Hitting Women
The Economist, 08 Mar 2012

Douglas Adams was perhaps more right than he knew when he quipped that coming down from the trees was a big mistake.

I like to visualize data with “people in a room” to put things in perspective. Jordan’s numbers are just ghastly, but if the Ukraine is the basis for any optimism we’ve got a long way to go. (See graphic below.)  If, irrespective of wealth, we put 20 Ukrainian women and their spouses in a room, we could be fairly certain that one of the proud hubbies we could look in the eye hits his wife and that she’s okay with that because it’s justified.  A room full of Jordanians would, statistically, seem more like a domestic violence enthusiasts’ club.  Pot luck. Door prizes. Bring your spouse. Full story »

This is the third and final post in my series on America post-apocalypse.

This week a Wyoming representative introduced a bill to prepare Wyoming for the coming apocalypse. Seems like everyone thinks the apocalypse is right around the corner. There are survivalist magazines, books and TV shows. Indeed, bookstores have entire sections devoted to books about the end of times—fiction and non-fiction. In Dallas, bulk food stores have discovered a whole new market segment of people filling their basements with 50 lb. sacks of flour and enormous cans of baked beans.

It’s the one topic on which both far left and far right agree, although they are not together on the reasons.

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Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, cuts to the chase in his lede:

Call it creative if you want, but this is what economic destruction looks like. Print newspaper ads have fallen by two-thirds from $60 billion in the late-1990s to $20 billion in 2011.

“This” is a graph in a post by Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan.

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I began my career as an engineer in a large Illinois manufacturing plant. Chuck, the only African-American engineer in the company, was comically paranoid—he rarely spoke above a whisper, refused to say anything over the phone, and before every meeting would check outside his door to see if anyone was lurking in the hallway. When Chuck was passed over for a promotion, he left the company. A year later I heard the head of engineering explain why Chuck had not gotten the job, “Reinhardt (the plant manager) was never going to promote a n…..r.” The moral of the story, obviously enough, is that Chuck’s paranoia was justified.

Gas prices are predicted to go up to $5 in the summer. The timing smells. I may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean I am wrong.
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Recently, a left-wing colleague described his vision of where America is headed over the next forty years–breakdown of government, mass starvation, roving bands of marauders, etc. It’s interesting that this is exactly the same vision shared by those on the far right who star in the new TV show Doomsday Preppers, about people who are stockpiling cases of beans in their suburban basements, while asking themselves, “What load would Jesus shoot?” Maybe the visions of both left and right are so similar because that future has been portrayed so many times in movies.

Of course, we could end up like that. But we probably won’t.

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The more I watch modern politics (and economics and the culture wars and science “debates”) the more it all reminds me of pro wrestling. You know how it goes. Tough match, back and forth, both the good guy (the “face”) and the bad guy (the “heel”) getting their licks in, and then at the decisive moment either the heel “accidentally” knocks the ref down or his manager distracts the ref or something. While the zebra is looking the other way, the black hat clocks the crowd favorite with a steel chair. Ref turns around. 1…2…3…and we have a new champion! Lather, rinse, repeat.

Which brings us to the breaking story surrounding The Heartland Institute and the revelation of all kinds of incriminating internal documents that, in a nutshell, prove that everything climate scientists have been saying about them is true. Full story »

As regular readers know, we’ve been tracking the progress of the design and construction of a new nuclear facility (the CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. As we posted yesterday … Nuclear Pit Boondoggle at Los Alamos Temporarily Scuttled due to a combination of the economic climate and the efforts of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), which has been educating the public, lobbying Washington, and filing two suits to halt the CMRR-NF on environmental grounds.

But sociologist Darwin BondGraham, who is on the LASG Board of Directors, is in no mood to gloat about the victory. In an elegiac article for Counterpunch titled Starving the Real Beast, he writes

The war machine has begun to eat itself for the sake of preserving hyper-inequalities resulting directly from the less progressive tax code instituted a decade prior, and the multitude of shelters capital now hides behind. Full story »

“Who the hell is this guy writing to?” I wondered as I made my way deeper and deeper into Bill McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

In my recent readings about “place” in creative nonfiction, I’d had the pleasure to read a lot of fine, fine work by nature writers. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of writing, and I’ve enjoyed a deeply felt connection to the natural world (one reason I took on that reading project in the first place). I’ve tried of late to make a conscious effort to seek out writers who talk about the relationship between humankind and nature, particularly in the context of looming environmental collapse. That’s how I found McKibben.

That I finished his book—instead of throwing myself off a bridge in despair—still amazes me.

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I was originally going to respond to a thoughtful piece by Jane Briggs-Bunting here at Scholars & Rogues, “Is the media simply racist? Detroit News columnist hits the mark on Bashara murder coverage,” but the more I thought about the matter, the more I disagreed with her conclusion that columnist (actually editorial page editor) Nolan Finley’s piece “Finley: If life’s cheap, murder’s not news” is either poignant or accurate.

Somehow, I missed the sensational headlines about the Bashara murder since it happened, but then again, I don’t generally keep up with national news of local murders for pretty much that very reason…the sensational aspect. Full story »

The Institute for Science and International Security is dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation and its president, David Albright, is often quoted in the mainstream media. Much of its energy is spent in raising the alarm about Iran, though — thank goodness for small favors — it doesn’t call for an attack.

For example ISIS declared that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran contained “the most comprehensive detail and analysis to date [of] evidence of nuclear weaponization-related activities conducted by Iran.” Nevertheless, it concluded, “Notably absent … is any assessment by the IAEA of Iran’s capability to make a nuclear explosive device based on what it learned through these activities.” Full story »

I do not like bats. Once, as a college student living in a third-floor apartment with no air-conditioning, a bat landed on me during a hot summer night. I fled my room, shrieking. Even today, on summer nights at my rural home, when bats fly low over my deck, I instinctively duck.

Bats have a bad rep. Think bat and you likely think bat with rabies. Think bat and you likely think dirty bat or bat as vampiric bloodsucker. Think bat and you likely think evil harbinger of doom and destruction. (Okay, that last one’s a tad over the top … but you get the idea.) Bats have fewer defenders than fear-laden critics.

But bats, the only mammal structurally capable of sustained flight, are just creatures with significant ecological — and economic — roles. Hate mosquitoes and other insects? They’re on the nighttime menu for bats. Like bees, many bats pollinate plants and spread seeds. Bat shit (sorry; bat guano) is rich in nitrogen and is a profitable fertilizer. Bats’ ability to navigate in the dark (echolocation) is a subject of significant scientific study.

But in the past five years, up to 6.7 million bats are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. Three species face extinction — the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat. A malady called white-nose syndrome is killing them.
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#15: Lost on Planet China: One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation by L. Maarten Troost (2008)

The first time I landed in Shanghai, I couldn’t believe how big everything was. The terminal stretched off to some Whovian vanishing point. It was like that driving through the city, too—mile after mile of skyscraper, each as interesting to look at as the last. This was a city that wanted to be Manhattan but bigger, richer, busier.

But the bus windows showed me something distressing, too, as we rumbled across the coastal plain from the airport to the city: muddy canals choked with floating garbage, heaps of garbage and rubble scattered in back lots and side yards, an armada of small blue flatbed trucks jockeying for first place in a race that wasn’t even happening.

China turned my brain into an Escher landscape, constantly challenging me at every turn. I found new things to be amazed about, new things to wonder about, and new things to worry about. Full story »

Consider the continual political warfare among tea partiers, Democrats, Republicans, President Obama, members of Congress, and anyone else with a media megaphone over size of the deficit run up by the American government. You’d assume they were confident the government knew how much money it took in and how much it spent. You’d assume the government knew how to keep its checkbook in order.

And you’d be wrong. According to the fiscal 2011 financial report by the nation’s bookkeeper, the Government Accounting Office, some government agencies cannot soundly manage their fiscal affairs.
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If you’re a working journalist, congratulations. You have survived a horrendous year of newsroom job cuts. The Newsosaur, Alan Mutter, compiles the sad, frustrating, dismaying news:

The number of jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry rose by nearly 30% in 2011 from the prior year, according to the blog that has been tracking the human toll on the industry for the last five years.

Mutter, working with data from Erica Smith, author of the Paper Cuts blog, notes layoffs have been horrific over the past four years.

Since Smith began her running count of publishing layoffs in the middle of 2007, 39,806+ newspaper jobs have been eliminated. This represents 11% of the all the jobs in an industry that, according to the Census Bureau, employed 360,633 individuals in 2007.

Worse, Mutter points out, the number of journalists in America’s print newsroom is at an all-time low. The layoffs, over time, have taken a staggering toll on newsrooms.
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I think the educated, informed and politically active electorate on all sides get the three-ring circus metaphor for our government. There just needs to be more of them, on all sides. Let’s see what happens, though, when I look, with beginner’s eyes, at the nuts ‘n’ bolts under the hood of the the Klown Kar in the lead-up to the featured act. For this exercise, I’ll use a bit of legislation currently up for debate, S.1726, Withholding Tax Relief Act of 2011, a bill to repeal the imposition of withholding on certain payments made to vendors by government entities.

I first became aware of this issue by following Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) on Facebook. Full story »

Ala. GOP leaders have 2nd thoughts on immigration
By PHILLIP RAWLS

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Republicans who pushed through the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants are having second thoughts amid a backlash from big business, fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state’s prized Honda and Mercedes plants.

The Republican attorney general is calling for some of the strictest parts of it to be repealed.

Some Republican lawmakers say they now want to make changes in the law that was pushed quickly through the legislature.

Sometimes I think the problem is Democrats see the likely results of Republican policies ahead of time and argue against them  rather than just letting these fools go ahead and do dumb stuff and see what happens. Full story »

Dear Senator Baucus:

I appreciate your thoughtful response. However, it confirms for me the worst of my suspicions of how exactly you “support” Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

As one of your constituents, I am deeply concerned about your positions on these issues. Again and again, polls and policy experts are in the news indicating the very things that need to be done in order to preserve and protect these vital programs. Full story »