OK, if the Smallest Nation in the World Can Do It

Why can't we?

Wind Turbines Replace Diesel on Sealand.

It's Because They Stop Sweating the Small Shit

People Turn More Liberal With Age

Good sign for us, eh? With the Baby Boomer population aging, right?

There's a Conversation on Race

In the comments of Angry Black Woman's "Thank You, White People", over Pat Buchanan's racism (among others).

If you're not reading ABW, now is a great time to start. I'd specifically like to refer readers to Angry Black Woman's Required Reading.

The Photography of Jeremy Wheaton

There's some lovely, lovely work here. Check it out. http://www.jeremywheaton.com/

Krugman on Financial Crisis

Taming the Beast

America came out of the Great Depression with a pretty effective financial safety net, based on a fundamental quid pro quo: the government stood ready to rescue banks if they got in trouble, but only on the condition that those banks accept regulation of the risks they were allowed to take.

Over time, however, many of the roles traditionally filled by regulated banks were taken over by unregulated institutions — the “shadow banking system,” which relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass those safety regulations.

Now, the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.

Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

Makes sense to me.

There's something that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and hasn't for a long time. Government regulates in order to protect the public, in large part because companies make decisions to improve their profit margin, not to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." That's the job of (the people as) government. The job of a corporation is to make money. As long as corporations have no social conscience, which is a rant for a different day, as long as corporations are tasked in this world with obligations other than providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, etc., they *need* to be regulated by the government.

So, whenever someone comes along and says we should deregulate some market somewhere, I think a) that's asking the government to abdicate its responsibility, and b) deregulation never seems to accomplish the goal my typical deregulation afficionado touts, which is something along the lines of better lives for all of us if only we'd let "the market" work. Well, "the market" never behaves the way they taught us in high school economics (yes, we used to have econ classes in high school. And civics in junior high. How 'bout that?) because "the market" is never, ever, the "perfect" market that you use in economics class hypotheticals.

I want environmental regulation of companies (hi, EPA). I want regulations that ensure I get paid overtime when I work overtime. I want regulations that protect my pension. I want regulation that protects my person (hi, OSHA!) from harm and I want regulations that protect my human dignity as well. Business is the business of America, but the real business of America is protecting the common good and promoting the general welfare. *That* is the mission statement of America, friends and neighbors.

In the broader social sense, the corporation is just a tool to achieve that goal. When properly regulated.

Global Warming Killing Antarctica

Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland

"In this case things are happening more rapidly than we thought. We didn't really understand how sensitive these ice shelves are to climate change," said Dr Vaughan, who predicted in the 1990s that it would take 30 years for the ice shelf to break up.

Ice shelves form along the coasts and, because the ice is already floating on water, their disintegration does not affect sea levels. However, scientists believe that their rapid disappearance could lead to the faster movement into the ocean of the massive, land-based ice sheets and glaciers – which do raise sea levels.

The Wilkins ice shelf covers an area of about 5,282 square miles and satellite images taken at the end of February revealed that the rapid disintegration began after an iceberg the size of the Isle of Man broke away from its western edge.

New Record for Most Distant Object in Sky Visible to Naked Eye

Naked-Eye Gamma Ray Burst.

A powerful gamma ray burst detected March 19th by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.

One summer when I was in undergrad I did astrophysics research, specifically, working with data on high-energy particles emitted by black hole candidates. A high energy particle triggers a shower of lesser-energy particles when it hits the atmosphere and interacts with the particles that make up the atmosphere, and it all cascades farther and farther (if energetic enough) until the shower eventually propagates down to the ground. In general, the higher the energy of the incoming particle, the higher the energy of the particles in the shower hitting your detector on the ground. Plus, the more atmosphere the shower is propagating through, the more energy is used up.

So, the highest energy particles that come in almost horizontally have cascaded through the most atmosphere to get to you, and thus were really REALLY high energy before they started, and thus might be from a black hole.

I worked on processing those data measurements calculating the incident angle of the initial particle, to then determine if it was from a black hole candidate. Fun stuff. I love science.

Arthur C. Clarke, dead at 90

No!

Sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90

Tent Cities in America Today

Bushburbs growing as more lose homes

Politicizing the DOJ

Christ, how are we even going to *start* cleaning this mess up?

Down the Politicized Rabbit Hole

Wanted: Good Biography of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek

After reading this intro to On Soong Mei-ling, who later became Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, at IntlLawGrrls, I need a good biography of her that really gets into the history of Taiwan, too.

Internet, recommend!

Choosing to do...

From Crooks and Liars, from The Daily Show:

Jon Stewart and Senior White House Correspondent John Oliver discuss Bush’s recent trip to Africa.

STEWART: It’s hard for you to accept that the President has done something admirable?

OLIVER: Well, it’s just [stammers] What’s his angle? He’s not running for reelection. There’s no ulterior military objective. He’s got no chance of becoming King of Africa. What the HELL is going on?

STEWART: Maybe he’s just trying to do something good in a difficult part of the world.

OLIVER: No! No! That makes it worse! Over the past seven excruciating years I’ve come to terms with the President being incompetent. The fact that we now know that he’s capable of doing good all along and has simply chosen not to, that really burns!

Yeah, it does.

This year's Dem race

I love it, we got a real live horse race, people. Now, that's reality TV worth watching. (I suppose if I had TV reception I'd feel otherwise, knowing me, and the crass, superficial reporting the U.S. seems so prone to broadcast.)

The news on the radio just mentioned something about folks in Rhode Island being thrilled to actually be relevant. That's how elections should be, neighbors. Every vote, in every state. Relevant.

Hate, Hate Speech, and Hate Crimes

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez on fear and loathing of Latinos. In Hollywood, and everywhere else.

Here's Something I Don't Get

Don't all you people with iPods jammed in your ears want to know what's going on behind you?

I'm quite sure that if I can hear someone's iPod music as they walk past me, it's drowning out quite a bit of the ambient sound. What does that mean? It means you don't hear the car engine behind you. Or someone on a bicycle trying to get past you and saying "excuse me". Repeatedly. Or the serial killer skulking in the shadows, muttering to himself about the blue angels with bloody hooks for hands, as he waits for his chance. (Made you look!)

I don't know about everybody else, but when I'm walking around Boston, one of the walkingest towns around, I'm pretty keen on my safety, as a general rule, and that requires paying attention to sounds, as well as to sights.

I just don't get this urge people seem to have block off one of their senses as they run their errands.

Next thing you know, all the cool kids will be wearing blinders or something, and blocking off their peripheral vision. Why bother?