The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
GOOD: Solar Power to Hit Cost Parity Next Year
RP SIEGEL – Triple Pundit
BAD: Amanpour on Iraq: Where Were the Journalists?
DAVID FERGUSON – The Raw Story
UGLY: The Last Letter: A Message to George Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
TOMAS YOUNG – Truthdig
REALLY UGLY: America’s Dirtiest Coal Company[Deliberate Bankrupcy to Wipe Out Pension Obligations]
BILL MCKIBBEN – Bloomberg
Facebook ‘likes' predict personality
What do your Facebook likes say about you?
Sexuality, political leanings and even intelligence can be gleaned from the things you choose to “like” on Facebook, a study suggests.
Researchers at Cambridge University used algorithms to predict religion, politics, race and sexual orientation.
The research, published in the journal PNAS, forms surprisingly accurate personal portraits, researchers said.
The findings should “ring alarm bells” for users, privacy campaigners said.
See Also:
Michel Bauwens: Facebook Corrupt Arbitrage — Blocking Popular Subscriptions as Extortion Tool
The stories are getting simple enough and ridiculous enough for the average American to start getting it.
The Disturbing History of One of the Pentagon's Most Expensive Flying Turkeys
EXTRACT
The C-130 Hercules, or Herk for short, isn't a sexy plane. It hasn't inspired hit Hollywood films, though it has prompted a few photo books, a beer, and a “Robby the C-130” trilogy for children whose military parents are deployed. It has a fat sausage fuselage, that snub nose, overhead wings with two propellers each, and a big back gate that comes down to load and unload up to 21 tons of cargo.
The Herk can land on short runways, even ones made of dirt or grass; it can airdrop parachutists or cargo; it can carry four drones under its wings; it can refuel aircraft; it can fight forest fires; it can morph into a frightening gunship. It's big and strong and can do at least 12 types of labor — hence, Hercules.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Here's where the story starts to get interesting. After 25 years, the Pentagon decided that it was well stocked with C-130s, so President Jimmy Carter’s administration stopped asking Congress for more of them.
Lockheed was in trouble. A few years earlier, the Air Force had started looking into replacing the Hercules with a new medium-sized transport plane that could handle really short runways, and Lockheed wasn't selected as one of the finalists. Facing bankruptcy due to cost overruns and cancellations of programs, the company squeezed Uncle Sam for a bailout of around $1 billion in loan guarantees and other relief (which was unusual back then, as William Hartung points out his magisterial Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex).
Then a scandal exploded when it was revealed that Lockheed had proceeded to spend some $22 million of those funds in bribes to foreign officials to persuade them to buy its aircraft. This helped prompt Congress to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
So what did Lockheed do about the fate of the C-130? It bypassed the Pentagon and went straight to Congress. Using a procedure known as a congressional “add-on” — that is, an earmark — Lockheed was able to sell the military another fleet of C-130s that it didn’t want.
To be fair, the Air Force did request some C-130s. Thanks to Senator John McCain, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did a study of how many more C-130s the Air Force requested between 1978 and 1998. The answer: Five.
How many did Congress add on? Two hundred and fifty-six.
As Hartung commented, this must “surely [be] a record in pork-barrel politics.”
Continue reading “Penguin: Examination of Lockheed Lobbying and the C-130 Hercules”
This is both exciting and wonderful, it could be of enormous significance in medicine, and in near death experience research to cite just two areas. It could also be deeply alarming, because the shadow of this research is the thought police. You wouldn't be safe even inside your own head. Once again science and technology outstrip ethics and law. It is our curse.
Mental Picture of Others Can Be Seen Using FMRI, Finds New Study
SYL KACAPYR – Cornell University
This is a conservative, but brilliant analysis of several of the trends I have covered in SR. I agree with all of this except for the energy sector section, which I think is quite wrong. They do not properly take into account the quickening transition to noncarbon energy; and they make no mention at all of climate change, and its effects.
The net-net here though is an emerging trend of massive importance: How do we structure a society where human labor is rendered irrelevant by robotics? If profit remains our only essential priority, disaster will follow. Wellness must become our first priority if we are to survive and prosper.
China Robots Signal US Challenge
JOSHUA JACOBS and EFTYCHIS MOURGINAKIS, Founding Members – The Conservative Future Project – Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Perception versus reality is truly frightening. Reality is much, much worse than perception. Average worker has to work for one month to earn what the average CEO earns in one hour.
Published on Nov 20, 2012
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
References:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2…
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt…
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011…
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/…
The idea of patenting life forms, I think, is morally repugnant and, as this case illustrates, naturally leads to grotesque outcomes like trying to control the world's food supply. Think about it: this is a kind of mythic evil.
GMO and the Corporate Patenting of Living Organisms: Monsanto’s Patents on Life
KATHERINE PAUL and RONNIE CUMMINS – Organic Consumers Association
Because we have not had proper accountability for the financial crisis, the same ethical standards continue to obtain. One can see the result in the behavior of large banks in payday loans, as well as student loans. Both demonstrate that these banks have become essentially above-the-law criminal operations.
Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States
JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG – The New York Times
The cycles and processes of nature are always interconnected and interdependent, and this is an excellent example of what I mean. Poisons are killing honey bees, affecting wild bees, and climate change is breaking down the stasis of our food ecology. Unless this is reversed the results will be devastating.
Wild Bees Are Good For Crops, But Crops Are Bad For Bees
DAN CHARLES – npr
The sense of persecution that is part of the DNA of Christianity begins here. I have to admit this story stunned me. Perhaps like you I had seen the early Christian period as a time of persecution and martyrdom. But I spent some time looking into this, and I think Professor Candida Moss! 9; work is solid, and is destined to be the accepted view. We need to reconsider this period through a very different prism.
Were Early Christians Really Persecuted? Historian Reveals the Surprising Truth
LAURA MILLER, Senior Writer – Salon/AlterNet (U.S.)
Very good analysis here.
EXTRACT
Bank failures: Towards an « Icelandation » of the banking crisis’ management
In the face of this shock, our team estimates that most countries, including the United States, will approach management of the crisis in an “Icelandic style”, i.e. not to bail out the banks and to let them collapse (16). We have already had a glimpse with the liquidation of the Irish bank IBRC which has given many people ideas: “How Ireland liquidated its banking albatross in one night” headlined La Tribune (17) admiringly. This possibility seems to increasingly be the solution in the event of the banks backsliding, for the following reasons: first, it seems much more effective than the 2008-2009 bailout plans judging by Iceland’s recovery; second, countries don’t really have the means to pay for new bailouts anymore; finally, one can’t deny that it must be a big temptation for leaders to get rid in a popular fashion of part of the debts and “toxic assets” which encumber their economy.
