Sunday, August 21st, 2011
ARI BURACK, - San Francisco Examiner
Stephan: Like everything else in our infrastructure the justice system is crumbling.
It takes at least six months to get a divorce in San Francisco, and now unhappy couples can add at least a year to that, thanks to planned budget cuts to the Superior Court.
Katherine Feinstein, the Superior Court’s presiding judge, gave a dire outlook to reporters at a Monday news conference, reiterating the court’s plan to lay off 200 employees and close 25 courtrooms in late September.
The budget recently approved by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature sliced hundreds of millions of dollars from state courts. San Francisco is facing a $13.75 million deficit, or 15.6 percent of its operating budget.
‘We’re left with one painful, unprecedented option, which is a reduction in service that is so severe that it will, for all practical purposes, dismantle our court,
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Sunday, August 21st, 2011
GARDINER HARRIS, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is the latest on the growing drug shortage trend, just another example of the reality of the illness profit system. I don't expect anything to change, however, the Obama Administration in this regard is not much different than the last Bush Administration. Your health, for these corporate interests is, at best, a secondary consideration. I take a generic drug for blood pressure and the last time I went in to fill my prescription I had to wait two days, the pharmacy had run out, and couldn't get any more. They finally tracked some down but in a lower dosage, so now I have to take two pills instead of one. Best health care in the world.... I don't know how they say it with a straight face.
WASHINGTON — Federal officials and lawmakers, along with the drug industry and doctors’ groups, are rushing to find remedies for critical shortages of drugs to treat a number of life-threatening illnesses, including bacterial infection and several forms of cancer.
The proposed solutions, which include a national stockpile of cancer medicines and a nonprofit company that will import drugs and eventually make them, are still in the early or planning stages. But the sense of alarm is widespread.
‘These shortages are just killing us,
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Sunday, August 21st, 2011
MARIE DIAMOND, - Think Progress/truthout.org
Stephan: This is how political bribery happens. And it's all perfectly legal.
A top Bank of America executive was caught on camera yesterday whispering to Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), ‘Bank of America. We’ll help you out,
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Sunday, August 21st, 2011
YURY ZAITSEV, - Space Daily/Novosti
Stephan: It is very hard -- I think it arises from the religious belief that humans are a special order of creation with dominion over the earth -- to realize that we are really just high order mammals who live not on the earth but embedded within the earth's biosphere. I don't expect Creationists to believe this but, for those who care about facts, this is an important one.
MOSCOW — It has long been established that magnetic storms not only affect the performance of equipment, upset radio communications, blackout radars, and disrupt radio navigation systems but also endanger living organisms. They change the blood flow, especially in capillaries, affect blood pressure, and boost adrenalin.
The young and fit couldn’t care less, but those who are older, may develop problems. They have to consider the state of magnetosphere in their daily plans. Before, people were glued to weather forecasts. Now they are obsessed with the geomagnetic situation.
But what is a magnetic storm?
Shortly after the launch of the first satellites, mankind discovered the solar wind – a continuous flow of hot plasma from the solar corona. At a distance of 10-12 Earth’s radii in the direction of the Sun, where the energy of the solar wind equals that of the Earth’s magnetic field, solar wind particles change their direction, and flow around the Earth, forming a comet-like plasma vacuum — the magnetosphere. The size of its sophisticated but fairly stable structure depends on solar wind pressure, and hence, on solar activity.
The tail of the magnetosphere, which stretches for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in the direction opposite to the Sun, accumulates […]
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Saturday, August 20th, 2011
Stephan: I couldn't believe this report when I first saw it, but then realized it was an extraordinary datapoint on the trend of moving wealth to the top. You may be having trouble making your car payment but 12 -- yes 12 -- car companies now offer cars costing more than a MILLION DOLLARS. Some cost two million. It's not just the price tag that stopped me; it's that there are 12 companies making these things. And they wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't a market of buyers. Click through to see what you'll never own.
When vintage car collectors go to auctions, they’re used to seeing price tags exceeding $1 million. They may not necessarily buy any of the immaculately preserved specimens on display, but they’re happy to have to opportunity to note the technical specifications and observe the details that make each car a piece of living history.
Then there are cars with million-dollar price tags, where that number represents what you have to pay just to drive them off the lot. These are the luxury cars at the highest of price points, produced in limited edition runs of fewer than 100 and purchased only by the wealthiest clients.
These cars are not available to everybody, nor should they be. They’re not ideal for grocery shopping, picking up the kids from soccer practice or visits to the Taco Bell drive-thru. However, many of them have twin turbo engines that allow them to go faster than 200 miles per hour, so what they are ideal for is going from parked to speeding in less than five seconds.
What are some of the cars with prices exceeding $1 million?
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