The Age of Stupid

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Film coming out in March with Pete Postlethwaite. Looks awesome.

I ate some mushrooms earlier and its amazing how easy it is to type . . .

is Scott Adams prescient?

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beware of Wally

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punkscience is going to get cancer

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Apparently. Oh dear.

missing the point

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Steve Richards dithers a bit but ultimately makes his point:

"Heathrow will now be a running story, sapping ministerial energy and attention. That is why the whole affair is misjudged. It is not as if the rest of Britain's transport problems are resolved and we have the luxury of moving on. The railways remain an overpriced and chaotic disgrace. Over Christmas we took a sleeper from Euston to Fort William in Scotland. We were kicked out at 3am in Edinburgh because the train was defective. On the way back there was chaos from Glasgow station with Scotrail officials having no idea what Virgin trains were doing. The fragmented monopolies are not delivering. Sorting out the railways is where the intense ministerial focus should be, for economic reasons as well as quality of life ones."

Whereas the UK government (condom machine in vatican) has missed the important details almost completely. Because they are shit.

I love the idea of sleeper trains. I wish they ran to more locations. I remember travelling to Southern Germany when I was young. It was magic. Sleeping in bunks and watching the landscape roll past. Like I said: Magic.

Marc Jacobson is super-awesome

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Word!

"Putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles, and transmission lines would not only create jobs but also reduce costs due to healthcare, crop damage, and climate damage – as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power,"

Energy & Environmental Science

democratic reform of the UN

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I keep banging on about this. Its really very badly needed in light of this sort of thing:

"Ten of the 15 seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country's U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members' votes should be especially valuable), and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country's election to, and exit from, the council. Finally, the U.N. results appear to be driven by UNICEF, an organization over which the United States has historically exerted great control."

(Journal of Political Economy)

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 377 A, the "Uniting for Peace" resolution

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The US has used its permanent position on the UN security council to veto every draft resolution that has criticised Israel. Every single one, pretty much. Including the ones condemning Israel for killing UN staff in its various wars (pdf). Likewise with all the ones that might threaten international condemnation of Israel's utter disregard for international law.

However, the resolution in the title allows the security council to be circumvented in the interests of peace if the security council cannot agree on a draft resolution. In specific the resolution declares that the General Assembly of the United Nations:

"Reaffirms the importance of the exercise by the Security Council of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and the duty of the permanent members to seek unanimity and to exercise restraint in the use of the veto," ...

"Recognises in particular that such failure does not deprive the General Assembly of its rights or relieve it of its responsibilities under the Charter in regard to the maintenance of international peace and security," ...

"Resolves that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security."

This endows the UNGA with the ability to call an "emergency special session" which can consider motions and draft resolutions that cannot be blocked by a veto of the five permanent members of the UNSC. This provides a mechanism to catalyse international action in cases such as the Gazan genocide, where the rule of law is clearly being broken, peace has been destroyed and global security is being threatened. I'm going to see who I can talk to about this.

Kelly Slater rules

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Word!

the problem with neo-classical economics

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This is frickin rad:

". . . the situation in the current capitalist system whereby much of the surplus labour appropriated by capitalists and shareholders ends up unable to find genuine investment opportunities because workers whose surplus labour has been appropriated do not earn enough to provide a sufficient market for the goods or services that would have been produced or supplied. In other words, much of the capital derived from the surplus labour that people have performed ends up not being invested at all – at least not in any meaningful economic sense, in new productive activities. Indeed, this is the primary cause of the world’s current economic crisis – too much capital accumulating at the expense of wages and growth of economic demand."

My only gripe is that it lacks any mention of sustainable development. Just a small elephant in the room, there.

tempting fate

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From NewScientist:

"Last year saw the first handful of prototype robotic exoskeletons go on sale to the public – with the most advanced being the full-body HAL robot suit made by Japanese firm Cyberdyne."

(emphasis is mine)

Surely, naming your robotic company and product after the most notoriously psychopathic such examples in popular fiction is more than a little irreverent and stunningly arrogant, even for the Engrish-bound Nipponese. Watch this space for the latest reports of amokkery.

SHOCK DECLARATION! - TV exec condemns online file sharing of his programs

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The Indy has been slipping into Daily-Mail-like demagogy for some time. Giving a pedestal to a TV executive from which he can broadcast his condemnation of file sharing is a classic business-and-upstanding-citizen-friendly example and ignores the fact that the recording and distribution of such programs was going on long before teh interweb became the medium of choice for sharing video (anyone remember video cassettes?).

Anyhow, file sharing over teh interweb is becoming less and less popular as video streaming sites start to take over, supplying a world of content on demand (if slightly jerkily and after ten minutes' buffering). Funny how you don't see cnuts like Garrett screaming about that in the press. The most damning thing is that TV networks are now offering their own streaming sites to compete with the Chinese. So the market is already being forced to work with this new paradigm without any obvious collapses of big TV networks or any obvious fall in program quality. So claims to the contrary are all a pack of fucking lies.