Porpoise F*cks Himself to Death New York Magazine
In Deaths of Dogs in Arizona, a Human Story of Loss and Intrigue New York Times
Creationism conference at large U.S. research university stirs unease Science Magazine
Gov. Brown signs bill banning commercial production of genetically modified salmon Press Democrat. Why haven’t evangelicals been opposing GMOs? It is playing God, after all.
The Elon Musk interview on Mars colonisation Aeon (furzy mouse). Lambert: “Musk never asks himself whether our species DESERVES to get off planet.”
4.8-magnitude quake rattles Kansas and Oklahoma Christian Science Monitor. Locals blame fracking.
Rise of the Robot Security Guards MIT Technology Review (David L)
Internet trolls face four times longer in jail, Chris Grayling pledges Guardian
A response to President Xi Jinping New York Times. Reader Brett points out that this article contradicts the Grey Lady’s claims of not “altering its coverage to meet the demands of any government ”
China’s Climate Change Plan Raises Questions New York Times
U.S.-China climate deal isn’t enough to avert effects of global warming, experts say Washington Post
China data shows no sign of pick-up BBC
Saudi oil chief dismisses ‘price war’ claims Financial Times
European staples resisting Russia downturn CNBC
Eurozone growth set to disappoint Financial Times
Crimea Nationalizes the Means of Bread Production Moscow Times (furzy mouse)
Russia To Build As Many As Eight Nuclear Power Plants For Iran OilPrice. Note IAEA approves.
Russia’s Largest Bank Alfa Bank Plans Eurobond Issue in Dollars, Sources Say Moscow Times. Huh, I thought the point of those Tier III sanctions was to cut Russian firms, particularly banks, off from Western capital markets. Too many subjects where I don’t have the bandwidth to read the fine print.
Ukraine
Russia to Fly Bombers to U.S. Gulf as Ukraine Escalates Bloomberg (furzy mouse)
When Henry Kissinger Makes Sense Robert Parry, Consortiumnews
Tanks and Nukes: NATO Statements on Ukraine; McCain Will Go Ballistic Michael Shedlock (furzy mouse)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Why the Pentagon Dreads the “Sale” of IBM’s Chip Business Wolf Street
Plumbing the Depths of NSA’s Spying Consortium News
Police Body Cam Privacy Exploitation Slashdot (furzy mouse)
Mozilla updates Firefox with Forget button and DuckDuckGo search, rolls out sponsored tiles to new tab page VentureBeat
Obamacare
Surprises Lurk for People Re-Enrolling on HealthCare.gov Wall Street Journal
Fully-Insured Woman Faces Bankruptcy After Being Taken to Wrong Hospital Gawker (nycTerrierist)
Wall Street Bankers Want to Make Hillary Clinton Their Next Mascot in the White House Truthdig (furzy mouse). In case you hadn’t figured that out already.
Lame Duck Senate Will Vote To Approve Keystone Pipeline TalkingPointsMemo
From & Friends: Failing upward at the Democratic Leadership Council with Al From Nation (MS)
Exclusive: As cities struggle, Scranton in Pennsylvania to triple a local tax Reuters (EM)
Utility Regulator in More Legal Trouble Over Emails? NBC Bay Area (EM)
UBS to Curb Bonuses Amid Swiss Currency Probe of Staff Bloomberg
The forex scandal proves fines don’t deter bad banks. So ban them from trading Guardian. Another “hit them in a revenue stream” idea.
Regulators Want Banks to Rescue Themselves Next Time Matt Levine, Bloomberg. Levine focuses on interconnectedness, our pet issue. We said that had to be fixed first. Trying to reduce risk in a tightly-coupled system without fixing the tight coupling generally makes matters worse.
Overheard: Pow! Zap! Wham! Get Ready for Comic Book Economics Wall Street Journal. Steve Keen strikes!
Class Warfare
Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone-Especially the Wealthy Michael Lewis, New Republic. We said this before inequality was a hot topic: Income inequality is bad for rich people too.
Handy class-action lawsuit Gawker
Financial Pressures Ease on Students, Studies Say New York Times
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse). Since many of you admired the mane on the horse yesterday, I thought you might enjoy another great coif:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
167 comments
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It’s a wig, I tell you.
I thought it was Gene Simmons having a “bad hair day”
I think I should download the latest version of Sigismund von Shrink and spend some “quality time” with him. My first reaction was; “Why. That’s John Kerry!”
I dare you to tell him he has a hair out of place.
Magnificent creature but I bet this picture was taken in a reserve someplace because he looks mighty old to be still surviving in the true wild. Can’t see him fighting off too many young males intent on taking over the pride, where the females do most of the hunting and then the Alpha male sits down to dine.
Yes, probably…. males in the wild never have manes that luxurious. They get constantly pulled out by thorn bushes, brush, etc.
He’s a huge fan of Farrah Fawcett, of Charlie’s Angels days. Bet those highlights cost a fortune, but worth every penny (and that coming from a brunette).
“Eurozone growth set to disappoint”: you can only be disappointed if you had expected better.
Japanese Riot Police Raid Kyoto University
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/443135/japanese-riot-police-raid-kyoto-university
I saw that but couldn’t find any context for it. Are any readers more knowledgeable? (The story also said that heavy police presence is normal even for very small protests. Is that true?)
At the end of the article it mentioned increased militarization and restarting nukes.
My guess would be more the restarting of nukes because, IMO, the Fukushima cover up is of enormous significance and the students know this first hand…..can’t BS them, they live there.
It is frustratingly hard to find details or background information, but it seems several of the group tussled with police overseeing a union organized demonstration in Tokyo earlier in the month. The police attempted to infiltrate the group but the infiltrator was caught and held by the students for a few hours.
Background info here – https://throwoutyourbooks.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/security-police-kyoto-university-campus-arrests-activists/
and
https://throwoutyourbooks.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/police-raid-chukaku-ha-headquarters-zenshinsha/
Some of the comments here are interesting –
http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/riot-police-raid-kyoto-university-after-3-activists-arrested
I can confirm from first hand experience that the police are always a large, often intimidating, presence at every political demonstration large and small. They surround the group along pre-determined march routes, all speakers are video-taped, and 90% of them hide their identities with surgical masks as if they all came down with the flu. Meanwhile, at any major train station in Tokyo right-wing groups are free to blast anyone within earshot with nationalistic music and xenophobic hate-speech.
In addition to the above bit of 1930’s deja-vu – a man burned himself to death in protest of the government in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park on Tuesday. The second politically motivated self-immolation in Tokyo this year.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/selfimmolation-against-military-policy/article6592738.ece
Yep, spot-on. Japan’s power structure is extremely right-wing, fascist fits the bill. The society as a whole is obsessed with control. Great place to visit, horrible place to live unless you enjoy being a cypher.
“Russia to Fly Bombers to U.S. Gulf as Ukraine Escalates” Such imperialism – it used to be known as the Gulf of Mexico.
From the Kissinger link: “Curiously, one of the few prominent Westerners who has dared question the prevailing wisdom on Ukraine is … Henry Kissinger”. The “curiously” is odd – the man has always been a realist, that’s why so many people have found him objectionable. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
Most people don’t like war criminals. YMMV, and obviously does. Good news for you: Queen Hillary is also a “realist.” Get your bumper sticker now.
The idea that Hellary is a realist is laughable. Just consider her hare-brained attempt at Healthcare reform. She was a realist, I grant you, at being a conduit for her husband’s bribes.
“Most people don’t like war criminals.” I have no idea whether that’s true. But it’s certainly irrelevant. It’s his realism people hate.
I’m not sure what Kissinger’s realism means to you. To me it means his plotting with Nixon to sabotage the 1968 Vietnam peace talks and extend the Vietnam War positioning Nixon for his first term election win over HHH and what, maybe a million more dead?
Later their realpolotik connivance helped along the disaster in Bangladesh, then East Pakistan. From the Nixon tapes by way of an article in the New Yorker, ” It is still startling to hear Nixon musing that what “the Indians,” then lucklessly hosting millions of refugees, ‘need—what they really need—is . . . a mass famine.’ Kissinger loyally chimes in: ‘They’re such bastards.’ ”
Gary Bass has a new book out “Blood Telegram” delving into that sanguine moment in the Kissinger Nixon years.
Realist by definiton – One who is inclined to literal truth and pragmatism & or, a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are.
So Mr. K looks at the situation in Vietnam & decides to illegally carpet bomb Cambodia to deprive North Vietnam of troops. Was that a realism ?, it didn’t work anyhow & besides the initial estimate of 40 – 150,000 bombing casualties, it then led to the rise of the Khmer rouge with an estimated death toll of between 1.7 to 2.5 million, & of course it didn’t change the outcome of the war.
It did turn out to be a stupid idea, maybe he might have been a bit more realistic – like maybe considering the possible implications of his actions – but then again they were only the lives of brown people at stake, unlike in Ukraine which could escalate into a Western white people Armageddon.
His realism exists in the sense that, like the bankers & other powerful criminals, he knew that he would not be held accountable for his actions if he screwed up or got caught out.
At a guess, the “realism” which people are claiming to hate is the foreign policy school of thought.
Speak for yourself. “Realist” or not, the SOB is directly responsible for millions of deaths.
does this help?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity-why-is-henry-kissinger-walking-around-free/5358322
too bad an awful lot of dead people never got a chance to hate him for his “realism.”
I hate him EVEN THOUGH he is a realist. Theres a difference.
Forgot a couple other escapades in which Henry the K was closely involved:
The unpleasantness in East Timor after Indonesia was given the green light to invade.
http://www.thenation.com/article/kissingers-green-light-suharto
The unpleasantness in Chile after Pinochet and the Boyz were given the green light to stage a coup against the elected government of Salvador Allende.
After these two events, there was plenty of reality that was kinda hard to bear for the humanity of those parts of the world. Like the kinda reality in which you are raped, tortured, your children are stolen to be raised by the people who did the first two items on this list to you, and you and those for whom you care are murdered.
I think that those actions that flowed from Henry the K’s “realism” were pretty unbearable. True dat.
I think Kissinger is very slippery. I think he likes to portray himself publicly as a realist.
In the Spring he called on Russia and the US to agree on the “least bad” outcome. At the time, the US was pushing for Russia to not interfere in Ukraine prior to the Ukrainian elections on May 26th (I believe). If Russia had heeded this call to ‘standstill’, the rebels may not have been able to prevail over the Ukrainian Government.
After Ukraine had been badly defeated by the rebels (about mid-August), Kissinger wrote a seminal Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal asserting America’s exceptionalism and essentially vowing that the US would not be eclipsed (by Russia, which had continued to support Russia after rounds of sanctions). To me, this refusal to accept defeat (of a minor ally) was tantamount to a declaration of war. It was clear that the sanctions would continue, the hostilities would continue, the goal of regime change would continue, etc.
So it is important to read Kissinger very carefully. He appears reasonable on some fine points (Russia’s long ties with Crimea) but on the whole, he is very pro-US. Notably, AFAICT it is Robbert Perry – not Kissinger! – that is criticizing US media. And it would be shrewd (would it not?) for someone like Kissinger to deflate some of the dismay and anger at US tone-deaf warmongering – while US policy remains exactly as it was.
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Kissinger was a realist in that he knew he was a class warrior, with a large dose of Zionism. The posters above mentioned many of his deadly faux paus, except Cambodia. Even his successes, such as the China Game, was just another way to undermine international workers’ movements. And though it may sound tripe, Kissinger was the first wedge for the Jewish network machine into the old Anglo political establishment. Nixon realized this when he kept Kissenger out of certain Israeli related policies. Too bad Kissenger didn’t return the favor of the extinct Anglos. Recent administrations had From, Liberman, et. al and a strong Israeli lobby.
Your comment is interesting because since writing mine I was thinking: didn’t the term ‘realist’ change over time? Weren’t the ‘realists’ of the 70’s opposed to the liberal doves and a little less ideological than the hard-line anti-commie hawks? Didn’t the ‘realists’ of the 70’s morphed into the neocons of the 90’s-today?
As for inequality being bad for the rich, the financiers need to keep in mind that when they do finally blow up the financial system, they become superfluous and power flows to that next level down, of security types they thought they had control over, due to control of the medium of exchange. Then they become useful as scapegoats.
FYI
Living on Mars sucks!
Even the Martians couldn’t stand it and left.
I’d like to hear from Dr. Tremens on the Mars angle. The University of Magonia, where I believe the good Doctor is chair of something, has done extensive research into both Outer and Inner Space.
CB is right! Why would somebody want to go somewhere even the locals bailed on.
That’s like going to a restaurant everybody avoids. You sit down and finger your plastic menu looking at a dirty glass filled with warm water while the waitress stares out the window. The rolls are stale and the butter packs are icy bricks. 45 minutes later your dinner comes and the food is cold. When you leave you head right to McDonalds.
Why go to Mars when you could fly around the earth 15,000 times and then land in the Andes. Just wear some orange colored glasses and you’ll never know the difference. When some dude on a lama rides up to your spaceship you can call him a Martian. If you get bored, you can be back in New Yawk in a day! What’s not to like.
Well, for starters, New Yawk will be under about 200 foot of ocean. (That’s roughly the maximum extent of sea level rise with a complete melt out.) And yeah, I did forget about the Andean Indigenes enhanced blood oxygen carrying capacity. Llamas? They originally came from Mars!
As for restaurants, when even Mickey Ds has folded, any greasy spoon still in business will be King.
Are we talking the entirety of the city or just the areas near water, e.g., lower manhattan
Sorry, I should have supplied this link:
http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml
Try the 60 metre rise to see how the city will probably end up being called New Yonkers.
If it does go unabated, it looks like the Mets will be playing underwater (Citi Field in Queens) and Hipsterville Central—Williamsburg will be washed away.
Yeah, besides, the well dressed billionaire wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something as funky looking as a space suit!
craazyman,
“…some dude on a lama…” means you’re in Tibet not the Andes. Take no pictures.
Dude . . .
http://sylvia13.hubpages.com/hub/Llama–the-symbol-of-Peru
craazy,
“ll” = Andes
“l” = Tibet
This is a confusion you would not want to be guilty of in person.
that’s amazing! only 1 “l” of difference between two places thousands of miles apart.
this means you could land in either Tibet or Peru after circling the earth 15,000 times and it wouldn’t matter!
I don’t know how science can explain something like this. It seems like fiction more than truth.
craazy,
Are you really unaware that a llama is an animal related to camels, while a lama is a member of a Buddhist religious order?
Hard to tell leg-pulling from ignorance sometimes.
FYI, “Martians” are from Mart, as every true Marsian knows.
they ran out of TP :o(
there is a problem with this link:
“A response to President Xi Jinping New York Times”
It takes you to the Risin post on the Huffpost
The polite thing to do is include the correct link, along with your error report ;-) We search because we care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/a-response-to-president-xi-jinping.html
Thank you.
Thanks, fixed.
Wall Street Bankers and Hillary (a good sub-title might be, why don’t we skip straight to Chelsea?):
Hillary’s coronation won’t tell us much we don’t already know. The system is beyond repair. But it will provide information about just how far down the rabbit hole we have gone, just how blatant the robber barons have become. We are entering that phase where our public address – the media – is beginning to openly sound like Baghdad Bob. And Bob is going to explain how Hillary’s ascension to the
thronepresidency is as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. In America, dynasties are the most natural thing in the world don’t ya know? The sales pitch itself will say a lot about the state of the nation as will the degree to which the public buys into it.Keeping people cowed by propaganda has got to be big time expensive. One has to wonder just how much of every dollar we spend (6 cents, 12 cents ?) goes into keeping us misinformed.
I’ve also noticed the Bagdad Bob-ization of the MSM. With the incessant cheerleading for neoliberal policies, with the promotion of the political fugue-state, with the denial and misdirection, the split between “the news” and the reality has become a chasm. The American mass media is now a great engine of oligarchy.
Glad to see someone is trying to make Keen more palatable for the masses. I got about 1/10th of the way through “Debunking Economics” and had to stop. Dry as toast, despite his best efforts. When it comes to engaging writing, the man is no Yves Smith, unfortunately.
But I was even more excited to see Joni Mitchell telling the story of her time in Matala, Crete with Cary (or Carey, as she spelled it for the song). Man, that’s a great song, and it’s cool to know that Cary is also the “red-neck on the Grecian isle” that she refers to in ‘California.’ No mention of whether he actually stole her camera or not, but I’m going to assume that actually happened. Great stuff.
Re: Fully Insured Woman Facing Medical Bankruptcy
We didn’t let you die: be grateful, slave! Now give us all of your money!!!! Does this hospital have the world’s sh*ttiest PR person or what? You’d think they would at least be smart enough to blame this clusterf— on the insurance company…or the Party that just got spanked in the election. But telling this poor woman to suck it up and be grateful she isn’t dead and broke is not very politic.
This looks like an early Modern example of institutionalized “benign neglect.” This also proves that our much vaunted modern educational system doesn’t teach history very well. These hospital administrators would do well to refresh themselves on the history of the eighteenth century French aristocracy.
What a wondrous new facet of the economic system known as capitalism–purchases of goods and services while unconscious are deemed valid and binding transactions.
Under these circumstances, bankruptcy should be considered “Payment in Full.”
Perhaps the “supreme” court, which never met a capitalism “affirming” question it didn’t like, can find a constitutional guarantee of payment for goods and services contracted for while unconscious. I’m sure the framers intended to include such a guarantee, and just hoped for the likes of Scalia and his faithful dog Thomas to suss it out.
i delivered flowers to both those hospitals in college. They are LITERALLY 30 seconds to a min away from eachother… this will happen again.
Amazing.
But I have to ask. When seconds means the difference between life and death, is it even rational to expect the EMTs to stop and find out which hospital is preferred? What if it was closed at the time the call was made? Why wasn’t she transferred to to her network once she stabilized?
WHY THE FUCK DOES IT MATER!!!!!!
Oh right, because ACA.
Watch for the proposed “solution” of a chip or maybe a tattoo, or perhaps a brand mark, like cattle, with the lD of the “healthcare” system which owns that body.
You just gave me the plot of my next dystopian sci-fi novel: Thanks!
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy — where everyone sported a tattooed bar-code ID –
beat you too it! Satire as prophecy…
But in my version it’s all the Democrat’s fault. I figure I could get the Koch brothers to buy 10,000 copies or so, just on principle (if you can’t beat ’em, sell to ’em).
Careful, China Mielville is probably way ahead of you. He has sentient, demonic, tattoos which animate dead zombie bodies for locomotion. If the tat happens to be on the back, the body walks backwards so the tat can see where it’s going!
There are pros in this field.
But I think soon hospitals will take organs for payment. That’s not fantasy.
Look up “fire insurance marks”. Fire fighting used to be market based before municipal departments were created. When you took out a policy, that company would give you the right to display an emblem on the side of the house so that a responding fire crew would know who to bill when they showed up. If not mark was seen, the fire fighters would go home as there was no money in it for them.
This gives new meaning to the phrase “rack rate.”
Well… maybe a lawsuit against her insurer for bad faith, assuming there is a cause of action for bad faith insurance practices in Wisconsin. The insurer should, at least, be willing to pay the out of network hospital whatever they would have had to pay the in network hospital. In California that cause of action could give rise to punitive damages.
They did. And the hospital itself forgave 90% of its own charges. That still left the hospital’s remaining fees and all the other miscellaneous specialists who glomped on the gravy train to give her care while she was hospitalized in a coma… which left a bill of about $50,000. Great thing to wake up to. Aren’t you glad you’re alive?
> Rothbauer and her fiancé have postponed their wedding and are seriously considering filing for bankruptcy.
‘Glad’ is a relative term.
> “I think the best outcome is the person walked away from the emergency room.”
Really because I can think of a lot better outcomes.
Have this woman email me!
I’ve BTDT with this hospital/insurance issue. There is a federal law that requires insurers to pay for all costs of a medical emergency (In or out of network). This woman was clearly in a “critical care” state. In fact, she was likely in the intensive care unit (ICU). That’s why the hospital bill is so high (average ICU rates are $20,000 per day). No kidding!
What is surpising about the story is that this sort of medical condition usually gets you emergency open-heart surgery. No mention of that. The 10 day medically induced coma seems about 3 days beyond the norm.
Her name is in the article – certainly it’s in the article about her on Salon. Also a picture; she’s young and attractive, an advantage with a jury, I would think.
I suggest that you contact her with an offer of your services. I’d guess she’s already got a good lawyer, but it can’t hurt.
Do you know the statute citation? I have the same issue but on a much smaller scale.
Yes, citation please.
My understanding of some of the code of the ACA illuminated catastrophic care coverage because it didn’t include all of the minimums. Up until the ACA, the “fully covered” had two policy, one for managed care and one for catastrophic converge. As these are very different products, they demand different rate structures. The ACA’s one size fits all approach never took into account that consumers might have multiple policy to cover difference scenarios.
Or perhaps I am completely wrong about this.
Re the re-enrolment
File this away in the not-a-bug-but-a-feature category. I remember this being pointed out when the ACA was being “debated”.
The idea was to compel consumers to “shop around” for better rates rather than to get comfortable with the subsidies, and to remove the subsidies from the consumer’s calculus all together. That way the consumer would be searching for the best insurance policy – and not for the largest subsidy.
The problem is that this ties the subsidies to what the markets are doing – and not the needs of the consumer in order to afford the policy. It was predicted that subsidies would fall faster than premiums and once again price consumers out of the market. And this is if the ACA actually works in reducing insurance premiums, which I highly doubt it will be able to so.
Predictably, they trotted out the “shop around” excuse. This assumes that better deals are out there. If they are, it may take a super computer a few days of number crunching to find it. Yay, a single mom trying to fill this thing out over her lunch break can totally do that.
re: Musk interview:
In the entire article about this ridiculous plan to put a million humans on Mars is nary an iota of discussion about the thermodynamic realities of our civilization.
This subject is, shall we say, fraught with contradictions. At bottom, it shows that the Mars Enthusiasts consider themselves a ‘more deserving’ sub species of the human race. (In effect, let the rest of the world go to H— as long as we have our lifeboat in space. Because we’re better. Etc.)
Douglas Adams captured the Musk ethos well (from Wiki):
The Golgafrinchans are a race from the planet Golgafrincham that appears in Fit the Sixth of the radio series, episode 6 of the TV series and the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
In their ancient history, they tricked the most useless third (the middlemen) of their population to get on a spaceship and leave the planet, by spreading rumours of the horrific fates their planet was doomed to soon undergo, such as being eaten by a gigantic mutant star goat, or collapsing into the sun. The plan was to get them to crash on a “harmless” planet, thus losing any capacity for space travel; they would then be out of everyone’s hair.
Soon after they managed to get rid of these people – including all the telephone sanitizers – the entire remaining population was wiped out by a plague contracted from a dirty telephone.
I believe Musk is not alone.
According to Stephen Hawking, in the film ‘Surviving Progress,’ we humans deserve another chance somewhere in space.
It makes one wonder if a person is good in one area (physics, for example), does it mean him/her is also good in other areas.
Yesterday, Einstein was quoted to say we can not simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. How does one square that with the Einstein-Szilard letter that prompted FDR to initiate our own nuclear program? Was that solely preparing for war?
Einstein was a member many pacifist groups and gave a famous speech in 1930 where he said that, “..even if only two percent announced their refusal to fight, governments would be powerless.”
He had to be persuaded to sign the letter to FDR. Accounts suggest that he was given evidence of Nazi Germanys probable ability to produce a Cosmic Bomb. It appears to have been a case of him being given a “lesser of two evils” choice.
As for ‘goodness’, it’s a case of the generally unappreciated difference between intellectual ability and emotional maturity. One does not imply the other.
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? May, 1949
It is a shame that more of today’s scientists and technocrats don’t share Einstein’s humility.
That’s really nice.
Albert, it seems, was just like the rest of us…some good, some bad (or maybe just people mis-quoting him about insanity being repeating the same expecting different results…that’s sane if you are rolling dice or drawing play-cards), i.e. fallible just like all of us.
In that sense, we are all leaders…self-help…heal thyself…from within…empower yourself (don’t let anyone steal your money that has just been created, belonging to all of the People to use as they see fit).
Don’t assume experts know more about the society’s organization…challenge them, including Albert, Stephen, economists, and others.
I’m reading This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, which slashes Musk’s arguments to pieces. Just the idea of needing another Earth because we might successfully screw up this one is objectionable. Then the interview devolves into unattainable science fiction mixed with capitalist delusion. A million people? Didn’t anyone notice the huge payloads mentioned?
At some point in its development, science got mixed up with Ponzi-schemers. A most unfortunate occurrence.
Now, science is used mostly to solve problems created by earlier scientists. And dazzling future worlds are dangled to distract the victims from examining the dismal consequences brought about by past ad present applications of science. If nothing else, these scientist-priests look very persuasive. Perhaps it’s all due to the propaganda ministry/MSM that can make heroes out of them, as well as out of soldiers and spooks.
That’s how this Luddite sees it.
Musk never asks whether humans deserve to leave the planet because it is self-evident to him they do not. The only people Musk will allow to leave are money-grubbing strivers like himself who can afford his $500,000 fee. I actually encourage this effort because it will rid the planet of thousands of libertarian blowhards at no expense to ourselves. The half-baked science will ensure they all die of oxygen deprivation within months, a ghastly (but instructive) monument to humanity’s stupid greed.
The worse the planet gets in terms of environmental destruction the more of these utopian billionaire fantasies we are likely to see.
This goes to show how dumb billionaires really are. If they had bothered to read some real sci-fi, say
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, they would know that they would die of gamma radiation exposure long before they got to Mars. In order to keep his novel from ending on page 40, Kim designed his spaceship with an huge aquarium on board which was the only way to shield the occupants from gamma radiation. I don’t think Kim was a real spaceship designer, however, and moving a sizable population may entail taking along one of the Great Lakes in the “real world” scenario.
‘Course you’ll need the water after getting to Mars. Besides, using some energy, water can be made into oxygen!
We’ve had the Musk interview before I think (possibly in Water Cooler). My initial reaction is that perhaps we should demonstrate our ability to create a self-sustaining civilization that doesn’t progressively degrade its own environment here on Earth, before we attempt the (vastly more challenging) task of doing the same thing on a different planet.
Getting rid of neoliberalism and the fetishization of growth would be a good start, and we seem to be further away from that than ever.
I recommend the Michael Lewis article on inequality and the rich. I know his work from his days at TNR when it was something other than the propaganda rag it is today. I have many bones of contention with his analysis of power–but his precis on the research concerning money and happiness is well-written and enlightening. I’ve followed most of this research for some time–but he figures we’ll change now that the idea that money does not buy you happiness is expanding–clearly science proves it! Well, the problem with that idea is that he doesn’t understand that “science” as he knows it is no longer a force in public life. People will believe whatever if it suits them science has dramatically lessened in authority–look at how people treat climate change! They believe that scientists are all running a scam to get more research money rather than finding a cushy job with Exxon!
Anyway, the money does buy happiness idea is repeated over and over and over again 24/7 by our entertainment, propaganda and advertising industries who rely on that principle for their own existence and won’t give it up without a fight! We depend on filling our emptiness with shopping and consumption of whatever helps us escape from the ugly reality of the face in the mirror.
Agreed. Our culture is sick and is infecting us.
(I would have posted my comment as a reply had I seen yours first.)
P.S., Isn’t this the reason people invent counter-cultures?
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive”. It’s just that the very rich do way more “traveling” than the rest of us.
Does writing more weakly evidenced articles bring Mr. Lewis more happiness?
We will never be satisfied by things that don’t satisfy.
Notice how many things surround us that don’t satisfy. Soda drinks are diuretics and don’t slake thirst. Snacks are carby nothings that don’t satisfy hunger. Games and apps are skinner grind-boxes that generate automatic, unthinking behavior.
The only benefit is to the sellers of these things – people will consume them constantly, because there’s nothing in our brains that can say “that’s enough”.
“The things that satisfy only come real slow” — Rolling Stones, “One More Try”
Extreme wealth is bad for everyone. This post kept me interested because of the generational evolution (or lack) of ideas. Jack Kenney is someone I never heard of when I was 20. But Ram Das was. I saw him in his long white robes and his divine aura and thought he might be from a place that never had to scrape and steal for food. And indeed he was. And then the years passed. Scraping and scrounging for a living. Then one day I was old. I turned on the TV set and watched Bode Miller fly down a mountain of snow without even touching it except to carve a live-saving turn. The last time I saw Bode he was beyond his prime and when he crossed the finish line he was clearly finished. And still just the fact that he could spend 10 years of his life flying down a mountain at almost 100 mph seemed like a very interesting achievement. I always knew he was some kind of Zen Master. But my guess is he now must scrape and scrounge and might wish he could still fly. Because Fascist Government.
Re: Senate Keystone Vote. It’s not clear what the Senate’s hurry is. Under this logic, should they outlaw abortion and abolish the EPA on their way out too?
re Dead Dolphin. Had to drill down to a second article to find out how the poor thing got into that alley. Dumped by mobsters? Abandoned bathtub pet? Talk about burying the lede. It’s a weekend at Bernie’s. [Bonus question; what was the other earlier movie where they drive around with a dead body in the car? I think it was Burt from Soap]
re Clickbait from dolphin story: Republicans Finally Admit Why They Really Hate Obamacare
PS. Evangelicals oppose what they’re told to oppose. That’s the point.
PPS. The cyber bullying question raises an interesting intersection of privacy, free speech, hate speech, and illegal threats. Wonder how to sort that out.
Re: Evangelicals–their theology and “Faith” make no sense at all. It’s a grab-bag of cultural prejudices and out-of-context readings of Scripture. There is very little reporting on the corruption of churches–the press doesn’t want to touch it.
If we could only get Johnny Depp to play Billy Graham as Ed Wood!
Re: Keystone
From the article it looks like the approval is to give Mary Landrieu a talking point in her petro-state runoff next month.
Memo to Demos: We’re no dumb-O’s, and neither are the people of Louisiana despite what you think of them.
Another fistful of sand in the base’s faces.
Not sure if the Democrats could offend and insult more people if they tried.
As usual with Michael Lewis, his piece is hit and miss. He misses when he discounts the political power of the Rich. At the moment there is scant “competition of ideas” among the American elites. Neoliberalism is gospel. Moreover, that the Rich wholly control the American political system has been documented with social science studies. The fact that certain individual rich people don’t win office or lose ballot initiatives is essentially irrelevant as it is the aggregation that counts. This is, after all, a class analysis.
Lewis, however, is dead right about the emptiness of wealth (as was Yves 3 years before). I absolutely agree that a social re-culturalization is needed: Rich people need to be corrected, as it were, and that will happen we non-rich reform our views about the desirability and propriety of obscene wealth.
One point: Lewis mentions the “chemical changes” in rich people’s brains that make them increasingly selfish. I suspect that at least some of that is a reflection of hoarding, which is just an example of compulsive, addictive behaviors generally. IOW: these people become money-addicts, with all the attendant features of addiction.
Some people wake up everyday and want to make more money. It’s literally an insatiable desire (not same as poor person struggling endlessly).
Other people have other priorities that compete.
My initially promising career sorta stalled out when I realized I just couldn’t keep up that drive. I couldn’t force myself to wake up every day and rely on a desire for money to be the only reason to keep doing an otherwise uninspiring job, and t be surrounded by people who were like that.
Later, I did another lap with the golden handcuff in a job that was soul-sucking but fairly well paying. I had young kids, new mortgage etc. Trying to keep that up almost killed me.
Being a money-addict takes a serious toll. All addictions have that characteristic. They cloud your mind and they rot your soul and, in the end, they destroy your humanity. Consider yourself fortunate to escape that miserable fate.
Does neo-liberalism mean modern hippies? I thought they were called conservatives because conservatives wish to conserve the environment and the status quo by remedying the contradictions (of capitalism) with social policies like unemployment benefits, social security, and food stamps etc.
“I absolutely agree that a social reculturalization is needed.”
“The chemical changes in rich people’s brains…”
Trying to understand culture raises a multitude of difficult issues. For example:
What is culture? (does it have to do primarily with the transmission of human ways of life?)
Is there is distinction between our mind and our brain?
Is the mind produced in the brain by culture?
Are our individual minds culture in the brain?
Does the dual mind/body view of reality which attributes causal primacy to the material (the central nervous system) over the “spiritual” (consciousness, mind, culture) need to be rethought?
If we reverse traditional causation is it rational to accept the hypothesis that culture can and does cause biological (material) diseases?
Regarding Lewis,
Yup, his usual weird apologetics and omissions surrounding the ultra-rich wrapped inside a good story are frustrating. He seems to claim the ultra-rich are completely unable to influence politics because of a few high-profile single political race losses. The Koch-brothers weren’t able to stop Obama? So what? Barack Obama more or less pursues their agenda anyway and the Koch brothers have tilted the entire political landscape of the country to the far right with victory after victory in both state and federal elections with massive political spending coming through their various libertarian and tea-party front groups. To pretend the most politically influential billionaires in the country are failures just because a center-right Democrat like Obama occasionally makes it to the White House? Huh? What is Lewis’s program?
Exactly what caught my eye. Michael Lewis is an old-school liberal so he views power through idealistic glasses–he cannot believe that the elites would stoop as low as they, in fact, do stoop and have been stooping for quite a while. This forced naivite is so sadly typical of the self-deception of the American intellectual class.
Made the mistake of listening to NPR last night and lo and behold our new and improved (??) Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was being interviewed. I swear he said “Structural Reforms” like 5 times. Well I quickly turned the radio off and continued my drive home in sullen silence.
Snort!!
I often feel that way after watching Charlie Rose…
I hear that Charlie Rose is nearly as intelligent as Evan Bayh….
And as intellectually honest as our present POTUS.
That guy is so frustrating I cant watch a full program even if it is a subject/person I have an interest in hearing.
“tonight I’ll be speaking with Hillary Clinton, who, full disclosure, is a good friend of this show” uuugh enamel etching on the back of my teeth.
The Mustache of Understanding is such a ‘good friend of the show’ that he practically has a weekly time slot to reveal his latest illuminosities and profundulations…
From the William Binney interview linked above:
This interview is very important because it confirms two aspects of the many-headed Hydra of the surveillance state: 1) It is a self-licking ice-cream cone with every incentive to continue exponential growth by inflating false “threats” all the time. And 2) The principal reason the kleptocrats like the surveillance state is because it allows them extra-constitutional means for removing any pesky persons of conscience who might hinder their wealth extraction schemes.
We will not have any chance to begin solving any of the myriad problems the world faces without first confronting the unaccountable unlimited power of the secret police. This is not a technical problem. We cannot fix this with fancy privacy protection gadgets– developed by computer whiz kids eager to take our money in exchange for providing the illusion of privacy.
The only solution is to restore popular sovereignty and the rule of democratically adopted laws as the true sources of legitimacy here in the U.S. This will require the courage to break out of merely spectating the absurdist kayfabe that passes for politics today. We need to continue petitioning the current government for a redress of our grievances, vowing to expose its illegitimacy and build an alternative to its power if it continues to ignore us, and suppress our views.
It seems as if our neighbors to the South are starting to unite in their recognition that the emperor has no clothes:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/crisis-mexico-protests-missing-forty-three?intcid=mod-most-popular
Telling the truth is the most effective way to subvert the dominant paradigm!
Re.The surveillance state(s); continuing on this topic and the increased openess and public discussion .The article describes best this forthcoming event .
quote-
read more,
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/symposium-mass-surveillance-when-reality-exceeds-the-fiction
Fear-mongering…
Spent close to a trillion dollars since 9/11…
The whole point is to get more money and build a bigger empire…
One can not live in the same house or the same tent with Big, Rich Brother and say the government can spend as much as it wants because it’s not a household.
Totalitarian regimes can happen…anywhere in the world. Is it American Exceptionalism that we believe it cannot happen here, that we pre-emptively grant it unlimited power (because money is power – and they ‘need more money to build a bigger empire’)? Or perhaps it’s Imperialism that motivates such thinking (building a bigger empire).
Or we can say, we have enough money already. We need to spend it wisely.
“Totalitarian regimes can happen…anywhere in the world.” Yes, indeed, and one is emerging here in the U.S. right before our eyes. Sen. Frank Church was alarmed by what he saw in the far more modest surveillance state of four decades ago:
I think that Ferguson will be a case study in American Totalitarianism. Our country is turning against its own people and the plutocratic owned media brainwashing/propaganda outlets are fanning the flames of repression. This is how Hitler controlled Germany.
Are drones more moral than gas chambers?
Now we will see why much of the rest of the world hates us for our “freedom” (aka economic slavery).
The porpoise was a satyr.
Back in the old days, that was a respectable mythological identity. These days, we have 12-step programs for them. Not sure which is better … leaning toward the first. That’s not a bad way to shuffle off this mortal coil.
since he found and thereafter lost himself in his special porpoise, wasn’t he more like narcissus than a satyr?
More of an all porpoise cetacean. A hemi priapid in points of fact. Almost a Manichaean Omphalos.
insofar as he strove, for all intents and porpoises, to push Cyreniacism beyond a normative event horizon, did he not vaporize all notions of duality out his blowhole?
Ah, now I see. He was a Sceptic with feelings! (I would never accuse him of harbouring immoral porpoises.)
a question not so much of morality, but of pragmatism, as the respective pursuits of pleasure and longevity seem at least in this circumstance to have been at cross-porpoises
China’s Climate Change Plan Raises Questions New York Times
Mazzucato has some perspective on this. China rapidly surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest wind energy market in 2010. The China Development Bank helped with funding and policies were put in place to foster domestic demand.
Similarly they were able to nurture the innovative technology of Suntech much better than we were able to do with Solyndra. ‘Suntech’s fate is not to be decided by it’s investors however – who naturally prefer to have funds returned over all other considerations, Solyndra’s failure highlights the ‘parasitic’ innovation system that the U S has created for itself – where financial interests are always and everywhere the judge, jury and executioner of all innovative dilemmas.’
Anyone notice the current google logo on their search page — http://www.google.com/ — ?
It’s a graphic of a satellite looking like it’s hoovering up what you type in the search box. Yes, I know it’s commemorating a comet probe landing, but still . . . . . .
Use Duck Duck Go and you won’t have to look at any google logo
I tried using DuckDuckGo and the results were nonsensical – unrelated to my search. So I deleted it from my toolbar.
And suggestions on using it successfully?
I would suggest you go to the link below and read about their search results help
https://duck.co/help/results
I still use google for map searches but that is all…..YMMV
Robot security guards.
Coming soon: Home-made robots…some assembly required.
You can then get your own home made robot to go (in your place, M-F), punch in and spend 8 meaningless hours at your job guarantee site.
Unfortunately, we are not completely there yes – as of today, robots are tools of the bourgeois to further repress the working class.
But one day in the future, there will be robot anarchists to keep those robot security guards busy. The Age of Dueling Robots…whichever side controls the energy needed for those robots will likely emerge victorious.
Excellent non-hagiographic review by Rick Perlstein of the new Al From book. From seems to be a real legend in his own mind, not to mention totally out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Nice graf by Rick Perlstein in The Nation article:
“Once in office, though, Clinton largely let economic populism fall by the wayside. From doesn’t acknowledge one of the main reasons why: Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan told the new president that if he kept his populist promises, interest rates would rise and he would lose the confidence of investors. (“You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” was Clinton’s famously incredulous response.) There is no acknowledgment, either, that the Clinton era’s prosperity was owed to an unrepeatable asset bubble in the tech industry, or of the roles played by a new class of huckster fundraisers—Tony Coelho, Terry McAuliffe, Rahm Emanuel—who made the Democratic Party safe for billionaires. No, for From it’s all “ideas”—his ideas.”
It may well have been posted earlier, but there are two articles by the Archdruid dealing with the collapse of economies caused by intermediation in the markets with an excellent historical perspective. Definitely worth reading.
This week:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/11/dark-age-america-hoard-of-nibelungs.html
Last week:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/11/dark-age-america-end-of-market-economy.html
Having GlobalFoundries now making the CPUs for the legacy IBM mainframes (zEnterprise series) could get real interesting; especially since the mainframes are rigged with capacity-on-demand functionality to bring additional MIPS online via a phone call.
Wage theft in Silicon Valley
Re: NY Times report on Russian tank column
For Russian tanks to move east toward Donetsk they would have to pass through territory held by the Ukrainian army, not very likely. Oddly enough, this report coincides with the Ukrainian army reinforcing itself with tanks that have been refurbished in Kharkov and transported east toward Donetsk. Does General Breedlove not know how to read a map or interpret satellite imagery, or is he just lying?
The US has and continues to lie about virtually everything related to Ukraine. Conflict and the countless deaths following are blood on our nation’s hands. That’s the way it works in the Empire.
Sometimes even the right hospital is the wrong choice for aca
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100623/0146249930/dailydirt-healthcare-nightmares.shtml
STILL unable to get Financial Times content. By linking to paid subscription-only content, Nekkid Capitalism is becoming exclusive. Remedy this, or I will leave you.
Did you misspell your name? Is it boorish?
You are truly grotesque. Those jokes were de rigeur when I was in kindergarten. My name is a noble one. You are ig-noble. Your comment is demeritorious to you.
Siwence! I will not have my impewious demands widiculed by the common bwoggewy!
Do you mean “noble” like the von Buchwaldts– or noble, as in of good and admirable reputation?
Sounds like ol’ E.B. went to one heck of a posh kindergarten!
Kindergartener 1: “I say Theolinda, I just chuffed that Borling chap by giving him the humorous misnomer “Boorish!” Don’t you appreciate my clever intuition of when to execute a de rigeur witticism?”
Kindergartener 2: “Jolly good joshing there, Eustace, you old cad!! But seriously, perhaps your jest is an unforgivable faux pas, after all, aren’t the Borlings an old “noble” family?
Kindergartener 3: “Don’t you wish sometimes, my dear Theolinda, that we could just cut loose and say any old thing that popped into our childish little heads like those prole preschoolers on the other side of the tracks?”
Kindergartener 4: “That’s enough mindless banter, you oafs! Or have you forgotten the book report we have to finish by three on Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful ?
An interesting inversion of roles there. Pray tell, who is the host, and whom the guest?
Lambert says theres a way to get around the block, but I can never remember what it is.
They have been linking to that site for years now.
Google the headline. That should get you in. If that doesn’t work, clear cache and cookies.
If people don’t want to do that, they can skip those links and read other ones, or find a more congenial site. It’s a big Internet.
I believe you just enter the full article title in a search engine, et voila. I may be wrong. edit: I just tried it and it works.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out…….oh wait!
‘Remedy this, or I will leave you.”
LOL that!
Maybe buy a subscription to FT if there is a burning need to read it?
Noble in-breeding has its downside. hahahaha
I apologize. I did not realize this was a website for children or people who can’t spell r-e-s-p-o-n-s-b-i-l-i-t-y or hold their own in relationships that aren’t abusive. Goodbye and good luck.
Wow dude, this is a world class childish hissy fit. And why? Because you can’t follow really simple instructions for the paywall workaround.
Good night Edward
I cant believe it! You guys just cost NC an invaluable reader. What so great about wisecracking all the time? Oh, why cant we all just be civil and courteous to each other?
Holier than thou, followed by demands – ultimatums and total disrespect for the hostess.
Does the spirit of the 7 samurai live at NC… you bet cha’…
Skippy… the rules are stated… bend they will… but broken not…
Hah, the Seven Samurai is one of my favorite movies! Although the opening scene of Yojimbo is one of the very best ever made.
Yojimbo… yes… set in the mid 1800s, a middle class has brought to end, the power, of a Dynasty.
Some are still confused.
I guess it all depends on what you call civil and courteous.
You can register on that site for something like 10 free articles a week.
The photograph in the Al Jazeera article on Ukraine / Russia shows several military vehicles. The caption “Russia has consistently denied it has any military presence in Ukraine [Reuters]” seems to imply the vehicles in question are Russian, whereas in fact they are Ukrainian. Ukrainian vehicles are identified by either two parallel white stripes or by white circles. This is to ensure they do not get shot at by their own side.
Lambert — On the Intercept front page, did you notice the story that John Cook is leaving The Intercept at the end of the year to return to….Gawker?!
I wrote my post around 10PM last night. Cook left the Intercept this morning. Coincidence? You be the judge!
LOL!!!! You got some powerful mojo there Lambert.
Maybe we can start referring to it as the Intercept Gawker
This site seems to have aligned itself reflexively with Mark Ames in its hatred of The Intercept and all things Greenwald. It’s a baffling and self-diminishing prejudice.
Untrue. We regularly link to articles from the Intercept under Big Brother is Watching You Watch.
You seem to notice only the ones where we criticize the Intercept. That’s YOUR bias. And it reflects a general cognitive bias: halo effect, that things are either all good or all bad. We are big on getting to get people past that.
And your attack is basically an ad hominem. Is there anything wrong or inaccurate with what Lambert wrote? You seem to have no objection to the substance.
In case you managed to miss it, we do that with lots of publications, and even authors. We praise Gillian Tett of the Financial Times on her good days and shoot at her on her bad ones.
Our big beef with The Intercept is they look to be sitting on the Snowden documents. When Greenwald was with the Guardian, he was cranking out 1-3 articles a week that came directly out of the Snowden archives. They were having SERIOUS policy impact here and overseas.
Then Greenwald and Poitras went over to Omidyar. Even knocking out the period of months when The Intercept was starting up, we’ve seen pretty much nothing from the Snowden material since then.
Are we to believe that Greenwald managed to find everything that was really hot out of the material, and go over to Omidyar just as the documents were tapped out? His claim is they’ve hardly begun to go through them. If so, why haven’t we seen more of them?
If anything, the pace should have picked up thanks to Omidyar’s resources. They could use the software that law firms use in discovery to process hundreds of thousands of documents. Or they could have hired 50 interns. But it’s slowed down to nothing.
In addition, there is no one with serious tech chops on The Intercept reporting team. There is no doubt stuff in there whose significance would be lost or not fully understood by a generalist reporter but would by someone with real network expertise.
Finally, Mark Ames is far from the only critic. Cryptome has been demanding the release of the archives too, as have former NSA whistleblowers like Bill Blunden.
It is actually precisely because of that ordinary measure that these threads stand out so jarringly. I’m a fairly careful reader of your site, respectful in past commentary, and I read widely across a variety of sources. If you want to make your links database available to me Intercept go live forward in some manipulable format so that I can prove my case, I’m happy to do that work. I’m also too familiar with creators’ tendency to punch back at any criticism (always a failure of the consumer to see), and old enough to know that some of the knowledge garnered from long experience so that it lives in my bones is actually worth something. Respectfully, this counter is a little fact free as well (maybe your bias is to think you do something routinely that is not evident to others).
” It’s a baffling and self-diminishing prejudice.”
WTF does that even mean?
The prejudice (facts not in evidence) is “self-diminishing”, and yet, at the same time, baffling? To whom? If you’ve made the judgement that its a “self-diminishing prejudice” why is it then baffling?
Was it a pre or post baffle? You apparently knew about the prejudice, and are you still baffled? Would it be better if it were a self-inflating prejudice? Would it still baffle?
What’s your prejudice against baffle anyway? Is it self-diminishing? Baffling?
Or, do you write bullshit for a living?
Since I wrote it, it’s clearly I who find it baffling (my alleged bias aside). Cluttering a comments section with phrases like “I find it” or “I think” seems wholly unnecessary. If I wish to make a representation on behalf of others, I’ll make that clear. The rest of your post is simply foolish.