August 2009
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Rebuilding New Orleans? Wait Until The Next...
Humans have short memories, and that accounts for a lot of the dumb things we do over and over again. But rebuilding New Orleans is going to turn out to be a truly dumb idea.
[via New Orleans Sees an Opportunity to Improve on Its Past - NYTimes.com]
“The future of the New Orleans economy depends on what happens when the waters rise again.
The Army Corps of Engineers has a Hurricane and...
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“Our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to...”
– Paul Krugman
[via NYTimes.com]
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The Future Of Local Food Is Horizontal, Not...
There’s been a great deal made of vertical farming recently, especially in the context of urban food production, culminating in a recent NY Times article by Bina Ventakaraman. [via NYTimes]
What if “eating local” in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers...
“Local food has its merits, but that’s what New Jersey is for.”
– Adam Stein on Vertical Farms: “Pie in the Sky” : TreeHugger
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Next Indian-Pakistani War?
via U.S. Says Pakistan Made Changes to Missiles Sold for Defense
“The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and Congressional officials.
The charge, which set off a new outbreak of tensions between the United States and Pakistan, was...
Man leaps into river to escape wife's nagging
[via The Courier-Mail]
A man jumped into a fast-flowing river because he couldn’t take his wife’s nagging anymore.
The Chinese truck driver, known as Zhou, and his wife were on a ferry on the Yangtze River when it all became too much for him, the Chongqing Evening Post reports.
Members of the ship’s crew saw the man suddenly run out of his cabin with his hands covering his...
“At a time when government itself had fallen into disrepute Mr. [Ted] Kennedy...”
– Sam Tanenhaus
[via In Kennedy, the Last Roar of the New Deal Liberal]
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Iraq Will Fall Apart, Part II
[via Iraq’s Ambivalence About the American Military by Rod Nordand]
“Iraqis have enthusiastically embraced their newfound military sovereignty, even when, as is often the case, they’re not really ready for it. They can field troops who can fight, but they can’t fix their Humvees. They can mount their own operations against insurgents, but are reluctant to do so without air cover — which so...
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GOP Has Poisoned The Well
[Imbalance of Trust by Charles Blow]
“According to a poll of 600 adults ages 18 and older, which was conducted Aug. 13 to 18 by Indiana University’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research and released last week, most Americans now believe that if health care reforms pass, health care services will be rationed and taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions. And although...
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Cross The Border, Lose Your Rights
Bush’s Search Policy For Travelers Is Kept - washingtonpost.com by Ellen Nakashima]
“The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of...
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Will Wiles On Urban Gardening
[Spillway: Urban Farming and Apocalypse Chic by Wil Wiles]
“Now, there are very good reasons to grow more food inside cities, and to encourage people to grow some of their own food where they can. We do not want to continue to be at the mercy of a bloated, destructive and wasteful industry that gulps petrochemicals, destroys ecosystems and ruins the lives of thousands. As well as being...
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends...”
– Upton Sinclair
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Obama Is Playing The Game With 46% Of His Team
[Obama Has Fewer Than Half of His Top Appointees in Place by Peter Baker]
“As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.
Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent...
Life, Inc.
[The Edge Bookstore - Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back]
“This didn’t just happen.
In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted...
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Time To Leave Afghanistan?
Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam? by Peter Baker]
“The share of Americans who said the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting slipped below 50 percent in a survey released last week by The Washington Post and ABC News. A July poll by the New York Times and CBS News showed that 57 percent of Americans think things are going badly for the United States in Afghanistan, compared with 33...
“Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated...”
– How We Support Our False Beliefs (via elvira)
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Economics Is Not A Natural Science by Douglas...
[via Edge 297]
“Feudal lords, early kings, and the aristocracy were not participating in this wealth creation. Their families hadn’t created value in centuries, and they needed a mechanism through which to maintain their own stature in the face of a rising middle class. The two ideas they came up with are still with us today in essentially the same form, and have become so embedded...
Oceans Are A Plastic Stew
[via Plastic Not Fantastic… in the Ocean: Scientific American Podcast by David Biello]
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be disappearing, and not in a good way. New research presented at the biannual meeting of the American Chemical Society reveals that polystyrene actually can break down in seawater.
Polystyrene is better known as Styrofoam, wads of which can be found on...
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“I was shocked to discover that my fondest childhood memory was actually a scene...”
– One Sentence archive - story #3264 (via aja)
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The Heart Has Its Reasons That The Mind Knows Not
[originally posted 3/10/08 on /Mind]
Apparently, at least some decisions are made at a deep stratum in the mind, before we are consciously aware we have made a decision. Shades of Minority Report:
[from Brain scanner predicts your future moves by Ewen Callaway]
By scanning the brains of test subjects as they pressed one button or another – though not a computer mouse – researchers...
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Mixed Signals From A Muddled Policy
[Obama’s Trust Problem by Paul Krugman]
“On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple,...
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George Lakoff on The PolicySpeak Disaster for...
Lakoff thinks it may be possible for Obama to trun around the health insurance policy debate, but not be continuing with what he is doing now.
George Lakoff: The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care]
“The view of human reason and language behind [Obama’s] PolicySpeak [website] is just false. Certainly reason should be used. It’s just that you should use real reason, the way...
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Obama's Approval Rating Drops To New Lows
Obama is finding out that he can’t find a middle ground on health care reform. His strongest supporters — the “left of the left” — want a single payer system (nationalized health care), and view his efforts to reform health insurance as the first of two steps to get there. Conservatives oppose any revisions to the current health care mess. And the independents in the...
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Obama's War
[In Afghanistan, the Choice Is Ours by Richard Haass] “But even if the United States were to succeed in Afghanistan — with “success” defined as bringing into existence an Afghan government strong enough to control most of its territory — terrorists could still operate from there and would put down roots elsewhere. And Pakistan’s future would remain uncertain at best. Moreover, there are...
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Animal!
Restaurateurs From Los Angeles, Bearing Lots of Meat by Brett Martin]
“Along with the pig ears (some 40 pounds of them), 10 pork bellies and 72 racks of St. Louis-cut pork ribs, Mr. Shook had come east with 20 pounds of ground beef, 10 lobes of foie gras, a case of chorizo, 25 pounds of hominy and 18 wheels of Petit Basque cheese.
The pig ears would boil for 36 hours, cool and then be...
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Intuitive Eating
[Skin Deep - To Eat Well, Back to Basics by Mandy Katz]
“Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of “good” or “bad” foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one’s hunger and taste cues — rather than cognitive rules — provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.
Kate Harding, an...
“By the way, that Fox and Friends poll on the health care debates is sponsored by...”
– Jon Stewart (via soupsoup) (via andres) (via mikehudack) 