One out of every 34 Americans who earned wages in 2008 earned absolutely nothing — not one cent — in 2009.
The stunning figure was released earlier this month by the Social Security Administration, but apparently went unreported until it appeared today on Tax.com in a column by Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston.
It's not just every 34th earner whose financial situation has been upended by the financial crisis. Average wages, median wages, and total wages have all declined — except at the very top, where they leaped dramatically, increasing five-fold.
The Bottleneck. The Great Disruption. Peak Everything. The Great Turning.
Whatever you call it, it's the big enchilada.
In the words of filmmaker Tom Shadyac, “The shift is hitting the fan.” We're experiencing the dawn of a revolutionary transformation. This awkward ‘tween state marks the end of pre-history – the sunset of an ecologically illiterate civilization. Like a baby being born, a new world is crowning.
The revolution has begun. But in fits and starts. The challenge is it's one minute to midnight – too late to avoid large-scale destruction. We have to fan the shift to ecoliterate societies at sufficient scale and speed to dodge irretrievable cataclysm.
From breakdown to breakthrough, it's a revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart. It leads with a basic shift in our relationship with nature from resource and object to mentor, model and partner. Game-changing breakthroughs in science, technology and design such as biomimicry are revolutionizing our very ways of knowing. The Rights of Nature movement is recognizing the inalienable rights of the non-human world of ecosystems and critters, widening our circle of compassion and kinship. Greater decentralization and localization are building resilience from the ground up – shaped by ancient indigenous wisdom of becoming native to our place.
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A major barrier in the U.S. is the annual military budget of over a trillion dollars. Although the Defense Department has embraced climate change as a top national security issue, national sustainability must move front and center. As David Orr observes, “The concept of sustainability should be the new organizing principle for both domestic and foreign policy. Sustainability is the core of a national development strategy designed to enhance our security, build prosperity from the ground up, and reduce ecological damage, risks of climate destabilization and the necessity of fighting endless wars over dwindling resources.”
What's needed is the national and global equivalent of a wartime mobilization with sustainability as magnetic north. Many say only catastrophe will precipitate such a shift and are readying plans for that turning point. Paul Gilding's One Degree War Plan forecasts a “Coalition of the Cooling” anchored by the U.S., China and the EU, who produce 50 percent of emissions – and who could then engage Russia, India, Japan and Brazil to hit 67 percent.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a world-class public oration worthy of Oxford or Cambridge or a Nobel acceptance. A little known aspect of revolution is that it can occur in isolation across each of the dimensions (political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic), but when it occurs in two or three of the dimensions at the same time, it has the potential to “explode” into a Great Revolution that leaves no stone unturned. It is possible that 2012 will see a Great Revolution in the United STATES of America.
You know who you are. Only authorized viewers allowed. This is a short film/cartoon followed by an interesting advertisement for the maker that is going viral. RESTRICTED. Do NOT click on this list if you are not one of the 5 billion people authorized to do so….
Very Short Film
Phi Beta Iota: We frown on frivolity in public intelligence, it is certainly NOT in the public interest to be funny, but in this one instance we felt it should be shared to increase inside the beltway understanding–and beyond the water's edge understanding–of what is rocketing around both military email and in the heartland. It is entirely possible that these mischief-makers were funded by Iran or Venezuela, or the Koch Brothers out of Wall Street. Approach with caution, they may be armed with pencils and erasers.
CIMA is pleased to release a new report, The Pentagon, Information Operations, and Media Development, by Peter Cary, a veteran journalist with extensive experience reporting about the U.S. military. As part of its post-9/11 strategy, the Department of Defense has launched a multi-front information war, both to support its troops on the ground and to counter the propaganda of radical Muslim extremists. The DoD’s global public relations war, however, has fostered criticism that the department has over-reached and tarred the efforts of non-DoD Americans doing media development work abroad.
While the DoD cannot be criticized for trying to protect the lives of its soldiers, it has spent vast amounts of money on media operations–which can tend to be conducted in secrecy and whose effectiveness often cannot be measured. This report examines the impact of DoD information operations on international media development efforts and offers recommendations – including that the DoD leave media activities that could be considered public diplomacy to the State Department.
Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown.
Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown.
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The insects learn to fly the shortest route between flowers discovered in random order, effectively solving the “travelling salesman problem” , said scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London
The conundrum involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations he has to visit. Computers solve the problem by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the one that is shortest.
Bees manage to reach the same solution using a brain the size of a grass seed.
Phi Beta Iota: This is one reason why we continue to believe that Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is vastly superior to Signals “Intelligence” (SIGINT) which we have come to think of as grotesquely expensive out of control unprocessed noise of little intelligence value. Of course, HUMINT without intelligent management is not intelligent at all, but our going in proposition is that HUMINT and Open Source Source Intelligence (OSINT) allow intelligent management to do much more with much less in the way of dollars, time, and footprint.
Fishphone: Enter 30644 as the phone number. Text ‘fish' then a space, then the name of fish. You will receive health & enviro info as well as green to red alerts on the health status of seafood. The service is run by BlueOcean.org
Kenny Ausubel
