The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Here is what may turn out to be very important news for solar energy. I am always struck by what might have happened if the political will to quickly make the transition out of carbon energy had been mustered.
Solar Cell Power Breakthrough
University of Copenhagen – Niels Bohr Institute
21 graphs that show America’s health-care prices are ludicrous
Every year, the International Federation of Health Plans — a global insurance trade association that includes more than 100 insurers in 25 countries — releases survey data showing the prices that insurers are actually paying for different drugs, devices, and medical services in different countries. And every year, the data is shocking.
The IFHP just released the data for 2012. And yes, once again, the numbers are shocking.
For a case study in incestuous amplification and a detailed description of how it infects an entire culture, watch this video, which first aired in 2007.
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: BIll Moyer on Incestuous Amplification”
Marine F-35 Jump-Jet PR: Caveataxpayer Emptor
The Marines issued a flashy press release last week: “first operational F-35B conducts initial Vertical Landing.” It was an amateurish, somewhat slimy piece of hype.In one important way, the press release contradicted itself, and in another it inadvertently revealed one of the many reasons why the Marines' Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) version of the F-35 – that's the F-35B – will never be the battlefield-based close-combat support bomber the Marines like to advertise it as.
The corps' headquarters' release repeatedly described the “operational” nature of “the first STOVL flight for an F-35B outside of the test environment.” It also characterized the event as “another milestone” toward “revolutionizing expeditionary Marines air-ground combat power,” that perhaps-the press released tried hard to imply-would be available for combat use as soon as “late 2013.”
The press release, which was formatted as if it were some sort of news article, inadvertently cued alert readers to the fact that this “first” “operational” “STOVL flight for an F-35B outside of the test environment” was flown by a test pilot.
His name is Maj. Richard Rusnok, as the press release says, and as a different Marine Corps press exercise reveals, he has been flying for 13 years.
In the world of F-35-double-talk, it is apparently reasonable to announce flights as operational when they are flown by test pilots.
The term “operational” was stretched even further in a second respect in the press release, which featured the photograph above showing the F-35B landing vertically with its lift fan doors open and its flaps deflected. Note the area below the aircraft; note that same area in the later stages of a video at YouTube also released by the Marines' PR team.
This is a very big step from the past, when insurance companies charged premiums based on big data risk, but nothing was done on the front line — among the fire fighters – because they did not have the same access to such tool. Another excellent useful story from BBC.
Click on Source Below to see the Slide Show showing word circles by size for each year. In addition to the circles, each of which can be opened further, an example of US use of the word is provided, along with a view from the Arab media. A very good job by the BBC.
Being Neither a-Waving Nor a-Parting
Considering both science and spirituality
Introduction
Being a-Waving
Being a-Parting
Death — a final parting?
Neither a-Waving nor a-Parting
Transcending a-Waving and a-Parting
Correspondence to a-Coming and a-Going?
Conclusion
References
Produced on the occasion of publication by science of an inspiring map of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang
EXTRACT:
Science now offers a greeting, through “a-waving”, from the origins of the Universe — to a global civilization faced with collapse, “a-parting”, through lack of capacity to encompass its own paradoxes consequent on its growth. The paradoxes are those assiduously explored by the best of science and spirituality.
