Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Nature Bats Last: (Another) Nuclear Power Station Shut Down By (More) Jellyfish

Earth Intelligence
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(Another) Power Station Shut Down By (More) Jellyfish

by Rachel Cernansky, Boulder, Colorado on 07.12.11

Treehugger

Image: NPphotostream via flickr

It's getting to be a recurring problem: jellyfish clogging the water flow that power plants need in order to run. In Scotland less than two weeks ago, they impacted the water intake for cooling at the Torness nuclear power plant. The latest incident is in Israel, where the city of Hadera was left without electricity when the power station's cooling system was flooded with jellyfish.

Australia's The Age reports that at the Orot Rabin Electric Power Station, which uses seawater to cool its reactors, tons of jellyfish clogged the filters.

Phi Beta Iota:  Note the word “tons.”  Tons of jellyfish.  This is an example of self-sustaining replicable bio-scale that cannot be matched by preventive measures, even in those rare instances when forethought is present.  Geo-Engineering is a nice concept, but not for a population that is intellectually challenged, lacking the integrity of Buckminster Fuller and Russell Ackoff, to name just two broad minds.

See Also:

Review: The Collapse of Complex Societies

Review: The Next Catastrophe–Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters

2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth (Chapter for Counter-Terrorism Book Out of Denmark) Humanities Version

2009 The Ultimate Hack: Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer the World Engineering Version

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

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Seth Godin: Creating Crossroad Moments Today

Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process
Seth Godin Home

The invisible crossroads

In Career World, crossroads don't happen very often. Should I go to college? Which one? Should I quit this job? Where should I apply…

In Project World, on the other hand, every day offers a choice that could change things. Should you start a new project? Organize a conference? Open a new channel of social media? Quit something you're doing right now to make time for something else?

It's easy to get stressed and excited about the infrequent crossroads. It's just as easy to ignore the daily opportunities you have to change everything.

Phi Beta Iota:   The status quo has failed.   As Dr. Russell Ackoff would say, we cannot keep doing the wrong things righter.  It's time to do the right thing.  Integrity is the core value, M4IS2 is the method.

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John Steiner: The Political Racketeers

Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Policies
John Steiner

Dear Friends:

This is an interesting dialogue I’ve been eavesedropping on..

Cheers,
John

Phi Beta Iota:  Others have been on this story for decades–the rest of the world is just now catching on.  It is a two-party tyranny–voting for one or the other is NOT an option.  What we need is an end to the one party winner take all system.  Here's a starting point:  Seven Promises to America–Who Will Do This?

From: John Neffinger

To Drew's point, check out this AP story from a couple days ago, noting that Obama is having trouble selling the Republican talking points he has adopted about how budget cuts that lay people off create jobs by reassuring the business community.

What is new about this moment is that things have gotten so bad, the American people see very clearly that the richest few of us are paying less than ever in taxes and should pay more.  Even Republicans know this.  David Brooks lashed out at his own party last week for taking its ideological aversion to taxes to a new, cult-like level of irrationality.

But to call them ideologues misses the point.  The majority of rank-and-file Republicans admit that taxes on top earners should be higher, and the people calling the shots aren't mere ideologues either.  They are running a hugely successful business enterprise. It's not irrational, it's very rational (if not so enlightened).  The contributors invest in the politicians and lobbyists, and they make very handsome returns on their investments.  To Brooks' question, the reason Washington Republicans won't cut any taxes at all as part of an otherwise very favorable deficit deal is that lowering taxes is the entire point.  The concern about deficits is only a charade, just another way to discredit our government.  The Republican party is not a cult. The Republican party is a racket.

This might be a moment we could make that point with new clarity.  That yes there are honest and well-meaning Republicans all across the country, but their whole party is run as a racket.  That Republican politicians are just errand boys, as Colonel Kurtz would say , who work only for the rich conservatives who pay for their campaigns.

Prior emails and other links below the line…

Continue reading “John Steiner: The Political Racketeers”

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John Robb: 94% of Rich Fear Riots Calling for their Blood

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats
John Robb

WSJ:  94% of global millionaires fear riots/unrest in the streets that calls for their blood.  As well they should.

Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets

Robert Frank

Wall Street Journal, 6 July 2011

EXTRACT:

A new survey from Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of those with liquid assets of $1 million or more found that 94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.

Fully 90% of respondents have a negative view of the current global economic climate and 41% say they have little or no faith that the U.S. will be able to right itself in this fiscal climate.

Read full story…

Phi Beta Iota:  The super rich have created a global plague of failed states, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation, thinking governments that they corrupted will take care of it.  Not so.  Corruption is a super-plague.  Integrity is the antidote, M4IS2 is the method by which the super-rich can fund a win-win recovery.  They did it once before, addressing public health in New York City.  Time for big ideas again.

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How Washington Works–Against the Public Interest

Corruption
Gary Rivlin

The Billion-Dollar Bank Heist

How the financial industry is buying off Washington—and killing reform.

Gary Rivlin

Newsweek, 11 July 2011

Phi Beta Iota:  Read every word.  A blow by blow description of why Washington is as corrupt and pathologically ineffective at governance as any “failed state.”

See Also, by the Same Author:

Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. – How the Working Poor Became Big Business

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Stephen Aftergood: Pentagon Dismisses Presidential Promises of Open Government, Mounts Major Campaign to Control UN-Classified Information

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military
Steven Aftergood

PENTAGON TIGHTENS GRIP ON UNCLASSIFIED INFORMATION

In 2005, the U.S. Army issued a new field manual on the military use of dogs, which it said were being “employed in dynamic ways never before imagined.”  The field manual was approved for public release and marked for unlimited distribution.  See FM 3-19.17, “Military Working Dogs” (pdf), 6 July 2005.

But in May 2011, the same Army manual on military working dogs (redesignated as ATTP 3-39.34) was updated, and this time its distribution has been limited to DoD and DoD contractors only.  Public access to the document is barred.  At the same time, copies of the unrestricted 2005 edition have been removed from Army websites.  (A copy is still available through the Federation of American Scientists web site.)

The net loss of public access to information in this case illustrates a new trend that is at odds with the Obama Administration's declared policy.  Although the President promised to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” in practice new barriers to access to unclassified information continue to arise.

Continue reading “Stephen Aftergood: Pentagon Dismisses Presidential Promises of Open Government, Mounts Major Campaign to Control UN-Classified Information”

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DefDog: US Approach to Security Insane?

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)
DefDog Recommends....

Anyone who believes we are winning the War on Terror doesn't understand the goals of AQ.  They wanted us to be afraid and to spend our money, both of which the government is doing in spades…..one really has to ask, then, who is winning?

Is high security backfiring in U.S.?

By Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent

NEW YORK – As a foreign correspondent for NBC News, I haven’t spent much time in the United States during the last decade. I return only occasionally to check in with colleagues, visit family, or, this last time, to research a documentary for MSNBC.

The documentary, still in the works, is about the Global War on Terrorism, and what it has done to our military, economy and American society in general. Perhaps because the subject was on my mind, I found a recent travel experience especially meaningful.

Through my work I travel to some of the busiest airports in high-risk areas. Just this year I have been in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, France, Italy and many other countries. But I have yet to feel so angry, so embarrassed or so scrutinized as I did going through airport security for a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to New York’s JFK while visiting home.

. . . . .

I’ve watched American troops fight, and sometimes die, to drive the Taliban and al-Qaida from Afghanistan, and to secure free elections in Iraq. They have been fighting for other people to be free. I was horrified to see that despite their sacrifices we’d let ourselves become a nation that appears to be driven by fear.

. . . . .

But at the airport, watching a 7-year-old girl go through a full body scan in public – just so she could fly out of the city of Los Angeles – made me wonder how much we have lost.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota:  The Founding Fathers do not approve….

Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.

Thomas Jefferson: Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

noble gold