Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: As usual Paul Krugman sees through the miasma, and explains it very well.
Housing activists outside a home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Credit: Scott Heins/Getty
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 stock index hit a record high. The next day, Apple became the first U.S. company in history to be valued at more than $2 trillion. Donald Trump is, of course, touting the stock market as proof that the economy has recovered from the coronavirus; too bad about those 173,000 dead Americans, but as he says, “It is what it is.”
But the economy probably doesn’t feel so great to the millions of workers who still haven’t gotten their jobs back and who have just seen their unemployment benefits slashed. The $600 a week supplemental benefit enacted in March has expired, and Trump’s purported replacement is basically a sick joke.
Even before the aid cutoff, the number of parents reporting that they were having trouble giving their children enough to eat was rising rapidly. That number will surely soar in the next few weeks. And we’re also about to see a huge wave of evictions, both because families are […]
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r −.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.
Conclusion
The present work comprises two parts. The first part was a meta-analysis of the relation between intelligence and religiosity. The second part examined possible explanations for the relation that was observed. Results of the meta-analysis […]
Stephan: Some of the greatest and most memorable moments of my life have occurred in the wilderness. The idea that Trump and his orcs are trying to pollute and degrade the public lands that each generation passes on to its heirs, and they to theirs just makes me very angry. It is a kind of ecological blasphemy.
Bristol Bay from Nushagak Point. Credit: Christopher Miller
On a bright July morning, in the tiny community of King Salmon on Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Nanci Morris Lyon bustles around her docked fishing boat. The water beneath is clear 15 feet down, like looking through glass. Up the slope behind Bear Trail Lodge, which Lyon has owned and operated for 11 years, the low-slung tundra unfolds for miles, stopped only by the snowy wall of mountains in the far distance.
It’s the height of the salmon run, and Lyon is readying the boat for her sport-fishing guests, who have to take a puddle-jumper plane for the hour-long flight from Anchorage — there are no roads to Bristol Bay. This season, tourists also have to abide by Alaska’s Covid-19 quarantine regulations for out-of-state travelers. But Lyon’s guests are willing to practice strict procedures; fishing in Bristol Bay represents an increasingly rare experience that’s worth the extra burdens.
Wild-salmon runs have taken a steep nosedive in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest in the past few decades, due to dams, […]
Stephan: In contrast to Trump world's dedicated effort to support petroleum, other wiser heads are moving in a very different direction. My fear is that because of what Trump and his orcs are allowing corporations to do here, America is going to end up trailing the international pack, not leading it, .
The Italian oil company Eni’s Green Data Center. The chief executive of Eni said he wanted it to rely more on green energy. Credit: Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times
Under pressure from governments and investors, industry leaders like BP and Shell are accelerating their production of cleaner energy.
This may turn out to be the year that oil giants, especially in Europe, started looking more like electric companies.
Late last month, Royal Dutch Shell won a deal to build a vast wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands. Earlier in the year, France’s Total, which owns a battery maker, agreed to make several large investments in solar power in Spain and a wind farm off Scotland. Total also bought an electric and natural gas utility in Spain and is joining Shell and BP in expanding its electric vehicle charging business.
At the same time, the companies are ditching plans to drill more wells as they chop back capital budgets. Shell recently said it would delay new fields in the Gulf of Mexico and […]
Stephan: Today we had Steve Bannon and his grift. Yet another person in Trump's immediate circle caught as a law-breaker. And how about this? Remember that shady sweetheart deal Moscow Mitch worked out for Kentucky in which a Russian company was going to invest several hundred million dollars in the state? Well, it turns out it was even shadier than we knew. Everything about Trump and his followers at some point turns out to be some kind of crooked grift or scam, and so often there is a Russian intelligence aspect to it.
Oleg_V._DeripaskaCredit: World economic Forum
Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, has invested heavily in a mill that the North American company Braidy Industries has planned for Eastern Kentucky — and according to a Senate Intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Rusal is a “proxy for the Kremlin.”
In 2019, journalist Morgan Watkins reports in the Louisville Courier Journal, Rusal agreed to invest $200 million in Braidy’s mill. And the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report, released on August 18, describes Russian oligarch and Rusal co-owner Oleg Deripaska’s ties to the Kremlin.
According to the report, “Deripaska’s companies, including Rusal, are proxies for the Kremlin, including for Russian government influence efforts, economic measures and diplomatic relations.”
Watkins notes that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission report that Braidy filed in June, Rusal had provided $75 million for the mill as of December 31, 2019 but had discontinued contributions until Braidy could secure another $300 million in funding.
The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Rusal, but Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Sen. Rand Paul and Senate […]
