Decline of the Empire

Downsizing Expectations As We Enter 2014

It is the last day of the year. I feel I should say something to my fellow Americans about the only thing most of them care about, namely, the economy. It is the holiday season, so the recent Bloomberg article Americans on Wrong Side of Pay Gap Run Out of Means to Cope went largely unnoticed (December 30, 2013). But that article deserves our attention.

Elizabeth Kolbert On The Sixth Extinction

I was rummaging through the stuff I've kept these many years when I ran across the October, 1998 issue of Harpers Magazine, which contains an article called Planet Of Weeds (pdf) by David Quammen. As I was re-reading it, I remembered how much Quammen's piece influenced me at the time. In the 1990's I was reading a lot of stuff on the history of life on Earth, including mass extinctions (paleontology).

On High-Quality Bullshit

I have to admit that when I see a particularly fine piece of bullshit, when I read the incoherent babbling of a highly skilled (albeit delusional) craftsman at work, I am filled with admiration lately. In the past I was often disgusted. When important issues affecting millions of people are at stake, and the bullshit in question seeks to whitewash the situation to maintain an astonishingly unfair status quo, disgust is natural reaction in a person who is marginally more conscious than a primordial flatworm.

But nowadays, I tend to see some piece of exquisite human bullshit as a fine work of art by a master craftsman. This more aesthetic point of view helps to sustain what little sanity I've got left. Certainly it helps me maintain my sense of humor.

Merry Christmas

 

 

Everybody Was Bonking Everybody Else!

And that's why birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

In Spain, the best upper sets do it
Lithuanians and Latts do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

— Cole Porter, Let's Do It (1928)

Some interesting results about the last species in the genus Homo have been coming in lately. The evolutionary events of the last ~500,000 years which culminated in the dominance of Homo sapiens are starting to come into focus. This report is from Science Daily (December 18, 2013).

Human Social Instincts At Work

Reader Steve L. sent me a Live Science report on a paper published in the British journal BMJ on the perils of following celebrity medical advice. Such advice is often contrary to what medical science says, or is simply made-up nonsense. In asking why people follow such advice, the authors arrived at some startling conclusions.

Thou Shalt Not...

On today's Diane Rehm Show there was a discussion of benefits for the long-term unemployed. In reaching a budget deal to prevent yet another government shutdown, Congress (read, House Republicans) opposed an extension of those jobless benefits. The shit will hit the fan for 1.3 million Americans three days after Christmas. In the first six months of 2014, an additional 1.9 million Americans will see their benefits disappear. There are 4.1 million long-term unemployed altogether, meaning those people have been out of work 27 weeks or longer.

There are two arguments for continuing jobless benefits, a moral argument and an economic argument. The moral argument is easy to make, and can be stated as a Moses-like 11th Commandment.

Silicon Valley — Where The Assholes Are

Apologies to Maurice Sendak for this post's title — Dave

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Where is the biggest congregation of assholes on the planet? There are so many good candidates that this question does not permit an easy answer—Washington D.C., the financial district of London, Wall Street, Moscow, Riyadh, Beijing, etc. So many places, so many assholes.

I believe Silicon Valley is where the biggest group of assholes lives. This post was prompted by yet another write-up of these grown-up children called Silicon Valley Is Living Inside A Bubble Of Tone-Deaf Arrogance. It was written by Jim Edwards.

Bitterness Can Make You Sick

I don't know about you, but I could use a good laugh. Thankfully, the human condition didn't change today, so there are abundant opportunities for getting that laugh.

Let's start with the quote of the day, from The Atlantic's 229 Million Children Are Officially Invisible.

Registering babies at birth may be a routine, almost automated process in the United States, but it's a rarity in some impoverished nations in both South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new report released on Tuesday by UNICEF. In all, there are nearly 230 million children in the world who are nameless and stateless. And they may languish in anonymity for a good portion of their early lives.

Living without any proof of your existence can be a major challenge...

The Concern Industry

As far as I can see, about once a week some human somewhere on Earth says something interesting. That's what comes from having a World Wide Web and more than seven billion people!

Today's interesting quote was published in Der Spiegel (Germany) and was part of an article called Climate Summit Trap: Capitalism's March toward Global Collapse. The article is by Harald Welzer, who I've never heard of.