Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 96

June 28, 2010

MIchael Hudson in Counterpunch

Another grim look at Europe (and the US):
In England, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has described a "euro mutiny" against regressive fiscal policy. But it is more than that. Beyond merely shrinking the economy, the neoliberal aim is to change the shape of the trajectory along which Western civilization has been moving for the past two centuries. It is nothing less than to roll back Social Security and pensions for labor, health care, education and other public spending, to dismantle the social...
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Published on June 28, 2010 06:46

A Dream

I don't usually remember dreams. When I do remember one fairly clearly, I tend to think it means something. It's a message from my subconscious. This is one of two dreams I had last night:

I was a kid, with my parents and brother in the house where I grew up, which had been built by the Walker Art Center as a design project into the late 1940s. (All of this is true.) We were discussing moving, which my father wanted to do. I was reluctant. Suddenly, in the middle of this discussion and the mid...
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Published on June 28, 2010 04:58

Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman, talking about the decision by European governments and the Senate Republicans to cut spending in the middle of a recession/depression:

So I don't think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the...
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Published on June 28, 2010 04:49

June 24, 2010

Cheerful News

Patrick just read my island poem and pointed out that many islands appear to be rising in response to the rising ocean water. If I remember correctly, the coral is simply growing upward.

And also per New Scientist, the glaciers in the Himalayas are not shrinking. This is very good news, since large populations in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China rely on water in the rivers that flow out of the Himalayas.
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Published on June 24, 2010 21:25

Unemployment

Three comments in Firedoglake on the failure of the jobs bill:

As a 4 year college grad who has been unemployed for nearly a year, I guess I am a dead man now. I have been without benefits for 2 weeks and even though I finally have a good job prospect coming up, the job is not starting until the end of next month. So what do I do until then? How do I pay bills, put gas in the car and oh yeah…eat?? These are the people in power? Those who would take away from the "have nots" Who should I be...
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Published on June 24, 2010 20:43

Unemployment

I am absorbing the fact that the Republicans in the Senate have apparently successfully blocked extension of unemployment benefits. Since Patrick and I are both collecting unemployment, this is not good news. The theory is, the Rs figure they can win the next election if Americans are hurting badly.

At the top end of the job market, where the people politicians and pundits know look for work, the unemployment is 3%. For those of us who are looking for middle class and working class jobs, the j...
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Published on June 24, 2010 07:10

Living in the Future

I just heard a line from Patrick: "The advantage of living in the future is, it's the only place where you can change anything." Pat doesn't know where he got the line, but I love it. It is the ultimate argument for science fiction.
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Published on June 24, 2010 07:09

June 23, 2010

Courtesy of NASA and Astronomy Photo of the Day


What are these strange color bands being seen from the International Space Station? The Sun setting through Earth's atmosphere. Pictured above, a sunset captured last month by the ISS's Expedition 23 crew shows in vivid detail many layers of the Earth's thin atmosphere. Part of the Earth experiencing night crosses the bottom of the image. Above that, appearing in deep orange and yellow, is the Earth's troposphere, which contains 80 percent of the atmosphere by mass and almost all of the...
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Published on June 23, 2010 08:45

Detroit

From a Common Dreams article on people in Detroit working to build a new society in the ruins of industrial capitalism.

Here is Ron Scott, a Detroit community activist and founder of the Detroit chapter of the Black Panthers way back when:

"The most important thing we're doing is taking responsibility for making sure in cities like Detroit that we can reshape communities the way we want them. The people running this city and others are not blatantly evil. It's that many of them are not capable ...
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Published on June 23, 2010 06:24

June 22, 2010

From NASA and Astronomy Photo of the Day


Our Earth is covered by volcanoes. Volcanoes are breaks in the Earth's cool surface where hot liquid rock from the interior comes out -- sometimes suddenly. In the above image from the ASTER camera aboard NASA's orbiting Terra satellite, snow-capped volcanoes are seen from overhead that compose the picturesque Islands of the Four Mountains in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, USA. The islands contain restless Mt. Cleveland, an active volcano currently being watched to see if it emits an ash...
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Published on June 22, 2010 07:48

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