| Judge: Feds liable in Federal Flooding of Greater New Orleans |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|12:28 am] |
"It has been proven in a court of law that the drowning of New Orleans
was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty," the
attorneys said in a statement. "The government has always had a moral
obligation to rebuild New Orleans. This decision makes that obligation a matter of legal responsibility." -- CNN story
Here in Greater New Orleans, where people routinely talk about "the Federal Flood" and refer to the MRGO Canal as "the Hurricane Highway", the news isn't the facts of the case, but rather the judge finding legal liability.
If I understand the ruling correctly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has legal immunity from being sued for damages from the failure of their mis-designed and mis-built levees, but not for the fact that the MRGO Canal channeled deep sea storm surge right into the heart of the city. This point alone is enough to make them culpable for the majority of the flooding of the Greater New Orleans area in 2005.
Times-Picayume story
On Bloomberg
On UPI
For those interested in details of what happened and why concerning the great flood, I reccomend the book Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow. It also makes the point that rather than Greater New Orleans being unique in vulnerability, bad decisions by political and business interests have created no shortage of other engineering disasters waiting to happen.
YouTube video of one of the co-authors and members of levees.org at a reading/discussion at Octavia Books. |
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| Communism and Capitalism |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|02:56 pm] |
Excerpt by Slavoj Zizek in the New York Times:
Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from? Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many young people don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”
It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s really changed, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated ...
What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.
One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, the disillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to run the new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While the heroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in their dreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the former Communists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the new capitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency, inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.
source |
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| ...from small acorns grow... |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|10:17 am] |
You may have heard from some on the American "right wing" about the huge threat to the nation posed by the scary scary ACORNs.
Fortunately, bold legislative steps are being taken to combat the ACORN menace.
Louisiana Governor Eddie Haskell has cut off all state funding of ACORN. Before the ban, the amount of Louisiana state funding of ACORN was zero. It has now been reduced to zero. Way to go, PBJ!
I'm much more impressed, however, with Rep. Alan Grayson's "Defund ACORN Act" (H.R.3571) This is a truly remarkable and important bill. Rather than focusing narrowly on ACORN, it prohibits the Federal Government from funding, contracting with, or entering into any form of agreement with:
"Any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office, including a law relating to voter registration."
*OR*
"Any organization that has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency."
Okay. THIS. IS AWESOME.
Ryan Grim: "Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud"
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex.
Blackwater, Lockheed Martin, Hewlett-Packard, yeah sure, obvious targets of the bill.
But don't think so small. It doesn't just say contractors, it says "any organization".
Who else? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?
The Federal Reserve?
The C.I.A.?
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party?
This could get interesting. Hats off to you, Representative Alan Grayson of Disneyworld, American Patriot!
Help identify organizations that fit this criteria |
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| Walter Cronkite Memorial Truth Telling |
[Jul. 18th, 2009|02:45 pm] |
Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs, by Walter Cronkite, March 1, 2006
As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is."
To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire - least of all in a time of war.
I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.
Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.
I am speaking of the war on drugs.
( Read more... ) |
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| "When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience" |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|10:47 pm] |
A FLASH OF MEMORY
By ISSEY MIYAKE
New York Times
13 July 2009
IN April, President Obama pledged to seek peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons. He called for not simply a reduction, but elimination. His words awakened something buried deeply within me, something about which I have until now been reluctant to discuss.
I realized that I have, perhaps now more than ever, a personal and moral responsibility to speak out as one who survived what Mr. Obama called the “flash of light.”
On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on my hometown, Hiroshima. I was there, and only 7 years old. When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape — I remember it all. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure.
( Read more... ) |
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| A Grin Without a Cat |
[May. 19th, 2009|06:45 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | 1960s, 1967, 1968, 1970s, a grin without a cat, austin chronicle, cheshire cat, le fond de l'air est rouge, lewis carroll, marjorie baumgarten, vietnam | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | There | ] |
I was going to say a big long piece about what's going on in the video below but I tend to think that this video speaks for itself and doesn't require anyone interpreting it for you.
What you've just seen is the opening of the Movie which is titled "Le fond de l'air est rouge" en francais and "A Grin Without a Cat" en anglais. For a pretty decent review of Le fond de l'air est rouge go here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid%3A781957
The best part of that review is the following statement:
"The title, A Grin Without a Cat, is a reference to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, which, like revolution, is seen only in parts, not the whole. As Marker says of the contributions by this film's unknown image-takers and his own re-edited footage: 'You can never tell what the camera might be filming.'"
I'll be x-posting this to a bunch of other places.
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| Obama, Redistributionist in Chief |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|09:09 am] |
www.fair.org/blog/2009/02/26/obama-redistributionist-in-chief/
02/26/2009 by Peter Hart Barack Obama unveiled plans to extend one lower- to middle-class tax credit, allow the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy to expire as scheduled, and raise revenue from a cap-and-trade emissions plan. Today's New York Times (2/26/09) described the proposals this way: The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers.
Huh. Were Bush's tax cuts, which were overwhelmingly tilted towards the wealthy, described as "a pronounced move to redistribute wealth" by the Times? My Nexis searches don't turn up anything like it.
I did, however, find a February 9, 2001 piece that began: President Bush formally sent Congress his proposal today for the broadest and deepest tax cuts in two decades, touching off a debate that seemed sure to produce a major cut in personal income taxes this year. But no sooner had Mr. Bush described his plan in the Rose Garden, declaring it a boon for the working poor, than Democrats began jockeying to limit its size while conservatives and business groups sought to expand it. The White House said it would try to head off corporate lobbyists--many representing major contributors to the Bush campaign--who seek to garnish it with huge cuts for their wealthy clients.
The Bush White House, according to the Times, was fighting to make sure his corporate backers didn't benefit from the cut. How did that work out? The Times also mentioned that Obama's tax plan "introduces a politically volatile edge to the congressional debate over Mr. Obama’s domestic priorities." The L.A. Times (2/26/09) was sounding a similar alarm about Obama's plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund healthcare: By relying heavily on new taxes, the president is also sending a potentially controversial signal that he is willing to ask wealthier Americans to help foot the bill for his healthcare agenda.
I suspect that if you asked the public if they supported raising taxes on the wealthy in order expand healthcare for those who need it, you'd find that it's not controversial at all. |
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| Science Fiction Mavens Offer Far Out Homeland Security Advice |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|05:12 pm] |
I am still trying to wrap my head around this one, but I am still laughing too hard...
Science Fiction Mavens Offer Far Out Homeland Security Advice
March 2008
By Stew Magnuson
Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.
The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking. Members of the group recently offered a rambling, sometimes strident string of ideas at a panel discussion promoting the group at the DHS science and technology conference.
Among the group’s approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as “Ringworld” and “Lucifer’s Hammer,” which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.
Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.
“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.
( Read more... ) |
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| No link between MMR vaccines and Autism |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|11:49 am] |
MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism
The Sunday Times - February 8, 2009
THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found. Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition. The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions. However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.
( More? ) |
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| Treasury Weighs Hard Choices To Save Banks |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|03:18 pm] |
Treasury Weighs Hard Choices To Save Banks
Any Path Carries Risk of Failure
By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 28, 2009; A01
President Obama's top advisers are in the final stages of debating several perilous options to right the financial system, all of which are likely to prove unpopular and in some cases carry a significant risk of failure, according to sources in contact with the officials.
The rapid deterioration of the economy has accentuated these hard choices. The health of many banks is getting worse, not better, as the downturn makes it difficult for all kinds of consumers and businesses to pay back money they borrowed from these financial firms. Conservative estimates put bank losses yet to be declared at $1 trillion.
Senior administration officials are likely to try a combination of initiatives rather than pin their hopes on a single, all-encompassing solution to help the financial system, the sources said. But their strategy may require trial and error, which could make them vulnerable to the same criticism that dogged the Bush administration's fitful management of the $700 billion rescue program.
On the table are several approaches, which officials have begun to experiment with on a smaller scale. One would give the firms a federal guarantee protecting them against losses on assets that are backed by failing mortgages and other troubled loans. Another would set up new government institutions to buy these toxic assets. A third would inject more money into financial firms in exchange for ownership stakes, perhaps ending with nationalization in all but name.
( Read more... ) |
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| I'm sure he's not hiding assets.. |
[Jan. 25th, 2009|10:11 pm] |
Lehman's Fuld sold Florida mansion to wife for $100
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fallen Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Richard Fuld sold his $13.3 million mansion to his wife for just $100 last November, according to Florida real estate records.
The 62-year old executive, who could face civil lawsuits after overseeing the storied investment bank's collapse into Chapter 11 proceedings last September, transferred ownership of the 3.3 acres seaside home to Kathleen Fuld on November 10, records show.
The couple had jointly bought the home for $13.75 million in March 2004, as first reported by Cityfile.com.
Fuld has been blamed for Lehman's collapse on September 15 after it was weighed down by bad assets leading to the largest-ever U.S. bankruptcy when it was unable to find a buyer to come to its rescue.
He was widely criticized for not acting quickly enough to save the 158-year old bank.
Though Fuld told U.S. lawmakers he took full responsibility for his actions and felt "horrible about what has happened to the company," he insisted he shared the blame with U.S. regulators and Congress.
Fuld, who was awarded $22 million in compensation in fiscal 2007, stepped down as Lehman chief executive at the end of last year and did not receive any bonus or severance when he left.
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke) |
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| Why so many minds think alike |
[Jan. 15th, 2009|02:06 pm] |
Why so many minds think alike
By Elizabeth Landau (CNN)
You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?
Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images.
A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the "oops area" becomes extra active, while the "reward area" slows down, making us think we are too different.
"We show that a deviation from the group opinion is regarded by the brain as a punishment," said Vasily Klucharev, postdoctoral fellow at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study.
( Read more... ) |
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| DIY Adjustable Eyeglasses |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|04:14 pm] |
It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.
What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?
...
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-adjustable-glasses-josh-silver |
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| Cosmic Aerogami |
[Dec. 10th, 2008|10:19 am] |
[fixed URL]
My housemate Alex emailed me this article today...
Ever wonder what would happen if someone threw a paper plane out of the space shuttle?...
[update: my father emailed me this image he found of the plane: 
( Read more... )
I can hardly believe it... this is as cool as that time I read about the thousand-foot-tall cave that looked just like a Hans-Werner Sahm painting (google Cueva del Fantasma). But even if it doesn't work, it's great that there are scientists with that kind of playfulness and imagination in the world.
I want to see a model of this plane, and a blueprint for how to fold it! It must be a really smooth dart shape. Although that would make it very fast, too. Maybe it's a design that's supposed to glide smoothly and slowly?... |
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| Washington’s New Tack: Helping Homeowners |
[Dec. 5th, 2008|10:54 am] |
I thought the conflict between banks and the real estate people was laid out pretty well here and is quite fascinating in terms of competing interests.
December 5, 2008
Washington’s New Tack: Helping Homeowners
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON — After pouring vast amounts of money into financial institutions of almost every type, and having little to show for it, the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve are suddenly taking a new look at ordinary homeowners.
Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned on Thursday that the soaring number of foreclosures threatened the economy. He then proposed some ideas — government-engineered loan modifications, and more taxpayer money to help people refinance — to keep people in their homes.
“The public policy case for reducing preventable foreclosures does not rely solely on the desire to help people who are in trouble,” Mr. Bernanke said. “More needs to be done.”
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|09:47 pm] |
Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page A01
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.
Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.
But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.
"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."
( More? ) |
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| Many recent presidential executive orders won't count. |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|11:36 pm] |
[ source ]
Huge Bush Gaffe Allows Obama To Overturn More Laws
We've heard for the past week that Barack Obama intends on overturning George W. Bush's Executive Orders. Basically all laws passed in the middle of the night without Congressional approval and all, coincidentally, bad for the American people.
Now Politico brings us news that the Bush Administration made a huge gaffe. They aimed for the wrong date to get all of their legislation signed into law.
The Bush Administration were racing to finalize new laws before November 1st, the date they believed was the cut off date for Obama to be able to easily overturn anything Bush passes at the end of his term.
( However, Bush's targeted date was wrong. ) |
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