Thursday, February 21st, 2013
LYNN STUART PARRAMORE, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This report, grounded entirely in facts, is going to upset you. It is a saga of how a nation commits suicide, and if it doesn't leave you concerned, it might be wise to make sure you have a pulse.
How much will you need for medical expenses in retirement? What does it cost to keep 2.5 million Americans behind bars? Here are a few facts and figures that might surprise you.
1. Recovery for the rich, recession for the rest.
Economic recovery is in rather limited supply, it seems. Research by economist Emmanuel Saez shows that the top 1 percent has enjoyed income growth of over 11 percent [3] since the official end of the recession. The other 99 percent hasn’t fared so well, seeing a 0.4 percent decline in income.
The top 10 percent of earners hauled in 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917 – and that doesn’t even include money earned from investments. The wealthy have benefitted from favorable tax status and the rise in stock prices, while the rest have been hit with a continuing unemployment crisis that has kept wages down. Saez believes this trend will continue in 2013.
2. Half of us are poor or barely scraping by.
The latest Census Bureau data shows that one in two Americans currently falls into either the ‘low income
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Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Wynne Parry, Contributor - Live Science
Stephan: This is the latest in the Homo Superiorus Trend. I first wrote about it in 2006 and it has tracked much as I had projected. (Please check Homo Superiorus in the journal Explore: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2806%2900027-9/fulltext.) There is almost no public conversation about this trend, but it is going to have a significant impact.
NEW YORK — The increasing power and accessibility of genetic technology may one day give parents the option of modifying their unborn children, in order to spare offspring from disease or, conceivably, make them tall, well muscled, intelligent or otherwise blessed with desirable traits.
Would this change mean empowering parents to give their children the best start possible? Or would it mean designer babies who could face unforeseen genetic problems? Experts debated on Wednesday evening (Feb. 13) whether prenatal engineering should be banned in the United States.
Humans have already genetically modified animals and crops, said Sheldon Krimsky, a philosopher at Tufts University, who argued in favor of a ban on the same for human babies. ‘But in the hundreds of thousands of trails that failed, we simply discarded the results of the unwanted crop or animal.’
Unknown consequences
Is this a model that society wants to apply to humans, making pinpoint genetic modifications, only to ‘discard the results when they don’t work out?’ Krimsky asked during an Intelligence Squared Debate held in Manhattan. He added that assuming no mistakes will occur would be sheer hubris.
He and fellow ban proponent Lord Robert Winston, a professor of science and society and a fertility expert […]
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Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
DANIEL J. WEISS and JACKIE WEIDMAN, - The Energy Collective
Stephan: This is what our failure to effectively respond to climate change has wrought. It will appall you.
What is going to drive climate change forward, I think, is money. What can be made out of it? What does it cost compared to a more life-affirming way? I don't think the culture can move fast enough to do it any other way. Here for the first time, is a sense of what climate change has cost in just one year. It's staggering. And much of it is paid for with public money, which is to say your money, and my money.
Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.
Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant at the Center.
Click through to see the charts.
The United States was subjected to many severe climate-related extreme weather over the past two years. In 2011 there were 14 extreme weather events - floods, drought, storms, and wildfires - that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. There were another 11 such disasters in 2012. Most of these extreme weather events reflect part of the unpaid bill from climate change - a tab that will only grow over time.
CAP recently documented the human and economic toll from these devastating events in our November 2012 report ‘Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower- Income Americans.
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Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Stephan: Here is the link to SR on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/schwartzreport
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Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
KEVIN SULLIVAN, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This story may be hard to believe. We are now a society that creates obstacles to easy upward mobility and, as this report spells out, we are also explicitly driving away innovation and excellence at a time when such qualities ought to be precious to the nation.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The contraption sits in a basement lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a mishmash of hoses, wires, whirring pumps and a 12-foot-high plastic tower filled with steam and dripping water, all set on plastic milk crates.
It looks like a high school science project, but it was developed by two postdoctoral mechanical engineers at MIT. And it just might be a breakthrough that creates wealth and jobs in the United States and transforms the white-hot industry of oil and natural gas hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
That is, as long as the foreign-born inventors aren’t forced to leave the country.
Anurag Bajpayee and Prakash Narayan Govindan, both from India, have started a company to sell the system to oil businesses that are desperate for a cheaper, cleaner way to dispose of the billions of gallons of contaminated water produced by fracking.
Oil companies have flown them to Texas and North Dakota. They say they are about to close on millions of dollars in financing, and they expect to hire 100 employees in the next couple of years. Scientific American magazine called water-decontamination technology developed by Bajpayee one of the top 10 ‘world-changing ideas
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