Archive | February, 2012

New Life, From an Arctic Flower That Died 32,000 Years Ago – NYTimes.com

20 Feb

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue.

via New Life, From an Arctic Flower That Died 32,000 Years Ago – NYTimes.com.

Google tracks you. We don’t. An illustrated guide.

20 Feb

Google tracks you. We don’t. An illustrated guide..

A simple illustrated article about how your online search behavior helps advertisers target you with ads.

 

Iran Raid Seen as Complex Task for Israeli Military – NYTimes.com

20 Feb

Well, yeah, it’s a complex task of Israeli military, and for American military too. It looks like another invitation to an endless swamp if senseless destruction. And who knows what signals this article is meant to send to whom.

Earlier this month, a Bipartisan Policy Center report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obama administration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well as three advanced refueling planes.

The two said that they were not advocating an Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improve Israel’s credibility as it threatens a strike.

via Iran Raid Seen as Complex Task for Israeli Military – NYTimes.com.

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America’s last hope: A strong labor movement – The 99 Percent Plan – Salon.com

20 Feb

The labor movement is the critical anchor and enabler of democracy grounded on a notion of freedom. Most people have an intuitive understanding of what democracy means: rule by the people (as opposed to rule by the few or an elite). Yet, as Corey Robin so eloquently points out in his book on fear, Americans give up their individual freedom and democratic voice every single day they walk into work. The workplace is an authoritarian dictatorship, and we accept this as legitimate.

Now is the time to challenge that feudal relationship. We need to call into question the assumption that Americans believe democracy stops at the workplace door. If we would not stand for a despot to rule over us with impunity, why do we let the boss do so every day of the workweek? Any progressive advance needs a strong labor movement to achieve a fully free and democratic workplace and society. This vision of freedom and democracy manifests in two domains: the workplace and the southern region of the country.

via America’s last hope: A strong labor movement – The 99 Percent Plan – Salon.com.

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Robert Scheer: Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us

18 Feb

Forty years ago Nixon cut a deal with China:

At the heart of the deal was a rejection of the basic moral claim of both egalitarian socialism and free market capitalism, the rival ideologies of the Cold War, to empower the individual as the center of decision-making. Instead, the fate of the citizen would come to be determined by an alliance between huge multinational corporations and government elites with scant reference to the needs of ordinary working folk.

It was understood by both parties to this grand concord that monopoly capitalism could be constructed in China to be consistent with the continuance in power of a Communist hierarchy, just as in the West capitalism was consistent with the enrichment of an ostensibly democratic ruling class. Sharp income inequality, the bane of genuine reform movements bearing the names populist, socialist and democratic, came to be the defining mark of the new international order.

via Robert Scheer: Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us.

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Drones With an Eye on the Public Cleared to Fly – NYTimes.com

18 Feb

A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information.

There are legitimate and important uses for domestic drones (this article lists some, such as looking for irrigation leaks in large fields) there are also real privacy issues, especially given a government that’s paranoid about terrorists.

via Drones With an Eye on the Public Cleared to Fly – NYTimes.com.

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The Dodd-Frank act: Too big not to fail | The Economist

17 Feb

When Dodd-Frank was passed, its supporters suggested that tying up its loose ends would take 12-18 months. Eighteen months on, those predictions look hopelessly naive. Politicians and officials responsible for Dodd-Frank are upbeat about their progress and the system’s prospects, at least when speaking publicly. But one banker immersed in the issue speaks for many when he predicts a decade of grind, with constant disputes in courts and legislatures, finally producing a regime riddled with exceptions and nuances that may, because of its complexity, exacerbate systemic risks rather than mitigate them.

For the same reasons that bankers are worried, lawyers are rubbing their hands. For many of America’s most prominent law firms helping companies to cope with Dodd-Frank is a vital service to clients, a lubricant for the American economy and a great new business.

Hmmm . . . Sorta makes you think that no one really knows what’s going on.

via The Dodd-Frank act: Too big not to fail | The Economist.

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Is China our future? – U.S. Economy – Salon.com

17 Feb

And GE Consumer & Industrial CEO James Campbell reiterated it when he recently told the New York Times that “making things in America is as viable as making things any place” because domestic labor costs are now “significantly less with the competitive wages” — read: far lower wages — now accepted by American workers.

Now that this consensus is finally out in the open, the real question for America is simple: Do we accept an economic competition that asks us to emulate China?

If our answer is yes, then we should support current state legislative proposals to reduce child labor protections; back federal legislation to eliminate all environmental, wage and workplace safety laws; and applaud corporations that crush unions and further reduce wages in America. We should also probably encourage our fellow countrymen to follow Apple Inc.’s Chinese workforce by simply accepting $17-a-day paychecks, 12-hour workdays and six-day workweeks.

via Is China our future? – U.S. Economy – Salon.com.

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Noam Chomsky: America’s Decline Is Real — and Increasingly Self-Inflicted | World | AlterNet

17 Feb

From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the U.S. economy, as planners, private and state, shifted it toward financialization and the offshoring of production, driven in part by the declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing. These decisions initiated a vicious cycle in which wealth became highly concentrated (dramatically so in the top 0.1% of the population), yielding concentration of political power, hence legislation to carry the cycle further: taxation and other fiscal policies, deregulation, changes in the rules of corporate governance allowing huge gains for executives, and so on.

Meanwhile, for the majority, real wages largely stagnated, and people were able to get by only by sharply increased workloads (far beyond Europe), unsustainable debt, and repeated bubbles since the Reagan years, creating paper wealth that inevitably disappeared when they burst (and the perpetrators were bailed out by the taxpayer). In parallel, the political system has been increasingly shredded as both parties are driven deeper into corporate pockets with the escalating cost of elections, the Republicans to the level of farce, the Democrats (now largely the former “moderate Republicans”) not far behind.

via Noam Chomsky: America’s Decline Is Real — and Increasingly Self-Inflicted | World | AlterNet.

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Have Bees Become Canaries In the Coal Mine? Why Massive Bee Dieoffs May Be a Warning About Our Own Health | | AlterNet

17 Feb

A few years ago bees starting dieing in large numbers, large enough that there are serious doubts about agriculture, as many food plants (and others) are pollinated by bees. We don’t know what’s going on, but we keep messing with the environment anyway.

Hackenberg isn’t doing as poorly as he was several years ago, but he attributes that to feeding the bees protein and supplements like brewers yeast and eggs and “kicking them in the pants with all kinds of nutrition because what they are gathering out there in nature is not what it’s supposed to be.” Hackenberg says, “We — America or the world — has messed up the bees’ diet. Not only the bees’ diet but everyone else’s diet. We just don’t have the nutrition that’s out there in the food and bees are telling us this because what they are bringing home — they can’t make it anymore. We’re supplementing them… and the bees are eating it… But go back 10-15 years ago, we didn’t need this stuff.”

A key question is whether the problem is simply a laundry list of unrelated factors (i.e. pesticides, disease, parasites, etc.) or whether those factors interact synergistically to kill bees.

Are we as vulnerable as our bees?

Beekeepers see their bees as the canaries in the coal mine. All living beings are exposed to the cocktail of pesticides and other chemicals in our midst, each in sub-lethal doses but all mixing together and interacting in our bodies. Many Americans, like bees used to pollinate monocultures, do not eat very healthy or nutritious diets, and our stressful and sedentary lifestyles put us at even more risk of succumbing to illness. Are the bees giving us a message we should be heeding?

via Have Bees Become Canaries In the Coal Mine? Why Massive Bee Dieoffs May Be a Warning About Our Own Health | | AlterNet.

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