A famous Chicago factory gets Occupied – Occupy Chicago – Salon.com

28 Feb

Working alongside the union, Occupy Chicago gets results, in one-day, in a labor action:

Whether because of the right’s overreach, the rise of Occupy, or both, struggles like the Serious occupation seem to resonate with the general public. Fried says the existence of a large, easily mobilized Occupy movement made their 2012 action different. . . .

It’s that kind of Occupier/union synergy that has caught on in a few locales and has been given partial credit for union victories in places like Washington state, as well as pushing the labor movement more generally to take risks leaders are usually uncomfortable with.

In the case of Serious, Fried says Occupy’s participation changed the tone of negotiations with the company’s management in California. “When they heard that Occupy Chicago had moved in outside their company, they were alarmed,” she says.

via A famous Chicago factory gets Occupied – Occupy Chicago – Salon.com.

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This American Warehouse Sounds as Bad as Foxconn – Technology – The Atlantic Wire

27 Feb

It’s useful to be reminded that American can treat labor as badly as China does. The Atlantic Monthly compares conditions in an American fulfillment warehouse (the kind of place the delivers goods you order online)  with conditions at Foxconn in China:

After hearing all about the horrible working conditions it takes to make our electronics at Foxconn, Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland shows us what it takes to ship those products. It sounds pretty awful. And not just by American standards, but, in comparison to what happens in China, a developing nation without our fancy American worker protections. McClelland spent a short time as a temp worker in a shipping warehouse called Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide, during the busy Christmas season. After days of back-ache inducing labor, she confirms a scary reality happening right here in the good ole U.S. of A.

via This American Warehouse Sounds as Bad as Foxconn – Technology – The Atlantic Wire.

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Activists challenge Japan’s “nuclear village” – Nuclear Power – Salon.com

27 Feb

The Japanese government has been incompetent in response to Fukushima and the Japanese people have begun organizing and protesting,

…several community-based initiatives, protests and rallies have sprung up in the past year. Volunteers have set up a popular website where users crowd-source local radiation levels. Mothers are testing school lunches for radiation. And perhaps in a nod to the Occupy movement, antinuclear activists have camped out in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo for more than four months and refused orders to leave. Citizens are also becoming increasingly vocal toward public officials.

“You see people yelling and interrupting these bureaucrats, which I’ve never seen at public meetings,” said Aldrich. “What I’ve been seeing from Fukushima and elsewhere is ‘rituals of dissent’ — local people not willing to be talked down to, not willing to be ignored.”

via Activists challenge Japan’s “nuclear village” – Nuclear Power – Salon.com.

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America’s endless apocalypse – History – Salon.com

27 Feb

For some, the lack of drama or disaster that accompanied Y2K justified placing most discussions of Armageddon on the yonder side of the grassy knoll, in tinfoil-hat territory. This line of thinking has proven disastrous to efforts to address numerous pressing issues — global warming being chief among them. Yet for many others, Y2K turned obsessing about the apocalypse into a national pastime; by 2001, the expectation that a major event could lead to the rapid unraveling of modern society had moved firmly from the realm of the conspiracy into the suburban American living room, where it has stayed ever since.

via America’s endless apocalypse – History – Salon.com.

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Amid Winter Blooms, Wondering What That Means for Spring – NYTimes.com

27 Feb

David W. Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University and an expert on climate change, said the temperatures this winter appeared to “represent an extreme,” even within the context of climate change. But, he said, the federal climate-zone guides from 1960, 1990 and this year reveal “an extremely fast pace” of change.

“This winter, when they do the final analysis, will be close to an all-time record breaker,” Dr. Wolfe said. “It’s a rare event. But I think it will become less rare.”

That is little solace to farmers, horticulturalists and home gardeners, who have worried about their charges this winter. Rod Dressel Sr., who owns a 300-acre apple orchard in the Hudson Valley, said the buds on his trees were starting to swell. If the trees flower too early, a freeze could kill the blossoms and, with them, the promise of apples this fall.

via Amid Winter Blooms, Wondering What That Means for Spring – NYTimes.com.

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Moscow Protests Continue Week Before Russians Vote on Putin – NYTimes.com

26 Feb

Are these Russinas setting  an example for Americans? Do they care about their government’s future more than we care about ours?

The Kremlin has been shaken by the recent emergence of the protest movement among middle-class Muscovites, who only a few months ago were considered to be largely politically indifferent. But tens of thousands have braved subzero temperatures, occasional arrests and the loss of weekend shopping time to attend boisterous protests against Mr. Putin’s rule.

On Sunday, amid slush-clogged streets and a steady snow, a carnival atmosphere prevailed, with vendors handing out free hot tea and pancakes to mark the last day before the beginning of Orthodox Lent.

via Moscow Protests Continue Week Before Russians Vote on Putin – NYTimes.com.

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Too Big To Fail: The First 5000 Years — Crooked Timber

26 Feb

This is from the ‘middle’ (I suspect) of an ongoing conversation which I don’t have time to (even attempt to) summarize. But the suggestion is that it’s Jubilee time for all. That is, if the Powers That Be had any sense, which they don’t:

Well, no firm in any business can make a big profit if there is too much supply. Globally there is US$40 to $60 trillion zapping around, fast as electrons, looking for big yields.

Now they are running out of bubbles to blow up, while their yields in the safe sovereign harbors are negative, or almost negative.

The correct solution is redistribution, jubilee. But in today’s terms: let’s have higher fiscal deficits in the short-term to boost infrastructure and human capital (a.k.a. “education”), to get the economy moving again. Then afterward, let’s have a series of slow and progressive tax hikes to pay down deficits until the safety-net programs are long-term robust—which is also, incidentally or double coincidentally, a fiscal policy to reduce inflation from the wage side, and thus also to keep interest rates in check. And perhaps include a charter for a small-business investment bank, perhaps the only one with government deposit insurance.

via Too Big To Fail: The First 5000 Years — Crooked Timber.

Ghastly Outdated Party – NYTimes.com

26 Feb

I like that, Ghastly Outdated Party, especially as “ghastly” has a whiff of zombie about it, which is what these folks are, the walking dead. They aren’t going to nominate Ron Paul, who’s still proudly among the living. Wish he’d ditch them and go out with the Reform Party.

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates — be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes — and try to destroy them with it.

via Ghastly Outdated Party – NYTimes.com.

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Bell Labs, Innovation for the Ages

26 Feb

Bell Labs, Innovation for the Ages

Jon Gertner has an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Bell Labs, the place that gave us the transistor and the Unix operating system, information theory and the background radiation of the universe, among many other ideas and devices. It was perhaps the greatest industrial lab America, or the world, has seen. Ever. So far.

in the search for innovative models to address seemingly intractable problems like climate change, we would do well to consider Bell Labs’ example — an effort that rivals the Apollo program and the Manhattan Project in size, scope and expense. Its mission, and its great triumph, was to connect all of us, and all of our new machines, together.

In his recent letter to potential shareholders of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg noted that one of his firm’s mottoes was “move fast and break things.” Bell Labs’ might just as well have been “move deliberately and build things.”

Perhaps the ecology of innovation has changed so much in the last couple of decades that Zuckerberg’s philosophy is the right one. Perhaps not. So far Facebook is only one idea.

And again: Continue reading →

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Work Less, Help Economy And Environment

26 Feb

Today, the typical employee in the Netherlands works fewer than 35 hours per week, often spread from Monday to Thursday.

In the U.S., a trial program begun in Utah in 2008 compressed the 40-hour work week for state employees to four days. Without the need to commute or turn on the lights, elevators and computers on Fridays, employees helped cut the state’s energy bills and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 10,000 metric tons — the equivalent of removing about 1,700 gasoline cars from U.S. roads. The workers also appeared to like the lifestyle change: 82 percent wanted to stay on the new schedule. Nevertheless, the program ended in September 2011.

Meanwhile, Germany and France are among nations following the Dutch lead.

via Work Less, Help Economy And Environment.

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