not working properly."
Bank of England officials are concerned that big banks now supported by the taxpayer, such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, are struggling to increase lending volumes, as they had promised in return for help from the government.
The governor, Mervyn King, and several other members of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee are said to be unconvinced by talk of green shoots that has helped propel the FTSE 100 share index up by more than 20% over the last month.
Scotland Yard is to review its policing of violent demonstrations after the G20 protests to see if London needs harsher, European-style methods that could include the use of water cannon.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that they would look at the more robust tactics used by other European police forces.
Recruitment rose by 14 per cent in the six months to March 31 compared with a year earlier. It is expected to reach full strength in 2011 after years in which it struggled to win recruits.
There are also fewer people leaving. The number who quit the Armed Forces in 2008 dropped by 8.3 per cent year on year as fear of competing in a shrinking civilian jobs market persuaded more to stay on.
The figures come despite a rising death toll in Afghanistan where four more British Service personnel, including one Gurkha, were killed on Thursday, the deadliest day in almost a year.
What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits...
...There are huge efforts that do go into making people, to borrow Adam Smith's phrase, "as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be." A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think about it, it's designed for obedience and passivity. From childhood, a lot of it is designed to prevent people from being independent and creative. If you're independent-minded in school, you're probably going to get into trouble very early on. That's not the trait that's being preferred or cultivated. When people live through all this stuff, plus corporate propaganda, plus television, plus the press and the whole mass, the deluge of ideological distortion that goes on, they ask questions that from another point of view are completely reasonable....
The water from Lake Mead...irrigates a million acres of crops in the United States and Mexico, and supplies water to tens of millions of people. Its mighty Hoover Dam generates enough electricity to power a half-million homes. Additionally, the power from Hoover Dam is used to carry water up and across the Sierra Nevada Mountains on its way to Southern California.
In 2000, the water level at Lake Mead was 1,214 feet, close to its all-time high. It’s been dropping ever since. When Lake Mead was built during the 1920s and 1930s, the western United States was enjoying one of the wettest periods of the past 1,200 years. Even today, our so-called drought is still wetter than the average precipitation for the area averaged over centuries...Farmers grow rice by flooding arid farmland with water from Lake Mead; residents of desert communities maintain front lawns of green grass; golfers demand courses in areas where the temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer.
The combination of a changing climate and a strong demand for the lake’s remaining water has resulted in 100 foot drop since 2000. While that’s just 10 percent under the lake’s high water mark in 1983, Lake Mead is like a martini glass—wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. That 10 percent dip represents a loss of half Lake Mead’s water supply in nine years, from 96 percent capacity to 43 percent.
The news of falling GDP was preceded on Tuesday by a dismal housing report which showed that housing prices have continued their historic downward plunge with only modest slowing in the tempo of doom. Since their peak in July 2006, housing prices have dropped 31 per cent, falling 18.6 per cent in the last year alone. The rate of decline has decelerated slightly but -- on their present trajectory -- prices are on target to tumble 45 to 50 per cent from their 2006 highs. Another 20 per cent loss in home equity means another $4 trillion loss for US homeowners.
the Fed says homeowner equity is 43%, but "forgets" to mention that for 33% of owners, equity is 100%, since they own outright. For the remaining 67% who have mortgages, average equity is no more than 15% at best.
A report from Zillow's today states that 21.8% of all homeowners are underwater. But Zillow's too, as Barry Ritholtz points out, omits the fact that a third of US homes don't have a mortgage. Hence, among those that do, 33% owe more on their property than it's worth. This affects a total of 20.4 million homes, and, if we estimate 3 inhabitants per home, 60 million Americans. In 2008, plunging values cost homeowners $2.4 trillion.
Looking out over the landscape, it seems safe to predict that at least as much will vanish in 2009. If we add to that Meredith Whitney's claim that some $2.5 trillion in consumer credit card lines will go "poof" in the night, Americans stand to lose $7.5 trillion in spending power before the year is over. That is well over half of annual GDP, which, coincidentally, relies for over 70% on that same consumer spending power. Allow me to suggest that you read that last line once again, and think it over real well.
the mainstream continues to see what is going on as a plain-vanilla recession that will be quelled with some on-the-fly monetary and fiscal tinkering. Washington, we are told, will pull us out of this slump—as soon as the masses can be enticed back to the shopping malls. Then things will return to how they were before. But what if the experts and politicians are wrong not only on their ever-changing recovery timeline, but also on the nature—nay, the very existence—of a recovery?
America’s reigning political-economic ideology has demonstrably failed. Given that its government is obviously fumbling along without a clue, its foreign and domestic credit is tapped out, and its 300 million people are discovering that their hopes for continuous material improvement will never be met, could the U.S. be headed the way of the USSR?
For now, the "bottom" is in -- that is, the bottom of this society's ability to process reality. It may continue for a month of so, even after the "stress test" for banks is finally let out of the massage parlor with a "happy ending." But events are underway that are beyond the command of personalities. We're done "doing business" in all the ways that we've been used to, but we just can't get with the new program.
Cynical media hysteria, led by the rats in the MSM: the lowest form of fear-mongering. An existential threat used as entertainment.
A public whose reaction was largely blase (oh, the luxury of post modernist irony). Let's crack jokes about a disease that's killed a couple of hundred people.
Juvenile attempts to 'rebrand' the disease as "Mexican Flu" by our Israeli friends, taking time off from bulldozing of Palestinian women and children to take care of their wounded feelings.
Naked profiteering by Pharmaceutical companies selling glorified sugar pills.
If one of these flus ever does go hot, you'd better have a well stacked bunker - because we didn't exactly shine over the last couple of weeks. We keep dodging bullets - and we don't deserve to. Once again, grown adults reacted en masse like six year olds.
There are days when I'd love nothing better than to take a blowtorch to the entire human race - but why bother? Sooner of later a real pandemic, famine or war (or all three) will come around and do the job properly.
I'll never forgive you people for electing Obama. You're just postponing the inevitable.
Proof of the axiom "a convoy can only move as fast as the slowest vehicle": hand-washing denialists. Yes; people who boast about never washing their hands, even after visiting the toilet. Germ Theory has been well understood since the mid 19th century. Apparently some didn't get the memo. My four humours are out of sorts today; to the Physic for a bleeding, sirrah.
Called the Georgia Guidestones, the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides" themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite).
Methinks the authors of the stones waxed too poetic. They should have kept the advice simple: "Wash your hands after you shit, you disgusting ape." or: "Don't overrun the planet with an industrial economy based on the ludicrous idea of infinite exponential growth." (More simply stated: "Stay in the cave, you disgusting ape."
"The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and the largest of its kind," said David Vaughn of the British Antarctic Survey. "Eight separate ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the last few decades. There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has been the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere."
Dublin has been ranked 16th in the EU and 25th in the world for overall quality of life in a global survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
Dublin ranks ahead of several major European cities including Paris (33rd), London (38th), and Barcelona (joint 42nd with Portland, USA).
ANGER SWELLING. FURY RISING. VEINS POPPPING ON FOREHEAD! Dublin - 25th in the World? Are you FUCKING SHITTING ME??? WHAT goddam PLANET are these people living on? Portland Oregon on 42???
OK: I've lived in both - currently based in Portland. Dublin is one of the most expensive cities on the planet. It's not the worst place on Earth, but God almighty - 25 out of every city on Earth? Better than PARIS?????? Put down the crack pipe, Mercer HR Consulting.
I spent a year in New Brunswick Canada, where we had 3-4 months of snow, and temps hit -30F (-34C). Even that didn't feel as cold as a typical Irish winter, where it always hovers .01 above freezing. You're always cold and damp. So are your bedsheets. You catch about 4 or 5 colds/sore throats a year, and one good flu.
Do you like hacking up huge gobs of phlegm?
It's dark and rainy - enough to induce SAD (seasonal depression) and rickets (vitamin D deficiency) in those unlucky sods with darker skin who migrate from sunnier countries.
What else? A collapsed economy the envy of Iceland; political corruption that makes Iraq look good; shitty health care; gang crime soaring, with feral youths owning entire neighbourhoods of Dublin; endemic alcohol abuse with concomitant drunk-driving and soaring death rates on roads; did I mention EXPENSIVE?
Worse that that are the nouveau riche Irish - now that they've got some coin, they're going to tell you all about it. Some of them have been known to have Asian slaves chained to their radiators.
I've lost track of the number of Irish friends who've moved back to Dublin over the years (to enjoy the 'booming economy'), only to come back to the U.S., chastened. Once you've seen the way the rest of the world functions, it's almost impossible to fit back in...to turn a blind eye to the bunkum and baloney and the rip-offs. It's so bad now that people drive 100 miles to Northern Ireland to do their shopping. They save a fortune. I left that bloody place along with many of the best of my generation for a damned good reason.
I'm sharing a lovely craftsman house in Portland (rent = $450, utilities another $150 max). $600 a month, total. 3 miles from town (walkable). Nifty neighbourhood, with restaurants, coffee shops, and the like. First rate public transit, so no car needed. Within easy reach of skiing (which I don't do) and vineyards (which I hope to visit this summer). Relaxed, easy going, people are friendly.
Sorry Dublin; I'll give you a pass. Let me know when you manage to clean the vomit and used chewing gum off the footpaths.
To halt the escalating imbalance between expanding population numbers and the earth’s essential natural resources, humans must control their numbers. At the same time, they must make efforts to conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, biodiversity, and the other life-supporting environmental resources. People in developed countries could contribute by reducing their high consumption of all natural resources, especially fossil fuels.
Continued rapid population growth damages the lives of all individuals and their offspring. Personal well-being, based on health as well as personal freedoms, is directly related to population numbers. If humans do not control their numbers, nature will.
Fascist! Burn the Hitler-loving heretic! All bow before Octomom!
Nobody knows whether the flu will kill 500 million people, or be a big disappointment. Here's what I do: take some sensible precautions and hope for the best. Don't trust a word you hear from our FEMA/government/media overlords - they're the same people who proved themselves unfit to live during the Katrina debacle. Here's what I'd recommend should things get much worse:
Buy food - as much as you can get your paws on. If you've got enough supplies for a few weeks, you can quarantine yourself in the event of a breakdown/pandemic.
If you can get a mask, do so. You'll need a few. Here's where I got mine (2 years ago). Disposable gloves might be an idea also.
Do not put your fingers in your mouth, nostrils or near your eyes unless you've washed them thoroughly first.
Money is a vector for disease, as are handrails on trains, buses and public places. So are door handles. Use gloves or hand sanitisers (alcohol based).
You might want to rethink eating out.
Work from home if possible - as too many modern cube slaves think that they'll impress their psychopath employers if they work while sick.
For the love of Jesus, can we abandon the pagan ritual of shaking hands? Please? Is shaking hands worth dying for? How do you know that the other guy washed his hands after leaving the toilet? (Answer: he didn't, and he picks his nose too).
Stop eating pork...unless that BLT really is "to die for". Yeah, I know it's too late and all that, but there's a moral in this sad tale if people would just pay attention. You wouldn't butcher and eat a dog, so why do the same to an intelligent animal like a pig? Disgusting.
If the flu is the real deal, it will surely drive a stake through the faintly-beating heart of that invalid global economy, and possibly even continental-scaled economies like the US, the Euro-zone, and China -- any place where things and people have to move long distances to keep life going. The US, obviously, suffers in this instance from its proximity to Mexico, and the fact that so much of our food comes from places that employ casual Mexican labor. A serious flu outbreak would be a short path to food shortages in the US, with our three-day supermarket inventories and just-in-time shipping methods. It would not be such a bad idea now to lay in supplies of beans, brown rice, cooking oil, onions, and toilet paper.
Following are some facts about influenza vaccines.
* The WHO and CDC prepare samples of virus to give to industrial makers.
* These samples must be grown in specially produced chicken eggs. The virus is then purified and made into vaccines, a process that takes months.
Regulators seized banks in Georgia, Michigan, California and Idaho with total assets of $2.3 billion, bringing the tally of failures in the U.S. this year to 29, exceeding the total for all of 2008.
Add all this up and the case for optimism fades quickly. The worst is over only in the narrowest sense that the pace of global decline has peaked. Thanks to massive—and unsustainable—fiscal and monetary transfusions, output will eventually stabilise. But in many ways, darker days lie ahead. Despite the scale of the slump, no conventional recovery is in sight. Growth, when it comes, will be too feeble to stop unemployment rising and idle capacity swelling. And for years most of the world’s economies will depend on their governments.
In March, housing prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before--nearly perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they're crashing and crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high. These Notices will turn into foreclosures in 4 to 5 months time creating another cascade of foreclosures. Market analysts predict there will be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It's a disaster bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have already vacated their homes. There's nothing Obama can do to make them stay. Worse still, only 30 percent of foreclosures have been relisted for sale suggesting more hanky-panky at the banks. Where have the houses gone? Have they simply vanished?
It's going to end badly. We are not at the bottom; we aren't even near the bottom. In terms of the Great Depression, we are in 1931 or so; the bottom is ahead of us. I expect the dollar to default in the next few months after a General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcy convinces everyone that we are truly in a depression.
US Bonds are on the brink of a collapse. When they do, the dollar will tank and interest rates soar. As measured by John Williams at ShadowStats.com, the real pre-Clinton unemployment rate is above 20%.
All the following links are culled from The Automatic Earth, the go-to site for financial news/analysis.
Author Charlie Edwards, senior researcher at Demos, says: "We live in a brittle society rather than a broken one.
"Our complex modern social systems, our reliance on them and our inability to protect them are a growing concern for us all."
He adds: "A single failure in a network can cascade across systems causing all manner of systems to fail."
The report says over 80 per cent of Britons live in urban areas relying on "dense networks" of public and private sector organisations to provide them with food, water, electricity, communications and transport.
But it warns: "For much of the time this lifestyle poses us few challenges but it relies on an infrastructure that is outmoded and archaic, and which increasingly lacks the capacity to support our complicated lives."
Around 85 per cent of the UK's critical infrastructure is in private hands, it adds, and the country will become increasingly reliant on imports, from areas of the world that are "less stable".
My forecast: Citigroup’s effort last week to twist this into an “improvement” will go down in history as one of the greatest banking deceptions of all time.
But Citigroup is not the only one. Nearly all other major banks are suffering similar surges in their credit losses and delinquency rates. Nearly all are using at least one of the same gimmicks to bloat their first-quarter profits. And every single one is destined to see massive new losses, driving their shares to new lows and the banking system as a whole into a far more severe crisis.
Bottom line: Rather than the private-public partnership the government has called for to address the nation’s banking woes, we see little more than private-public collusion to hide the truth from the public, paper over the problems and, ultimately, sink the banks into an even deeper hole.
...the market value of these derivatives is nowhere near the notional values of these derivatives maintained and reported by these banks, and that the global derivatives market is in serious trouble. Because derivative products are subject to counterparty risks as well, this means that the failure of one major financial institution could cause the evaporation of assets for many other financial institutions that have derivative products with exposure to that one financial institution. In other words, when the notional values of a good percent of these financial derivative products start evaporating into thin air, and they will, it will have a negative domino effect on the balance sheet of not just one major financial institution, but many.
I won't be making any more posts on the topic of writing. First, a link to Strunk's 1918 "Elements of Style" received a riposte, accusing the dead man of being a dolt. Now, from Matthew, a defence of Strunk. Let's not split infinitives, eh? ... (Check out the comments section on that link - there's a mini war going on!)
Mr. Obama looked to be the man-on-a-white-horse -- on the exhaustion of Reagan-Bush Jesus-Republicanism -- but he's coming off more like Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, duc d'Orléans) in 1793, with perhaps Newt Gingrich waiting offstage to become Robespierre in 2012 -- and some obscure US Army captain now toiling in Kirkuk slated to become the American Napoleon of 2015. As you've surely heard a thousand times now, history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. The enormities of Wall Street today are a little like those of the French Ancien Régime at Versailles. If America encounters the sort of disruptions of food and energy supplies that are brewing on the horizon, and unemployment keeps arcing up its current trajectory, civil uproars could easily follow. Readers think I joke about the Hamptons going up in flames. But the antics of the bankers, hedge funders, the CEOs, the Madoffs, and even the P. Diddy's of our time, are liable to attract murderous attention as the public mood moves from sour to wrathful.
Thanks to a new law, Canada will bestow citizenship Friday on what its government believes could be hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans.
The April 17 amendment to Canada's Citizenship Act automatically restores Canadian nationality to many people forced to renounce it when they became citizens of another country. It also grants citizenship to their children.
“However, the risks are skewed heavily on the downside, so we would not be surprised after revisions, if output end up being down closer to minus 10 percent,” they wrote in a research note released on Wednesday.
Corn is the vegetable-as-villain in “Food, Inc.,” which builds on the work of nutritionists, journalists and activists Eric Schlosser (”Fast Food Nation”) and Michael Pollan (”The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) to show how multinationals have taken over the production of food. As the movie tells us, corn — which today assumes dozens of ubiquitous identities, notably high-fructose corn syrup — is kept at unrealistically low prices by the government, is fed to animals that haven’t evolved to eat it (such as the cow), causes those animals to develop maladies that must be treated with antibiotics (which are passed on to consumers), and has led to the mutation of new strains of the E.coli virus, which sickens tens of thousands each year.
