tagged w/ The New York Times
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"In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” by Michael Pollan."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02brod.html"In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the... more
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"China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.
China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants."
????????
Green:
Wind Turbines, Solar Panels (+2)
Not Green:
Nuclear Reactors, Coal Power Plants (-2)
Total score? 0
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html"China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States... more
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M.I.A. lashes out via Twitter, against the New York Times for listing Sri Lankan as one of the places to visit this year.M.I.A. lashes out via Twitter, against the New York Times for listing Sri Lankan as... more
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Op-Ed Columnist
The Big Zero
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 27, 2009
Maybe we knew, at some unconscious, instinctive level, that it would be an era best forgotten. Whatever the reason, we got through the first decade of the new millennium without ever agreeing on what to call it. The aughts? The naughties? Whatever. (Yes, I know that strictly speaking the millennium didn’t begin until 2001. Do we really care?)
But from an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.
It was a decade with basically zero job creation. O.K., the headline employment number for December 2009 will be slightly higher than that for December 1999, but only slightly. And private-sector employment has actually declined — the first decade on record in which that happened.
It was a decade with zero economic gains for the typical family. Actually, even at the height of the alleged “Bush boom,” in 2007, median household income adjusted for inflation was lower than it had been in 1999. And you know what happened next.
It was a decade of zero gains for homeowners, even if they bought early: right now housing prices, adjusted for inflation, are roughly back to where they were at the beginning of the decade. And for those who bought in the decade’s middle years — when all the serious people ridiculed warnings that housing prices made no sense, that we were in the middle of a gigantic bubble — well, I feel your pain. Almost a quarter of all mortgages in America, and 45 percent of mortgages in Florida, are underwater, with owners owing more than their houses are worth.
Last and least for most Americans — but a big deal for retirement accounts, not to mention the talking heads on financial TV — it was a decade of zero gains for stocks, even without taking inflation into account. Remember the excitement when the Dow first topped 10,000, and best-selling books like “Dow 36,000” predicted that the good times would just keep rolling? Well, that was back in 1999. Last week the market closed at 10,520.
So there was a whole lot of nothing going on in measures of economic progress or success. Funny how that happened.
For as the decade began, there was an overwhelming sense of economic triumphalism in America’s business and political establishments, a belief that we — more than anyone else in the world — knew what we were doing.
Let me quote from a speech that Lawrence Summers, then deputy Treasury secretary (and now the Obama administration’s top economist), gave in 1999. “If you ask why the American financial system succeeds,” he said, “at least my reading of the history would be that there is no innovation more important than that of generally accepted accounting principles: it means that every investor gets to see information presented on a comparable basis; that there is discipline on company managements in the way they report and monitor their activities.” And he went on to declare that there is “an ongoing process that really is what makes our capital market work and work as stably as it does.”
So here’s what Mr. Summers — and, to be fair, just about everyone in a policy-making position at the time — believed in 1999: America has honest corporate accounting; this lets investors make good decisions, and also forces management to behave responsibly; and the result is a stable, well-functioning financial system.
What percentage of all this turned out to be true? Zero.
What was truly impressive about the decade past, however, was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes.
Even as the dot-com bubble deflated, credulous bankers and investors began inflating a new bubble in housing. Even after famous, admired companies like Enron and WorldCom were revealed to have been Potemkin corporations with fOp-Ed Columnist
The Big Zero
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 27, 2009... more
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The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began corresponding with Khalid Awan in 2007, we had no idea why he was serving time in U.S. federal prison. We soon discovered Awan was one of the first of thousands of Muslims taken prisoner in the post-9/11 U.S. “terror war.” As the story began unfolding in our letters, we began to realize that this honest, humble and sincere man was not only innocent, but the ongoing injustice being done to him provides critical insight into the mindless, meanspirited, bureaucratic-yes-men idiocy fueling the illegal U.S. “war on terror” (and just about everything else that is going wrong in this country). At our insistence, Awan wrote his story and supplied us with whatever documents we requested. And now, after three months of cooperative efforts, the story of Khalid Awan can be told. We have come to know Awan as a peaceful man engaged in peaceful work who has been wrongfully accused, detained and repeatedly convicted of crimes he did not commit because he was a Muslim with international connections and an office in New York on 9/11. We present this to you in faith that you will realize a deeper understanding of the levels of complicity necessary for the “land of the free” to tolerate the phony war on terror year after year and in hope that Awan—and all the other million or more political prisoners being held by this country—will one day be reunited with their families.
Khalid Awan # 50959-054
USP Marion
P.O.BOX : 1000
Marion, IL 62959
USA
http://www.freekhalidawan.com/,
http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3759,
http://awankhalid.com/,
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60600467317The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began... more
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Last week, journalist David Rohde escaped after a seven-month kidnap by the Taliban. It's fabulous news, and it's been partly attributed to the fact that The New York Times suppressed it in the first place. But today we learn that Wikipedia did so too.
That raises a couple of very interesting questions. The New York Times worked very hard to keep facts about Rohde's kidnapping out of the media, with the intention of denying the Taliban the media coverage it desired and thus helping Rohde's chances of release or escape. The technique obviously paid off in this case, and it's certainly been done before.
But in a Times piece yesterday, the paper also made it clear that it had the help of Wikipedia staffers who suppressed the news popping up there too. Since Wikipedia is crowd-sourced and openly editable, the news did manage to arrive on the online encyclopedia several times, whereupon it was quickly erased and sometimes the offending page was frozen to prevent any further user-editing. Rohde's own Wikipedia entry was even edited by a colleague immediately after his kidnap to enhance the Islam-friendliness of Rohde's previous journalistic work.
This information dance on Wikipedia all happened with the specific help of the site's founder, Jimmy Wales. But while commenting on the moral angle of the Wikipedia tampering, Wales noted: "We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source...I would have had a really hard time with it if it had." And that's where this story gets interesting to people who believe in freedom of information: In essence The New York Times suppressed the info themselves, and by influencing other old media outlets, which then enabled the new media outlet of Wikipedia to feel okay about continuing the propagandizing.
It's a journalistic moral ouroboros, for sure, and it raises a couple of questions. Did Wikipedia damage its reputation as a crowd-based and open-access information source? The answer is yes, a little (and it's not the first time Wikipedia's admins have been caught manipulating entries). Wikipedia isn't a traditional media outlet, and therefore has no hard or soft journalistic moral code to abide by, which means it can be more flexible in its actions--and the fact a life was at stake here is a mitigating fact. But Wales' excuse still sounds particularly weak. As a result, the next questions about Wikipedia are: What other news pieces is it hiding? And will users trust in the site as a news source take a hit?Last week, journalist David Rohde escaped after a seven-month kidnap by the Taliban.... more
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Stirring piece from the NYT's Roger Cohen, who is in Tehran. He breaks the situation in Iran down into three key questions; it's a helpful framework for understanding what happens next. And then he says:
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Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home.
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Wow.Stirring piece from the NYT's Roger Cohen, who is in Tehran. He breaks the... more
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sloan
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added this
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8 months ago
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"The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”
A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.
He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.
Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.
He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.
The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.
Garbage burned. Crowds bayed. Smoke from tear gas swirled. Hurled bricks sent phalanxes of police, some with automatic rifles, into retreat to the accompaniment of cheers. Early afternoon rumors that the rally for Moussavi had been canceled yielded to the reality of violent confrontation.
I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basijis. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted.
I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”
Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her."
There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad.
“Can’t the United Nations help us?” one woman asked me. I said I doubted that very much. “So,” she said, “we are on our own.”
More at link, definitely worth the read!"The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley... more
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"The Daily Show" correspondent Jason Jones visited the New York Times offices on Wednesday night's show for a hysterical segment titled "End Times.""The Daily Show" correspondent Jason Jones visited the New York Times... more
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La domanda è: come sarà il 2040? Intel prova a rispondere
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The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.
Which is one reason “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.
The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the... more
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Someday, we’ll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we needed to get online, and they’ll laugh their heads off. Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what’s the holdup on universal wireless Internet?
David Pogue tests the Novatel MiFi 2200, a private hot spot that follows you everywhere you go.
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This sounds very cool and convenient, but I personally try to limit my exposure to Wi-Fi and cellular signals. My home is now a Wi-Fi free zone, except if my neighbor needs to use my connection, or if we're having a surfing party. I figure we're bombarded with all these signals every time we go out in public, why do it at home too?Someday, we’ll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking... more
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A spokesman for the Boston Globe says the newspaper has completed negotiations with its largest union.A spokesman for the Boston Globe says the newspaper has completed negotiations with... more
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The Boston Globe's largest workers union and the newspaper finished all-night contract-concession talks without a deal Monday, but plan to be back at the bargaining table within days.The Boston Globe's largest workers union and the newspaper finished all-night... more
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In the last 10 years, Ultimate Frisbee has become one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. It is played in more than 42 countries. Ultimate’s success at the college level, attracting traditional athletes from other sports like soccer and football to compete on its teams, is largely what has elevated the game to this stage.
And the rise of women in Ultimate is another crucial part of the sport’s growth. Watching these women play, one can see the athleticism that has attracted them: gorgeous arcing throws, full-extension dives, insane vertical leaps, and discs pinched out of the sky with the barest of fingertips. “I play pickup most every week, even in the winter,” said Fi Cheng, 33, who works for a solar backpack company in New York. She helps run a spring and fall league in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and is treasurer of Westchester Ultimate Disc, the biggest Ultimate organization in the metropolitan area. “I’ve noticed a lot more women playing than when I started. There are women in their late 20s or early 30s who have been playing for 10 years now.”In the last 10 years, Ultimate Frisbee has become one of the world’s... more
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Here's a chart from Techcrunch, who has been tracking laidoff technology sector employees since August 27 2008. They list company, date, number of employees, location and the sources of the numbers.Here's a chart from Techcrunch, who has been tracking laidoff technology sector... more
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The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as the newspaper publisher's advertising revenue plunged 27 percent in an industrywide slump that is reshaping the print media.The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as... more
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GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Jeff Rains, a retired steelworker at the sprawling mill here, made the discovery. Out walking a month ago, he waited impatiently at a rail crossing while a freight train slowly passed, its flatbed cars stacked with steel pipes, each wide enough for a child to crawl through. Then he noticed “Made in India” stenciled on the pipes.
That observation has made him a Paul Revere in the eyes of many townspeople. Hundreds of sections of imported steel pipe have been moving into Granite City for use in an oil pipeline. The steel mill, meanwhile, has been shut since December for lack of orders — the first time in its 130-year history — and nearly 2,000 workers are on furlough.GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Jeff Rains, a retired steelworker at the sprawling mill... more
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For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers reported in a new study.
The lead authors of the report, Timothy M. Shanahan of the University of Texas at Austin and Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, warned that global warming resulting from human-generated greenhouse gases was likely to exacerbate those droughts and that there was an urgent need to bolster the resilience of African countries in harm’s way.
But many stressed that the most urgent concern arising from the study was for the welfare of tens of millions of people with little capacity to endure today’s vagaries in rainfall, let alone epic dry spells.
“It’s a critical report,” said Kevin Watkins, the director of the Human Development Report office of the United Nations.
“Many of the 390 million people in Africa living on less than $1.25 a day are smallholder farmers that depend on two things: rain and land,” he said. “Even small climate blips such as a delay in rains, a modest shortening of the drought cycle, can have catastrophic effects.”For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more... more
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“On the day of its first foreign policy discussions with Mexico, the Obama administration remains mum on whether it will honor a campaign promise to alter a Bush administration policy establishing a massive fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including in federally protected areas.”
So far, the Department of Homeland Security has erected about 613 miles of new pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers to thwart illegal border crossers and drug smugglers trying to enter the United States.
While President Obama voted for the 2005 Secure Fence Act as an Illinois senator, he pledged on the campaign trail last year to review the Bush administration's fortification efforts, in part due to concerns about environmental impacts.
"I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it's on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier," Obama said last year at a debate in Austin, Texas.
While acknowledging that some areas may need fencing, Obama said deploying new surveillance technology and stepping up patrols would "be the better approach."
Yet almost three months into the new administration, neither Obama nor Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are addressing the issue. Meanwhile, construction is beginning on two new sections of the fence, one through the Rio Grande Valley near Brownsville, Texas, and another in the Otay Mountain Wilderness in California's San Diego County.“On the day of its first foreign policy discussions with Mexico, the Obama... more
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