They Might Want to Think About Those Olympic Puff Pieces

They were just doing a puff piece during the Olympics coverage that was oohing and ahh-ing over the Three Gorges Dam. But of course they didn’t mention some of the more negative aspects of it. The potential magnitude of the disaster it could cause is frightening.

Signs

A great deal has been made by some people of the fact that according to the classic definition of a recession as two quarters or more of negative GDP growth we just aren’t in one now. But the nature of our economy is in flux and old definitions just might not hold up.
So let me [...]

A Great Break

Via Andrew Sullivan. If you love great videos…

Laws? We don’t follow no steenking laws!

So the Bush Administration and the Pentagon got what they wanted in the arrangements for the “trial” of Salim Hamdan. They just didn’t get the verdicts they wanted. And now, like a version of the child who decides to change the rules when they lose but with far greater stakes they are debating completely ignoring [...]

From SciAm – August 1908: The Wright Brother’s Aeroplane in France and the U.S.

100 years ago. And now that device’s “descendants” can carry hundreds of passengers, travel faster than sound and go to the edge of space. My grandparents were young adults back then. In the grand scheme of things it’s nothing in the history of our race, much less our planet. It seems that we’ve come so [...]

Yes, AGW has Consequences

One of the things you’ll hear repeated all too often by those who deny the existence of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), or “man-made” global warming is “Even if it is true, so what? What’s so bad about things being a little warmer?”. Well, here’s yet another bad thing about it. It just isn’t true that [...]

Senator Clinton, You Need to be Much More Outspoken

Well, it’s being reported that Hilary Clinton is “seeking a way for her delegates to be heard at the Democratic National Convention”. Honestly, that’s not that bad an idea but she needs to do a lot more than that. Why? Because some people that consider themselves her supporters are, and this is putting it mildly, [...]

Yes, the War on Drugs is Insane

The Washington Post reports on how Prince George’s County police and Sheriff’s officers, including a full SWAT team, broke into the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, shot his two dogs and handcuffed he and his mother-in-law and interrogated them. Why? In Arizona a drug sniffing dog identified a package addressed to Calvo’s wife [...]

The Complete Picture is the Only Useful One

Every time you turn around there is someone using the unemployment rate to make a point, good or bad, about the economy. 5.5% isn’t that bad. 5.7% isn’t good enough. The simple sound bite versions of that message go on and on. But notice that when pgl at Angry Bear is writing about the unemployment [...]