What It All Means This Week:
Global Warming: Don't Tell Them, Show Them, Open Source:
The Union of Concerned Scientists, fed up with lawsuits filed by the US
automakers claiming the new fuel standards proposed by 15 US states and
the Canadian federal government are unachievable, has unveiled an Open Source minivan design that exceeds these standards using existing technology. Vehicles with comparable reductions in fuel consumption, using this design with existing bodies, could be introduced today.
Undoing the Cheney/Bush Damage: A recent NYT op-ed listed the things the next US government must do to undo the damage
done to the US foundation of civil liberties and democracy by the Bush
Regime. What's depressing about this list is that it doesn't even
scratch the surface. It could take decades to rebuild what has been
destroyed: the entire civil state.
SEC Shows it Cannot Reign In Stock Fraud Epidemic:
With desperate day-traders and other gambling addicts as a ready
market, securities fraud has reached epidemic levels online, as boiler
room touts push the price of worthless stocks higher and then bail out.
The SEC has just suspended - for a few weeks - 35 stocks that were among the worst of the 'pump-and-dump' offenders,
but the problem is that it's rarely the companies' executives who are
at fault. Everyone's a sucker for a get-rich-quick scheme, and some
people argue this is just harmless gambling. But this problem is not
limited to penny stocks. Over 90% of currency trades are purely
speculative, and much commodities trade is as well. Whipsawing prices
for these securities not only exploit human ignorance and greed, cause
great hardship and grief to the families of the addicts, and disguise
massive frauds, they can seriously damage economies and trade in the
process. The SEC probably lacks the authority to really act, and even
if it did, it's doubtful they would have the courage. A lot of very
rich (and now powerful) people have made their fortune in this
dangerous Ponzi lottery.
More Evidence the Oil Peak Has Been Reached:
A new analysis in The Oil Drum shows that Saudi Arabia, despite pumping
more and more high-pressure water into their wells to try to keep
production up, is now in a production free-fall.
How the MidEast Sees the MidEast 'Problem': Two recent stories, one by an Iranian ex-parliamentarian in the Iranian press (warning the people of Iran that the Iranian government needs to rein in its rhetoric), and the other in an Iraqi journal (decrying the involvement of foreign nations in Iraq's affairs
while the country, aided by US-supported government militias, descends
further into civil war), show how little perspective we get in this
part of the world on the political subtleties, the intractable
challenges, and the pragmatism of civilians, in that part of the world.
Thanks to Watching America for the links.
Internet Video Self-Organizes to Replace TV: The
popularity of UTube and its mostly amateurish, trashy content hides the
profusion of quality video programming now coming online. Now some
content aggregators are indexing and organizing content to help
separate the wheat from the (tons of) chaff. Network2 offers one such
service, and points to clips like this wonderful nature video from Wildcast and this NYT/Discovery Channel clip on how easy it is to make a nuclear bomb. Thanks to STBD for the link.
Thought for the Week,
from novelist Amy Hempel: "What you forget, living here, is that just
because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still under
water." |
5:03:21 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
