why your overlords hate the gold standard...,

whiskey&gunpowder | Ben Bernanke journeyed across town to give a 4-part seminar to 30 undergraduates at George Washington University.

This was clearly a public relations stunt. Why would the head of the world’s most powerful central bank lecture to 30 undergraduates? This was not quite the equivalent of George W. Bush reading “My Pet Goat” to third graders, but it was close. Think of it as “My Pet Peeve.” His first speech was an overview of central banking. He used PowerPoint to create slides. The presentation had 49 slides.

Any experienced lecture listener, had he known of this in advance, would have headed toward the exit. Here is the man whose verbal skills produce narcolepsy in normal people who have slept at least 10 hours. To this he added 49 slides. This violated Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30-point font. The slides are here.

UNDERGROUND GOLD

In his speech, he introduced some of the classic arguments of the fiat money advocates. Warren Buffett has invoked it:

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. “Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

This was Buffett’s reply to his father’s policy of defending the gold standard in Congress in the late 1940s. His father had far greater understanding of the gold standard than he does.

The thought of all those itching Martian heads apparently bothers Bernanke, too. So, he repeated the argument.

“Now, unfortunately, gold standards are far from perfect monetary systems. One small problem which is not on the slides but I’ll just mention is that there’s an awful big waste of resources. I mean, what you have to do to have a gold standard is you have to go to South Africa or some place and dig up tons of gold and move it to New York and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and, that’s a lot of effort and work and it’s a, you know, it’s a – Milton Friedman used to emphasize that that was a very serious cost of a gold standard that all this gold was being dug up and then put back into another hole. So there is some cost to having a gold standard.”

There is “some cost” to having a gold standard. This means that we must pay for services rendered. Will wonders never cease! There are costs in this life! I’m telling you, this fellow Bernanke is on the cutting edge of economic science.

It’s a shame that he did not have a slide for this, even though that would have meant 50 slides.
Back in 1969, I dealt with this argument. Bernanke was 15 at the time. He must have missed it.

I begin with his first statement: “Now, unfortunately, gold standards are far from perfect monetary systems.” So, let me assure you, is central banking.

paul vs. paul

waste unrivalled by anything short of uranium production...,

central bankers are intellectually bankrupt...,

zerohedge | Likely glowing from his glorious victory (h/t Trish Regan) over Krugman in Bloomberg's recent Paul vs Paul debate, Rep. Ron Paul destroys the central-planning arrogance of Bernanke and his ilk in an Op-Ed released by the FT today.

Control of the world’s economy has been placed in the hands of a banking cartel, which holds great danger for all of us. True prosperity requires sound money, increased productivity, and increased savings and investment. The world is awash in US dollars, and a currency crisis involving the world’s reserve currency would be an unprecedented catastrophe. No amount of monetary expansion can solve our current financial problems, but it can make those problems much worse.

Our Central Bankers Are Intellectually Bankrupt

by Ron Paul

The financial crisis has fully exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of the world’s central bankers.

Why? Central bankers neglect the fact that interest rates are prices. Manipulating those prices through credit expansion or contraction has real and deleterious effects on the economy. Yet while socialism and centralised economic planning have largely been rejected by free-market economists, the myth persists that central banks are a necessary component of market economies.

These economists understand that having wages or commodity prices established by government fiat would cause shortages, misallocations of capital and hardship. Yet they accept at face value the notion that central banks must determine not only the supply of one particular commodity – money – but also the cost of that commodity via the setting of interest rates.

Printing unlimited amounts of money does not lead to unlimited prosperity. This is readily apparent from observing the Fed’s monetary policy over the past two decades. It has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy, providing money to banks with the hope that this new money will spur lending and, in turn, consumption. These interventions are intended to raise stock prices, lower borrowing costs for companies and individuals, and maintain high housing prices.

But like their predecessors in the 1930s, today’s Fed governors behave as if the height of the credit bubble is the status quo to which we need to return. This confuses money with wealth, and reflects the idea that prosperity stems from high asset prices and large amounts of money and credit.

The push for easy money is not new. Central banking was supposed to have ended the types of periodic financial crises the US experienced throughout the 19th century. Yet US financial panics have only got worse since the centralisation of monetary policy via the creation of the Fed in 1913. The Depression in the 1930s; the haemorrhaging of gold reserves during the 1960s; the stagflation of the 1970s; the dotcom bubble of the early 2000s; and the current recession all have their root in the Fed’s loose monetary policy.

Each of these crises began with an inflationary monetary policy that led to bubbles, and the solution to the busts that inevitably followed has always been to reflate the bubble.

This only sows the seeds for the next crisis. Lowering interest rates in an attempt to forestall a recession in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble required massive credit creation that led to the housing bubble, the collapse of which we still have not recovered from today. Failing to learn the lesson of the bursting of both the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble, the Fed has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy and has promised to leave interest rates at zero through to at least 2014. This will only ensure that the next crisis will be even more destructive than the current one.

Not content with its failed attempts to prop up the US economy, the Fed has set its sights on bailing out Europe, too. Through currency swaps, it has committed to offering potentially hundreds of billions of US dollars to the European Central Bank and we cannot rule out the possibility of direct intervention.

The Fed’s response to the crisis suggests that it believes the current crisis is a problem of liquidity. In fact it is a problem of poorly allocated investments caused by improper pricing of money and credit, pricing which is distorted by the Fed’s inflationary actions.

The Fed has made banks and corporations dependent on cheap money. Instead of looking for opportunities to invest in real products that will serve the needs of consumers, Wall Street awaits the minutes of each Federal Open Market Committee meeting with bated breath, hoping that QE3 and QE4 are just around the corner. It is no wonder that long-term investment and business planning are stagnant.

We live in a world that seems to have abandoned the concept of savings and investment as the source of real wealth and economic growth. Financial markets clamour for more cheap money creation on the part of central banks. Hopes of further quantitative easing from the Fed, the Bank of England, or the Bank of Japan – or further longer-term refinancing operations from the ECB – buoy markets, while decisions not to intervene can cause stocks to plummet. Policy makers focus on spurring consumption, while ignoring production. The so-called capitalists have forgotten that capital cannot be created by government fiat.

Control of the world’s economy has been placed in the hands of a banking cartel, which holds great danger for all of us. True prosperity requires sound money, increased productivity, and increased savings and investment. The world is awash in US dollars, and a currency crisis involving the world’s reserve currency would be an unprecedented catastrophe. No amount of monetary expansion can solve our current financial problems, but it can make those problems much worse.

europe's scariest chart just got scarier...,

zerohedge | We were the first to note the dire state of youth unemployment in Europe here, and reiterated here, as this terrible social situation just goes from bad to worse this month. Whether youth unemployment is a proxy for sales of PlayStations or for the much more critical likelihood of widespread social unrest and eventually the dissolution of Europe's political compact is unclear but one thing is for sure - Europe's leaders will be watching this chart and quaking as nation after nation breaks to all-time high levels of joblessness for the critical tinder-box of Under-25 year-olds. The Euro-zone youth unemployment rate is back over 22% for the first time since September 1994. With Spain and Greece over 50% (and rising) and Italy now joining Ireland over 35% at the same time as Germany's youth unemployment falls below 8% for the first time since May 1993 - one can only surmise the rising tensions between the haves and the have-nots (even as Germany's PMI disappoints).

who's in charge - you or your brain?

Guardian | It is clear at this point that we are irrevocably tied to the 3lb of strange computational material found within our skulls. The brain is utterly alien to us, and yet our personalities, hopes, fears and aspirations all depend on the integrity of this biological tissue. How do we know this? Because when the brain changes, we change. Our personality, decision-making, risk-aversion, the capacity to see colours or name animals – all these can change, in very specific ways, when the brain is altered by tumours, strokes, drugs, disease or trauma. As much as we like to think about the body and mind living separate existences, the mental is not separable from the physical.

This clarifies some aspects of our existence while deepening the mystery and the awe of others.

For example, take the vast, unconscious, automated processes that run under the hood of conscious awareness. We have discovered that the large majority of the brain's activity takes place at this low level: the conscious part – the "me" that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is only a tiny bit of the operations. This understanding has given us a better understanding of the complex multiplicity that makes a person. A person is not a single entity of a single mind: a human is built of several parts, all of which compete to steer the ship of state. As a consequence, people are nuanced, complicated, contradictory. We act in ways that are sometimes difficult to detect by simple introspection. To know ourselves increasingly requires careful studies of the neural substrate of which we are composed.

the end of pax americana; how western decline became inevitable

TheAtlantic | When great powers begin to experience erosion in their global standing, their leaders inevitably strike a pose of denial. At the dawn of the twentieth century, as British leaders dimly discerned such an erosion in their country's global dominance, the great diplomat Lord Salisbury issued a gloomy rumination that captured at once both the inevitability of decline and the denial of it. "Whatever happens will be for the worse," he declared. "Therefore it is our interest that as little should happen as possible." Of course, one element of decline was the country's diminishing ability to influence how much or how little actually happened.

We are seeing a similar phenomenon today in America, where the topic of decline stirs discomfort in national leaders. In September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed a "new American Moment" that would "lay the foundations for lasting American leadership for decades to come." A year and a half later, President Obama declared in his State of the Union speech: "Anyone who tells you that America is in decline . . . doesn't know what they're talking about." A position paper from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated flatly that he "rejects the philosophy of decline in all of its variants." And former U.S. ambassador to China and one-time GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman pronounced decline to be simply "un-American."

Such protestations, however, cannot forestall real-world developments that collectively are challenging the post-1945 international order, often called Pax Americana, in which the United States employed its overwhelming power to shape and direct global events. That era of American dominance is drawing to a close as the country's relative power declines, along with its ability to manage global economics and security.

This does not mean the United States will go the way of Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. As Harvard's Stephen Walt wrote in this magazine last year, it is more accurate to say the "American Era" is nearing its end. For now, and for some time to come, the United States will remain primus inter pares--the strongest of the major world powers--though it is uncertain whether it can maintain that position over the next twenty years. Regardless, America's power and influence over the international political system will diminish markedly from what it was at the apogee of Pax Americana. That was the Old Order, forged through the momentous events of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. Now that Old Order of nearly seven decades' duration is fading from the scene. It is natural that U.S. leaders would want to deny it--or feel they must finesse it when talking to the American people. But the real questions for America and its leaders are: What will replace the Old Order? How can Washington protect its interests in the new global era? And how much international disruption will attend the transition from the old to the new?

history of the banking cartels and the federal reserve

private prison corporations are slave traders

bar | Crime has been going down for nearly a generation, and the states have finally put the brakes on prison growth in response to the fiscal crunch. But Wall Street prison profiteers see the crisis as an opportunity. The Corrections Corporation of America has offered to buy nearly all the nation’s state prisons. “To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full.”

The Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.”

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this month sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

For the last two years, the number of inmates held in state prisons has declined slightly, largely because the states are short on money. Crime, of course, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, but that has never dampened the states’ appetites for warehousing ever more Black and brown bodies, and the federal prison system is still growing. However, the Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag. The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them.”

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws." The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word. Fist tap Arnach.

breaking the addiction to incarceration?

aclu | Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it's ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we've spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

U.S. Jail Population Declines for Third Consecutive Year, Reports Justice Dept.
From June 2010 to June 2011, the jail inmate population declined 1.8 percent, dropping to 735,601 from 748,728. Jails were operating at 84 percent of their rated capacity at mid-year 2011, the lowest percentage since 1984.

House Funding Bill Includes $70 million for Second Chance Act
The House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, and Science proposed $70 million for the Second Chance Act, an increase of $7 million from the FY12 funding level. The Second Chance Act was passed by Congress in 2008 and supports evidence-based strategies proven to reduce recidivism.

California Group Collects Enough Signatures to Place Three-Strikes on Nov. Ballot
A coalition of law enforcement officials, civil rights organizations and taxpayer groups reported recently that it has submitted enough signatures to local election officials to qualify a November ballot initiative to change California's three-strikes law. The controversial statute, which deals out long sentences for any third felony, has been linked to the precipitous growth of California's bloated prison population. The measure, which received 830,000 signatures, also would allow prisoners currently serving life behind bars for nonviolent third strikes to appeal their sentences.

Vermont Reduces Prison Population Growth with Smart Reforms
In 2007, it looked like Vermont's prison population, which had doubled between 1997 and 2007, would continue its upward trend. In the five years since then, the state has reduced its prison population by changing the way it sentences offenders and rehabilitates inmates. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin credits a mix of measures that includes risk-based assessments at sentencing and drug treatment and job training for parolees with his state's success.

George Will Comments on Life without Parole for Juveniles
In the wake of the oral arguments in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, in which the Supreme Court considered whether sentencing minors to life without parole constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, George Will calls on the court to consider modern understandings of adolescent psychology when making its decision. Writes Mr. Will, "The court must consider not only what is society's sense of cruelty but also how that sense should be shaped by what some new technologies reveal about adolescent brain biology."

prohibition costs billions, legalization would earn billions - but what about its effect on dopamine hegemony?

aclu | Over 300 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, recently signed a petition that encourages the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to carefully consider marijuana legalization in America. The petition draws attention to an article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, whose findings highlight the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate marijuana, rather than needlessly spending billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.

Miron predicts that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement, in addition to generating $2.4 billion annually if taxed like most consumer goods, or $6 billion per year if taxed similarly to alcohol and tobacco. The economists signing the petition note that the budgetary implications of marijuana prohibition are just one of many factors to be considered, but declare it essential that these findings become a serious part of the national decriminalization discussion.

The advantages of marijuana legalization extend far beyond an opportunity to make a dent in our federal deficit. The criminalization of marijuana is one of the many fights in the War on Drugs that has failed miserably. And while it's tempting to associate only the harder, "scarier" drugs with this botched crusade, the fact remains that marijuana prohibition is very much a part of the battle. The federal government has even classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance (its most serious category of substances), placing it in a more dangerous category than cocaine. More than 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana use and possession each year, and 46 percent of all drug prosecutions across the country are for marijuana possession. Yet this costly and time-consuming targeting of marijuana users by law enforcement and lawmakers has done little to quell use of the drug.

The criminalization of marijuana has not only resulted in a startlingly high number of arrests, it also reflects the devastating disparate racial impact of the War on Drugs. Despite ample evidence that marijuana is used more frequently by white people, Blacks and Latinos account for a grossly disproportionate percentage of the 800,000 people arrested annually for marijuana use and possession. These convictions hinder one's ability to find or keep employment, vote or gain access to affordable housing. The fact that these hard-to-shake consequences – bad enough as they are — are suffered more frequently by a demographic that uses marijuana less makes our current policies toward marijuana all the more unfair, unwise and unacceptable.

the invisible borders that define american culture

TheAtlantic | When we think about borders, we tend to think of administrative boundaries. Those demarcating lines, often grown out of rivers and mountain ranges or diplomatic quirks, govern our daily lives, and that’s doubly so if we live near a neighboring country or state.

We know that these boundaries are on some level unnatural. Driving around Kansas City, where I live, makes this abundantly clear. Gas price differences aside, it can be difficult to tell which state you’re in, Missouri or Kansas, and the small street of State Line Road does nothing to make it clearer.

But are there more organic borders, brought to life by our own actions and activities? I recently set out, along with a team from MIT and AT&T, to see if I could find an answer. Previously, members of our group had collaborated to use mobile phone call and text message records to determine how tightly connected different counties are to each other. But communication is far from the only way in which we are connected or separated. We can be connected based on where we move, how we speak, and even what sports teams we root for.

So our research team, consisting of DeDe Paul of AT&T, Vincent Blondel of Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain, IBM's Dominik Dahlem*, and myself, set out to understand how a variety of cultural and social properties create borders, and whether or not these borders actually overlap. Are there in fact natural boundaries to the borders that we create as social creatures? Fist tap Prof. Geo.

mental-egoic tools for mental egoic connectivity

Guardian | I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads in potentially crippling postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. They were like zombies on call. There was no conversation.

Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to etiquette, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.

The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of sustaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are "alone together … a tribe of one". Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.

The audience in a New York theatre now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Children are apparently developing a dexterity in their thumbs unknown since the evolution of the giant sloth. Talk is reduced to the muttered, heads-down expletives brilliantly satirised in the BBC's Twenty Twelve.

Psychologists have identified this as "fear of conversation". People wear headphones as "conversational avoidance devices". The internet connects us to the entire world, but it is a world bespoke, edited, deleted, sanitised. Doubt and debate become trivial because every statement can be instantly verified or denied by Google. There is no time for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation.

neurobiological sickness...,

Romanity | From Roman racism to Orthodox equality.

All humans suffer from this short-circuit "since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23) The difference among humans is not equality or inequality of race, but whether one is being cured or not. Within this context we have a complete reversal of the above foundation of the Hellenic paganism of the Roman Empire. The great struggle between paganism and Christianity in the time of Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337) is reflected in the difference between Roman Greeks (meaning Pagans) and Roman Christians. All Pagan Romans were defending their aristocratic ancient Hellenic identity and traditions which was being torn apart by the aristocratic identity of the cure of glorification which was open to all Romans, both gentis and non-gentis, and to all non-Romans.^{[ 66 ]} The "Aristocracy" of Glorification is no respector of the aristocracy of birth. [ Return ](b) Examples of racism even in the theology of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism.

Having conquered the West Romans the Franco-Latins called themselves the "gentis" and their Roman slaves "serfs" and "villains". Pan-German ideology was clearly expressed to an extreme degree by the followers of Hitler who were out to enslave at least the Slavs. But a theological expression of this Germanic racism is found in Albert Schweitzer's book, "The Quest Of The Historical Jesus." For example, on the first page of Chapter I he claims that,

"When, at some future day, our civilization shall lie, closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection in the living complex of conditions and factors — of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historic insight, and religious feeling — without which no deep theology is possible."

"And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future.."

"In the history of doctrine its work has been negative; it so to speak, cleared the site for the new edifice of religious thought. In describing how the ideas of Jesus were taken possession of by the Greek spirit, it was tracing the growth of what must necessarily become strange to us, and, as a matter of fact, has become strange to us."^{[ 67 ]}

All this has been done without the slightest knowledge of what glorification in the Lord (Yahweh) of Glory is (in both Old and New Testaments). This is ignored equally by both Germans and their Protestant and or 'Catholic' colleagues. Because of Augustine's Neo-Platonism, both Protestants and Latins have always imagined that the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils accepted both the analogia entis between God and His creation and analogia fidei between God and the Bible. This created not only their Biblical fundamentalism, but also made Greek philosophy the foundation of their understanding of the History of Dogma which is certainly not that of the reality of the Roman Ecumenical Councils. The reason for this is that Western Biblical and doctrinal scholars are ignorant of the Four Patristic Keys to the Bible and the Dogmas of the Roman Ecumenical Councils explained earlier. But even many "Orthodox" scholars follow either the Protestant or 'Catholic' scholars by "sniffing."

Albert Schweitzer and his students saw clearly where their quest for the "historical Jesus" was leading, i.e. to the dissolution of the doctrinal fabric of what passes off as Christian Tradition in the Franco-Latin West. One typical Orthodox reaction has been to become proud that the Fathers of the Church had supposedly Hellenized Christianity thereby making it acceptable to the Hellenic mind of the Roman Empire.

The Slavophil branch of Pan-Slavism also believed that the Slavs understood the Bible better than other races. But the supposed reason for this is that among the Orthodox the Greco-Roman Fathers of the Church belong to the historical manifestation of the Kouchite movement in history, whereas the Slavs belong to the Iranian movement in history.^{[ 68 ]} In other words the Slavic Orthodox are a superior brand of Christians than the Roman Fathers of the Church, not because they may have reached glorification, but simply because they are Slavs.^{[ 69 ]}

with the dopamine flowing like this, you knew the booty popping couldn't be far behind...,

CNN | After focusing on "green cars" in recent years, carmakers are wowing visitors at the Auto China 2012 car show with vehicles that are big, bad and gas-guzzling.

"I would definitely be interested if the price was right," says Wang Xizhen as he ogled a deep purple Aston Martin DBS.

Aston Martin launched its Dragon 88 China-only limited edition this week. With gold dragon emblems embroidered onto its leather seats, the car also carries a hefty price tag - more than 5 million yuan (nearly $800,000).

Jeep also launched a China-inspired car -- a flashy Wrangler concept car emblazoned with a long silvery dragon across the hood.

"Jeep brand sales in China in 2011 increased 81% over the prior year and China," said Mike Manley, CEO of Jeep Brand, Chrysler group, at the unveiling on Monday. "Last year, more Jeep vehicles were sold in China than in any other country besides the U.S. and Canada."

Manley said because the brand is committed to China, it's important to design and tailor vehicles specifically to Chinese tastes. But some consumers, like Wang, disagreed.

"Just because it has a dragon on it, doesn't mean Chinese people will love it. After all, we're after going after a western brand," said Wang. "I like the subtlety of Aston Martin's dragon design, but to put a huge dragon across the entire car is going overboard."

Jeep and Aston Martin are among many foreign automakers hoping to woo hundreds of thousands of Chinese consumers visiting the show this week, especially as China has become the world's largest auto market amid a sales slump in Europe and tepid growth in the United States.

Despite the push in green cars in previous years following government subsidies for cleaner vehicles, this year's focus turned to gas-guzzling SUVs. Crowds swooned over the new Lamborghini Urus SUV concept car -- a potential competitor to the popular Porsche Cayenne.

Ford also unveiled three SUVs at the show, including the EcoSport, which is expected to be manufactured at the company's China factory in Chongqing.

"SUVs are a strength for Ford globally and here in China, the SUV segment is one of the fastest growing segments in the industry," said Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford's Asia Pacific and Africa region. "So you put the two together...it's a very exciting time."

Automakers have turned their attention to bigger cars and flashier cars to attract consumers since there are fewer government-backed incentives to pursue green technology, analysts say.

your thoughts on mind control?

Fist tap GeeCheeVision.

left in the dark: plant/human symbiosis and the fall of humanity

realitysandwich | “I believe that the lost secret of human emergence . . . the undefined catalyst that took a very bright monkey and turned that species into a self-reflecting dreamer . . . that catalyst has to be sought in these alkaloids in the food chain that were catalyzing higher states of intellectual activity.”
--Terence McKenna

Tony Wright and Graham Gynn are authors of Left In The Dark--the book that presents Tony’s research outlining a radical re-interpretation of the current data regarding human evolution and, they contend, our recent degenerated state we call “civilization”. You can read the book for free here. Despite such a young and extreme proposal positive reactions are growing and include such minds as Dennis McKenna, Stanislav Grof, Colin Groves, Michael Winkelman and many There are many mysterious anomalies about human evolution yet to be adequately explained. These include the human brains rapid expansion in size and complexity, why this accelerating expansion suddenly stalled roughly 200,000 years ago and our brains have been shrinking ever since, and why our rare glimpses of genius goes hand in hand with our species wide insanity.

The following is a discussion with Tony Wright on these anomalies and more, followed by some further information on his theory.

TS: After two decades of research and radical self-experimentation you’ve come to a synthesis between the ancient data and information coming out of modern science. Paradoxically this all seems to indicate a humongous problem, and simultaneously explains why we would be oblivious to it in the first place: we are all suffering from species wide neural retardation, and are now too deluded to even realize when faced with the mountain of evidence. Is this the general idea?

TW: Yes. It should be virtually impossible to find any supporting evidence for such a profound theory if there was no real problem with the development and structural integrity of our neural system in the first place. If there were only ancient accounts of the diagnosis, or any supporting biological data, or initial support from some of society’s sharpest minds, then it should at least ring alarm bells. That all those elements exist and in addition our collective behavior has long been thought by many to be insane indicates something really serious just doesn’t add up. If everything is fine then the theory would be a no-brainer to refute, and we should at least have no fear in thoroughly checking it out.

So during millions of years of evolution in the African tropical forest we developed a symbiosis with fruit, and your proposing that it is no coincidence the most complex tissue in the known universe evolved during a symbiosis with perhaps dozens of species of the most complex chemical factories on the planet. How did this occur?

I’m proposing that the accelerating expansion of the neo-cortex was due to a runaway feedback mechanism driven by our own hormone system in combination with the complex plant bio-chemistry provided by our diet. What has been overlooked is the profound effects of flooding our brains 24/7 for thousands of generations with this highly advanced molecular engineering formula. Fruit is essentially a womb-like developmental environment for the seeds and has very unique, highly complex hormonally active chemistry. Our early development is dictated by the transcription process whereby changes in how the DNA is read dictate the type of structures that develop. Steroids like testosterone are the key players here, but by incorporating more and more of these DNA-reading plant chemicals into our diet we basically shifted from a typical mammalian developmental environment to more of a plant developmental environment.

Along with regulating gene transcription many of these molecules increase brain activity, modulate the endocrine system including the pineal gland, inhibit mono amine oxidase (MAO inhibitors), are antioxidants and also inhibit the activity of our own hormones such as testosterone and oestrogens. Just altering the activity of these two hormones has a dramatic affect on many aspects of our development, physiology and neural structure. For example, decreasing they’re activity extends juvenility and the window for brain development by delaying the onset of sexual maturity.

All this coming together would have many interconnected affects and, being that this bio-chemistry would be present in the developmental environment it would dramatically impact what develops at this most sensitive and rapid stage of brain/endocrine system growth in the uterus.

This carried on after birth through breastfeeding, and then afterwards through directly ingesting this highly advanced molecular engineering cocktail we call fruit. Each generation would pass down a progressively modified neuro-endocrine system as a result. So after millions of years of ever more entangled co-evolution nearly all of the transcription chemicals present during our early development and on through life that were essential to our optimal design/functioning were lost and replaced by progressively worse substitutes irrelevant to our evolution . . . all the way until we reach today’s ‘junk’ food. Ironically much of this actually has the opposite effect of fruit bio-chemistry on our hormones, causing the unique process to reverse.

All of this sounds complex but at its foundation it’s just really basic engineering principles: If you change the design (transcription) and construction materials that a system or technology is built from and fueled by, then the structure and functionality of that system will inevitably change as a result. This logic is obvious when applied to any of our technologies but paradoxically we haven’t applied it to the thing involved in generating our perception, which just happens to be the most complex piece of kit we know. Our perception is directly correlated with and ‘effectively’ a product of the extremely sensitive structure and bio-chemistry of our brain and this has changed out of all recognition in a very short time. (more on this symbiosis)

scenes from internet rising...,

from fracking to water rights: how foreign interests are cleaning out africa

treehugger | There are a lot of misconceptions about Africa, including that the continent needs help from the rest of the world in order to overcome the economic challenges it faces. It doesn't need help, though, so much as to be on equal footing with the rest of the world. Yet it continues to be seen not only as the 'dark' continent, but also a resource-rich one whose wealth is there for the taking. Foreign countries and companies are racing to claim not only the continent's mineral resources, which often fuel conflict and environmental disasters, but also arable land to grow water-intensive crops for export. That's no small problem, considering the droughts that African countries already face and how vulnerable the region is to climate change.

These resource grabs often proceed in the name of development, but all they develop are gains for foreign countries. In the process, they make every problem that the continent already faces a lot worse. Fist tap Dale.

huge water resource exists under africa

BBCNews | Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.

Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.

Demand for water is set to grow markedly in coming decades due to population growth and the need for irrigation to grow crops.

Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.

Now scientists have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the continent.

Helen Bonsor from the BGS is one of the authors of the paper. She says that up until now groundwater was out of sight and out of mind. She hopes the new maps will open people's eyes to the potential.

"Where there's greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad," she said.

"The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount." Fist tap Dale.