Slashdot Mirror

I haven't shuffled through all of them, or seen a believable analysis of the whole enchilada. But according to one Guardian article, your simple assertion is probably bullshit.

I heard it on that jingoistic, neocon broadcast network NPR. Specifically, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Monday July 26, with guests Mark Mazzetti (NYT), Nick Davies (Guardian), Richard Haass (some NGO). Mr. Davies and Mr. Mazzetti were among the reporters who reviewed the wikileaks documents before they were published so they have a multi-week head start on the rest of us. link to this episode

Note that the story you link to does not disprove my assertion. Incompetence and bumbling, and even deceit, while indefensible, are not even close to as bad as intentionally killing civilians (at a rate in excess of ten to one) in terror attacks. The Taliban and their supporters are clearly the bad guys in this conflict.

This [see boldface (mine) below]:

TOM ASHBROOK: Amory Lovins, you’ve pushed back fairly hard and quite publicly on Stewart Brand’s embrace here of nuclear power. Why?
AMORY LOVINS: Although Stewart and I share a great sense of urgency about climate change, I think the more urgent you think that problem is, the more important it is to invest judiciously to get the most solution per dollar and the most solution per year. And nuclear flunks both those tests. It gives about two to twenty times less carbon savings per dollar and about twenty to forty times less carbon savings per year than if you brought instead the things that are walloping it in the market, namely micropower and energy efficiency.
TOM ASHBROOK: What is micropower?
AMORY LOVINS: Micropower has two parts. One is renewables other than big hydro. So it’s sun, wind, geothermal, small hydro, and so on. And the other part is co-generating electricity and useful heat together in factories or buildings, which saves at least half of the fuel money in carbon.
TOM ASHBROOK: So your core argument is not the nuclear waste argument, but a cost-effectiveness argument around nuclear?
AMORY LOVINS: Correct. Nuclear is about the most expensive and slowest thing you can build. And I don’t think it’s true you need to build everything. You can’t afford to build everything. You need to choose the best buys for your goal, just as in assembling a financial portfolio you don’t stuff it full of one of everything on the market. You figure out the diversified set of assets that will best meet your investment objectives. If you buy something really expensive and risky, that actually makes your portfolio perform worse because you didn’t get to buy stuff that would have performed better.
TOM ASHBROOK: Stewart Brand, what about the argument? You’re arguing a big push in nuclear. Amory Lovins says it’s not the most cost-effective way forward and it really matters what we pull the trigger on here.
STEWART BRAND: I was surprised that in Amory’s good and thorough response to the chapter [on nuclear energy], which I’m glad to see is out there, and it’s downloadable from Rocky Mountain Institute. One of the things, Amory, you didn’t address in that was [nuclear] microreactors, and I’m delighted you’re talking about micropower because it looks like the new generation of those small reactors down around 100 to 125 megawatts coming from half a dozen manufacturers are right in there. And [they] could do co-generation and local adaptivity and all the things you’d like to see distributed micropower do.
AMORY LOVINS: It might have been a good idea to look at 50 years ago, but it’s way too late. Actually, I did describe it I wrote a special paper on this called “New Nuclear Reactor, Same Old Story” last spring, because I got really curious about these arguments and dug into them. There are two basic issues, that again are economic, that I get to before the other attributes. I think the Gen 4 reactor types are broadly comparable to today’s reactors in waste production. They might in some respects be safer. They’re generally as proliferative or more proliferative. But their economics are not sufficiently better to make any difference, for two reasons. One is that of course what makes a reactor work is that you have a very concentrated source of heat and also of radioactivity, and the physical devices you need to harness the heat and manage the heat and radioactivity do not scale down very well. It’s just a matter of physical scaling laws. Secondly
STEWART BRAND: Wait, wait, wait. Isn’t that the case also with solar thermal? They’re using the same thing. They’re using smaller steam turbines.
AMORY LOVINS: To some degree, it’s true of the steam turbine, except that there you don’t have a concentrate

Why yes, yes I am... and proud of it! (our high school support group was called "Nerds by Choice")

Anyway, this looks like a link to the article:
http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/07/jessica-stern-denial

Sadly, the idea that Ireland's boom was a result of cutting business tax is a myth, and was covered extensively in this On Point broadcast. The real reason for Ireland's boom was easy credit, the same as everywhere else.

Sigh. There was a real boom before the bubble (1993 to 1999), and that was directly related to the low corporate tax. The property bubble was always a farce and should not be considred part of the Celtic tiger era.

Sadly, the idea that Ireland's boom was a result of cutting business tax is a myth, and was covered extensively in this On Point broadcast. The real reason for Ireland's boom was easy credit, the same as everywhere else. Only their bubble was bigger-- partly because the Irish people had never before known a time of wealth, and also partly because Ireland became an attractive place to do business (comparatively low-wage, English-speaking labor)-- a property that disappeared around the same time as the crisis as emigration decreased and wages began to rise. What is true, though, is that the deep cutting of business tax had a detrimental effect on the ability of the government to actually do anything about the crisis-- they simply did not have the funds available to lessen its severity like we were able to in the U.S.

I have many friends who were affected deeply by this. The family of a good friend of mine was nearly employed in its entirety by Dell's Limerick plant. Dell left for cheaper labor in Poland, around the same time that the financial crisis hit. Nearly all of these folks, who, for the first time in generations, could afford to live in their own houses, and own their own cars, went bankrupt overnight. You can debate the wisdom of putting yourself in debt when your fate is tied to a fickle corporation, but the fact is that Dell was fully aware that this would be the result. Dell can kiss my ass if they think I'll ever buy or recommend their hardware again.

"This new technology is sponsored and funded by:
Your friendly health and life insurance company, constantly finding new and innovative ways to make sure we never have to pay you a dime since 1666."

For the benefit of those who didn't hear the show, last week NPR had an interesting interview with Karen Tumulty on just this topic. It was about her brother's problems with his insurance company when he started having kidney problems. Part of the story was that the insurance investigators got access to his medical tests, and they found a slight anomaly in one test a few years earlier that the doctors didn't consider significant at the time, but which the insurance company said indicated the kidney disease. Since he was insured by a different policy when that test was done, it means the disease was a "pre-existing condition" for the current policy, so they didn't have to cover it.

This is rapidly becoming a serious problem in the US. The more detailed your medical monitoring is, the more likely that the insurers will collect your money, and they refuse coverage due to a precursor that showed up once far in the past.

Of course, in the long run, the health insurers will shoot themselves in their collective feet, as health insurance slowly ceases to cover anything, and it will become pointless to pay for insurance that doesn't cover anything. Then the only people with medical coverage will be those able to pay the million-dollar charges for treating minor ailments.

(We're not quite there yet, but it's easy enough to be a prophet in this subject area. ;-)

This sounds like a great idea with the problem that I think there would be issues of liability. The litigious society, among other things, is killing American competitiveness. See below if you have 45 minutes to waste. http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/11/american-competitiveness/

You're kidding, right? Apparently you've missed out on Margaret Jones, or James Frey, or the entire bogus memoir industry that produces crap like this with the help of a ghost writer. I work for a publisher, and simply put, they rarely fact-check. Instead, what they do is send prerelease books to reviewers. The hope is that the reviewers will be smart enough to catch glaring errors. How knowledgeable the reviewers are depends somewhat on the audience of the book. College textbooks typically go to professors and grad students. Trade paperbacks can go to pretty much anybody, but usually quotable people or professional book critics.

In any case, this is exactly the same mechanism that Wikipedia uses: throw it out there and see if anyone catches something. As a practical matter, publishers cannot fact-check. They do not have the resources. The only books I would depend on fact-checking for are the ones that claim to do so as a principle of their cognitive authority: dictionaries and encyclopedias. The imprint I work for publishes several hundred textbooks a year, and reprints darn near a thousand. We have a little over 200 employees. See what I'm getting at?

Even scientific articles are "fact-checked" this way: throw it out there. Typically the reviewers are peers, and quite knowledgeable. This works better than with trade publishers because the reviewers have specific knowledge about that particular field. But does the publisher fact-check themselves? No! I should add that the pay scale for reviewers goes up depending on the relative reliability of the reviewers. Reviewers for scientific reviewers are often paid in the several hundreds range. Reviewers for college textbooks in the low hundreds (sometimes in trade for other goodies), and trade paperback reviewers, not much, if anything. Often it's for the privilege of seeing pre-release stuff.

There's only one kind of publishing where fact-checking (aside from dictionaries, etc.) is done as a rule: journalism. But there have been many scandals there as well. There was a study mentioned in the book Trust Us, We're Experts that said that nearly half of the Wall Street Journal's article's were simply slightly modified press releases. And the Wall Street Journal is regarded as one of the more reliable papers! I think I only need to mention cable TV journalism for you to see where I'm going with this.

The publishing industry is not reliable. They're in it for the money. Books like Frey's sell just as well, if not better, than the real ones. Just look at the demand for O.J. Simpson's book-- a book that never even claimed to tell the truth! People want something juicy, and the publishing industry is happy to give it to them. Sorry, ptrourke, your premise is false.

re McD's coffee incident: Not only did they have prior notice as you note (there were numerous other incidents), the coffee in question gave her 3d degree burns in the groin area.

To those tempted to use McD's coffee a a snarky "example" of the legal system gone awry, consider that a 3d degree burn is where the skin is totally destroyed down to the flesh, and then think about you might do if the skin was totally burned off your cock.

People who buy into the whole "McD's coffee"="lawyers bad" argument are suckers. I've been reading "Free Lunch" (interview with author) and it's just disgusting. Like John Snow, treasury secretary, who slashed maintenance for CSX (rail freight) causing 2 billion dollars extra profit. Train derails, many injured and eight die. Caused by a switch installed backwards, held together by a rusty nail, maintenance records falsified. Eventually, 50 million awarded as punitive damages. Of course, CSX paid none of it -- because it was an Amtrack train running on CSX tracks, taxpayers paid it.

So here you have a guy who murders people, profits, gets promoted in government, has to pay nothing for his evil acts, and people like him and his administration tell you that lawyers are the problem. Wake the fuck up!

The danger is not that your children will fail, and have permanently damaged egos-- the danger is that your child will never experience failure, and thus learn the important skill of picking up the pieces and moving on. Parents naturally want to save their children from the suffering that comes from defeat (e.g., the track race on field day, the art competition, spelling bee, science fair, etc.), but this is an important experience, and one that they will eventually have, regardless of how much parents shelter them. I would much rather have my child feel crushed because he lost the Boy Scout knot-tying competition than have his first failure be at that new job out of college. The young adult who knows ego management will be in a much better position to dust himself off and carry on than the college grad who takes failure as a sign of permanent inability.

Last night's On Point featured Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who funded Netscape, Google, AOL, and so on, and he said something that struck me-- he said that he has failed often, but that his successes outnumber his failures. He also said that his firm has a reputation of betting on the entrepeneur who has failed once before. The entrepeneur who fails, learns from it, and tries again is the kind of guy he wants to invest in.

I feel the need to plug my favorite NPR show, On Point Radio with Tom Ashbrook. Each show is an interview of a variety of guests on a topic. He's a brilliant moderator, and the guests are amazing. Not long ago, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer surprised Tom by popping into his studio when they were discussing the Dred Scott case. When discussing Iraq, you'll always have some combination of generals, ambassadors, former secretaries of state, and Iraqi politicians. You owe yourself a listen; I recommend the podcast available in the iTunes store.

On Point had a fun little radio show about coffee recently.
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/04/20070413 _b_main.asp

She was on On Point last night. Everyone else on the list is either braindead or actually dead (or nonexistent). Maybe that was a criteria.

but not the fact of usage.

Onpoint 09/2002: College Students and Psychoactive Medication

Never mind the old equation of college and recreational drugs, the parents' old tiptoe through pot and peyote. A new generation is arriving at university heavily armed with prescriptions for Zoloft, Dexedrine, Paxil and Prozac. Xanax, Adderall, Cylert and Ritalin. And it's not about weekend benders. It's about ADD, anxiety, OCD and depression.

Officials say that today that about 40 percent of American college students are on psychoactive drugs. Everybody knows the number is huge. But what exactly does it mean? Up next On Point: the Medicated Generation goes to college.

---

And maybe the reason for the increasing levels of usage is that they are learning this from their days in grade school?

Better Living through Chemistry? (Dr. Leonard Sax)

This year some six million children in the U.S.--one in eight-- will take Ritalin. With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. consumes 85 percent of this drug. Have we considered the consequences?

and...

Despite their stubborn refusal to medicate their children with Ritalin, these other countries do not lag behind the United States in academic performance. On the contrary: according to the most recent studies, France, Germany, and Japan continue to maintain their traditional lead over the United States in tests of math and reading ability.
---

This article dates to 2000, but it's about the very same crisis that we've been hearing about more and more the last few years. Children are being medicated in order to get them to sit still in school (where 'unproductive' things like things like recess are being cut in favor of more cramming). Maybe a whole generation has been raised to think of 'learning' as something you need drugs to accomplish. And now we are beginning to see the consequences.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2006/02/20060203 _a_main.asp covered this in considerable detail.

Science and religion are not mutaully exclusive.

No, of course not, but that's not the issue at hand.

We're not talking about "science" versus "religion". We're talking about specific sorts of science versus American Christian fundamentalists. These definitely are mutually exclusive. These religious people have the arrogance to make specific claims that scientists have shown to be incorrect. The religious extremists have sufficient political power in the US that they can supress the scientific findings that can't be reconciled with their religious beliefs.

The fact that most religious people aren't doing this isn't germane to the issue. The issue is the actions of American religious fundamental extremists, and the fact that they are successfully suppressing the reporting of scientific results in organizations like NASA and NOAA.

Actually, there's more going on here than a religious debate. A major part of the suppression of people like NASA's James Hansen is that his results on climate change are not welcome to many of the Bush administration's business supporters. The politicians know that they can't fight such things on their merits, but they can use political pressure to keep the information from the American people. And part of the story is that the corporate crowd has rather cynically recruited the religious fundies to help fight the battle by confusing the issue with religion.

BTW, a few days ago, NPR's On Point radio show finally had an interview with Dr Hansen. It's an interesting listen. He was fairly clear about the situation, in a rather low-key manner.

The book raises interesting questions, but in the end is a lightweight analysis that is better for engendering sound bites on NPR and The Daily Show than for convincing serious readers.

Hmm... sound bites on NPR... That's interesting, it sounds like you probably never listen to NPR. The breadth and depth of their coverage far surpasses any other news source I've found. For example On Point is a two hour program, each hour consists of:

• An opening news debrief from a reporter or journalist on the biggest stories of the day.
• An in-depth conversation on a single topic with newsmakers, thinkers and callers.
• And the end of the hour segment that allows for more personal reactions to news and important issues, including radio diaries, excerpts from speeches, or special series segments.

They almost always have two or three experts in the relevant field during the discussion segment. Topics are explained and discussed with logic and level-headedness. Most of the time the topics are shown to be complicated with more sides than just the conservative vs. liberal slant you get from other news sources.

In fact I was listening when Morning Edition held a seven minute interview with the author of "Everything Bad is Good for You" back in May. I just googled for it now and it's available to listen to for free on their website: Morning Edition, May 24, 2005: Everything Bad is Good for You.

> Monogomy in women has been a survival trait - raising the kids and all.

Actually 'raising the kids' is a factor that leads women to select monogamous men -- she doesn't have to be monogamous herself. And before paternity tests it was not easy to tell who a child's father was, it was quite riskfree for a woman, if she could "get away with it", esp since a wide pool of (fit) fathers would likely improve the odds that her genes would propagate (eggs in many baskets, so to speak).

Social scientists point to the fact that infidelity in women has traditionally been lower because of several more practical reasons:
a) Poor social/economic status
b) Poor mobility and often housebound
c) The menopause and relative lack of appeal of older women to men
d) 'Social programming' esp in conservative societies

These days with improving education, mobility and economic rights, botox/makeup and fertility drugs and a sexuality-flaunting culture, it's no surprise that infidelity among women is rising.

and the the On Point interview

In the NPR vein, I highly recommend On Point with Tom Ashbrook. I listen to it most nights. Unfortunately, downloads are limited to streams (unless you have a stream ripper), but I sometimes just set my computer to record off the air. It's a great way to spend a couple of hours. Even with topics that I am not particularly interested in, I feel like I've spent the time well.

I see so many of those particular professions are in the service or retail sectors - so what happens when the middle class is no longer able to afford many retail products, or eating out at places other than fast food joints (if even that much)? We can't exactly be a nation of food servers, cash-register-jockies, and appliance salespeople - such folks don't have a lot of disposable income, and the upper-crust will only shop so much.

National Public Radio had a 1 hour show about the history of Parker Brothers. Your suggestion sounds very similar to how Parker Brothers was started. "Parker Brothers got its start in the 1880s, when a 16-year-old George Parker, who loved playing games and had a knack for selling, tried to earn a few bucks on a card game he created called Banking. That was the start of Parker Brothers, which gave us Ping Pong, Sorry and Monopoly. Tonight, On Point: How Parker Brothers rose to the top of the game board." The show is available on-line. The guest was "Philip Orbanes, President of Winning Moves Games in Danvers, Massachusetts and author of "The Monopoly Companion." His newest book is "The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit.""

Man's best friend? Author, dog owner and trainer Jon Katz says that the relationship between dogs and their owners has gone way beyond master and pet; that increasingly we're treating them as family members and human surrogates.

Katz says that in America today we give our dogs human names, they sleep on our beds, we spoil them with gifts, and turn to them more and more for emotional support, helping us through loneliness, isolation, divorce and aging.

In his latest book, "The New Work of Dogs," Katz looks at the relationships between 12 dogs and their owners in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, a town that he has dubbed "Dogsville, USA" to show just how much we're asking of our dogs today for attachment and emotional support.

Guests
Jon Katz, author of "A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me" and "The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love and Family"

Yes, I too would like to know if it's the same guy. I didn't hear the whole show, and don't know if that ever came up.

came out around 20th feb 2002

Guerilla News Network: The alternative news service's Creative Director, Stephen Marshall, speaks about his new "news video" that juxtaposes disparate messages to create new meanings from the news media messages that came out of 9/11.
Listen

http://archives.onpointradio.org/0202radiodiaries. asp

If you like Morning Edition and All Things Considered you should really check out The Connection and On Point. Both are news/topical discussion shows that discuss a wide variety of interesting topics with much greater insight than you'll likely find anywhere. I'm also a fan of This American Life.

All of these shows can be streamed over the net either live or time-shifted.