1/ An excellent column from Thomas Friedman tying our massive US debt and climate change together, making the point we aren't dealing with either crisis......
But which politician will have the courage to propose a carbon tax? Right now, noone.....they are all owned by the fossil fuel industry......
Whenever I hear the word “cliff,” I am reminded of something that President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, used to say about how we need to respond to climate change because no one can predict when it might take a disruptive, nonlinear turn. “We are driving toward a cliff in a fog,” said Holdren about the climate, and that’s always a good time “to start tapping on the brakes.” Indeed, when you think about how much financial debt we’ve built up in the market and how much carbon debt we’ve built up in the atmosphere, the wisest thing we could do as a country today is to start tapping on the brakes by both emitting less carbon to bend the emissions curve down and racking up less debt to bend our debt-to-G.D.P. curve down. Unfortunately, we are still doing neither.
Indeed, we are actually taunting the two most powerful and merciless forces on the planet, the market and Mother Nature, at the same time. We’re essentially saying to both of them: “Hey, what’ve you got, baby? No interest rate rises? A little bitty temperature increase? That’s all you’ve got?” I just hope we get our act together before the market and Mother Nature each show us what they’ve got.
Let’s look at the huge carbon and financial deficits we’re amassing. For thousands of years up to the dawn of the industrial age 200 years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere contained 280 parts per million of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Today, that number is nearly 400 p.p.m., with 450 p.p.m. routinely cited as the tipping point where we create the conditions for out-of-control acceleration. Melting the permafrost in Alaska, Canada and Siberia, for example, would release massive amounts of carbon that would further increase global warming. Permafrost is packed with CO2 and frozen methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. “If the tundra continues melting,” says Hal Harvey, the chief executive of Energy Innovation, “we could basically release the equivalent of all the carbon that all humanity has emitted from the start of history to now.” That would really send temperatures soaring, ice melting and sea levels rising.
We’re on a similar trajectory with our debt. Mounting deficits have driven America’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio from 36.2 percent in 2007 to 72.8 percent today. In their widely hailed book on credit crises, “This Time Is Different,” the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue that countries that allow their debt-to-G.D.P. ratios to exceed 90 percent experience slower growth and greater instability — much like hitting a climate tipping point. Indeed, they note, those who would point to low interest rates today as some kind of “all-clear” for more debt “should remember that market interest rates can change like the weather.
2/ You may have heard about the trillion dollar platinum coin, which would let the President raise the debt ceiling without being held hostage by the Republican Congress.....
Paul Krugman explains the debt ceiling issue clearly and offers a solution......good column.....
It’s that time again: the annual meeting of the American Economic Association and affiliates, a sort of medieval fair that serves as a marketplace for bodies (newly minted Ph.D.’s in search of jobs), books and ideas. And this year, as in past meetings, there is one theme dominating discussion: the ongoing economic crisis.
This isn’t how things were supposed to be. If you had polled the economists attending this meeting three years ago, most of them would surely have predicted that by now we’d be talking about how the great slump ended, not why it still continues.
So what went wrong? The answer, mainly, is the triumph of bad ideas.
It’s tempting to argue that the economic failures of recent years prove that economists don’t have the answers. But the truth is actually worse: in reality, standard economics offered good answers, but political leaders — and all too many economists — chose to forget or ignore what they should have known.
The story, at this point, is fairly straightforward. The financial crisis led, through several channels, to a sharp fall in private spending: residential investment plunged as the housing bubble burst; consumers began saving more as the illusory wealth created by the bubble vanished, while the mortgage debt remained. And this fall in private spending led, inevitably, to a global recession.
For an economy is not like a household. A family can decide to spend less and try to earn more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: my spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall — and unemployment will soar.
3/ One of the best SNL skits of last year was when a panel of techies complaining about the I-Phone 5 were confronted with some of the Chinese peasants who put them together......a funny four minutes......
4/ You may have read that AIG, the insurance giant, was considering joining Hank Greenberg [the former CEO] in suing the US Government for being too hard on the company, and Matt Taibbi of course had some pithy comments on this outrage......
Hank Greenberg Should Be Shot into Space For Suing the Government over the AIG Bailout
A lot of people are wondering what to think about the news that the board of AIG is considering joining the lawsuit filed by former AIG head Maurice "Hank" Greenberg against the Fed and the U.S. government – a suit that one news outlet describes as charging the state with handing out an "insufficiently generous bailout."
The editorial in today's Daily News captures the public feeling over this confusing news story quite well, I think:
If chutzpah were a crime, Hank Greenberg, American International Group's former chief, would be going away for a long, long time.Long since driven out of AIG, Greenberg is waging a lawsuit claiming the U.S. hurt the firm's shareholders — including him — when the government rescued the insurance giant with the most humongous bailout of all time.
If you just read the headlines, the story that AIG is considering suing the government for bailing it out makes no sense at all. What could even be the basis for such a suit? One reader asked the question this way: "If a cop bursts into a motel room and stops you just as you're about to blow your head off with a shotgun, can you sue him? If the answer is yes, should I try it?"
Former bailout inspector Neil Barofsky put it this way, in an interview with Bloomberg: "The idea that AIG would have been better off by going bankrupt, for the shareholders is a very, very hard thing to sell, I think."
But here's the funny thing about the lawsuit filed against the government: It isn't all wrong. In fact, parts of it are quite on the mark.
The only problem is, the suit is being filed by maybe the biggest douchebag of all time, Hank Greenberg (and his company, Starr International), a man who has not only been proven to be corrupt and a fraud, but who perhaps more than anyone else was responsible for the galactic balance-sheet goat-fuck that caused AIG's implosion in the first place. If there is such a person as an innocent AIG shareholder who was harmed by the government's conduct, it sure as hell isn't Hank Greenberg
5/ Jon Stewart's first week back dealt with some serious topics [gun control, the Hurricane Sandy relief bill], but on Thursday's show he had some fun......
Al Gore selling his liberal TV network to Al Jazeera was irresistible to Fox News, so in this four minute segment he issues the first Fox Boner alert of 2013......funny......
6/ Your scribe has been sick for the last two weeks, but at least I have had a lot of company ......Central Florida is one of the worst areas for the three strains of flu going around.....
Serious stuff......
It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots.
The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worstwhooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter highs for the many viruses that cause symptoms on the “colds and flu” spectrum.
Influenza is widespread, and causing local crises. On Wednesday, Boston’s mayor declared a public health emergency as cases flooded hospital emergency rooms.
Google’s national flu trend maps, which track flu-related searches, are almost solid red (for “intense activity”) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly FluView maps, which track confirmed cases, are nearly solid brown (for “widespread activity”).
“Yesterday, I saw a construction worker, a big strong guy in his Carhartts who looked like he could fall off a roof without noticing it,” said Dr. Beth Zeeman, an emergency room doctor for MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., just outside Boston. “He was in a fetal position with fever and chills, like a wet rag. When I see one of those cases, I just tighten up my mask a little.”
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston started asking visitors with even mild cold symptoms to wear masks and to avoid maternity wards. The hospital has treated 532 confirmed influenza patients this season and admitted 167, even more than it did by this date during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic.
At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 100 patients were crowded into spaces licensed for 53. Beds lined halls and pressed against vending machines. Overflow patients sat on benches in the lobby wearing surgical masks.
“Today was the first time I think I was experiencing my first pandemic,” said Heidi Crim, the nursing director, who saw both the swine flu and SARS outbreaks here. Adding to the problem, she said, many staff members were at home sick and supplies like flu test swabs were running out.
Nationally, deaths and hospitalizations are still below epidemic thresholds. But experts do not expect that to remain true. Pneumonia usually shows up in national statistics only a week or two after emergency rooms report surges in cases, and deaths start rising a week or two after that, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The predominant flu strain circulating is an H3N2, which typically kills more people than the H1N1 strains that usually predominate; the relatively lethal 2003-4 “Fujian flu” season was overwhelmingly H3N2.
No cases have been resistant to Tamiflu, which can ease symptoms if taken within 48 hours, and this year’s flu shot is well-matched to the H3N2 strain, the C.D.C. said. Flu shots are imperfect, especially in the elderly, whose immune systems may not be strong enough to produce enough antibodies.
Simultaneously, the country is seeing a large and early outbreak of norovirus, the “cruise ship flu” or “stomach flu,” said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the C.D.C.’s viral gastroenterology branch. It includes a new strain, which first appeared in Australia and is known as the Sydney 2012 variant.
7/ He's 17 and she's only 15. But together, they won the 2012 Junior Division National Carolina Shag Dancing Championships.What the hell is "Shag Dancing", you ask? I think it's something they do in the Deep South.......
Anyway this talented couple are dancing to Joe Turner's "Flip, Flop and Fly." Three minutes of the most incredible set of legs ever......
8/ If you thought the fast food industry was cleaning up it's act and serving healthier options, read what's in the MacDonalds McRib sandwich.......I passed a local McDonalds yesterday and they had a McRib sign up.....
Here's a personal story - a group of us were in a time crunch before a movie over the holidays, so we decided to eat at a Taco Bell - of our group of eight, only one could actually eat what they had ordered......it was truly inedible and unrecognisable as actual food.....but the place was busy! All of them are.....
Scary stuff how 80% of this nation eats.....it's cheap and filling, but it ain't actual food!
It’s ‘McRib season’, and thousands across the nation are scrambling to use online websites like the ‘McRib locator’ to stuff the McDonald’s McRib sandwich down their throats. A sandwich that is not only full of genetically modified ingredients, a medley of toxic fillers and preservatives, but also some ingredients that are actually banned in other nations around the world. But honestly, are you surprised?
The McRib is the result of intensive marketing by McDonald’s. Utilizing the basics of supply and demand through creating scarcity over the McRib by only unleashing the culinary abomination for a fraction of the year that is only known once it is released, McDonald’s fans have been known to ‘hoard’ McRib sandwiches and eat them in extreme excess. It’s even a topic of the popular documentary Super Size Me, where filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (who gorges himself with McDonald’s for 30 days only to find serious health consequences) encounters ‘McRib hunters’ who actually travel the country eating McRib sandwiches.
McDonald’s even made McRib fans sign a petition to ‘save the McRib’ online, bringing out a conglomerate of fans to bring back their favorite franken sandwich.
But what’s really inside the McRib specifically that makes it such a food abomination? Containing over 70 ingredients, the McRib is full of surprises — including ‘restructured meat’ technology that includes traditionally-discarded animal parts brought together to create a rib-like substance. Here’s some of the disturbing substances found within the McDonald’s McRib sandwich:
A flour-bleaching agent used in yoga mats
Out of the 70 ingredients that make up the ‘pork’ sandwich, a little-known flour-bleaching agent known as azodicarbonamide lies among them.
9/ "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5, with guest Christina Aguilara......lively, fun, great clip from an old Mick interview, and some of the dancers really nail his moves.....good video and catchy song...........
The tattooed singer is the lead from Maroon 5......
10/ Australia's summer heat and wildfires are breaking all kinds of records.....over 50 degrees C, 122 degrees F.
Right now, things are pretty hot in Australia. So hot, in fact, that meteorologists Down Under have added new, never-before-used colors to temperature maps in anticipation of record-breaking heat.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology amended its interactive weather chartTuesday, adding the colors deep purple and pink to indicate a temperature range of up to 54 degrees Celsius, or 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous range had capped at 50 Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
The change was based on one weather prediction model that forecasts temperatures to climb above 50 Celsius early next week.
The all-time hottest temperature recorded in Australia was 50.7 Celsius on Jan. 2, 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
According to the current model, the forecast for next Monday will bring a "Tasmania-sized" area of heat in excess of 50 degrees to South Australia.
"The air mass over the inland is still heating up. It hasn't peaked," David Jones, head of the bureau's climate monitoring and prediction unit, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
11/ There is extreme weather all around the world, from China to the UK to Russia.....the NYT has put together an excellent slideshow of the effects of the new weather we will be seeing in the future......and make no mistake this is just the beginning.....
12/ Amazing video of Dubai's little secret.......they have no sewer system for their wonderful high rises including the Burj Khalifa, so all of the sewage has to be collected and trucked into the desert.......
Two minute video.....a real eyeopener.......
Keep on Truckin!The modern Arab world, camel sense seems about right!You've seen those architectural wonders of Dubai . However, none are hooked up to a sewer system!The two minute video below passes a line of poop trucks and never gets to the end of the line. What were these people thinking?Unbelievable amount of sewage generated by the new high-rises & no place to dispose of it.Dubai doesn't have a sewage system for all those big new buildings so they haul it all away.Look at the number of tank trucks that are waiting to dump their load. This is amazing. They wait for days.Obviously, not everything you see above ground that looks amazingly beautiful is built on a well-planned system of utilities.Click on this link: < http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=31361
13/ What is our Central Florida economic engine that is Disney up to? Making it painless to spend more money, of course.
Interesting story about how they will be using technology to make the park experience more seamless with fewer lines.....and expensive!
ORLANDO, Fla. — Imagine Walt Disney World with no entry turnstiles. Cash? Passé: Visitors would wear rubber bracelets encoded with credit card information, snapping up corn dogs and Mickey Mouse ears with a tap of the wrist. Smartphone alerts would signal when it is time to ride Space Mountain without standing in line.
Fantasyland? Hardly. It happens starting this spring.
Disney in the coming months plans to begin introducing a vacation management system called MyMagic+ that will drastically change the way Disney World visitors — some 30 million people a year — do just about everything.
The initiative is part of a broader effort, estimated by analysts to cost between $800 million and $1 billion, to make visiting Disney parks less daunting and more amenable to modern consumer behavior. Disney is betting that happier guests will spend more money.
“If we can enhance the experience, more people will spend more of their leisure time with us,” said Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts.
The ambitious plan moves Disney deeper into the hotly debated terrain of personal data collection. Like most major companies, Disney wants to have as much information about its customers’ preferences as it can get, so it can appeal to them more efficiently. The company already collects data to use in future sales campaigns, but parts of MyMagic+ will allow Disney for the first time to track guest behavior in minute detail.
Did you buy a balloon? What attractions did you ride and when? Did you shake Goofy’s hand, but snub Snow White? If you fully use MyMagic+, databases will be watching, allowing Disney to refine its offerings and customize its marketing messages.
Disney is aware of potential privacy concerns, especially regarding children. The plan, which comes as the federal government is trying to strengthen online privacy protections, could be troublesome for a company that some consumers worry is already too controlling.
But Disney has decided that MyMagic+ is essential. The company must aggressively weave new technology into its parks — without damaging the sense of nostalgia on which the experience depends — or risk becoming irrelevant to future generations, Mr. Staggs said. From a business perspective, he added, MyMagic+ could be “transformational.”
14/ Ads for "Gangster Squad" are everywhere, but as this review says don't waste your time on this movie.......
“Gangster Squad” is less a movie than a costume party run amok. Set in a late-’40s Los Angeles painted in cartoon colors rather than noir shadows, it is a hectic jumble of fedoras and zoot suits, stockings and cigarettes, and red femme-fatale dresses. The accessories of choice are guns of various calibers and styles, deployed to drown out — or perhaps to emphasize — knucklehead dialogue and inept storytelling.
The script, by Will Beall (and based on a book by Paul Lieberman), is flecked with enough period idioms to suggest a Google Docs search though some of the writings of Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. “Who’s the tomato?” asks Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) when he spies a beautiful woman in the company of a notorious crime boss. The produce in question is Grace Faraday, played by Emma Stone, who falls hard for Jerry’s patter, even though he is a member of the L.A.P.D., and she is the moll of Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a vicious former boxer with an expanding criminal empire.
Opposing Mickey’s rise is the titular Gangster Squad, a secret police posse under the command of Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin). O’Mara, a straight arrow combat veteran with an anxious wife (Mireille Enos) and a baby boomer on the way, lays down a ponderous chunk of voice-over before settling down to assemble his team, which has the structure of a classic combat movie platoon. There is a sly old coot with deadly aim (Robert Patrick); his Mexican-American sidekick (Michael Peña); a black detective (Anthony Mackie); and the requisite egghead (Giovanni Ribisi), who has an advanced knowledge of the era’s high-tech gadgetry.
Rather than assemble a case against Mickey — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is well in the future — the squad undertakes a guerrilla campaign meant to disrupt his businesses. They raid casinos and cathouses, intercept drug shipments and burn piles of cash, with maximal noise and minimal regard for the niceties of due process.
The overheated trailer......
15/ Good TV - a pretty decent review of the HBO show "Girls".......
Alessandra Stanley [my cousin?] explains the popularity of this gritty show......actually sounds really good.......
Back when networks reigned supreme, cable television was the place to go for sex and violence. Now it’s also a safe house for pessimism, an alternate universe where problems fester or deepen, friends let one another down, and love doesn’t conquer anything.
And that’s particularly hard for American comedy, which is addicted to redemption and happy endings, so much so that one of the better network sitcoms on ABC at the moment is actually called “Happy Endings.” (That title may suggest to some a salacious double entendre, but the episodes do close on a warm, cheery note.) There is clever writing on even some of the most anodyne sitcoms, but it’s still almost impossible to find a network series that doesn’t celebrate the sunny side of human weakness.
And that’s why “Girls,” which returns to HBO on Sunday, is such a phenomenon. For the seven readers who haven’t heard of it or its 26-year-old wunderkind creator, Lena Dunham, “Girls” is a dark and deadpan comedy about four young women in Brooklyn who don’t own cool apartments or have glamorous careers, eligible suitors, expensive clothes or even, sometimes, paying jobs. Ms. Dunham plays the heroine, Hannah, and she isn’t always likable. “Girls” may be the millennial generation’s rebuttal to “Sex and the City,” but the first season was at times as cruelly insightful and bleakly funny as “Louie” on FX or “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO.
There is lots of good television, but comedies that are fresh and original as well as rigorously downbeat are harder to find — particularly when it comes to the depiction of women in their 20s. “Girls” drew so many accolades and so much media attention — Internet champions, television appearances, magazine covers and a multimillion-dollar book deal for Ms. Dunham — that it quickly started a backlash that was as disproportionate as all the initial fuss. So the measure of Season 2 lies in how well Ms. Dunham and her colleagues withstood all the pressure and stayed true to the original conceit.
And to get a bit of the flavour of the show, here is the trailer......
Todays video - love this one....."Spanish for your Nanny"
Todays blind man joke
A blind man walks into a restaurant and they offer him a menu. He says he is blind but if they will bring him a dirty fork he will smell it and order from it.
A little confused, the owner walks over to the dirty dish pile and picks up a greasy fork. He returns to the blind man's table and hands it to him. The blind man puts the fork to his nose and takes in a deep breath."Ah, yes, that's what I'll have -- meatloaf and mashed potatoes."
Unbelievable, the owner thinks as he walks towards the kitchen. The cook happens to be the owner's wife. He tells her what had just happened.
The blind man eats his meal and leaves.
Several days later, the blind man returns and the owner mistakenly
brings him a menu again.
"Sir, remember me? I'm the blind man."
"I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you. I'll go get you a dirty fork."
The owner retrieves a dirty fork and brings it to the blind man.
After another deep breath, the blind man says,
"That smells great. I'll take the macaroni and cheese with broccoli."
Walking away in disbelief, the owner thinks the blind man is screwing
around with him and tells his wife that the next time the blind man
comes in he's going to test him.
The blind man eats and leaves.
He returns the following week, but this time the owner sees him coming and runs to the kitchen.
He tells his wife, "Mary, rub this fork on your panties before I take it to the blind man."
Mary complies and hands her husband the fork.
As the blind man walks in and sits down, the owner is ready and waiting.
"Good afternoon, sir, this time I remembered you and I already have
the fork ready for you."
The blind man puts the fork to his nose,takes a deep whiff, and says,
"Hey I didn't know that Mary worked here..."
Todays dentist joke
A few drinks later, the guy takes off his shirt and then washes his hands.He then takes off his trousers and again washes his hands.The girl has been watching him and says:"You must be a dentist."The guy, surprised, says:
"Yes .... How did you figure that out?""Easy.." she replies, "you keep washing your hands."One thing leads to another and they make love.
After it's over the girl says: "You must be a good dentist."
The guy, now with an inflated ego, says:
"Sure - I'm a good dentist. How did you figure that out?"The girl replies:...."Didn't feel a thing."
Todays guy joke
I'm reaching out, as a friend of mine needs some help!
His wife told him to go out and get some of those pills that would help him get an erection.
When he came back he tossed her some diet pills.
Anyway, he's looking for a place to live, can you help him?
His wife told him to go out and get some of those pills that would help him get an erection.
When he came back he tossed her some diet pills.
Anyway, he's looking for a place to live, can you help him?
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