evolutionary past determines how leadership is chosen

ScienceDaily | Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over six feet tall influence the voters? In a synthesis of research, published in Current Biology this month, the authors of the paper 'The Origins and Evolution of Leadership' argue that due to 'a hangover from our evolutionary past' factors like age, sex, height and weight play a major part in the determining our choice of leaders.

Author Professor Mark van Vugt, an Associate Member of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said: 'Traits like height, age, gender, masculinity/femininity, and weight all appear to matter when we vote for our leaders. These are likely hangovers from our evolutionary past -- ancestral leadership prototypes that are context-dependent. When we face particular threats, like war, these elicit particular prototypes, such as the need for a masculine leader. Therefore, leaders who match these ancestral prototypes have a better chance of being elected.'

The article says that although human societies continue to rely heavily on political, economic, military, professional and religious leaders to function effectively, there is a consistently high rate of leadership failure. Nearly three quarters of business failures in corporate America are due to managerial incompetence, the study points out. It asks whether new approaches might be useful in understanding when and why human leadership succeeds and fails -- including Nature's own lessons on what works best in different contexts.

Author Dr Andrew King, from the Zoological Society of London, said: 'Evolution has fashioned principles governing leadership and followership over many millions of years. We need to ground the complex, even mystical, social phenomenon of leadership in science. Through empirical observation, theoretical models, neuroscience, experimental psychology, and genetics, we can explore the development and adaptive functions of leadership and followership. This analysis of data, combined with an evolutionary perspective on leadership, might highlight potential mismatches so we can see how evolved mechanisms of leadership are possibly out of kilter with our relatively novel social environment.'

obama declares h1n1 a national emergency

NYTimes | President Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, allowing hospitals and local governments to speedily set up alternate sites for treatment and triage procedures if needed to handle any surge of patients, the White House said on Saturday.

The declaration came as thousands of people lined up in cities across the country to receive vaccinations, and as federal officials acknowledged that their ambitious vaccination program has gotten off to a slow start. Only 16 million doses of the vaccine were available now, and about 30 million were expected by the end of the month. Some states have requested 10 times the amount they have been allotted.

Flu activity — virtually all of it the swine flu — is now widespread in 46 states, a level that federal officials say equals the peak of a typical winter flu season. Millions of people in the United States have had swine flu, known as H1N1, either in the first wave in the spring or the current wave.

Although there has been no exact count, officials said the H1N1 virus has killed more than 1,000 Americans and hospitalized over 20,000. The emergency declaration, which Mr. Obama signed Friday night, has to do only with hospital treatment, not with the vaccine. Government officials emphasized that Mr. Obama’s declaration was largely an administrative move that did not signify any unanticipated worsening of the outbreak of the H1N1 flu nationwide. Nor, they said, did it have anything to do with the reports of vaccine shortages.

“This is not a response to any new developments,” said Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman. “It’s an important tool in our kit going forward.”

Mr. Obama’s declaration was necessary to empower Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, to issue waivers that allow hospitals in danger of being overwhelmed with swine flu patients to execute disaster operation plans that include transferring patients off-site to satellite facilities or other hospitals.

h1n1 situation update

CDC | Each week CDC analyzes information about influenza disease activity in the United States and publishes findings of key flu indicators in a report called FluView. During the week of October 11-17, 2009, a review of the key indictors found that influenza activity continued to increase in the United States from the previous week. Below is a summary of the most recent key indicators:

Visits to doctors for influenza-like illness (ILI) increased steeply since last week in the United States, and overall, are much higher than what is expected for this time of the year. ILI activity now is higher than what is seen during the peak of many regular flu seasons.

Total influenza hospitalization rates for laboratory-confirmed flu are climbing and are higher than expected for this time of year.

The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report has increased and has been higher than what is expected at this time of year for two weeks. In addition, 11 flu-related pediatric deaths were reported this week; 9 of these deaths were confirmed 2009 H1N1, and two were influenza A viruses, but were not subtyped. Since April 2009, CDC has received reports of 95 laboratory-confirmed pediatric 2009 H1N1 deaths and another 7 pediatric deaths that were laboratory confirmed as influenza, but where the flu virus subtype was not determined.

Forty-six states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time. They are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. This many reports of widespread activity are unprecedented during seasonal flu.

Almost all of the influenza viruses identified so far are 2009 H1N1 influenza A viruses. These viruses remain similar to the virus chosen for the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, and remain susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir with rare exception.

self-help is not benign...,

WSJ | Self-help is not benign. The $11 billion industry can hurt you psychologically, it can hurt you financially and, as we see, it can hurt you physically. It can hurt your family and friends too.

Consider that today's increasingly popular "large group awareness training" (LGAT) incorporates tactics more commonly identified with psychological warfare. Facilitators bully attendees verbally and sometimes physically, call upon them to relive their worst experiences in humiliating detail in front of strangers, deprive them of sleep and even bathroom privileges—all in the name of self-actualization. In expert testimony in a 1992 lawsuit against the best-known of these LGATs, Landmark Forum (long a favored choice for corporate retreats), the clinical psychologist Margaret Singer observed that Forum "applies a number of powerful and psychologically disturbing, emotionally arousing and defense destabilizing techniques to large groups of people, in an intense, marathon-like period." How can this not have a catastrophic effect on people in a fragile emotional state—which is surely the case with a sizable contingent of those who seek out these "transformational" courses to begin with?

Other offerings, bracketed as "relationships therapy" or "assertiveness training," can wreak havoc on existing interpersonal bonds. Stories abound of couples whose marriages fell victim to gurus who celebrated promiscuity and "personal morality," or who chastised participants for their codependent (that is, caring and empathetic) ways.

Apologists argue that there are bad outcomes in any endeavor, that it's unfair to single out self-help when, say, conventional medicine kills thousands each year. The difference is that in medicine, practitioners share demonstrated expertise in methods that evolved over time and have been tested and retested for efficacy. A bad outcome in a field with proven benefits is unfortunate. A bad outcome in a field with little basis for existing in the first place is unforgivable. As noted psychologist Michael Hurd told me, "Gurus encourage these poor, already troubled souls to literally take leave of their senses, as if departing reason will somehow liberate you."

Meanwhile, the self-help industry continues to expand, with dozens of new gurus flooding the market each year, seeking their slice of the pie. Though modern self-help had its origins in works by classically trained psychiatrists like Eric ("Games People Play") Berne and his disciple Thomas ("I'm OK, You're OK") Harris, today's leading exponents have as much business trading in mental health as they do performing neurosurgery. They're snake-oil salesmen, pitching regimens that have never been validated.

grimm's reality tales...,

NYTimes | Over the past two years, government officials and experts have seen an increasing number of children leave home for life on the streets, including many under 13. Foreclosures, layoffs, rising food and fuel prices and inadequate supplies of low-cost housing have stretched families to the extreme, and those pressures have trickled down to teenagers and preteens.

Federal studies and experts in the field have estimated that at least 1.6 million juveniles run away or are thrown out of their homes annually. But most of those return home within a week, and the government does not conduct a comprehensive or current count.

The best measure of the problem may be the number of contacts with runaways that federally-financed outreach programs make, which rose to 761,000 in 2008 from 550,000 in 2002, when current methods of counting began. (The number fell in 2007, but rose sharply again last year, and the number of federal outreach programs has been fairly steady throughout the period.)

killer-ape targets

awol in the "good old days"...,

epic fail...,

Reuters | On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

The tax foreclosure auction by Wayne County authorities also stood as one of the most ambitious one-stop attempts to sell off urban property since the real-estate market collapse.

Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days.

The county had no estimate of how much was raised by the auction, a second attempt to sell property that had failed to find buyers for the full amount of back taxes in September.

The unsold parcels add to an expanding ghost town within the once-vibrant town known worldwide as the Motor City.

50% more brits behind on their energy bills

Telegraph | The number of people falling behind with fuel bills soared by nearly 50pc during the past six months, a charity warned today.

Citizens Advice said it had seen a 46pc increase in the number of people contacting it during the six months to the end of September who had fuel debts, compared with the same period of the previous year.

It said the rise continued a trend seen in recent years, with the number of people who were in debt to their fuel supplier jumping by 82pc since 2005/2006.

The majority of people who owed money on their energy bills in 2008/2009 were of working age, with only 5pc of people aged over 65.

Eight out of 10 people who were behind with their energy bills had incomes which were half the national average, with 32pc living off less than £400 a month, while a quarter of people with fuel debt had a disability.

David Harker, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: "We are already seeing large increases in the number of people in fuel debt and it is not yet winter.

"With fuel prices remaining at historically high levels it is essential that people get all the help that is available.

"Recent Government increases in Warm Front Grants and Cold Weather Payments will go some way towards helping but information on what help is available, targeted to those who are most vulnerable, must be a prime focus for the Government and energy companies."

the sun slowly sets on the west's oil men

Telegraph | “Oh somewhere in the $60 to $90 range for the foreseeable” – that was the consensus for the oil price that most energy executives milling around at the Oil & Money conference in London gave this week.

That is until John B Hess, the man whose father founded the $120bn oil-exploring Hess Corporation 76 years ago, shook up the room with his apocalyptic outlook for the world’s galloping energy consumption.

The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration. It was a warning,” he started. Some home truths from Mr Hess followed:

1 ) About 85pc of the world’s energy comes from hydrocarbons. Renewable energy does not have the scale, timeframe or economics to materially change this outcome.

2) Oil demand growth will be unrelenting, increasing 1m barrels per day each year. But non-OPEC production is in the process of, if not peaking, reaching a plateau. And 73 pc of the countries that produce oil have already peaked.

3) The role of the national oil companies [most OPEC nations] is critical. They need to invest more or allow others to partner with them. We do not have the luxury of time.

4) We will ultimately be at risk of supply rationing demand through skyrocketing prices that will threaten economic stability and prosperity. If we do not act now, we will have a devastating oil crisis in the next 5-to-10 years.

5) Emissions targets to limit global warming to no more than two degrees are unrealistic. To meet this target, global annual CO2 emissions would have to be reduced from today by more than 80pc by 2050. With world population growth and rising living standards, holding global CO2 emissions flat by 2050 would be a huge achievement
in itself.

So how far do we believe his doom and gloom? He is, after all, a man who sells oil for a living, with an interest in talking up the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. It depends how much faith you have in reduced demand for oil through energy efficiency and electric transport, but on balance, the dire warnings do not seem outlandish.

growing restless....,

Bloomberg | An Exxon Mobil Corp. executive overseeing the company’s $15 billion liquefied-natural-gas project in Papua New Guinea was beaten and stomped by a mob of 50 people in a dispute over landowner contracts.

Noel Wright, Exxon Mobil’s development officer overseeing plans to build a gas-export complex in the South Pacific nation, has returned to “normal duties” after the Oct. 20 attack outside his hotel in the capital, Port Moresby, said Margaret Ross, a spokeswoman for the Irving, Texas-based company.

Ross declined to provide details on Wright’s injuries, which the Post-Courier newspaper in Port Moresby said were severe enough to require hospitalization. Wright was “severely punched” in the face, knocked to the pavement, kicked and stepped on during the incident, the newspaper reported on Oct. 21. The attackers’ attempt to haul Wright away in a waiting vehicle failed when police intervened, the Post-Courier said.

“The reported assault is under police investigation,” Ross said today in an e-mailed statement. “The PNG LNG project places a high priority on the safety and security of its personnel and facilities and has programs and measures in place to provide security and safeguards to protect its people and operations.”

The attack won’t deter Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest company by market value, from proceeding with the LNG project, Ross said. Exxon Mobil will adhere to plans to make a final investment decision by the end of December, she said.

continuously less and less....,

click the image to enlarge its details

Continuously Less and Less
The fundamental enabler of our industrialized American way of life is continuous access to enormous quantities of inexpensive nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs)—energy resources, metals, and minerals. Unfortunately, future NNR supplies will be insufficient to perpetuate our American way of life, for both geological reasons and geopolitical reasons.

Geologically, an ever-increasing number of NNRs are near, at, or past their peak production levels; NNR supplies available to the US are or will soon be in terminal decline.

Geopolitically, our foreign NNR suppliers, who are also our competitors for remaining global NNR supplies, are becoming less willing to export their increasingly scarce NNRs to the US in exchange for our continuously devaluing US dollars and our unrepayable US debt.

Since our continuously declining domestic NNR supplies are woefully inadequate to enable our American way of life, and our imported NNR supplies will decline continuously going forward, we will experience permanent NNR supply shortfalls in the not-too-distant future that will cause American society to collapse. The following paper presents quantified evidence to support this contention.

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of 58 nonrenewable natural resources for which the US Geological Survey and US Energy Information Administration keep current and historic production, pricing, and utilization data. Specifically, the paper assesses the extent to which nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) supplies available to America are becoming increasingly scarce, and the extent to which America is vulnerable to an imminent and permanent NNR supply shortfall associated with each of the 58 analyzed NNRs.

Finally, the paper discusses the implications associated with NNR scarcity and NNR supply shortfalls on our American way of life and American society.

Supporting data tables, NNR myths, and possible sources of error associated with the paper’s analyses and findings are provided in the appendixes.

art of the samurai

MMOA | This will be the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the arts of the samurai. Arms and armor will be the principal focus, bringing together the finest examples of armor, swords and sword mountings, archery equipment and firearms, equestrian equipment, banners, surcoats, and related accessories of rank such as fans and batons. Drawn entirely from public and private collections in Japan, the majority of objects date from the rise of the samurai in the late Heian period, ca. 1156, through the early modern Edo period, ending in 1868, when samurai culture was abolished. The martial skills and daily life of the samurai, their governing lords, the daimyo, and the ruling shoguns will also be evoked through the presence of painted scrolls and screens depicting battles and martial sports, castles, and portraits of individual warriors. The exhibition will conclude with a related exhibition documenting the recent restoration in Japan of a selection of arms and armor from the Metropolitan Museum’s permanent collection. This will be the first exhibition ever devoted to the subject of Japanese arms and armor conservation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.

The exhibition is made possible by the Yomiuri Shimbun.

the speech obama needs to (but will not) give...,

The Oil Drum | As I’m sure all of you are painfully aware, the United States, along with the rest of the world, is in the midst of some of the most profound economic, environmental, and energy troubles ever experienced by modern civilization.

I understand the deep pain, anger, and confusion many of you are feeling at this moment, and I sympathize. My goal tonight is to try to clarify our situation a bit, and in doing so, perhaps channel some of those feelings towards more constructive ends.

The economic, environmental, and energy problems we are currently experiencing are not ultimately the fault of any one person, political group, ethnic group, religious group, country, or region. They go much deeper than that. They are, instead, manifestations of the ongoing conflict -- a war really -- between a finite planet and a human species with infinite aspirations.

In such a war -- a war we are waging against our very life-support systems -- we have no hope of winning. Our best hope is to, as quickly as possible, call off the war, regroup, and fundamentally restructure our society around the acceptance of our planet’s finite nature – around limits.

My words here are, no doubt, striking to you. These are not ideas commonly expressed in “polite” circles -- in the national print media, on television, in board rooms, in Congress, in addresses from the President. They are revolutionary. But they are true and they are necessary.

Let me use an analogy from my experience as a father. As children grow towards adulthood, one of the most painful experiences – for both the child and the parent – is the child’s slow realization and eventual acceptance of limits. Such an embrace of limits is, in fact, one of the hallmarks of “growing up.” My fellow Americans, we need to grow up.

Limits
We, as a species, are now bumping up against -- slamming into, really -- some very immutable biophysical limits on a global scale. These limits and the mounting consequences for their continued violation have been predicted and well documented by our best scientists for many decades -- complete with dire warnings for the consequences of failing to change our course.

We have not heeded these warnings and we are now suffering the predicted consequences. It is our own fault.

We have reached limits in two very real and dangerous senses. Firstly, our voracious material wants have outstripped the Earth’s physical limits -- hard limits on how much and how rapidly the Earth can provide us with material and energy resources to run our industrial lifestyles. A partial list of these increasingly scarce resources includes fossil and nuclear energy sources, freshwater for drinking and irrigation, phosphate fertilizer, and various key metal ores. Even theoretically renewable resources such as our ocean fisheries, fertile soil, and forest products are being destroyed by persistent abuse.

In short, we cannot have infinite wants on a finite planet. These were childish wishes.

Secondly, the almost-unimaginable volumes of waste arising from our industrial activities have overwhelmed the Earth’s waste-disposal systems. The list of accumulating toxins is long and growing: greenhouse gases, PCBs, mercury and other heavy metals, radioactive waste, various endocrine disruptors, silt from eroded forests and farmland, excessive fertilizer, pesticides, and antibiotics from industrial factory farms in our estuaries and drinking water, as well as many others I could list. Most notable among this shameful list are the greenhouse gases arising from our civilization’s terminal addiction to fossil fuels. These have accumulated in our atmosphere to such an extent that a potentially disastrous suite of climatic changes has already been initiated – changes that may ultimately endanger our very survival as a species.

We have fouled our nest. Again, we are guilty of childish behavior – mindless, reckless, and irresponsible.

The End of Growth
Having recognized these limits, we are immediately challenged to renounce one of our most cherished beliefs as a civilization -- the idea of continuous material growth.

u.s. joins ranks of failed states?

ICH | According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.

While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.

It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.

Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the pubic as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.

If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?

In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”

$400.00/gallon gas drives debate over afghan war

TheHill | The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.

The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. “When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it.”

The Pentagon comptroller’s office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is engaged in an internal debate over its future strategy in Afghanistan. Part of this debate concerns whether to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, reportedly has requested that about 40,000 additional troops be sent.
Democrats in Congress are divided over whether to send more combat troops to stabilize Afghanistan in the face of waning public support for the war.

Any additional troops and operations likely will have to be paid for through a supplemental spending bill next year, something Murtha has said he already anticipates.

Afghanistan — with its lack of infrastructure, challenging geography and increased roadside bomb attacks — is a logistical nightmare for the U.S. military, according to congressional sources, and it is expensive to transport fuel and other supplies.

t. boone speaks his mind...,

Reuters | Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq.

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

drop in foreclosures called "very scary"

DaytonDailyNews | Nobody is sure exactly how many bank walkaways are occurring. For various reasons, they can’t be identified in searches of public real estate and court data without individually pulling case files, experts say.

But nobody questions that they are on the increase.

David Rothstein, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, summarized the way they occur like this:

• The lender files a foreclosure, gets the foreclosure judgment in court, takes the property to sheriff’s auction but doesn’t bid on it if no one else does.

• The lender files as above, gets the judgment, sets the sheriff’s auction, then cancels the sale at the last minute.

• The lender files as above but then never requests a sheriff’s auction.

• The lender doesn’t even bother to file foreclosure.

All of these actions leave the foreclosed property in the hands of the original owner who, in many cases, has moved out and is unaware the lender hasn’t taken it.

One indicator of the trend in walkaways is the gap between the number of foreclosure filings by lenders and the number of properties actually sold at sheriff’s auction.

A Dayton Daily News analysis of Montgomery County records found that, through September, foreclosure filings are on a pace this year to decrease by 8 percent. Meanwhile, foreclosed properties sold at sheriff’s sale will be down more than 21 percent. Over the three years an average of 2,500 foreclosure filings have not made it to sale at auction.

A foreclosure filing may not make it to auction for a number of reasons, including owners coming up with the money or lenders working out deals with them. But, Rothstein said, the growing difference between filings and sales suggests walkaways are playing an increasing role.

“When we look at the numbers, it’s not like thousands of people are getting loan modifications that would lift them out of the foreclosure process,” he said. “So what’s happening to those other properties?”

american poverty higher than ever now

NYDailyNews | The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed.

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That's higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula.

That measure, created in 1955, does not factor in rising medical care, transportation, child care or geographical variations in living costs. Nor does it consider non-cash government aid when calculating income. As a result, official figures released last month by Census may have overlooked millions of poor people, many of them 65 and older.

foreclosures force ex-homeowners into shelters

NYTimes | The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.

The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.

foreclosures - worst three months of all time...,

CNN | Despite signs of broader economic recovery, number of foreclosure filings hit a record high in the third quarter - a sign the plague is still spreading. Despite concerted government-led and lender-supported efforts to prevent foreclosures, the number of filings hit a record high in the third quarter, according to a report issued Thursday.

"They were the worst three months of all time," said Rick Sharga, spokesman for RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed homes.

During that time, 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter -- whether a default notice, auction notice or bank repossession, the RealtyTrac report said. That means one in every 136 U.S. homes were in foreclosure, which is a 5% increase from the second quarter and a 23% jump over the third quarter of 2008.

Nevada continued to be the worst-hit state with one filing for every 23 households. But even tranquil Vermont, where the foreclosure crisis has barely brushed the housing market, saw foreclosure filings jump nearly 170% compared with the third quarter of 2008. Still, that resulted in just one filing for every 5,023 households in the state -- the best record in the country.

u.s. launches aid for state and local housing agencies

Reuters | The Obama administration on Monday launched a program to help the depressed U.S. housing market by effectively allowing state and local housing finance agencies to borrow from the U.S. Treasury.

The initiative, announced as new data showed a downturn in homebuilder sentiment, aims to restart a source of mortgage financing for first-time and low-income buyers that has been largely shut down by credit market gridlock.

Described as temporary by the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the program will allow state and local agencies to issue bonds through government-sponsored mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those bonds would then be purchased by the Treasury.

"Through this initiative, the administration aims to help ... jump start new lending to borrowers who might not otherwise be served and to better support the financing costs of their current programs," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.

The U.S. housing market, which was at the epicenter of the global credit crisis, has shown signs of stabilizing, but it has been bolstered by an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers that is set to expire at the end of November.

a very lucky universe?

Guardian | In a desperate attempt to explain why Cern's Large Hadron Collider has suffered a series of mishaps preventing it from commencing its search for the elusive Higgs Boson particle, respectable physicists have suggested (apparently in all seriousness) that nature abhors the Higgs so much that ripples from the future are travelling back in time to stop the Switzerland-based particle accelerator working.

Reports of the emergence of these theories have prompted renewed contemplation of the "granny paradox", which some think debunks the very idea of time travel. In this scenario, a time traveller goes into the past and inadvertently causes the death of his/her granny, before the traveller's parents are born. So the traveller never goes back in time, so granny doesn't die – and, well, so on. I have a much simpler explanation for the collider's plight. Its failure is related to the existence of other universes, the "parallel worlds" beloved of science-fiction writers.

This theory suggests there are many – perhaps infinitely many – universes, some more or less like our own, some very different. This is not an idea confined to science fiction; it is respectable scientific speculation. Such universes are thought to exist in their own sets of space and time dimensions, and include worlds where key turning points in history, such as the Battle of Hastings, turned out differently from the way things happened in our world. The physicist Hugh Everett proved half a century ago that this "many worlds" idea is completely compatible with everything we know about the way the world works, and is a natural feature of quantum physics.

u.s. state tax revenue drops most since 1963

Bloomberg | Bloomberg is reporting State Revenue Falls Most Since 1963 on Incomes, Sales. U.S. state tax collections tumbled the most in almost half a century in the second quarter as the economic recession curbed levies on incomes and sales.

The 16.6 percent plunge was the biggest since at least 1963, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government said today. For the 12 months to June 30, the fiscal year for most states, revenue declined 8.2 percent, or $63 billion, about twice what states got from the $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus package, the institute said.

State revenue has dwindled for two straight quarters and continued to decline in July and August, the Albany-based research organization said. Budgets for the year that began July 1 already face $26 billion of deficits, the Washington, D.C.- based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said Aug. 12, forcing state lawmakers to confront additional spending cuts.

“We’re looking at a multiyear problem hitting essentially every state,” Robert Ward, the institute’s deputy director, told reporters. “It has happened during recessions before, but the depth of this decline is unprecedented in modern times.”

Collections dropped in 49 states in the second quarter as sales and personal-income taxes slid for the third consecutive period, the institute said. Income tax was down 27.5 percent and sales tax fell down 9.5 percent, its study said. Both categories fell by the most in 45 years.

“Many economists believe that the national recession has ended and that a tepid recovery is now underway,” Rockefeller analysts Lucy Dadayan and Donald J. Boyd wrote. “Unfortunately for states, an emerging economic recovery does not spell instant budget relief.”

america's soul is lost - collapse inevitable

MarketWatch | Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today."

No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks. Faber is warning that the entire system of capitalism will collapse. Get it? The engine driving the great "American Economic Empire" for 233 years will collapse, a total disaster, a destiny we created.

OK, deny it. But I'll bet you have a nagging feeling maybe he's right, the end may be near. I have for a long time: I wrote a column back in 1997: "Battling for the Soul of Wall Street." My interest in "The Soul" -- what Jung called the "collective unconscious" -- dates back to my Ph.D. dissertation: "Modern Man in Search of His Soul," a title borrowed from Jung's 1933 book, "Modern Man in Search of a Soul." This battle has been on my mind since my days at Morgan Stanley 30 years ago, witnessing the decline.

Has capitalism lost its soul? Guys like Bogle and Faber sense it. Read more about the soul in physicist Gary Zukav's "The Seat of the Soul," Thomas Moore's "Care of the Soul" and sacred texts.

But for Wall Street and American capitalism, use your gut. You know something's very wrong: A year ago "too-greedy-to-fail" banks were insolvent, in a near-death experience. Now, magically they're back to business as usual, arrogant, pocketing outrageous bonuses while Main Street sacrifices, and unemployment and foreclosures continue rising as tight credit, inflation and skyrocketing Federal debt are killing taxpayers.

Yes, Wall Street has lost its moral compass. They created the mess, now, like vultures, they're capitalizing on the carcass. They have lost all sense of fiduciary duty, ethical responsibility and public obligation.

Here are the Top 20 reasons American capitalism has lost its soul:

frustration builds within the ranks

NYTimes | Only nine months ago, the Pentagon pronounced itself reassured by the early steps of a new commander in chief. President Obama was moving slowly on an American withdrawal from Iraq, had retained former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary and, in a gesture much noticed, had executed his first military salute with crisp precision.

But now, after nearly a month of deliberations by Mr. Obama over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military.

A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room.

“The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.”

marching toward zombieland

JHKunstler | When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow. This is now essentially the situation for the Goldman Sachs company, which last week announced third-quarter earnings of over $3 billion largely derived from converting zero percent loans from taxpayers into zero risk profits off of anything paying more than zero percent in interest, revenue, or dividends.

The "people" across this big country may not have a clue how any of this is done, and there may be much to fault them on from the care-and-feeding of their own bodies to the content of their dreams, but you can't argue with the fact that they are heavily armed to an extreme. And although it may be hard to measure with precision, one might venture to state that they are increasingly pissed off. How else explain popular entertainments like "Zombieland?"

The political part of what has to date appeared to be an economic problem is resolving into a crisis of authority and legitimacy. When those in charge of a nation's livelihood prove to be comprehensively false and dishonest, the economic automatically turns political. Nobody believes the bankers anymore, of course, and nobody believes the interlocutors of the bankers - the Federal Reserve chairman, the Secretary of the Treasury, the heads of the SEC and a dozen other regulatory bodies - and increasingly the charming figure in the White House cannot be believed on these issues of the nation's livelihood.

The questions lately revolve around whether the nation is destroying itself by inflation or deflation - by the willful destruction of the value of our currency to evade the repayment of debt, or by the hapless destruction of households, companies, and governments by default and bankruptcy. It's a fire-or-ice debate. Either way the nation is going down as a viable enterprise. The fiction that we can return to a Crate-and-Barrel credit card orgy has sustained the false of heart and mind for some months now, but even that pleasant reverie will come to an end as the foreclosures mount. Only remember, men living in their cars who have lost nearly everything else will still have guns.

All these tensions beat a path into the holiday season when emotions run high, when blessings are counted and sorrows taste most bitter. So the big question now floating above the sheer data of Goldman Sachs profit announcement is: what kind of year-end bonuses will they dare to pay their executives and minions, and how will the "people" react? It seems to me that conditions are ripening for a bloodbath. The kind of heinous acts that we have feared emanating from foreign "evildoers" since the awful stunt of 9/11/01 are now most likely to come from among our own "people" - a few pounds of Semtex in the lobby of Goldman Sachs's New York headquarters... a few men with market-grade small arms converted to full-automatic outside on the Wall Street sidewalk one evening at holiday time when the suits are leaving work for the day.... It won't take much.

u.s. military's battle to wean itself off oil

Grist | In the summer of 2006, Marine Corps Major General Richard Zilmer sent the Pentagon an unusual “Priority 1” request for emergency battlefield supplies. Stationed at a temporary base in Fallujah, Zilmer was commanding a force of 30,000 troops responsible for protecting Al Anbar, the vast territory in western Iraq bordering Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. Heavily armed insurgents were hammering the region, and Al Qaeda was quickly gathering recruits. Zilmer’s beleaguered soldiers were running low on fuel for the diesel generators powering their barracks—fuel that cooled their tents in the 135-degree weather, refrigerated and cooked their food, and kept the communication lines open. The general, however, was wary of trucking in backup supplies during a time of so much turmoil. The U.S. fuel convoys that chugged along the back roads of Iraq every day—long lines of 18-wheelers hauling armored vats of gas—were among the insurgents’ prime targets.

Zilmer’s memo presented the Pentagon with an unprecedented request: “a self-sustainable energy solution,” including “solar panels and wind turbines.” This was the first time a frontline commander had formally requested renewable energy backup in battle. Without alternative power sources, the memo continued, U.S. forces “will remain unnecessarily exposed” and will “continue to accrue preventable ... serious and grave casualties.” Put in civilian-speak: Too many of Zilmer’s troops were dying in fuel convoys, and the relentless gasoline demands of the diesel generators were partly to blame.

Renewable energy was not an environmental consideration for Zilmer, it was a tactical necessity—a matter of life and death, of victory or defeat. The Pentagon is the largest consumer of petroleum in the United States. In recent years it has used between 130 million and 145 million barrels of oil annually—2 percent of America’s total petroleum demand. That translates to nearly 400,000 barrels per day, roughly the total daily energy consumption of the United Arab Emirates. Over the last century, no institution has done more to propel America’s rise to power than our military—or consumed more oil in the process. We have petroleum to thank for building the Department of Defense into an as-yet-unmatched fighting machine—but our troops are only as powerful as the flow of fuel that sustains them.

I was both baffled and hopeful when I read about Zilmer’s memo. Here was a no-nonsense Marine Corps general who has served more than 30 years in the U.S. military (not your typical tree-hugger) stationed in a country that’s virtually floating on an ocean of oil (Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, after Iran and Saudi Arabia) demanding clean energy solutions that only a few years earlier had been regarded as rinky-dink hippie technology suitable only for yurts and Earthships. Zilmer’s plea struck me as a clear harbinger of change in America’s attitudes about energy. If there was ever an opportunity to “man up” the effete image and role of solar panels, wind power, and other fossil-fuel alternatives, this was it. Just think of what the Pentagon could do to fast-track alternative-energy innovations going forward—after all, it was military R&D that led to the invention of jet airplanes, helicopters, radar, remote-control mechanisms, cell phones, global positioning systems (GPS), microchips, and the internet.

But for all the promise it augured, Zilmer’s memo also carried overtones of despair that spoke to the massive challenges that come with fueling the military—one more oil-dependent today than ever before in history.

How did the American military get so hooked on petroleum? How much does it really cost—in both blood and treasure—to fuel war? What would it take to transform the world’s biggest and strongest military into a petroleum-free enterprise? And how did this become the primary concern of a man leading 30,000 troops? To get answers, I went straight to the heart of the U.S. military establishment.

shale gas estimates optimistic?

The Oil Drum | Unfortunately I have had to miss the ASPO Meeting in Denver this week, and so cannot provide the daily reports that I have written in the past. But I notice that at least one of the talks has already caught a significant amount of press, and that is the one by Arthur Berman on the gas production from shale deposits such as the Barnett, Haynesville and Marcellus.

There has been a considerable hype in the press about the value of the gas from these shales, and the ability that they provide to bring in an “Age of Natural Gas”. This picture of a large supply of natural gas has been strengthened by the increase in production from a number of the gas shale fields, at the same time that the recession hit, and as a result there has been more gas available than needed, and the price has dropped considerably as a result. This, in turn, has led to a considerable reduction in the number of rigs that have been drilling new wells.

Natural gas has been steadily increasing its share of electricity generation, rising to over 20% of the market, on its way to 25%. Natural gas is favored because of its reduced carbon footprint over coal, and it has historically been used since it is somewhat easier to start and stop gas turbines than it is coal-fired power. Thus natural gas is seen as a favored backup to the installation of wind farms, where the vagaries of the wind are backed by the ability to use natural gas when needed.

There are, however, considerable concerns about the ability of wells in the gas shale to produce to the targets that are being set up. I first noted Arthur Berman’s concern about this back in 2007 when I drew attention to a piece he had written in World Oil, where he noted the short life of most of the gas-producing wells; the very high costs for the wells and technology required to create them and, as a result, that only 28% of them return a reasonable profit. (Unfortunately the article itself is now behind a paywall).

Since then I returned to the topic at Bit Tooth showing, among other data, the very high decline rate (now 60%) of many of the gas wells in Texas (where the Barnett shale is) that Swindell has reported.

energy crisis postponed as new gas rescues the world?

ODAC | It is hard to know where to begin regarding Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's article entitled "Energy crisis is postponed as new gas rescues the world." But since the speculative world he invokes has more to with Alice In Wonderland than the hard reality of engineering and science, let us begin - at the end.

Evans-Pritchard caps his evangelistic encomium with this: "I am not qualified to judge where gas excitement crosses into hyperbole. I pass on the story because the claims of BP and Statoil are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century."

He admits his lack of gas qualifications but surely he is enough of a journalist - and an economist - to ask some basic fact-checking questions. What none of the boosters want to talk about is the reality of shale gas. It is true that there is most likely a lot of shale gas around, especially in the United States, but after this, the story goes down a rabbit hole. Shale gas is not like the conventional gas finds that gave the US vast supplies of cheap methane. Shale gas is locked in until the rocks holding it are fractured in a process known as hydro-fracing. This requires a lot of work, a lot of wells, a lot of water (2 - 5 million gallons per well), and some rather unpleasant chemicals. Having made all this effort, the production decline rates look like the cliffs at Beachy Head. Within two years production has typcally dropped by 80%.

Not surprisingly therefore, these expensive wells have an average commercial life of less than eight years. Worse still, in August of this year, World Oil pointed out that total production of many wells was only a third of what operators had predicted. Furthermore, of the two dozen or so shale plays in the US, Barnett appears to have the best geological profile and is responsible for 80% of current shale gas. Many of the other plays have much lower gas content density, which would likely mean yet more wells and more fracing for less gas.

blue-collar scholar spits game

Democracy Now | William Black, Former bank regulator at the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. In the 1980s he helped expose the savings and loan scandal. He now teaches at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and is the author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry. Interview money shot;

WILLIAM BLACK: Well, I mean, Summers, for example—you talked about Geithner’s aides and how much money they had made, and, of course, it’s absurdly large, and they’re making it typically for not doing much of anything. But they’re taking their cue from Summers, who got $5 million, roughly, for working one day a week in areas he had no expertise. So, you know, once you leave the federal service, then these interests that you were very helpful to find a way to make you spectacularly rich, and they know that that’s what’s coming in their future. That’s part of the problem.

But the bigger part of the problem, in many ways, is that they have such an ideology about the market and its ability to deal with all problems that has no basis in reality, has been exposed in this crisis as completely fictional, and yet they can’t give it up. I mean, think of yourself as one of these professors who’s been trained in the Milton Friedmanish views, and you’re in your fifties, and you’ve been saying—you know, everything you’ve said in your career is wrong. Everything you’ve learned in your career is wrong. All of your areas of expertise are wrong. Are you going to admit that? “Hi, I’ve been misleading you, and I’m sorry I caused this disaster. And by the way, I have no meaningful skills or experience.”

As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses - The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent.

music, pattern, and the neurostructures of time

Noology | The term pattern has recently gained prominence as key term in understanding mankind's quest to make the universe intelligible, to fashion a Cosmos from the pure Chaos of the undiscriminate swarm of photons, electrons, air pressure changes, chemical and physical stimulants, that organisms are exposed to every instant of their living existence. On pattern are based not only the sciences, but also human society, and in the wider sense, life, and the lawfulness of the universe. The present contribution connects Gregory Bateson's work as a recent trailblazer in the recognition of the role of pattern with Goethe's earlier work on Morphology and Metamorphosis. It links this to current scientific understanding of the working of the brain, as neuronal activation patterns, consisting of oscillation fields and logical relation structures of neuronal assemblies, treated formally as coupled dynamic systems and neuronal attractors, which are characterized by their space-time-dynamics. These are called neuronal resonance patterns, and patterns of patterns: metapatterns. Thus, pattern is the "infrastructure" of neuronal processing happening in our brains, below, and a few miliseconds before our working consciousness experiences the "phainomena" and "noumena", of our discernible impressions and thoughts. This spatio-temporal neuronal infrastructure is then re-interpreted in a Neo-Pythagorean way, as the "inner music of the brain", which supports a new validation for the old Pythagorean world views.

time, anticipation, and pattern processors

Noology | Recent advances in the neurosciences are leading to an understanding of the structures and processes in neural networks as electric activation patterns, consisting of oscillation fields and logical relation structures of neuronal assemblies, treated formally as coupled dynamic systems and neuronal attractors. These are specifically characterized by their space-time-dynamics. In the present context, these phenomena are also called neuronal resonance patterns, and as higher-order hierarchical aggregates, patterns of patterns: metapatterns, as Gregory Bateson would have termed it. The term pattern is suited equally well for the spatial as for the temporal domain, and thus allows to formulate an abstract conceptual system of the neuronal computation processes of organisms. In re-formulation of Goethe's original ideas, such a systematics of metapatterns is called meta-morphology, in an effort to account especially for their dynamic, time-relevant aspects. The fundamental properties of such a system display a strong resemblance to a very ancient thought system that was known as Pythagoreanism in the Western tradition. The present contribution will show some of the parallels between the ancient system and the meta-morphology as outlined here.

resources and anthropocentrism

NatureBatsLast | Considering the history of western thought, it's no surprise we view every element on Earth as feedstock for industrialization. The only question is when we exploit Earth's bounty, not if. The logical progression, then, is to exploitation of humans to further feed the industrial machine.

Within the last few years, personnel departments at major institutions became departments of human resources. Thus, whereas these departments formerly dealt with persons, they now deal with resources. There's a reason you feel like a cog in a grand imperial scheme: Not only are you are viewed as a cog by the machine, and also by those who run the machine, but any non-cog-like behavior on your part leads to rejection of you and your actions. Seems you're either a tool of empire or you're a saboteur (i.e., terrorist).

It's time to invest in wooden shoes.

As if fifteen people are even willing to poke a stick in the eye of the corporations that run and ruin our lives. Why is that? Probably because we think we depend upon them, when in fact they depend upon us. And, to a certain extent -- to the extent we allow -- we do depend upon industrial culture for our lives. But only in the short term, and only as self-absorbed, comfortable individuals unwilling to make changes in our lives (even ones that are necessary to our own survival). Taking the longer, broader view, it is evident industrial culture is killing the living planet, and our own species. The cultural problem we face is not that we're fish out of water. Rather, it's that we're fish in a river. We don't even know there's an ocean, much less a landbase.

Aye, there's the rub. Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.

shale and our water

NYTimes | New York State’s environmental regulators have proposed rules to govern drilling in the Marcellus Shale — a subterranean layer of rock curving northward from West Virginia through Ohio and Pennsylvania to New York’s southern tier. The shale contains enormous deposits of natural gas that could add to the region’s energy supplies and lift New York’s upstate economy. If done carefully — and in carefully selected places — drilling should cause minimal environmental harm.

But regulators must amend the rules to bar drilling in the New York City watershed: a million acres of forests and farmlands whose streams supply the reservoirs that send drinking water to eight million people. Accidental leaks could threaten public health and require a filtration system the city can ill afford.

Natural gas is vital to the nation’s energy needs and can be an important bridge between dirty coal and renewable alternatives. The process of extracting it, however, is not risk-free. Known as hydraulic fracturing, it involves shooting a mix of water, sand and chemicals — many of them highly toxic — into the ground at very high pressure to break down the rock formations and free the gas.

The technique is used in 90 percent of the oil and gas operations in the United States. And while most drilling occurs without incident, “fracking” has been implicated in hundreds of cases of impaired or polluted drinking water supplies in states from Alabama to Wyoming.

The dangers are particularly acute in the Marcellus Shale, which, unlike the relatively shallow formations found elsewhere, lies miles underground. Getting the gas out will require far more water and heavy doses of chemicals. While the rules would require drillers to take special precautions in the watershed, there are too many points — from the delivery of the fluid to the drilling site to the removal of spent fluid after it surfaces — where poisoned water could escape into the water supplies.

Quarantining the watershed also makes economic sense. The shale contains only one-tenth of the gas in the southern tier. One big accident could undo everything the city and state have done — buying up property, creating buffer zones around the reservoirs — to protect the watershed from development and pollution.
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The hazards to fresh water posed by massive fracking are fairly well understood. Do we really have the luxury of poisoning this much of our freshwater supply in the name of natural gas development? The question needs to be asked again: What do we value more, energy to run our machines or water to sustain human life?