Archive | December, 2011

Language Log » The assholocracy

14 Dec

A new word: “assholocracy.”

The whole Arab Spring has been a process of bringing down assholocracies. Italy suffered under one until recently. Russia and Syria are now protesting against their own crooked assholocracies, and the only reason North Korea and Zimbabwe don’t do the same is that they daren’t, they could be killed. We in the West are going to need a term for being ruled by assholocrats, because they continue to threaten to exercise power over huge parts of the earth’s population even if not (yet) over us.

via Language Log » The assholocracy.

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Taking Root in Unlikely Soil, Occupy Florida Gains Momentum | The Nation

14 Dec

The Sunshine State seems unlikely territory for the movement, but Occupy has taken root in cities and towns across Florida. Swaths of the state are deeply conservative—ostensibly more hospitable to the Tea Party than Occupy Wall Street—and the state is known for beaches and Disney World, not political action. But Occupy has resonated here, drawing hundreds of people to demonstrations even in the smallest towns. And this month, Florida will be home to the first-ever state Occupy convention—the “People’s Convention.”

via Taking Root in Unlikely Soil, Occupy Florida Gains Momentum | The Nation.

Whose Children have been left behind? by Diane Ravitch « Parents Across America

14 Dec

We know—or we should know—that poor and minority children should not have to depend on the good will and beneficence of the private sector to get a good education. The free market works very well in producing goods and services, but it works through competition. In competition, the weakest fall behind. The market does not produce equity. In the free market, there are a few winners and a lot of losers. Some corporate reformers today advocate that schools should be run like a stock portfolio: Keep the winners and sell the losers. Close schools where the students have low scores and open new ones. But this doesn’t help the students who are struggling. No student learns better because his school was closed; closing schools does not reduce the achievement gap. Poor kids get bounced from school to school. No one wants the ones with low scores because they threaten the reputation and survival of the school.

The goal of our education system should not be competition but equality of educational opportunity. There should not be a Race to the Top. What is the Top? Who will get there first? Will it be poor and minority students? Don’t count on it. The Top is already occupied by the children of the 1%.

via Whose Children have been left behind? by Diane Ravitch « Parents Across America.

Ron Paul Rising – NYTimes.com

14 Dec

In every post-Thanksgiving poll but one, Paul has been neck and neck for second place in Iowa. In most of them, he has lagged well behind the soaring speaker, coming in just below 20 percent while Gingrich hovers around 30. But a new Iowa survey, from Public Policy Polling, shows Gingrich leading Paul by just a single point, 22 percent to 21.

Moreover, the caucuses are not won by opinion polls alone. They’re won by the politician who can pack Iowa’s churches, libraries and community centers at 7 p.m. exactly on a frigid January Tuesday, and whose supporters won’t suddenly decide to back a different candidate during an hour’s worth of jawing, dealing and very public voting.

That’s how Howard Dean ended up losing Iowa by 19 points in 2004, even though last-minute polls showed him neck and neck with John Kerry and John Edwards….

Ron Paul isn’t going to take 37.6 percent of the caucus vote, as Kerry did in 2004. But he has a better organization in Iowa than Gingrich and inspires more enthusiasm than Romney, making it perfectly possible that he could eke out a narrow victory.

via Ron Paul Rising – NYTimes.com.

Intel’s woes expose a rickety new world order – U.S. Economy – Salon.com

13 Dec

Ever since an earthquake in Taiwan in 1999 disrupted Dell’s supply chain, it’s been clear that the relentless search for flexibility, cheap labor coasts, and just-in-time manufacturing has a significant downside. Knock one link out of the chain, and the whole mechanism comes to a complete hall. We witnessed this on a huge scale when the Fukushima earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster disrupted all kinds of supply chains and slowed global economic growth. Thailand is just the latest case study.

But there’s another story here about climate change. Thailand has long been prone to disastrous flooding….

But the worst flooding in decades happens to be exactly what scientists have predicted will happen in Thailand as a result of rising temperatures. In the future we can expect even greater climate-related disruptions. So what happens when you mix a global economy built on fragile globe-spanning supply and production chains with increasing incidences of extreme weather events? You get chaos.

via Intel’s woes expose a rickety new world order – U.S. Economy – Salon.com.

When every year is election year – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

12 Dec

The Presidential election season has become 4 years long. These numbers are insane! And the system is broken.

On money, the sky’s the limit. In 2000, the total federal election season cost $3 billion; in 2008, more than $5 billion, of which an estimated $2.4 billion went into the presidential campaign. With the Supreme Court having made it easier for outside money to pour in, thanks to its Citizens United decision, funding for campaign 2012 is expected to pass $6 billion and could even top $7 billion. The Obama campaign, which raised $760 million in 2008, is expected to pass the billion-dollar mark this time around (with money already pouring in from the financial and banking sector on which candidate Mitt Romney is also heavily reliant). …

It’s true that, on November 6, 2012, Americans will enter voting booths and choose a candidate for president, and that makes this an “election.” But thinking of it that way won’t get you far. It’s also true, that, on January 20, 2013, a newly elected president will step into the Oval Office. What any of this has to do with democracy, as opposed to spectacle, influence, corruption, the power of the incredibly wealthy to pay for and craft messages, and the power of media owners to enhance their profits is certainly an open question. Think, at least, how literally the old phrase “money talks” is being updated every time you hear the candidates, or see their ads, or get a robocall from one of them, or receive a geo-targeted mobile ad of theirs on your iPhone or Android.

via When every year is election year – 2012 Elections – Salon.com.

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An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports | Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports

12 Dec

There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.

We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.

Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.

You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.

Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.

via An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports | Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports.

Could the desert sun power the world? | Environment | The Guardian

12 Dec

In 1986… [Gerhard Knies, a German particle physicist] scribbled down some figures and arrived at the following remarkable conclusion: in just six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. If even a tiny fraction of this energy could be harnessed – an area of Saharan desert the size of Wales could, in theory, power the whole of Europe – Knies believed we could move beyond dirty and dangerous fuels for ever….

Last month, at its annual conference in Cairo, Dii [Desertec Industrial Initiative] confirmed to the world that the first phase of the Desertec plan is set to begin in Morocco next year with the construction of a 500MW solar farm near to the desert city of Ouarzazate. The 12sq km project would act as a “reference project” that, much like Egypt’s own project at Kuraymat, would help convince both investors and politicians that similar farms could be repeated across the Mena region in the coming years and decades.

“It’s all systems go in Morocco,” announced Paul van Son, Dii’s CEO, to the visiting delegates. Talks, he added, were – given their shared close proximity, along with Morocco, to western Europe’s grid – already under way with Tunisia and Algeria about joining the “first phase” of Desertec. Countries such as Egypt, Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia would be expected to join in the “scale-up” phase from 2020 onwards, once extra transmission cables were laid across the Mediterranean and via Turkey, with the whole venture becoming financially self-sustaining by 2035.

via Could the desert sun power the world? | Environment | The Guardian.

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Air Quality Difficult to Gauge in Dustier American West – NYTimes.com

11 Dec

The survey said that 13.6 percent of the adult residents in the deeply rural and mostly undeveloped region suffer from asthma, compared with about 7.5 percent nationally, according to federal figures.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said there was no clear explanation for the increase.

Scientists caution that links between asthma and dust are not certain. Other air problems in the West, like ground-level ozone in natural-gas drilling areas that has plagued some places in Wyoming and pollution from coal-fired power plants, complicate the air story as well. Asthma rates have also gone up in many other parts of the country.

But a study this year looking at dust generated by off-road vehicle use at the Nellis Dunes Recreation Area near Las Vegas found dust samples with naturally occurring arsenic and palygorskite, a mineral similar to asbestos, which could under certain circumstances pose potential health risks. The study, commissioned by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, said that four-wheelers and bikes stirred up as much of the mineral-laden dust as wind did.

via Air Quality Difficult to Gauge in Dustier American West – NYTimes.com.

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The paradox of a ‘responsible’ arms maker – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

11 Dec

…the US has not published a single document on its development and production of conventional armaments, despite having the highest level of government expenditure, the greatest volume and value of exports, and the largest number of private companies in the world. Instead, they have made some basic information about the scale and scope of the arms production available along with that of other major sectors in the Annual Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress.

via The paradox of a ‘responsible’ arms maker – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.

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