9 March - Morning Notes

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Politics of Self-sufficiency

By Jon Taplin - March 8, 2011, 10:59AM

We are living in what should be a teachable moment. The Interregnum of the autocrats will cause turmoil and roil the energy markets for years to come and yet leaders of both parties fail to teach the one important lesson: We must learn to become more self-sufficient as a nation. Instead of pushing to reduce our dependence on Mid East Oil, the President threatens to open the Strategic Oil Reserve to lower gas prices, so we can stay addicted to low priced oil. Instead of heeding the warnings of Defense Secretary Gates against further military interventions in Mid East countries, both the President and those reliable hawks, Lieberman and McCain argue for bombing the Libyan Air Force and starting down the slippery slope of yet another war on Muslim lands based on securing cheap oil.

Impoverishing Our Kids? Productivity Growth Matters, Deficits Don't

By Dean Baker - March 8, 2011, 5:29AM

Washington politicians, like politicians everywhere in the west, have been running around with shrill cries about how we are adding trillions of dollars to the national debt and that this burden will impoverish our children and grandchildren. It is almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or listen to a news show without hearing such whining.

By contrast, next to no one knows that productivity has increased by almost 10% since the start of the recession. This is too bad, because this increase in productivity will matter far more to the well-being of our children and grandchildren than the trillions of dollars of debt that are getting our politicians so excited.

Why Is Israel Aid Exempt From Cuts?

By M.J. Rosenberg - March 3, 2011, 2:20PM

Once upon a time, Social Security was considered the "third rail" of American politics. The "third rail" is the train track that carries the high-voltage power; touching it means instant death.

The "third rail" metaphor has for decades been applied to Social Security, a government program so popular with the American public that proposing any changes in it would mean political death to the politician.

No more. Although Social Security is as popular as ever, politicians routinely propose changes in the program - including privatization and means testing. While the proposals usually go nowhere, and rightly so, the politicians who support them live to fight another day. Today, with those massive deficits and the astronomical national debt, not even Social Security is sacrosanct.

Few, if any, government programs are.

But U.S.aid to Israel is. In fact, the $3 billion Israel aid package is the new third rail of American politics: touch it and die. It is also the one program that liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and tea partiers all agree should not sustain even a dollar in cuts.

Whose 'Solidarity'?

By Jim Sleeper - March 2, 2011, 4:13AM

"Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity fore-e-ver, for the union makes us strong."
----
Neoliberals find the word "solidarity" distasteful. I'm not fond of it myself. Doesn't solidarity collapse easily into groupthink? Shouldn't being free mean thinking independently?

Before you answer those questions, review your own life to see if you ever actually and consciously needed the kind of solidarity that West Virginia coal-miners needed when "Solidarity Forever" was written for them in 1914.

Probably, you never did. But is it really only people like the miners who do? True enough, the song's lyrics aren't nuanced or pretty; nor are labor unions. I'm not a union romantic; as a journalist in New York in the 1990s, I saw and described how badly, even disgustingly, some work-rules and pension scams compromised basic public services.

But I also learned that unions are what they are because society is what it is. As my one-time sparring partner Al Sharpton put it one day, "Society is basically a hustle, from top to bottom."

The Interregnum

By Jon Taplin - February 28, 2011, 10:58AM

On October 14, 2008 I gave a speech at USC called "America 3.0 and The Interregnum". In it I argued that we were entering a global phase of extreme turbulence in which the bottom-up forces of a networked world battled the top-down hierarchies of centralized power. As the Italian philosopher Gramsci had noted,"The old is dying and the new cannot be born.  In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms." Although this upheaval was accelerated by the global financial crisis that I had been warning of since December of 2007, it was not caused by the crisis. It was rather a symptom of atechnological revolution initiated with U.S. Defense department funding as early as 1958. We came to call this the Internet.

I am not a techno-utopian who believes that the mere existence of a globally networked culture will allow "the new to be born". In fact, as John Palfrey points out, dying regimes will do their best to use Internet surveillance to hold on to power.

The leaders of many states, like China, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan, have proven able to use the Internet to restrict online discussion and to put people into jail for what they do using the network. We should resist the urge to cheer the triumph of pro-Western democracy fueled by widespread Internet access and usage.  The contest for control of the Internet is only just beginning.

The Top 10 Names for the "Pro-Life," Pro-Cancer, Pro-UTI, Anti-Planned Parenthood Amendment

By Katie Halper - February 25, 2011, 2:28PM

Nothing says "sanctity of life" better than cervical cancer, breast cancer, and HIV! That's why on February 18th, so-called "pro-life" members of the House of Representatives, voted 240 to 185 to defund Planned Parenthood, a premier women's healthcare provider for nearly a century, serving 3 million women a year in its 800 centers across the country. 

TPMDC

Republicans Move To Strip Detainee Authority From Holder And Future Attorneys General

Hat Tip Glenn Greenwald, Salon

ggreenwald GOP wants to empower military to detain people without involvement of AG - uh, that's called "military dictatorship":http://is.gd/JC8oei

Tech Dirt

Ask Congress To Make Public Domain Congressional Research Service's Reports Public

Congressional Research Service's reports weretechnically public domain, but were often hidden from the public by a Congress, who doesn't want you to see the CRS reports. That's because CRS is known for publishing research that is non-partisan, extremely credible and useful. And, of course, our elected officials in Congress don't want that sort of information out there. They prefer the information that's been spun to their political advantage first. Wikileaks has been able to publish some CRS reports, but a ton of CRS stuff still remains hidden, even though it's technically public domain.

A bunch of organizations are trying to change that. 38 groups have sent a letter to Congress asking them to open up and release CRS research. The full letter is included after the jump, but this is a proposal that really should be supported by the public. Check it out, and if you agree, add your voices to those pushing to finally open up this valuable resource to the public who paid for it.

..........

Representatives from the undersigned organizations would be happy to meet with you or your staff at any time to discuss this important issue. Please contact Amy Bennett, Program Associate, OpenTheGovernment.org (afuller@openthegovernment.org or 202-332-6736), at your convenience.

Sincerely,

AhEeCOSH
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
American Society of News Editors
Association of Research Libraries
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
CAUS
Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for Media and Democracy
Center for Responsive Politics
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Defending Dissent Foundation
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
Essential Information
Federation of American Scientists
Free Government Information
Government Accountability Project (GAP)
iSolon.org
Knowledge Ecology International
Liberty Coalition
MapLight.org
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Freedom of Information Coalition
National Security Counselors
No More Guantanamos
OMB Watch
OpenTheGovernment.org
Point of Order
Project On Government Oversight (POGO)
Public Citizen
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
RS&S INTERNATIONAL, LLC
Society of Academic Law Library Directors
Society of Professional Journalists
Special Libraries Association
Sunlight Foundation
University of Missouri Freedom of Information Center
Washington Coalition for Open Government

 Jose_X, Mar 2nd, 2011 @ 5:53pm

This looks like an example of how the minority of those with above-average access have advantages in places like the stock market.


And yet those with this greater access complain on paying a few % higher in taxes on high income even though in many cases they would have much lower income were it not for their greater than average access useful in anticipating the direction of major market movements. And we are talking about tax revenues that would cover our national public deficit.


Big money loves lack of transparency because it would be one more source of quality advantages to those already wealthy (who can afford to buy insight most cannot).


This tiered knowledge access always exists and is a reason numerous economic assumptions go too far. We can't have free markets that are fair when we have such information lopsidedness.


Since Big Money loves this sort of thing (the existance of "insider" information), they will resist having this be opened up. If opened, they will seek to sway Congress to move the new good information to another low-profile 

 Jose_X, Mar 2nd, 2011 @ 6:00pm

Perhaps there are several people unsure about opening that up for just this reason.


But Madison was correct. "A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."


We can continue pressuring to have as much made open as possible. Otherwise, this is not a nation of We the People, but of We a Minority of the People.


Put differently, if government info remains largely inaccessible to those of modest means, those of modest means will not be the ones ruling. It will be those of higher means who do have access -- this is what we have today.


We should keep putting pressure so that the odds increase that those that do honest assessments and are willing to share with the public are more likely to get their hands on this

BBC - UK

'Tractor beam' is possible with lasers, say scientists

A laser can act as a "tractor beam", drawing small objects back toward the laser's source, scientists have said.

Continue reading the main story

Now, in a paper on the Arxiv server, researchers from Hong Kong and China have calculated the conditions required to create a laser-based "pull".

The idea appears to be qualitatively similar to one proposed in 2006 by Washington State University physicist Philip Marston that uses sound waves to achieve a similar result.

MYSTERY OF MISSING SUNSPOTS EXPLAINED

Solar physicists say they are homing in on the complex internal interactions that could explain why the sun has been hibernating for more than four years now and may not fully awaken for another decade. Hathaway and other researchers say they’re now convinced that a flow of ionized gas, or plasma, known as the meridional flow controls the strength of the solar cycle (SN: 4/10/11, p. 8).On either side of the equator, the flow moves like a conveyor belt that stretches just beneath the solar surface from the equator to the two poles and then dives into the sun’s interior, flowing from the poles back to the equator to complete the loop.

In the March 3 Nature, Dibyendu Nandy of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata and his colleagues report new computer simulations suggesting one way that the flow determines future solar activity. Their simulations show that a fast flow during the first half of a solar cycle, followed by a slower flow during the second half, creates a weak polar magnetic field. This generates an unusually weak and prolonged solar minimum,

“The Nandy article is an excellent study of the effect of the meridional flow on what we see at the surface over a solar cycle,” says Pesnell.

But the problem, says Hathaway, is that his observations indicate that the speed of the meridional flow was exactly opposite to that required by Nandy and his colleagues. Another solar physicist, Yi-Ming Wang of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., says he is baffled by the apparent contradiction between the model and Hathaway’s observations.

Nandy notes that measurements made by Hathaway and his colleagues are limited to the surface, so they may not reflect the true speed of the flow deep in the sun’s interior.

Hathaway says that a fast meridional flow is indeed required to explain both the sun’s long hibernation and the weakness of the current solar cycle, which began in late 2008. But his observations show that the fast flow occurred during the last half of the last solar cycle, not the first. The flow drags the magnetic field along with it, and a fast flow leads to a weaker field at the poles than a slow flow would. Because the polar fields are thought to be the seeds for the next solar cycle, a weak polar field will cause the next cycle to be weak also.

“It is possible that the current sunspot cycle, cycle 24, was seeded with magnetic fields from cycle 23, or even an earlier cycle, cycle 22,” says Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson. “This seed field may have been weaker than normal, somehow, and it may be producing a weaker solar activity cycle now.”

1. 1:
2. 10:

England 'healthier than the US

Across all ages, US residents tend to fare worse in terms of diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease markers, data on over 100,000 people show.

The reason remains a mystery, says the US team, and challenges the idea that resources necessarily improve health.

It may be due to the UK's bigger drive on disease prevention, they say.

And although a larger share of Americans are uninsured or under insured compared to populations in England or other European countries, even groups with good access to health insurance experienced worse health than people in England.

The researchers say: "Why health status differs so dramatically in these two countries, which share much in terms of history and culture, is an unresolved puzzle.

"Given our finding of health differences between the US and England at young ages, a promising focus of future research - one that could help to elucidate the causes of poor health across the life course - is on health differences between countries at the earliest ages."

Minecraft Creator Says 'No Such Thing As A Lost Sale

Piracy is not theft. If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.

There is no such thing as a 'lost sale'... Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?

The "lost sale" point is one we've raised a bunch in the past, but people have a lot of trouble grasping it. There is no such thing as a lost sale, because a lost sale just means a failure to get people to buy. And that's a marketing issue, not a legal one. If a "lost sale" is illegal, then anyone who gives you a coupon to buy their product instead of a competitors is "causing a lost sale." But that's ridiculous. And that's the point Notch is making. There are all sorts of reasons people might not buy from you -- and most of them may be your fault. So it's your job to convince people to pay for something -- which he's clearly done. As he notes:

If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week.

Justin Olbrantz (Quantam), Mar 3rd, 2011 @ 12:01pm

While slightly more optimistic, this guy is very average in my experience with professional software and hardware engineers: they (usually) simply don't worry much about piracy (and, may I add, they tend to 

dislike

D

R

M).

Speaking personally, I can't say I agree with the statement that there's "no such thing" as a lost sale, but everything I've seen and heard leads me to believe that the number of lost sales is grossly overestimated by non-engineers.

 

Does President Bush Speaking Out Against Julian Assange Prejudice The Case Against Him? (93)

Moby Says The Major Record Labels 'Should Die' (50)

ICE Boss: It's Okay To Ignore The Constitution If It's To Protect Companies (147)

Stop Thinking That Tech & Content Are Fighting Each Other

Are GOPers Playing Politics With Military Gear?

Today, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank follows up on this story and updates my numbers: Turns out Rep. Bill Young hasn't gotten $26,350 in contributions from the builders of the Humvee. He's gotten $80,000.

From today's Defense News:

Members of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee have refused to allow the Pentagon to shift $1.2 billion because the U.S. Army wants to stop buying Humvees...the Army planned to stop buying Humvees in 2011, but the lack of an appropriations bill means there are hundreds of millions of dollars still slated to buy them.

The biggest single chunk of reprogrammed funds - $864 million - would be moved from Humvee purchases and used to buy gear to protect forward operating bases...The gear would fill a request from Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, for fixed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told House appropriators during a March 2 hearing.

Common Dreams

Prosecution of Ray McGovern is Dropped

“This outrageous arrest laid bare the hypocrisy of Clinton’s presentation about free speech and free expression. While lecturing other governments, she never even paused while Mr. McGovern was brutally hauled out right in front of her and arrested while peacefully and silently expressing dissent,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, one of Mr. McGovern’s attorneys at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which is representing Mr. McGovern.

Since Ray McGovern’s arrest, there has been a huge outpouring of support from people of conscience all over the country and widespread coverage in the alternative media in defense of free speech rights.

Mr. McGovern and his attorneys at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund are evaluating his next legal options.

 Michigan Workers Jam Capitol to Protest Union Plan

How Many Afghan Kids Need to Die to Make News?

Big Shakedown: Wisconsin & GOP's Vision for America’s Future

Chevron Wins Halt to $18 Billion Judgment in Ecuador Pollution Case

Drilling Companies Agree to Suspend Operations After Work at Wells in Arkansas Linked 
Causing Earthquakes

1. How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us
2. This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us
3. America Is Not Broke
4. The Phony Budget Crisis: Forget Austerity, Tax the Rich
5. Next Mass Extinction an Eyeblink Away: Scientists

Diabetes Risks Go Beyond Heart Attacks, Strokes

Now an international team of researchers has produced one of the first comprehensive reports on the non-cardiovascular causes of death in people with diabetes, and it offers some sobering new findings.

Pooling data from 97 studies representing more than 820,000 people, researchers found that 40% of people with high blood sugar died from non-cardiovascular causes.

ArXiv

Why Randomly-Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy

KFC 03/09/2011

In practice, there are numerous examples of democratic systems that are rife with corruption or paralysed by disagreement. Even in benign parliaments, it is often an open question as to whether the work they do really benefits the majority of people.

Today, Alessandro Pluchino and amici at the Universitá di Catania in Italy say there is a better way. They have modelled the behaviour of a two-party parliament and examined how it changes as randomly selected independent legislators are introduced into the system.

Their counterintuitive conclusion is that randomly selected legislators always improves the performance of parliament and that it is possible to determine the optimal number of independents at which a parliament works best.

Tropical Water Ice Discovered On Mars

New Magnetic Resonance Technique Could Revolutionise Quantum Computing

Lager 'n' Chips

Digital Blasphemy - Newest Wallpaper

Island Time

AllAfrica.com

The South African Civil Society Information Service (Johannesburg)

South Africa: Shell South Africa Cites America's EPA On Credibility of Fracking, But EPA Stands Accused of Concealing Dangers of Natural Gas Extraction

blogAfrica: Featured Posts

1. Africa Unchained » Production, not innovation, will win the Future
2. Tag Egypt » Six dead as Muslims and Christians clash in Cairo
3. iRevolution » The Volunteers Behind the Libya Crisis Map: A True Story
4. Enough blogs » Comedian, Activist Jane Bussmann Returns to NYC
5. The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African » First ever Ghana Women of Excellence Awards 2011
6. Global Voices in English » Egypt » Arab World: How Much Does Internet Access Matter?
7. Zambian Economist » Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Bill 2010: Part VI
8. John Campbell: Africa in Transition » New Evidence Of Conflict In Sudan

at a Glance » South Africa

• Ruling Party Race Row Intensifies
• Country's Women in Senior Positions Beating Global Counterparts
• Navigation Satellite to Combat Piracy at Sea
• Public Protector Welcomes Portfolio Committee's Support
• Google to Help Digitise Madiba and Tutu Archives

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