Andre Ling introduces the importance of the the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers:
“She is a truly remarkable philosopher and currently one of my favourites. While she has written some very solid books on the philosophy of science (such as The Power of Invention, Cosmopolitics, and others), her more recent books are shorter, highly accessible and powerful. The titles of her two most recent books that I especially want to share with you are:
* Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell
* Au temps des catastrophes: Resister a la barbarie qui vient (currently only available in French, but due to be translated, I am told, in open access format in English)
Electrolysis of water seems very much like low energy nuclear reactions, also called cold fusion. You have to get the materials and the conditions just right to increase efficiency to where energy output starts to match and perhaps even exceed energy input.
Scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis.
‘We can’t do it as an individual, But four hundred communities aggregating and asking for local wind power and solar power – that’s really powerful.”
Oak Park, IL, is one of hundreds of Illinois towns using their authority to buy electricity in bulk on behalf of its residential and small business customers. So far, most communities have used the policy – known as community choice aggregation – to negotiate for less expensive electricity compared to the default electric utility, Commonwealth Edison. Many have also purchased renewable energy credits with their power, but it’s not clear if the practice is greening or green-washing the power supply.
As we had, likewise, reported on after the issuance of last weeks SVR report, of the estimated 111,000 Saudi Arabian students currently in the United States, 8,000 have been identified as being Islamic State (IS) [also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)] terror members, of which nearly 3,000 of them have become “Ebola Martyrs” willing to die in their “mission” of infecting as many Americans as they can before their stated deadline of October.
Phi Beta Iota: We have no direct knowledge. By all accounts available the US intelligence community appears to have helped the US special operations community achieve an extraordinary intervention in the past 24 hours. The FBI has absolutely no clue who's who among all the foreigners inserted into the USA, and least of all among the Saudis and the combination of Israelis and multinational “sayonim” (Jews who blindly support the Zionist state). Note that the posited 8,000 above could easily provide a 1,000 individuals to be voluntarily infected with Ebola or anything else AFTER their arrival in the USA, with the viruses imported via the Saudi diplomatic pouch. However, having lost all faith in the integrity of the US Government in relation to the public interest, we do not discount the possibility that this is a false flag operation intended to justify a fake Ebola crisis to further test the ability of the federal government to restrict travel and shut-down any areas of the country they wish. We pray the Obama Administration understands just how close the USA is to massive armed push-back against the militarization (and potential federalization) of the state and local police. We suspect Obama has no one he can actually trust to tell him the truth.
In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty
EXTRACT
Ms. Guidry, 35, earns money by using her own car to ferry around strangers for Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, ride services that let people summon drivers on demand via apps. She also assembles furniture and tends gardens for clients who find her on TaskRabbit, an online marketplace for chores.
Her goal is to earn at least $25 an hour, on average. Raising three children with her longtime partner, Jeffrey Bradbury, she depends on the income to help cover her family’s food and rent. That has become more unpredictable of late. Uber and Lyft, her driving mainstays, recently cut certain passenger fares. Last month, TaskRabbit overhauled the way its users select their helpers; immediately after the change, Ms. Guidry’s stream of new clients dried up.
“You don’t know day to day,” she said. “It’s very up in the air.”
Phi Beta Iota: Anything less than a dollar a mile (50 cents for wear and gas, 50 cents for labor, home base door and return) is a losing proposition — to clear $25 an hour one must drive at least 50 billable miles in that hour. To make the $50,000 a year that $25 an hour would normally add up, one must have eight full revenue hours. Very few people achieve this, dog walkers being a possible exception. There are two sharing economies — perhaps many more. The first leverages existing assets and created variable income increases. The second leverages labor, and appears to be a losing proposition for most. What we see is a dearth of analytic models and a dearth of data — we see a desperate need for the rethinking and redesign of entire communities and cities to achieve cost of living reductions on the order of 50%, while optimizing the time-energy composition of the constituent individuals in any given community.
“Never mind buying a second home when you can rent a chateau in France on Airbnb for $200. Why hire a chauffeur when they don’t come with an app that tracks their relative location to yours, like Uber?” she says. “Even owning the latest album of your favorite band feels a lot less appealing when you can stream it immediately on and offline with a Spotify pro membership, without taking up any space on your hard drive.”
The UK’s child abuse scandal, rooted in the media, Westminster and the Royal Family and personified by serial abuser and BBC personality Jimmy Savile, has been shocking enough. But far more insulting to the victims, the nation and the world is the Cameron government’s attempt, in early July, to institute two separate child abuse inquiries led by establishment figures who, due to family and work connections, immediately faced suspicions of possible conflicts of interest.
