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New article by Elizabeth Douglas at InsideClimate News interviews Peter Lam who has an impressive background as a Nuclear Industry regulator. Lam changed his mind on the use of probability statistics in nuclear disaster preparations. He says: One can plan for a lot of things, but things don’t always happen according to what you plan for. … Sure, I think everybody’s doing the . . . → Read More: Nuclear power is an unforgiving technology The notion that jobs are what is needed, rather than a decent, rewarding way of life for all, is in itself a perversion, more smoke and mirrors intended to confuse working people regarding their own needs and desires. No one needs a “job.” What is needed is a meaningful and rewarding lifestyle. Most people are willing to work, and even work hard, in order to achieve such a lifestyle, . . . → Read More: Mole in the ground Greg Palast, Guardian economist has written about Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro: The euro would really do its work when crises hit, Mundell explained. Removing a government’s control over currency would prevent nasty little elected officials from using Keynesian monetary and fiscal juice to pull a nation out of recession. “It puts monetary policy out of the reach of politicians,” he . . . → Read More: Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro Our societies are descending into a mire in which hope vanishes, prospects are annihilated, life is cheapened, and where the only winners are the misanthropes, the ‘haters’, the seekers of scapegoats in the form of the ‘alien’, the Jew, the ‘different’, the ‘other’. As the lights are literally going out, with families ‘choosing’ to have their electricity supply discontinued in order to put food on the dinner table, thugs ‘patrol’ the streets in search of the ‘enemy’. Nazi ideology is getting another chance, like hunger and dispossession, to infect, once again, our social fabric. And as our institutions, our trades unions, our cultural norms and organisations are turning into empty shells, little, if anything, stands in the way of the bigots, the racists, the exploiters of generalized pain and helplessness. Alas, the serpent’s egg is hatching again in Europe, and for the same reasons it did back then. . . . → Read More: Greek tragedy The government is up to some really weird things in mortgage land as Mandleman Matters tells us in this post on Hamp 2 is here – Some say it’s the best HAMP yet, and they’re probably right about that. Put your irony filter on wide band receiving about now… . . . → Read More: HAMP 2 – New Boss same as the old boss In America we are witnessing as never before the swift dismantling of the liberal democratic principles that we have had in place for the past 70 or so years. The rhetoric is strong. The people who want to have your pension, your pay raises and your health care money directed to them are coming for you. . . . → Read More: The votes we can’t afford I picked up Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child. I may have read this back in the 70’s or 80’s as I seem to remember bits of discussion about Miller’s work from then. I was particularly struck by this statement: “I understand a healthy self-feeling to mean the unquestioned certainty that the feelings and needs one experiences are part of one’s self. This certainty is not something one can gain upon reflection; it is there like one’s own pulse, which one does not notice as long as it functions normally.” . . . → Read More: Alice Miller: Remembering the child in us It’s worth thinking about how governments could decide to organize their finances. From New Economics Perspectives: …nations can’t run out of money and can buy anything for sale in their own borders, including all labor resources, that means that their governments can spend what they need to spend to help solve the problems they encounter. They can afford job guarantees for anyone wanting . . . → Read More: Job Guarantee, free education, universal health care… what more could you want? Drone manufacturers are considering offering police the option of arming remote-controlled aircraft with (nonlethal for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas… . . . → Read More: Weapons for US based drones coming soon to a sky near you In my earlier post on Buddhist psychology I noted that the feeling sense is part of the thought process, prior to understanding, integral to the mind formation as an atom is to a molecule. Now via Kurzweil I came upon new research review which supports the fact that our feelings of attraction and repulsion are basic parts of perception: New research from Carnegie . . . → Read More: Science catches up with Buddhism |
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