Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Stephan: While we have been squandering our treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shifting our wealth from the middle to the top 2 per cent, the rest of the world has been building the infrastructure for the 21st century. This is what's coming.
Take a car, add an electric motor and some batteries. Build in a special gearbox which combines the output of the motor with that of an internal-combustion engine. Now all you need is a sophisticated electronic control system, and the result is a hybrid car like the Toyota Prius. It saves fuel, because when the driver brakes the car stores the lost kinetic energy in the battery, and when the driver hits the accelerator the electric motor kicks in, using that stored energy. But it took Toyota 13 years to convince customers that the Prius principle is the technology of the future.
Now, it seems, it has convinced builders of railway engines, too. Like carmakers, they are trying to combine internal-combustion engines and electric motors to save fuel. ‘Development is so advanced now, that we can use it, too,
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Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Stephan: This is a demonstration of the point I have been trying to make: Virtual Corporate States have no geographical or national allegiance. Expecting these corporations to feel an obligation to help America's working men and women, or to care about preserving the middle class, is a fool's worldview. Particularly because our workforce is increasingly unskilled and ignorant as a result of the politicization of education, and the campaign of Willful Ignorance actively pursued by the Religious Right. And just to be sure they won't be taken to task the VCSs are buying control of our government. Citizen's United opened the gates to speed this on. Get the law interpreted the way you want. Don't break the law; make the law.
Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn’t anyone hiring?
Actually, many American companies are – just maybe not in your town. They’re hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.
More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.
The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.
But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.
‘There’s a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus […]
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Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Stephan: You ask yourself: How can a man this grotesque get elected to Congress? Didn't somebody, somewhere along the line look at him and say, 'No, this won't do.' Or is Ralph Hall exactly what the people of his district actually want? Certainly Big Oil wants him. His quote is so very strange, and I was particularly struck by its latent sexuality. It is a quote worthy of Dr. Strangelove.
Incoming House Science Chair Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) plans to put big oil back in charge of his committee. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News this month, the climate zombie declared his intention to use the House Science and Technology Committee to investigate the ‘false statements’ of climate scientists, and ‘subpoena’ those who don’t appear willingly. Hall also explained why the BP disaster ‘didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for offshore drilling.’ He sees the BP explosion that killed 11 men, injured dozens, and led to the despoilment of the Gulf of Mexico as a ‘tremendous,’ ‘blossoming’ flower of energy:
‘As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out — all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day of every week — that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there — even on an explosion.’
Hall has received $14,500 in campaign contributions from BP. In an extensive report today, The New York Times describes the explosion differently:
The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern. Crew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some […]
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Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
Stephan: This is a scale of Willful Ignorance equal to the 'Moses Wrote the Constitution' conceit of the Fundamentalist religious right in the U.S. All too often formal religious organizations allow, cosset, and hide mediocrities such as the Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim, allowing them to remain in power.
A leading priest in Greece said that the world Jewry was to blame for the country’s financial problems, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Wednesday.
While being interviewed on a morning show of Greece’s largest television station, Mega TV, the Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim said that international Zionism tries to destroy family values by promoting one-parent families and same-sex marriages, and said there is a Zionist conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy.
The Metropolite also said that Hitler was just a tool used by Zionists in order to ensure the establishment of Israel.
When the Greek host asked him, ‘Why do you disagree with Hitler’s politics? If they are doing all this, wasn’t he right in burning them?,’ the Metropolite answered, ‘Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire.’
He went on to say that Jews such as ‘Rockefeller, Rotchschild and Soros control the international banking system that controls globalization.’
The JTA quoted the president of the Athens Jewish community, Benjamin Albala, as saying: ‘Watching and listening to the program, I felt disgust […]
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Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
IAN SAMPLE, Science Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
If your social life is a blur of friends and family, you might want to thank an almond-shaped clump of nerves at the base of your brain.
Researchers have found that part of the brain called the amygdala, a word derived from the Greek for almond, is larger in more sociable people than in those who lead less gregarious lives.
The finding, which held for men and women of all ages, is the first to show a link between the size of a specific brain region and the number and complexity of a person’s relationships.
The amygdala is small in comparison with many other brain regions but is thought to play a central role in coordinating our ability to size people up, remember names and faces, and handle a range of social acquaintances.
Researchers at Massachusetts general hospital in Boston used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measure the amygdalas of 58 people aged 19 to 83 and found the structure ranged in size from about 2.5 cubic millimetres to more than twice that.
As part of the study, each of the volunteers completed a questionnaire giving the number of people they met on a regular basis. They also commented on the complexity of each […]
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