Easy Solutions to Big Problems, Suggestion 1

Cut military funding by a significant proportion.

Use some of this to reduce the deficit.  Use the rest for increased funding to NASA and the NIH (National Institute of Heath), which funds biomedical research.

Everyone wins, excepting Lockheed-Martin.

This is my comment to the moderator for the Economist's debate on fracking.  The question proposes was "Do the benefits derived from shale gas outweigh the drawbacks of fracking?".

My answer, of course, was no.  

Dear Sir,
Please ask the debaters how well fracking, or any oil or gas extraction, takes any account for it's negative externalities. Do the oil companies have funds set aside for polluted drinking water or aquifers, spoiled and polluted land (as most states have not even disallowed surface dumping), or ground and structure stability issues after the bedrock underneath is fractured?
And how about the externalities of the energy-intensive process used to obtain this fuel? Will Exxon, now that has publicly admitted its recognition of climate change (for over a decade, even while it was funding various disinformation campaigns) seek to balance the emissions it directly causes, and will cause in the distribution of its primary product?
This magazine has come out in favor of the clear scientific consensus: Global Climate Change is real, increased by human GHG emissions (or solely caused), and will cause a massive amount of widespread economic and social damage if not mitigated.
How do any of the industries involved in fracking seek to counter this?
And if they don't, why we do, as the public, accept it as given that we must pay for their waste?

And yes, all the comments are artificially started with the opener "Dear Sir".  Oh those wacky British!

Gangnam Style and Sound of Silence

Often with giant, amusing or enjoyable viral memes, I stop listening before I stop enjoying them.  Then several months later I go back and pick out the really interesting remixes and spoofs from the chaff.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as brilliant, but it got me thinking.

I present to you - Gangnam Style, sans music.

Because the Rich and Powerful Don't Already Have a High Enough Opinion of Themselves

From some leaked memos from Citigroup:

We project that the plutonomies (the U.S., UK, and Canada) will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization… Since we think the plutonomy is here, is going to get stronger… It is a good time to switch out of stocks that sell to the masses and back to the plutonomy basket.

Depressing.  

I can see why Citigroup would pay millions to keep this under-wraps; this reads like a parody of Scrooge McDuck's evil accountant.  Not good for attracting private, low profile, rich investors.

It seems awfully limited in prognosis.  It seems to implicitly assume that what a world run by neo-feudal, capitalist states would be best for everyone, or at least everyone that matters.  Obviously no one knows the future, but our current system of technological upheaval is based, in large part, on the promise that people can and do make a decent living through invention and have the chance of striking it rich.  I suppose inequality doesn't necessarily defeat this scenario, but it does make it harder for the natural talent and ambition to eke it's way into competition with immensely substandard education, resources and support.  

But I suppose they weren't writing those memos to advise people on how to run society, so much as to flatter rich people and make them feel important, so that they will continue to pay them idiotic amounts of money for stock tips.

A realization of no particular relevance.

Do you ever get a sudden insight that is brilliant, hilarious, or interesting, and then realize the obvious nature of this observation?  Obvious, not in the sense of 1+1=2, but in the sense of "if I were in that scenario, the mostly likely outcome of 1(being some particular quantity that I deal with) +1(ditto) = 2(as someone in this scenario this answer is too obvious to mention).

I would appreciate it if someone could come up with a more pithy way of putting that,

BUT

My realization of today was perhaps obvious, but amusing: the tech engineers and the stylistic engineers at Apple must hate each other.  I'm talking Montague and Capulet level hate.

AmIright?


POST HASTE EDIT
The word is that I am wrong and Apple is much more together than I had suspected and/or doesn't divide the technical from the stylistic engineering.  First of all: wow.  Second: those poor engineers must go mad from the war that goes on in their minds; between the artistic and mathematical sides.

Or maybe they're just much smarter than I.

Republicans are Crazy (and getting Crazier) Part XXIII

Voteview's amazing graph of Clarity.

I want to order a poster-sized-print of this graph, and carry it around with me, so that when people claim "the liberals have gotten more extreme!" or "it's both parties' fault!" I can beat them over the head with this.

A pox on both their houses! if by Houses you mean the GOP Senate and House.



Hat-tip Andrew Sullivan: go subscribe to his soon-to-be-independent site.

Hostages in Algeria: Khrushchev's in Afghanistan

It all sounds like something out of We didn't Start the Fire, but the hostage scenario going on in Algeria right now sounds incredibly chaotic.  Reports of hostages escaping, being killed along with their captors by an Algerian strike force, and who knows.  Lots of different sources; the situation is occurring at a B.P. gas field, so my guess is that there are as many sources leaking news as there are officials representing the countries the various employees work for.  Plus BP, the militants, and various army officials.

It all makes for an interesting media circus.

From the L.A. Times article:

Captives being held are believed to be from the U.S., France, Japan, Norway and other countries. Reports on Wednesday suggested that as many as 41 foreigners were being held by an Al Qaeda-linked group calling itself the Signed-in-Blood Battalion.The ordeal has shown the volatility of a region bristling with gunrunners, smugglers and a visceral strain of Islamic ideology. Militant groups, including Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have been deadly at home but now present a widening danger in North Africa, including in Tunisia and Libya, where Islamic extremists have gained a foothold since the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

Does this sound like a bad Hollywood action movie to anyone?