One Stop Thought Shop

trouble making numbers

2010-03-06T09:10:26Z

I must confess, numbers baffle me. They’re mysterious.

They multiply and divide with impunity, they add up to something else or take themselves away.

When they are statistics, they lie. And when they are money, they disappear.

As for fractions, they make me fractious.

kill the bill

2010-03-05T17:13:56Z

Habits:
Foreign Policy.

“The U.S. military spends $1.75 billion every day, much of it on big ships, big guns, and big battalions that are not only not needed to win the wars of the present, but are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future.”

control daylight

2010-03-05T13:01:57Z

Switch windows on or off to radically reduce energy use.

Sage Electrochromics, Inc, a Minnesota-based inventor of an international breakthrough glass innovation – a window that can be switched on or off to reject up to 98% of the sun’s heat and light on demand – has received a financial shot in the arm from the Department of Energy for a total of $103 million to mass produce energy-saving glass.

“This investment will help cut utility bills, reduce carbon pollution, and create jobs our economy needs,” said Energy Secretary Chu in granting the loan guarantee.

Breakthrough technology. Glass switched from clear to dark at the push of a button.

climate astrology

2010-03-05T11:34:13Z

The South Dakota legislature has declared, by majority vote:

That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect (sic) world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative. [link]

rats clear landmines

2010-03-05T05:02:28Z

Bart Weetjens, a rodent enthusiast, realized he could train rats to sniff out land mines. The rats run along wires between two handlers. When they smell a landmine, they stop, sniff the ground and begin to dig, signaling an explosive.

Next? Smuggled drugs and medical screening. Cheaper than dogs.

re-engineer the web

2010-03-05T04:33:50Z

A former director of national intelligence says:

"We need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageable."

In other words, we need to spy on everyone.

Oh. It's important to know he now works for a spy firm.

this is looting

2010-03-04T20:49:26Z

About the way a phrase, 'free market', was turned into profoundly destructive behavior.

It’s been a long time a-comin’, this Crisis.

Invisible hand?
Free market?

What's really going on is scams, rip-offs and brazen looting.

Absurd complacency and happy talk.
Worthless cheer from the glossy clueless.

Travesty speculation.
Cooked figures and oblivious economists.

The outcome of this pseudo-scientific botching is an imposing corpus of pretentious quackery that somehow elevates unregulated 'free markets' into the sole mechanism of the spoils of economic activity.

We are supposed to believe that by some alchemical process, maximum indulgence of human greed results in maximum prosperity for all.

Officially Sanctioned Thievery On An Epic Scale.

sick or not sick

2010-03-04T20:46:05Z

A person in whom the social feeling is at all developed, conscious as a being,
of course pays regard to others, and cannot want all the rest defeated.

Let's try another.

One day this era will be known as the period of dishonesty.

tiny box of one

2010-03-04T14:08:06Z

A: Existence of community allows communities to organize.

B: Lack of community prevents communities from organizing.

C: America was once where people could self-organize. Now it isn’t. Once there were strong communities which could bring pressure to bear on their elected officials. But no longer.

D: There are no strong, cohesive communities.

And so… they can’t organize because there is nothing for them to organize.

to cure reality

2010-03-04T14:00:07Z

Our civilization is collapsing. Why shouldn’t we feel bad?

We’ve exhausted the natural resources our planet took a billion years to store up, we live in suffocating, overcrowded, polluted, horrifically stressful conditions, and we have launched the planet into the 6th global extinction.

Gary Greenberg: "What’s happened is that the diagnosis has gotten increasingly detached from any sense of where it might come from."

More than 14 million suffer from major depression, and more than 3 million suffer from minor depression longer than two years. These numbers are ridiculous — not because people aren’t depressed but because, in most cases, their depression is not a mental illness. It’s a sane response to a crazy world.

"Well, if people are encouraged to think of external circumstances, then they may be more empowered to take action."

Of course, as Mind Hacks points out, "One difficulty with their proposal, however, is that while they admit that social problems are one of the most common triggers for depression, they miss out the many studies that have found depressed people and, especially depressed people who ruminate, are reliably worse at social problem solving."

do we ask?

2010-03-04T11:23:23Z

Larry Beinhart:

What is civilization?

Is it doing business? Exxon, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs? Or is it the rule of law, social order, clean water, sewers and waste disposal, a reliable food supply, literacy, mathematics, science and technology, art, architecture, public spaces and public forums?

family values

2010-03-04T10:03:28Z

I wonder when America will confront pathology and be done with it?

California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), a fierce opponent of gay rights and top organizer of anti-gay marriage rallies is arrested for DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified man in a state vehicle.

As Jon Stewart points out, "Jim Bunning didn't block the extension of unemployment benefits as a principled stand against fiscal responsibility -- he's just a dick."

universe is slacking

2010-03-04T09:53:04Z

C'mon! Get going, rest of the universe!

who is poor?

2010-03-04T09:37:28Z

In all, 47.4 million Americans lived in poverty last year, or 7 million more than official poverty reports.

The official measure, created in 1955, does not factor in rising medical care, transportation, child care, housing, utilities or geographical variations in living costs.

extending implosion

2010-03-03T19:47:02Z

Duh. And that would be because...?

This is especially troubling because the economy is still such a long way from being healthy.

Lawrence Katz, the Harvard labor economist, estimates that 10.6 million jobs would need to materialize immediately to return the job market to its condition when the Great Recession began.

For it to get there four years from now, the economy would have to add 316,000 jobs a month. That pace would be faster than in any four-year stretch of the 1990s boom.

Uh-huh. That's what I thought. That's what most economists thought. That's what everybody who didn't have his head up his ass thought.

first intestinal census

2010-03-03T19:30:25Z

Trillions of bacteria live in our mouth, skin, lungs and especially the gut.

There are 10 times more microbes in the body than there are human cells.

1000 species of single-celled organisms live inside humans, the vast majority recently discovered. One individual might carry at least 160 different species.

starve the real beast

2010-03-03T15:36:36Z

Michael McGown:

Every time you give a bank one cent of your money, you are simply short-changing yourself.

There's no reason to continue to pay your bank; it should be paying you.

Move your money to find better rates.

For tips, discoveries, better deals, keep track of the Move Your Money community here. Sign up for Michael's newsletter here.

thinking drinking

2010-03-03T15:32:57Z

Mothers who worried their children might become drinkers had kids that were significantly more likely to drink.
Alcohol is so embedded in most cultures that perceptions and reality intermix in surprising ways.

A Sober Assesment

bang for the buck

2010-03-03T14:19:37Z

Mark Zandi – chief economist for Moody’s – has calculated which stimulus work.
One more time, Bush and Republicans behind the line. [click large]

fail to tell our own

2010-03-02T22:17:00Z

Treasury Secretary Paulson and other senior Bush financial regulators flouted the law. The Bush administration wanted to cover up the depth of the financial crisis that its policies had caused.

Economics Populist:

I have a hard time understanding Americans sometimes.

They seem to have unlimited ability for outrage against government workers collecting middle-class paychecks, but can't seem to work up a protest against a massive amount of fraud and theft from people who don't live next door to them.

Why is that?

We, and by that I mean working people, have been betrayed at every level, and the average American just cannot accept it. The deception is so broad, and so complete, that Americans have turned to blaming scapegoats instead. Because they can't accept that fact, when all the evidence points toward it, they are easily used and manipulated.

Their crime is trusting people who are obviously lying to them.