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Gawker.com asked unemployed people to tell their own stories, and the responses have been flooding in. They’re harrowing, but they’re worth reading. Or rather, what makes them harrowing is what makes them worth reading; these are intelligent, articulate people (the all caps rants presumably don’t get published) who, often, didn’t make any particularly bad decisions […] Bill McKibben’s new Rolling Stone article: Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math, is clear and chilling. The article goes into depth, but the math is simple: According to our most conservative (i.e., hopeful) estimates, it’s possible that we could survive a warming of 2 degrees Celsius without catastrophe. (This is arguable—this summer, with its droughts and […] It’ll be no surprise to my regular readers that I’m a bit skeptical when people praise “the market” (by which is usually meant “powerful companies that do not operate in anything resembling a real free market”), but there is a case when leaving things to private business is clearly better than leaving it to government: […] From yesterday’s New York Times: “[I]f your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.” […] Came across this quote, from Rexford Tugwell: “If we lack purchasing power, we lack everything…. There is just one thing to do: Take incomes from where they are and place them where we need them.” Tugwell was one of FDR’s “brain trust”; he was speaking of the depression of the 1930s, but he could have […] Our quote of the day comes from Alexis de Tocqueville: “We so soon become used to the thought of want . . . that an evil which grows greater to the sufferer the longer it lasts becomes less to the observer by the very fact of its duration.” Quoted in Henry George, Progress and Poverty. […] So, apparently Allen West has “heard” that 80 House Democrats or so are members of the Communist Party. Specifically, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. You know, liberals. A strange choice of words. Allen, if you’re reading this, here’s a guide to how conservatives like you refer to liberals, depending on when you’re doing it: Until 1917: […] Here’s some of good news (a bit old now): A boycott by scientists made Elsevier (publishers of many science journals) back off its support of the evil Research Works Act. From the article: The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was […] Here’s a chart showing the Club of Rome’s 1972 predictions for the future, as given in Limits to Growth, and how things have worked out since then. Pretty accurately. Frighteningly accurately. I’ll take the liberty of reprinting it, for those who don’t want to click on the link. It’s copyright etc. the Smithsonian magazine. The […] |
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