Clipmarks | masbury's 'economy' clips

Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:47:34 GMT

clipped by: OhBlaDi

Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

12 Nov, 2006 General, -Funneh

Top Ten Reasons to Make Gay Marriage Illegal

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans. .

Tags: politics, idiots, gay marriage

Why the World Still Needs Philosophy

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:35:21 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.oycf.org

This new century has the potential to be either the worst or the best of times for humanity. The worst of times because there is no end in sight to the struggle between a dehumanizing global economy and the irrational forces (sexism, racism, and superstition) threatened by its hegemony. Unlike any other time in history, ours has sufficient stupidity, power and hatred to destroy the conditions for the possibility of life on this planet before they may be preserved anywhere else; the destructive powers at our disposal far exceed our present capacity to express love or altruism. Yet, it could very easily be the best of times because we finally have technological resources sufficient to provide a good life for the entire
population of the earth.

While the desires of human beings are at least potentially finite, most of us, with varying degrees of comprehension, allow our lives to run by insatiable institutions

artificial entities have no motive other than profit and unlimited accumulation

Tags: perspectives

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:09:21 GMT

clipped by: sam.reckoner

Clip Source: www.ft.com

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“They need to make fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity one of their top priorities. If they do, I think we have a chance to turn this around but if they don’t, I think the risk of a serious crisis rises considerably”.

Tags: politics, government, finance, economy

Bono on the Bailout

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:51:00 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: A great quote, but somewhat sad.

Clip Source: www.prospect.org

BONO ON THE BAILOUT.

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $7 $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

--Dana Goldstein

Tags: bono, economy, poverty

Why America Will Survive George W. Bush

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:53:01 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Otto von Bismarck saw how American blunders led to American power and allegedly said that God has a special providence for drunks, fools, and the United States of America.

Walter Russell Mead (of the Council on Foreign Relations) puts Bush's 8-year stint in the White House into proper perspective.

America's foreign policy has been short-sighted and often self-defeating from the get-go, alternately collaborative, passive, and interventionist. And, yet, miraculously, we always come out ahead.

With the unstoppable rise of a global capitalist economy, Mead makes the case that America, for all its past and current faults, will continue to be the inevitable leader of this new international buoyancy. Not even our latest mistakes (unprecedented though they may be) can derail such a powerful incentive that is the modern American world trade system.

Which means, more than ever, we're literally all in this together.

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

Failing Upward

Nothing in the field of international affairs is as scandalous and as perplexing as the fact of American power. From Revolutionary times to the present, virtually all observers foreign and domestic have agreed that Americans don't do foreign policy well.

Moralistic, uninformed, unsubtle, alternately isolationist and hyperactive, hamstrung by a clumsy constitutional process and a public that oscillates between fatuous idealism and ignorant bellicosity, U.S. foreign policy has been shocking the world for more than 200 years.

And, worse still, we win. For two centuries, the United States has astounded critics with its bad foreign policy--and, for two centuries, the United States has steadily risen to an unprecedented level of power and influence in the international system.

The spectacle is often surreal. The United States seems to wander nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another

like a version of the chronically oblivious cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

Tags: america, usa, bush, foreign policy, world, history, war, empire, trade, economy

Reality Lord of the Flies

Thu, 17 May 2007 04:30:44 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Drop a bunch of kids in an abandoned town and see if they get crazy enough to make some must-see TV. Yes, it's exploitative and a frightening snapshot of our voyeuristic society, but how can you not watch this?

Clip Source: www.variety.com

CBS is ready to unleash a reality take on "Lord of the Flies," quietly wrapping filming on a new skein in which a group of 8- to 15-year-olds will create their own society.

Rather than surviving on an island, the kiddies relocated to Bonanza City, N.M., a ghost town abandoned more than a century ago.

Goal for the kids is to build a functional society. They have to pass laws, choose leaders and build an economy.

Unlike most reality shows, there will be no mandated eliminations. Kids can go home when they want to.

Tags: tv, television, lord of the flies, cbs, kids, children, kid nation

The Coming Death Shortage

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:33:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive" a must read.
Though I fail to agree with many of the premises of this article, the critical views it presents are important and the issues need be taken into consideration seriously

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward "engineered negligible senescence"—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have "a good chance of success in mice within ten years." The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. "In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. "And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born."

The critical issue, in Goldman's view, will be not the costs per se but determining who will pay them. "We're going to have a very public debate about whether this will be covered by insurance," he says

Tags: longevity, death, economy, future, public debate

How To Win EVERY Argument

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 06:05:30 GMT

clipped by: Jdfodio
clipper's remarks: Brilliant! I think my boyfriend has already memorized all of these tactics and then some.

Clip Source: www.ece.ust.hk

MAKE THINGS UP

Suppose, in the Peruvian economy argument, you are trying to prove that Peruvians are underpaid, a position you base solely on the fact that YOU are underpaid, and you'll be damned if you're going to let a bunch of Peruvians be better off. DON'T say: "I think Peruvians are underpaid." Say instead:

"The average Peruvian's salary in 1981 dollars adjusted for the revised tax base is $1,452.81 per annum, which is $836.07 before the mean gross poverty level."

NOTE: Always make up exact figures.

USE MEANINGLESS BUT WEIGHTY-SOUNDING WORDS AND PHRASES

Memorize this list:

Let me put it this way
In terms of
Vis-à-vis
Per se
As it were
Qua
So to speak

USE SNAPPY AND IRRELEVANT COMEBACKS

You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponents when they make valid points. The best are:

You're begging the question.
You're being defensive.
Don't compare apples to oranges.
What are your parameters?

Don't forget the classic: YOU'RE SO LINEAR.

Tags: humor

Barack Obama on Iraq - 2002

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:14:33 GMT

clipped by: jmk432
clipper's remarks: I love this quote! And it was in 2002!

Clip Source: en.wikisource.org

Barack Obama's Iraq Speech

Delivered on 26 October 2002.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

Tags: barack, obama, iraq

Cartograms

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:36:18 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: I found this quite interesting...

Clip Source: www-personal.umich.edu

Here is an ordinary map of the world:

It's possible, however, and sometimes very useful, to redraw the map with the sizes of countries made bigger or smaller in order to represent something of interest. Such maps are called cartograms and can be an effective and natural way of portraying geographic or social data.

Here, for example, is a cartogram that shows the human population of the countries of the world:

Cartograms are most often used to show population data, but there is no reason why they need be limited to population. They can in principle be used to show almost any quantity. Here is a cartogram of the world in which the sizes of countries are proportional to Gross Domestic Product, which is a measure of how much wealth a country's economy generates, and hence, to an extent, of the wealth of the country's inhabitants:

Child mortality

People living with HIV/AIDS

Total spending on healthcare

Energy consumption (including oil)

Greenhouse gas emissions

Click on image for a larger version

Tags: maps, world, countries

Are GM Crops Killing the Bees?

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:28:48 GMT

clipped by: quickstar
clipper's remarks: This is quite scary... especially the prediction by Einstein! It makes sense, though... no bees = no food. Read the full article for more.

Clip Source: www.truthout.org

Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

Tags: gm, gmo, genetics, food, health, science

12 year-old Kills Herself Over Pair of Shoes

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:38:01 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: More sad human truth behind the world's 'booming economy'.

Clip Source: news.independent.co.uk

All she wanted was a bicycle, a pair of new shoes and to be able to finish her schooling. But her family was dirt poor, and eventually the 12-year-old Filipina girl grew so demoralised that she hanged herself.

Mariannet Amper left a letter under her pillow describing her failed hopes and aspirations. Her family also found a diary in which she described the privations of a life with no money in Davao City, on southern Mindanao island.

The night before she killed herself with a nylon rope in their modest hut, which has no electricity or running water, Mariannet had asked her father, Isabelo, for 100 pesos (about £1) for a school project. But he had no money.

In the Philippines, nearly 14 per cent of the 87 million population lives on less than a dollar a day, despite government claims that the economy is booming.

Tags: phillipines, poverty, economic lies

Algae-in-a-vat may power the future

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:53:27 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

Genetically modified green algae could one day produce stored energy in the form of hydrogen gas, say Australian researchers, fuelling a hydrogen economy.

Associate Professor Ben Hankamer of the University of Queensland and colleagues report they have increased the sunlight-capturing efficiency of algae that can pump out hydrogen.

If successfully scaled up, the researchers say this could complement or be an alternative to our present carbon-based economy.

"We urgently need to develop and install new CO2-free energy production systems. Our systems offer one solution for this," the researchers say.

They report their findings in the latest issue of the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

A prototype bioreactor

The researchers have been studying single-celled photosynthetic algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii).

A major problem is the algae are inefficient at capturing sunlight,

they have now used RNA interference (RNAi) to engineer a strain of algae to make the process more efficient

Tags: algae, hydrogen, photosynthesis, energy, co2, rna, sunlight

Nothing to lose but their chains

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:36:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.economist.com

Robots are getting cleverer and more dexterous. Their time has almost come

Today, thanks to the relentless increase in the power of computing, the latest robots are being fitted with sophisticated systems that enable them to see, feel, move and work together. Robot engineers call this “mechatronics”: the union of mechanics, optics, electronics, computers and software. Some factory robots are now smart enough to be released from their safety cages to work among humans. And as they become cleverer and more dexterous, they are starting to move from factories to offices and homes.

A robot is defined not by its appearance, but by how it is controlled. The more automated it is and the more it can determine its behaviour, the more likely it is to count as a robot. Many single-function service robots are already familiar

Vision and touch are improving fast enough for the cage soon to be removed.

As with industrial robots, the first service robots to enter production will be shaped by their job

Tags: robotics, dexterity, economy, industrialization, technology

0.3% of Saharan Sun Enough To Power Europe

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:42:28 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The visionary proposal comes as the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission released its strategic energy technology plan which highlighted photovoltaic cells as one of the eight technologies that need to be developed in the future. The plan also includes fuel cells, hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind and smart grids.

Clip Source: www.environmentalgraffiti.com

The major obstacle to using renewable energy has always been the inability to produce a constant supply of electricity to consumers.

However, scientists now believe that they have found a way to solve the supply and demand problem.

Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European Commission’s Institute for Energy, speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona (ESOF), believes that the creation of solar farms in the Sahara desert could produce enough energy to meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

Power could be generated either through photovoltaic cells or by using the sun’s heat to boil water and power turbines.

The argument for solar farms in the Sahara is solid in that photovoltaic panels there could potentially generate three times more energy than panels in northern Europe.

It is estimated that capturing 0.3% of the sunlight falling on the desert would meet all of Europe’s needs.

around €450bn would be needed and scientists estimate that it would take until 2050

Tags: energy, economy, europe, solar energy