Clipmarks | kmcolo's clips

A well-regulated...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:19:44 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: I am, in general, a liberal free-marketeer. Light and efficient government regulation is needed and in some sectors more of it than in others, but taken in a gross overall picture, I tend to agree with the maxim "the less government the better".

It seems the Japanese have just decided to take a different route. I for one still think the "American model" with some adjustments for context is more honest, at a genetic level, to the human experience and thus is more likely to promote innovative solutions to problems. But I also know that, in nature, diversity is resilience so perhaps it is good that the Japanese have decided on a different course. One that, perhaps, fits their context better than the "American model" (or what they took to be the "American model") did. We will see how this plays out now that history has restarted its engines.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

TOKYO — Japan’s opposition party won an overwhelming victory at the polls on Sunday pledging to increase social welfare, better protect workers and do away with American-style, pro-market reforms to lead the country out of its long slump.

Tags: economy, japan, politics

Some are more equal than others

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:28:45 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: An interesting radio program(me) on the likely impact of inequality in developed countries.

These researchers provide background information and discussion on their evidence that inequality is more destructive to society in those economies already well developed. This means that the social advantage of economic inequality, from the utopian 'motivator of innovation and growth' to the cynical 'there but by my listening to my boss go I' is outweighed by the social disadvantage of crime, ill health and the like.

Though I would not consider this the last word on the subject, it is a worthy listen to, despite the odd and off putting affect that such discussion seems to instill in our brothers and sisters on that little island over there called Britain.

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Research has shown that health and social problems become more acute in an unequal society, where the gap between the richest and poorest is greatest. For most of us, respect is measured in money, and lack of it or low pay tells us that we are worth very little. But given the chance, would we as a society be prepared to rebalance?

Laurie Taylor discusses these issues with Professor Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Equal Societies Almost Always So Better, and Sunder Katwala from The Fabian Society, on a new paper on underlying motivation.

Listen (Duration: 30 minutes)

Availability:

Available to listen.

Last broadcast on Mon, 20 Jul 2009, 00:15 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).

Tags: economy, society

IDENTITY CRISIS

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:18:11 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: My sister's book - now on Lulu.

Clip Source: www.lulu.com

IDENTITY CRISIS introduces attorney Stephanie Ann "Sam" McRae. A simple domestic abuse case turns deadly when the alleged abuser is killed and Sam’s client disappears. When a friend asks Sam to find Melanie Hayes, the Maryland attorney is drawn into a complex case of murder and identity theft that has her running from the Mob, breaking into a strip club and forming a shaky alliance with an offbeat private investigator to discover the truth about Melanie and her ex-boyfriend. With her career and life on the line, Sam’s search takes her from the blue-collar Baltimore suburbs to the mansions of Gibson Island. Along the way, she learns that false identities can hide dark secrets, and those secrets can destroy lives.

Tags: book

Obama appears ready to drop 'public option'

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:45:31 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: Heaven forbid that there be a public option. What American's surely need are fewer options and we are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure our options are restricted. Now I don't know about you, but this is only a minor victory. Next up, make sure that our only options are with "for profit" companies. Otherwise its just Socialism with a smiley face painted on it. No non-profit health care! Make non-profit health care against the law!

Clip Source: www.dailycamera.com

WASHINGTON — Bowing to Republican pressure, President Barack Obama's administration signaled on Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan.

Tags: heath, politics

Boulder Rocks!

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:35:40 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: I wouldn't call Boulder affluent in the same sense that other areas are affluent (though we do have our problems with the idle trustifarians and the like) more a town that was build and developed with the future in mind. Also helps to have some pretty resilient institutions around like the University of Colorado and the federal campus (NOAA, NIST, NCAR).

Clip Source: images.businessweek.com

Wait a second. At a time when real estate prices have been in almost perpetual free fall for more than a year, are there really places around the U.S. where home values are going up? Unbelievable as it may sound, yes. According to real estate site Zillow.com's second-quarter home value index, there are more than 30 metro areas across the country where values have risen from the first quarter of the year to the second quarter. The winner? Boulder, Colo., the affluent Denver suburb where the share of homes with increasing values rose nearly 60%.

Tags: boulder, colorado

Computers: 1 watt in 50

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:10:19 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: An interesting statistic and an important reminder that it is not simply a measure of the consumption but also of what that consumption begets.

Clip Source: www.sciencemag.org

One watt in every 50 now goes to powering computers, and industry leaders are eager to keep that figure from growing. Big savings can still be made by using more-efficient power supplies and automatically putting idling computers into an energy-saving "sleep" mode. But although computers' energy demand has increased, that expenditure must be weighed against the savings it brings to other machines such as cars and refrigerators.

Tags: electricity

Rich on Palin

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:25:01 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: Frank Rich on Sarah Palin and the fringe that now controls the GOP. Some of the nationalist fervor, the fear and the scapegoating are reminiscent of prior troubled times. May our present time's more level heads prevail.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

Its voice can be found in the postings at a Web site maintained by the fans of Mark Levin, the Obama hater who is, at this writing, the No.2 best-selling hardcover nonfiction writer in America. (Glenn Beck is No.1 in paperback nonfiction.) Politico surveyed them last week. “Bottomline, do you know of any way we can remove these idiots before this country goes down the crapper?” wrote one Levin fan. “I WILL HELP!!! Should I buy a gun?” Another called for a new American revolution, promising “there will be blood.”

Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P.

Tags: politics

Making The Case For Intellectuals

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:06:07 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: An interesting (and apparently controversial if you read the associated comments) book review.

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 28, 2009 · Some years ago, when, at last, I'd finished my belabored dissertation and got my Ph.D. in literature, a relative of mine "congratulated" me by asking: "So, are you making any money now?" It's that kind of attitude, the all-American pragmatism that needs to attach a bottom-line value even to ideas, that prompts the title question of George Scialabba's new collection of essays and reviews: What Are Intellectuals Good For?

The national tendency to equate the term "intellectual" with "ineffectual" hits Scialabba where he lives. Scialabba is one of the last of the free-range eggheads, a nearly extinct breed of public intellectual not affiliated with think tanks or ivory towers. Granted, he graduated from and has long been employed by Harvard, but as a clerical worker, not a faculty member. In his free time, Scialabba writes, acutely, about literature and politics and ethics.

Tags: book review, podcast

U.S. Considers Curbs on Speculative Trading of Oil

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:44:04 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: I am a little weary of this step in the regulation of futures markets. Though I do not have the complete information before me and I do realize the vital interest there is in price stability I question the role of government to overly regulate the energy futures market as futures markets do serve a function that is beneficial to more than the few. Though what that benefit is escapes me at the moment.

In fact the price swings of late I’d say have little to do with futures markets and more to do with expected price fluctuations of a dwindling resource, i.e. this is an indicator that we have reached peak oil.

There was a study (hey if you are interested in the details, let me know) that came out a few years back that showed the price curve of a commodity that suddenly reached the point of being a dwindling resource, meaning that new demand was coming on at a higher rate than supply. Contrary to expectations the price did not skyrocket forever but went through wild gyrations

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — Reacting to swings in oil prices in recent months, federal regulators announced on Tuesday that they were considering trading restrictions on hedge funds and other “speculative” traders in markets for oil, natural gas and other energy products.

But a growing number of critics have blamed some of the extreme volatility on the role of purely financial investors — those who are simply betting on the direction of energy prices, as opposed to those who actually use such products, like airlines.

Mr. Gensler added that the agency would be reviewing the manner in which traders receive exemptions from trading limits by claiming the need to carry out “bona fide hedging transactions.”

Tags: energy, government

Coffee 'may reverse Alzheimer's'

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:42:00 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: Five cups a day!!!! My lord. That should cure just about anything. Well I guess it all depends on how you define a cup. Heck, on my coffee pot a "cup" is six ounces!

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer's disease, US scientists say.

Tags: diet, health

Parallel ecological networks in ecosystems

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:17:12 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: Han Olff, David Alonso, Matty P. Berg, B. Klemens Eriksson, Michel Loreau, Theunis Piersma and Neil Rooney

Phil Trans R Soc B (2009) 364, 1755-1779

A look at ecosystems (and perhaps their analogs) as something more than a simple trophic pyramid.

Clip Source: rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org

In ecosystems, species interact with other species directly and through abiotic factors in multiple ways, often forming complex networks of various types of ecological interaction. Out of this suite of interactions, predator–prey interactions have received most attention.

The aim of this paper is to provide new and testable ideas on how to understand and model ecosystems in which many different types of ecological interaction operate simultaneously.

we propose that food webs are structured among two main axes of organization: a vertical (classic) axis representing trophic position and a new horizontal ‘ecological stoichiometry’ axis representing decreasing palatability of plant parts and detritus for herbivores and detrivores and slower turnover times.

Tags: complex adaptive systems, ecosystems

Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:03:44 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: W. Neil Adger,1* Terry P. Hughes,2 Carl Folke,3 Stephen R. Carpenter,4 Johan Rockström5

Science 12 August 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5737, pp. 1036 - 1039
DOI: 10.1126/science.1112122

Clip Source: www.sciencemag.org

Resilient social-ecological systems incorporate diverse mechanismsfor living with, and learning from, change and unexpected shocks.Disaster management requires multilevel governance systems thatcan enhance the capacity to cope with uncertainty and surpriseby mobilizing diverse sources of resilience.

Here, we explore howa better understanding of the linkages between ecosystems andhuman societies can help to reduce vulnerability and enhanceresilience

By resilience,we mean the capacity of linked social-ecological systems toabsorb recurrent disturbances such as hurricanes or floods soas to retain essential structures, processes, and feedbacks(1, 2). Resilience reflects the degree to which a complex adaptivesystem is capable of self-organization (versus lack of organizationor organization forced by external factors) and the degree towhich the system can build capacity for learning and adaptation(3, 4).

Tags: disasters, resilience

Ayelet Waldman's Memoir Of A 'Bad Mother'

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:37:52 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: An interesting interview. Learned something about bipolar disorder...

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Fresh Air from WHYY, May 5, 2009 · Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

Now, in the memoir Bad Mother, Waldman details the fall-out of that essay, as well as what she calls "the perils and joys of trying to be a decent mother in a world intent on making you feel like a bad one."

Tags: interview, npr. fresh air, podcast

Is Bicycling Bad for Your Bones?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:39:46 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: The vast majority of us that do bike need not worry.

Clip Source: well.blogs.nytimes.com

Is cycling bad for the bones? A number of intriguing studies published in the past 18 months, including Smathers’, have raised that possibility

Bone scans showed that almost all of the cyclists had significantly less bone density in the spine than the control group. Some of the racers, young men in their 20s, had osteopenia in their spines, a medical condition only one step below full-blown osteoporosis.

The riders, aged 27 to 44, began with slightly below-average bone density. By the conclusion of the race season, they had lost a significant portion of their total, already-low bone mass in their hips

Other endurance sports don’t seem to hurt bones in the same way and are typically beneficial.

many serious riders burn more calories in a day than they consume, an energy imbalance that is being studied to determine its impact on bone loss. And sweat could play a role. A rider can lose hundreds of milligrams of calcium an hour through sweat.

Tags: health, sport

Capture the Flag

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:02:40 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo

Clip Source: egan.blogs.nytimes.com

Traveling in California and New York over the last couple of weeks, I noticed something in the summer landscape of these two deeply blue states that is more reminiscent of rural America this time of year – a surfeit of American flags.

It’s not unusual to see a flag in liberal provinces, of course. But in the Bush years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit, many Americans withdrew from overt displays of patriotism. Some said they were ashamed of their country.

Stephen Colbert, with so much overt flag-waving and eagle-flying that he neutered the public blowhards who costumed themselves in red, white and blue at the peak of the Bush presidency.

The same country that turned away from its ideals in the runup to the Iraq War is opening its embassies this Independence Day under a president whose personal narrative shows the promise inherent in that flag.

Tags: america