what about the ratings agencies? REDUX (originally posted 6/23/13)

rollingstone | That's what "they" always say about the financial crisis and the teeming rat's nest of corruption it left behind. Everybody else got plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage hucksters like spray-tanned Countrywide ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo.

But what about the ratings agencies? Isn't it true that almost none of the fraud that's swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's rubber-stamping it? Aren't they guilty, too?

Man, are they ever. And a lot more than even the least generous of us suspected.

Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.

In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.

"Lord help our fucking scam . . . this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at," writes one Standard & Poor's executive. "As you know, I had difficulties explaining 'HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it," confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. "If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value," complains another senior S&P man. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters," ruminates one more.

Ratings agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. These gigantic companies – also known as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, or NRSROs – have teams of examiners who analyze companies, cities, towns, countries, mortgage borrowers, anybody or anything that takes on debt or creates an investment vehicle.

Their primary function is to help define what's safe to buy, and what isn't. A triple-A rating is to the financial world what the USDA seal of approval is to a meat-eater, or virginity is to a Catholic. It's supposed to be sacrosanct, inviolable: According to Moody's own reports, AAA investments "should survive the equivalent of the U.S. Great Depression."

a little living-memory, partisan, political dot-connecting to get you through the hump...,

Why the Republican National Debt is $12 Trillion

post-gazette |  OK, the beast is starving. Now what? That's the question confronting Republicans. But they're refusing to answer, or even to engage in any serious discussion about what to do.

For readers who don't know what I'm talking about: Ever since Ronald Reagan, the GOP has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of the activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

But there has always been a political problem with this agenda. Voters may say that they oppose big government, but the programs that actually dominate federal spending -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- are very popular. So how can the public be persuaded to accept large spending cuts?

The conservative answer, which evolved in the late 1970s, would be dubbed "starving the beast" during the Reagan years. The idea -- propounded by many members of the conservative intelligentsia, from Alan Greenspan to Irving Kristol -- was basically that sympathetic politicians should engage in a game of bait-and-switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government's fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit.

And the deficit came. True, more than half of this year's budget deficit is the result of the Great Recession, which has both depressed revenues and required a temporary surge in spending to contain the damage. But even when the crisis is over, the budget will remain deeply in the red, largely as a result of George W. Bush-era tax cuts and unfunded wars. In addition, the combination of an aging population and rising medical costs will, unless something is done, lead to explosive debt growth after 2020.

calling an ordinary problem a "disease" leads to bigger problems

NYTimes | There’s plenty of blame to go around for this mess. But broadening our definition of disease probably made all of this possible.

My friend and colleague Dr. Beth Tarini, a health services researcher at the University of Michigan, published a study last year that examined how parents react when given a diagnosis of GERD for their infants. Dr. Tarini and her colleagues randomly chose certain parents to be told that an infant with symptoms of reflux had GERD or, instead, “a problem.” Half of each of these groups were also told that medications were ineffective.

Parents who were told that their infant had GERD were significantly more interested in having their child put on medication, even when they were told that medication was ineffective. Parents of infants who were not labeled with GERD were not interested in medication once they were told it didn’t work.

Words matter. Studies have shown that once people with high blood pressure are labeled “hypertensive,” they are significantly more likely to be absent from work, regardless of whether treatment was begun. Many diseases have become so much broader in definition that they now encompass huge swaths of the public.

When statins were first approved, they were used to treat people with very high levels of cholesterol. Their benefit was thought to be clear in that population. Last year, however, the release of new guidelines meant that more than 87 percent of all men age 60 to 75 would be recommended to be on statins, and the same for more than 53 percent of women in the same age group. Nearly every single African-American man over 65 would be recommended to be on the drug.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released guidelines a number of years ago recommending that children as young as 8 years old be treated with medication for an LDL cholesterol level above 190. Many think this is going too far. No one knows the long-term consequences of being on such drugs for decades.

Allowing the medicalization of normal variations in physiology to be transformed into “treatable conditions” is leading to unintended consequences. We’re spending billions of dollars on treatments that might not, or don’t, work. We’re making people worry when they don’t have to. And we may be causing actual health problems in the process.

As Dr. Tarini puts it, “Our job as doctors is to make sick patients healthy, not to make healthy patients sick.”

internet addiction?

scientificamerican |  How do we size up such an addiction? One way is to look at chemistry and the brain’s wiring. Drugs and behaviors are viewed as triggers for the same chemical changes in the brain. Researchers are also testing substance-abuse treatment drugs in experimental trials for Internet addiction and gambling. And the DSM-5 has a new behavioral addictions category, of which gambling is now a part, moved from its past classification as an “impulse-control disorder.” The APA has thus hinted that behaviors can be addictive in medical-speak.

Another way to look at addictions, however, is to look at the symptoms and consequences. You could diagnose addictions differently—alcohol, Internet gaming, etc.—or you could call them patients of a single condition: an addiction syndrome. Each overdose is viewed as a manifestation of this syndrome, driven by circumstance and inherent traits. The syndrome model buckets addictions into one category with a set of symptoms and a spectrum of severity. More than a habit, it’s the consequence that defines the addiction.

A third way is to rethink an addiction like Internet gaming as the development of a new worldview. An addiction often starts off as an innocuous experience. The experience triggers a series of pleasurable feelings but it also plants a series of memories. Taken to an extreme, what an addict wants is the recreation of the memory, an alternate reality. To simply abstain from whatever it is that is addictive is to deny a worldview. The body serves as a medium for the known route (the drug or behavior) that is the ticket to the desired world (the alternate reality). Of course, there are very real chemical changes that happen in an addict’s brain. But this alternate way of looking at addiction illustrates that it is a process, not a condition, and that circumstance influences chemistry.

And thus, the final question: Who decides what matters?

Over 400 years ago to be addicted was to simply have a strong inclination toward substances or behaviors. It was a choice. But over time, addictions started to mean inclinations that were less about choice and more about lack of control. Deviance then became a problem that could be fixed through religious discourse, medicine and social pressures. Today, there’s a psychiatric manual.

The DSM wields power. It’s gone from a 130-page manual in 1952 to a 900-page bestseller that competed with J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown on Amazon’s top-selling of 2013 before settling in at #12. The book is used as a treatment guide for picking out the right mental condition, providing the basis for insurance claims.

hitler attempted that dog-breeding approach...,

medicalexpress | A single-letter change in the genetic code is enough to generate blond hair in humans, in dramatic contrast to our dark-haired ancestors. A new analysis by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists has pinpointed that change, which is common in the genomes of Northern Europeans, and shown how it fine-tunes the regulation of an essential gene.

"This particular genetic variation in humans is associated with blond hair, but it isn't associated with eye color or other pigmentation traits," says David Kingsley, an HHMI investigator at Stanford University who led the study. "The specificity of the switch shows exactly how independent color changes can be encoded to produce specific traits in humans." Kingsley and his colleagues published their findings in the June 1, 2014, issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

Kingsley says a handful of genes likely determine hair color in humans, however, the precise molecular basis of the trait remains poorly understood. But Kingsley's discovery of the genetic hair-color switch didn't begin with a deep curiosity about golden locks. It began with fish.

islam INFINITELY preferable to these backward-assed lynch mobs...,

butterfliesandwheels |  Last Sunday, a 45 year old woman, Christine Jemeli Koech, was accused of witchcraft. A neighbour claimed that Koech, a mother of six, had been responsible for her child’s illness. A local mob stormed Koech’s house early in the morning while she was asleep. They murdered her and burnt her body. This gruesome practice of lynching continues in the East African country of Kenya.

According to media reports, the neighbour has been arrested but the people who carried out the killing are still at large. Witch burning is common in Kenya and in other parts of the region. Men and women accused of bewitching people are executed by a lynch mob. Some years ago, a graphic video of ‘witches’ being burnt in Kenya was circulated on the internet. It attracted international outrage and condemnation.

It drew the attention of the world to the scale of the problem in Kenya and in other parts of Africa. People in Kenya engage in witch burning with apparent impunity. People who attack and lynch ‘witches’ more often than not get away with their crimes. This has to stop. The government of Kenya needs to take a proactive rather than its current reactive approach to combat the accusation of witchcraft and the burning of witches in their country.

understanding creationism

pandasthumb |  In this short series, David MacMillan explains how misinformation and misconceptions allow creationists to maintain their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A former creationist blogger and writer, Mr. MacMillan earned his BS degree in physics from the University of North Alabama and now works as a technical writer when he isn’™t frequenting the PT comment boards. Since leaving creationism, he has written several columns discussing the public dialogue between creation and evolution. This series will outline the core beliefs creationists use as the basis for their reasoning while pointing out the challenges faced in re-educating against creationist misconceptions.

1. Introduction and overview: Philosophy of pseudoscience
During my tenure as an active young-earth creationist, I never once heard other creationists accurately describe what evolutionary theory is or how it is supposed to work. Nor did I understand it myself. Creationists often seem familiar with a lot of scientific terminology, but their understanding is filled with gross misinformation. Thus, a host of misconceptions is believed and taught throughout creationist circles, making it almost impossible for actual evidence to really sink in.

There are plenty of comprehensive lists of creationist claims with exhaustive refutations, such as the TalkOrigins archive. Rather than try to replicate those, I will attempt to explain why creationist claims persist in the face of contrary evidence, even when individuals are otherwise well-educated. To do so, I’m going to go over the major areas where creationists get the science itself completely wrong. My list doesn’t represent all such misconceptions, of course. These are the misconceptions I personally recall hearing or using myself. I’ve chosen not to provide specific examples of each misconception from the creationist literature, though they are all easy to find. Citations for my explanations can be found online by anyone who wants to see them; this series is not about any particular facts so much as it’s about how false beliefs are used to support false conclusions.

We understand the theory of evolution to be a series of conclusions drawn from over a century of research, predictions, and discoveries. This theory allows us to understand the mechanisms in biology and make further predictions about the sort of evidence we will uncover in the future. Its predictive power is vital to success in real-life applications like medicine, genetic engineering, and agriculture.

However, creationists don’t see it the same way. Creationists artificially classify medicine, genetic research, and agriculture as “operational science,” and believe that those disciplines function in a different way than research in evolutionary biology. They understand the theory of evolution, along with mainstream geology and a variety of other disciplines, as a philosophical construct created for the express purpose of explaining life on Earth apart from divine intervention. Thus, they approach the concept of evolution from a defensive position; they believe it represents an attack on all religious faith.

This defensive posture is reflected in nearly all creationist literature, even in the less overt varieties such as intelligent-design creationism. It dictates responses. When creationists see a particular argument or explanation about evolution, their initial reaction is to ask, “How does this attack the truth of God as Creator? What philosophical presuppositions are dictating beliefs here? How can I challenge those underlying assumptions and thus demonstrate the truth?” Recognizing this basis for creationist arguments is a helpful tool for understanding why such otherwise baffling arguments are proposed.

In reality, we understand that although various philosophical implications may be constructed around evolution, it is not driven by any atheistic philosophy. The fundamental principle undergirding the theory of evolution is the same as the fundamental principle behind all science: that hypotheses can be tested and confirmed by prediction. But creationists instead insist that evolution arises out of explicitly atheistic axioms. This series will look at the arguments and objections which flow from this worldview in six different areas.

Creationists accept certain aspects of variation, adaptation, and speciation, but they artificially constrain the mechanism for adaptation to produce an imagined barrier between “œmicroevolution” and “œmacroevolution” (Part 2). They conceptualize evolutionary adaptation as a series of individual changes, missing the entire mechanism provided by the population as a whole (Part 3). They make the extraordinary claim that no transitional fossils exist, simply by redefining “transitional” into something that could not possibly exist (Part 4). Creationists attempt to rewrite the last two centuries of scientific progress in order to avoid dealing with the multiple lines of evidence all independently affirming common descent and deep time (Part 5). They have far-reaching misapprehensions concerning microbiology and DNA (Part 6). On top of all this, they assign ethical and moral failings to evolutionary science in order to make evolution seem dangerous and anti-religion (Part 7). I will address each of these topics in the coming posts.

dna doesn't determine race, society does...,

psmag |  Genes certainly reflect geography, but unlike geography, human genetic differences don’t fall along obvious natural boundaries that might define races. As my Washington University colleague Alan Templeton has shown, by objective genetic definitions of race, human races don’t exist. Writing in Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Templeton notes that “Human populations certainly show genetic differences across geographical space, but this does not necessarily mean that races exist in humans.” For an objective, biological definition of race, this genetic differentiation has to occur “across sharp boundaries and not as gradual changes.” Templeton examined two genetic definitions of race that are commonly applied by biologists to vertebrate species. In both cases, races clearly exist in chimpanzees, our nearest relatives, but not in humans.

One natural definition of race is a group whose members are genetically much more similar to each other than they are to other groups. Putting a number on what counts as “much more” is a somewhat arbitrary exercise, but Templeton found that the genetic differentiation between populations of chimpanzees is over seven times greater than the genetic differentiation between broad geographical populations of humans. Furthermore, the level of genetic differentiation between human populations falls well below the threshold that biologists typically use to define races in non-human species.

Races could also be defined by genetic branches on the family tree. For most of us, this is the most intuitive definition of race. It’s one that, at first glance, is consistent with recent human evolution: After originating in Africa, part of our species branched out first into Asia and Europe, and then to the rest of the world. We should thus expect different geographical populations to be distinct genetic limbs on our species’ recent evolutionary tree.

But as it turns out, our species’ family history is not so arboreal. Geneticists have methods for measuring the “treeness” of genetic relationships between populations. Templeton found that the genetic relationships between human populations don’t have a very tree-like structure, while chimpanzee populations do. Rather than a family tree with distinct racial branches, humans have a family trellis that lacks clear genetic boundaries between different groups.

These findings reflect our unusual recent evolutionary history. Unlike the distinct populations of chimps, humans continued to exchange both goods and genes with each other even as they rapidly settled an enormous geographical range. Those ongoing contacts, plus the fact that we were a small, genetically homogeneous species to begin with, has resulted in relatively close genetic relationships, despite our worldwide presence. The DNA differences between humans increase with geographical distance, but boundaries between populations are, as geneticists Kenneth Weiss and Jeffrey Long put it, “multilayered, porous, ephemeral, and difficult to identify.” Pure, geographically separated ancestral populations are an abstraction: “There is no reason to think that there ever were isolated, homogeneous parental populations at any time in our human past.”

the gene is obsolete...,

psmag | In the aftermath of the Human Genome Project, biologists are struggling with the definition of a gene, but why should this matter to anyone else? It matters because the molecular concept of the gene that has dominated biomedical research for the last half-century is increasingly ill-suited for our efforts to understand the role of genetics in human biology. Giving a physical meaning to the concept of a gene was a triumph of 20th-century biology, but as it turns out, this scientific success hasn’t solved the problems we hoped it would.

The Human Genome Project was conceived as part of a research program to develop a set of clear molecular explanations for our biology. The idea was to inventory all of our genes and assign each of them a function; with this annotated inventory in hand, we would possess a molecular explanation of our genetic underpinnings and discover druggable target genes for specific diseases. While this gene-focused approach has been successful in many cases, it’s increasingly clear that we will never understand the role of genetics in our biology by merely making an annotated inventory of those DNA entities that we call genes.

Life isn’t so simple, and perhaps Wilhelm Johannsen’s more agnostic definition of a gene is a better match to the mixed bag of genetic elements in our genomes. The molecular concept of a gene was supposed to explain the influence of our DNA on our biology, our behaviors, and our ailments. That explanation is much more elusive than we hoped, and the role of DNA in our lives is more complex and subtle than we expected.

inclusive banksterism...,

NYTimes |  Guildhall at the heart of the City can be a lulling sort of place after a long day. The statuary and vaulted timber ceiling of the medieval great hall lead the eye to wander and the mind to muse on Britain’s strangest quirk — its centuries of continuity. Grace is said, claret is served, glasses clink and dreaminess sets in. A keynote speech from a central banker is all that is required to complete the soporific effect.

Or so one would think, until Mark Carney, the Canadian governor of the Bank of England, lays into unfettered capitalism. “Just as any revolution eats its children,” he says, “unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.”

All ideologies, he continues, are prone to extremes. Belief in the power of the market entered “the realm of faith” before the 2008 meltdown. Market economies became market societies. They were characterized by “light-touch regulation” and “the belief that bubbles cannot be identified.”

Carney pulls no punches. Big banks were too big to fail, operating in a “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bubble.” Benchmarks were rigged for personal gain. Equity markets blatantly favored “the technologically empowered over the retail investor.” Mistrust grew — and persists.

“Prosperity requires not just investment in economic capital, but investment in social capital,” Carney argues, having defined social capital as “the links, shared values and beliefs in a society which encourage individuals not only to take responsibility for themselves and their families but also to trust each other and work collaboratively to support each other.”

A stirring through the hall, a focusing of gazes — Carney has the attention of the chief executives, bankers and investors gathered here for a conference on “Inclusive Capitalism.” His bluntness reflects the fact that, six years after the crisis, the core problem has not gone away: The deep unease and anger in developed countries about the ways globalization and technology magnify returns for the super-rich, operating in a world of low taxation and lax regulation where short-term gain becomes a guiding principle, even as societies become more unequal, offering diminished opportunities to the young, less community and a growing sense of unfairness.

Anyone seeking the source of the anger behind populist movements in Europe and the United States (and the Piketty fever) need look no further than this. Anti-immigration, anti-Europe movements won in European elections because people feel cheated, worried about their children. As Bill Clinton noted a couple of hours before Carney’s speech, the first reaction of human beings who feel “insecure and under stress” is the urge to “hang with our own kind.” And the world’s greatest challenge is defining “the terms of our interdependence.”

of course the uk gettin it in...,

telegraph |  Illegal drugs and prostitution are worth 0.7pc of GDP, which is roughly the same proportion as agriculture, gambling and accommodation services which includes hotels, bed and breakfasts and caravan parks. 

They are worth more than advertising, which is 0.5pc of GDP, and double the contribution of real estate activities, at 0.35pc. 

“In terms of the new concepts coming in, illegal activities is the biggest,” said Graeme Walker, head of national accounts at the ONS. 

“For the rest of GDP we do things like sending questionnaires to businesses, asking them how much they have earned. 

“We don’t think it would be right to directly collect information on [illegal drugs and prostitution] and we have no plans to contact people involved in these activities. 

"We think our data fits the purpose for giving people an idea of the size of illegal activity.”

The contribution of prostitution to GDP was calculated using a number of estimates, including the clients per prostitute per week based on Dutch practise, the average price per visit and the cost of room rental and clothing. 

Meanwhile the contribution of cannabis to GDP was calculated using estimated figures including sales, number of users, street price and imports. 

For drugs other than cannabis, estimates are based on figures such as sales, import price and value, purity from police seizures and street price. 

As a first estimate, the ONS says that from 1997 to 2009 the impact of the illegal drugs and prostitution on GDP ranges from £7bn to £11bn. 

The national accounts, published in September 2014, will include the import, production and sale of illegal drugs as well as the provision of prostitution services.

The ONS say that the figures “will be based on a variety of sources and assumptions” and add that there are “significant limitations in the availability of data”. 

This is part of a raft of changes being made to the national accounts that will increase the level of GDP in 2009 by between 4pc and 5pc. 

This will include the contribution of “non-profit institutions serving households” such as charities, universities and trade unions, which is the ONS have valued at £24bn, or 1.7pc of GDP.

People who build their own homes will also be included as a category, which contributes £4bn, or 0.3pc to GDP.

sprezzatura...,

businessweek | The Italians have a word for it: sprezzatura, or studied nonchalance. The news that Italy plans to include prostitution and illegal drugs in gross domestic product sounds like a joke. But it’s not just an Italian initiative. New European Union rules require member states to include in GDP the value of all income-producing activities, including prostitution, the production and consumption of illegal drugs, and black market sales of cigarettes and alcohol.

The beauty? By counting prostitution and drugs in output, Italy will raise its GDP and thereby lower the ratio of debt to GDP, which will make it easier to comply with European Union rules on indebtedness. The same will go for other countries. That’s sprezzatura.

Governments of European Union members are not supposed to let their annual deficits exceed 3 percent of GDP or accumulated debt exceed 60 percent of GDP.

This pyramid portrays the detailed process that the European Union has established to deal with countries that fall out of compliance. On paper, the penalty is a fine of 0.2 percent of GDP, plus a “variable component” that can range up to 0.5 percent of GDP annually as long as the breach continues. 

In reality, the European Union’s bark is worse than its bite. A fine would only make a country’s deficit worse. At the moment 17 member countries are being monitored under what the EU calls “excessive deficit procedures,” while another nine (Italy among them) have emerged from excessive deficit procedures. Only two member countries, Estonia and Sweden, have never had excessive deficit procedures.

Countries outside the European Union that want to make their economies look larger may want to follow suit. Italians have no monopoly on drugs and prostitutes. According to research by two Turkish economists, Ceyhun Elgin and Oguz Oztunali of Bogazici University in Istanbul, the shadow economy (not just drugs and prostitution) averages just under 18 percent of GDP in OECD and EU countries. It’s 42 percent in Latin America, 37 percent in post-socialist countries, 32 percent in the Middle East-North Africa region, 43 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, and 33 percent in Asia, by their estimates.

in most countries, theft is the primary driver of inequality...,

theatlantic | As I wrote last week, the profound impact of Piketty’s book is largely a result of the fact that it was published at a time when growing economic inequality has become an American preoccupation. Since the United States has proven so adept at globalizing its anxieties and exporting its policy debates, the Piketty phenomenon is extending to places where inequality has been pervasive for so long that the public seemed inured to it and resigned to passively accept it. Now, members of many of these societies are actively debating how to bring inequality down.

In order for this discussion to be valuable, however, the problem requires a more complete diagnosis. It is not accurate to assert that in countries like Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, and China, the main driver of economic inequality is a rate of return on capital that is larger than the rate of economic growth. A more holistic explanation would need to include the massive fortunes regularly created by corruption and all kinds of illicit activities. In many countries, wealth grows more as a result of thievery and malfeasance than as a consequence of the returns on capital invested by elites (a factor that is surely at work too).

To channel Piketty, inequality will continue to rise in societies where “c > h.” Here, “c” stands for the degree to which corrupt politicians and public employees, along with their private-sector cronies, break laws for personal gain, and “h” represents the degree to which honest politicians and public employees uphold fair governing practices. Corruption-fueled inequality flourishes in societies where there are no incentives, rules, or institutions to hinder corruption. And having honest people in government is good, but not enough. The practices of pilfering public funds or selling government contracts to the highest bidder must be seen as risky, routinely detected, and systematically punished. 

Most of the roughly 20 nations from which Piketty forms his analysis classify as high-income countries and rank among the least-corrupt in the world, according to Transparency International. Unfortunately, most of humanity lives in countries where “c > h” and dishonesty is the primary driver of inequality. This point has not attracted as much attention as Piketty’s thesis. But it should.

planet-scouring trajectory of unsustainable compound "growth"...,

guardian | Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained. But coal broke this cycle and enabled – for a few hundred years – the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.

It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, with the accessible reserves exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.

On Friday, a few days after scientists announced that the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now inevitable, the Ecuadorean government decided to allow oil drilling in the heart of the Yasuni national park. It had made an offer to other governments: if they gave it half the value of the oil in that part of the park, it would leave the stuff in the ground. You could see this as either blackmail or fair trade. Ecuador is poor, its oil deposits are rich. Why, the government argued, should it leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is drilling down to the inner circle of hell? It asked for $3.6bn and received $13m. The result is that Petroamazonas, a company with a colourful record of destruction and spills, will now enter one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, in which a hectare of rainforest is said to contain more species than exist in the entire continent of North America.

The UK oil firm Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa's oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east, the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it's changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people. These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.

The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world's diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.

peak oil, climate change, food costs, debt - thai militarization a symptom of political system failure...,

guardian |  Military coups in Thailand are nothing new. But the latest seizure of power by army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha underscores the risks to democracy when governments consistently fail to deal adequately with the complex convergence of systemic crises.

Although Chan-ocha has said he is merely seeking to "restore order" in reaction to escalating protests that have seen the deaths of 28 and injury of 700, informed observers point out that the declaration of martial law appears to have been calculated to benefit the coup instigators.

Whatever the case, the opportunity to impose authoritarian rule has emerged in the context of escalating political instability. But few recognise that the driving force of this instability is not simply 'political infighting', but the inexorable intersection of global trends that affect us all.

Three years ago, a prescient editorial in Thailand's English language daily, The Nation, noted that global economic growth was indelibly tied to the abundant availability of cheap oil. Pointing out the links between domestic oil scarcity in countries like Egypt beset with surging social upheaval, the editorial diagnosed the problem as follows:

"The recent sharp rise in food prices has triggered riots in Egypt and other less-developed countries. Higher energy prices have also added on to the inflationary pressure. The poor are the most vulnerable sector to fluctuations in food and energy prices. Governments thus have to come up with subsidy measures for food and energy."

What does this imply for Thailand? The editorial continued:

"The Thai inflation rate is very sensitive to higher oil prices, which will drive up local transport and production costs. As a heavy importer of energy, the rising oil price could derail the Thai economy and drain our reserves if we're not careful."

Indeed, Thailand is a net energy importer. As Southeast Asia's second-largest consumer of energy, with total domestic consumption at 108.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE), the slow demise of cheap energy sources exacerbated by rising demand from India and China has posed a growing challenge. 

Thailand's Ministry of Energy has not been entirely asleep at the wheel. In 2003, a government report acknowledged that the country's "high dependency on imported energy will make Thailand at risk of energy supply disruption and volatility of energy prices, apart from a substantial foreign currency loss for the imports of energy." The report urged the government to embark on a strategy to diversify energy supply sources and ramp up domestic renewable energy investment.

But the pace of transition has been too slow, with "little change to the status quo" - and so far the poor, especially rural farmers who have played an increasing role in recent protests, have been most affected. 

We need to call a spade a spade: Thailand's deteriorating economy is driven significantly by its fossil fuel dependence. In 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that Thailand's economy was especially vulnerable to external shocks, disruptions to its energy supplies and oil price escalation. High international oil prices would push up the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

a crumb of lucidity on the collective inanity buffet....,

cherispeaks | Because Elliot had threatened his own life and that of others in those April videos there was probable cause for 72-hour metal health hold. By all intents and purposes Elliot’s family, therapist and the ensuing mental health experts that were called all had done the right thing, but it was the Santa Barbara Sheriffs that let him slip through the cracks.

It seems clear there is indeed plenty of documentation of Elliot’s “mental health history” and when you combine that with the nature of the video content for which the cops had been called, one would think the authorities would have done more than stand outside the door chit-chatting.  Had they taken his video messages more seriously, looked into his mental health history and entered the apartment for a safety-check they may have discovered 3 semi-automatic handguns, more than 400 rounds of ammo, knives and the working draft of his “manifesto”. The Isla Vista Massacre by the baby-faced killer may have never happened.

Sgt. Mark Williams of the sheriff’s office is quoted in that same Washington Post piece as saying,

“He had some emotional trouble. He was upset. We all get upset sometimes. . . . We have to have a pretty strong belief to take someone’s rights away — the right to bear arms, the freedom.”

It is unclear why Sgt. Williams mentioned a “right to bear arms” unless they had [in April] run a check and discovered Elliot Rodger was a registered gun owner. If they did, then why would they have been so casual after knocking on his door?

Until the time came that Elliot had actually used them, no one, but the shop owners who sold them, knew Elliot had a gun…let alone 3 of them.

Are politics — personal or otherwise, already playing a role in the investigation and aftermath of this tragedy? Is that why Sgt. Mark Williams mentioned Elliot’s “right to bear arms”? This writer can see no other reason why.

While the gun debate rages on with both sides having valid points, it is still only a debate of vitriol while in reality nothing is being done to stop gun violence in America. The NRA, with all of their power and Lobbying money, may not be responsible for the acts themselves, but their rigidity and unwillingness to change is a part of what allowed Elliot Rodger to be able to legally buy the guns that killed 4 people and injured 7 others.

fox news correspondence school psychologist spanked for saying "teh geh"...,

WaPo | On her bio, Ludwig calls herself a “regular contributor to the Today Show as well as CNN, Headline News, The Fox News Channel and TruTv where she talks about psychological/lifestyle issues as well as the criminal mind.” Her use of the term “contributor” appears to be colloquial. In the TV industry, it generally means a paid commentator with steady appearances on air. CNN and NBC News tell the Erik Wemple Blog that she is not that kind of contributor, and Fox News has made the same point. Also in her bio, Ludwig claims to have earned her doctorate in psychology from the Southern California University for Professional Studies, “a traditional correspondence school.”

The missteps in this minor dustup are the property of cable news: People with not enough information were talking in some detail about a breaking news event and focusing on a question that was impossible to answer. Pirro’s inquiry to Ludwig, verbatim: “What’s going on in this kid’s head?” A good response from Ludwig would have been: I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the real estate world has been rocked by this television appearance. Prior to her comments to Pirro, Ludwig had served as the “lifestyle real estate correspondent” for Coldwell Banker, a position whose existence the Erik Wemple Blog couldn’t have fathomed. In that capacity, Ludwig apparently participated in articles like this one on the U.S. News & World Report site: “Should Kids Make Big Money Decisions?” Not really, concluded Ludwig: “They are kids — they are just thinking about themselves in the immediate now, and no good decision can be made that way. That’s where the adults come in. It’s really giving away your job as the adult in the family [to let kids make those decisions]. That’s not healthy, and it’s not fair,” she says.

No more insights of that sort from the Coldwell Banker correspondent. The company said in a Facebook posting today: “Dr. Robi’s comments on the tragedy in Santa Barbara do not represent the opinions of Coldwell Banker. Therefore at this time we feel it best to part ways with her as our lifestyle real estate correspondent.”

rodgers rorschachian: what do you see?

forbes |  Rodger also authored a 141-page autobiography titled “My Twisted World,” which was sent to a local news station. He describes the events of his life since birth, blaming an obsession with World of Warcraft for lack of social development in middle and early high school; blaming his father for not teaching him how to woo women; blaming his mother for not re-marrying into the rich, upper class after his parents separated; and blaming his own social awkwardness for getting in the way of his making friends and meeting women. Despite his seemingly-affluent lifestyle, he felt less rich than and inferior to others in the circles in which he traveled, lamenting that his father was not a more successful director. In college, he starts playing the Megamillions Lottery obsessively, spending hundreds of dollars at a time in the hopes of becoming a multi-millionaire, which he thinks will allow him to finally “get a woman.” He visited a shooting range for the first time at age 21 after he failed to win the lottery when there was a $120 million jackpot.

He expresses jealousy of people in sexual relationships; he seems more hateful of and angry at specific men — friends and social acquaintances — than at particular women. Women are vaguer to him, objects of desire; he sees them as both superior to him and inferior at the same time. The jealousy gets more and more deranged as the manifesto goes on. As he becomes a fan of Game of Thrones, he expresses a desire to a friend to “flay” a couple he sees in a mall food court; he seems especially enraged when men of other races are dating white women. (This despite his being of a mixed background; his father is British and his mother is Malaysian).

He feels the jealousy and sadness that all of us feel at some point when we are alone, without a romantic partner, except his loneliness manifests as a desire to cause violence for people who are happy. He starts acting out by spilling beverages on people he dislikes: coffee on a couple making out in a Starbucks, ice tea on a couple he saw in a mall whom he followed with his car. When he was 20, after two women at a bus stop didn’t smile back at him when he drove by, he turned his car around and splashed them with his Starbucks latte, taking pleasure in it staining their jeans, driving away quickly before they could get his license plate. And months later, when he spotted a happy group of “popular college kids” — “typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular” and “beautiful blonde girls” — playing kickball in a park, he went to a K-mart and bought a Supersoaker, which he filled with orange juice and sprayed them, driving away when they chased him, an ominous foreshadowing of the devastation he would wreak later with a real gun.

At 21, he called his parents ranting about his loneliness and virginity. They insisted he see a psychiatrist. The next month, he bought his first gun.

lol@"the manosphere"

WaPo | And so, while some of Rodger’s companions on PUAhate have praised his gruesome spree — Josh Glasstetter at SPLC points out that he was almost seen as some kind of “incel revolutionary” — the rest of the manosphere has worked hard to distance themselves from him.

“Rodger pings some operational gaydars,” mocks Heartiste.

“A lot of loneyy beta males will identify with him,” Roosh followed up. (Notice that he calls Rodger a beta, despite Rodger’s videotaped insistence that he was “an alpha male.”)

Rodger blames women. Women blame misogyny. Misogynists blame feminists. This is a fascinating, weird cycle — and it actually repeats after most national tragedies  in which a man kills a woman or women. In 2009, when George Sodini killed three women at an L.A. Fitness outside of Pittsburgh, Heartiste was quick to postulate that, had Sodini “learned game,” he never would have developed negative feelings toward women or become violent.

Meanwhile, a guest blogger on Return of Kings theorized in December that 18-year-old Karl Halverson Pierson killed a girl at his school because he was “sexually frustrated.” Another post on the site, published about the same time, blamed a “lack of game” for brutal murders everywhere from Baltimore to Southern California.

But Return of Kings’ latest post really takes the cake. “No one would have died if PUAHate killer Elliot Rodger learned game,” promises the ever-aggrandizing Roosh V, who then goes on to promise that “if Rodger came to me, he would have received actionable and effective advice.” (A sampling of recent advice from the site, presented without comment: “all women are nymphomaniacs who crave rough sex”; “if your girlfriend insists on a big wedding, dump her.”)

A moment of awakening for the manosphere, this incident is not. And in some ways, that should be just as disturbing as Rodger’s videotaped rant.

clever memetic engagement with/for doing something about it...,

resistcomics |  What is resistcomics? The summer of 2013 saw one of the greatest mass uprisings in the history of Turkey. What started out as a small scale environmentalist demonstration became a defiant outcry in the face of an increasingly authoritarian, conservative, neoliberal government.

The resistance became associated with creativity and humour of the protesters from early on, as they tackled the violent oppression of the state with a cheerful attitude of subversion. #diren (#resist) became a hashtag mantra in social media and on the streets. 

#ResistComics has been inspired by the intelligence of the protesters and the sense of solidarity and collaboration in the air. We wanted to capture the spirit of the resistance in our words and pictures. We wanted to make a political statement without being didactic. We wanted to tell good stories about the resistance in different genres. 

#ResistComics anthology contains 96 pages of comics, illustrations, a short story and an article on comics and politics. We would like to entertain, inform and inspire our readers through this anthology.

Who are we? We are an international group of writers, artists, academics and critics. We are based in different parts of the world, including Turkey, France, Germany and Australia. In the early days of the resistance, we organised online to collaborate on a comics anthology. We used online tools to workshop scripts and artwork, and to exchange ideas. As we all have day jobs and other responsibilities (some of us became parents in the last year), it took us a while to bring our project to life. 

We embrace a punk/DIY approach, and have been involved in every stage of production and we would like to self-publish our anthology through the support of our Kickstarter backers. 

We are supporters of indie art and the comics scene and some of us have been involved with independent comics projects before. Some of us are professional comic artists and cartoonists published internationally, while others are first timers. We bring an eclectic range of styles and diverse stories.