The Desirability of Solar and Wind Energy Introduction: What is Disaster Capitalism? When profits rule the minds of political planners, it does not matter how far down the rabbit-hole of destruction society travels, the same dead-horse flogging is pursued until the inevitable result of ignored environmental destruction reduces available resources for those who do not …
Mathematics is concerned most often with certainties. If x plus y equals z, then 2x plus y equals zx. That sort of thinking is not arrogant, it is simply one way or the other. Magical thinking believes that given a few little tweeks you can make 2+2 equal what the hell you want it to …
Read this in the Guardian just now. Currently about 400 tonnes of groundwater is streaming into the reactor basements from the hills behind the plant each day. The plant has accumulated about 300,000 tonnes of contaminated water, which is being stored in 1,200 tanks occupying a large swath of the Fukushima Daiichi site. Eventually Tepco …
The nature of the ground underneath us is that it is not the singularly solid mass we perceive. Our point of view is relatively spec like tiny and the size even of a country is hard to encompass as a personal experience. There is a lot of ground underneath us and drilling out ancient residues …
Adam Smith wrote the seminal work about capitalism - The Wealth of Nations. Growth was then based on nations competing in the most extreme act of international piracy in history, colonialism. These days we talk of "bubbles" as though these modern gold rushes were a certain financial rhythm. We developed a science to predict and …
Over 300 flood defence schemes were subject to budget cuts and not proceded with, and hundreds of millions of pounds in insurance claims and the cost of the suffering and interruptions in people's lives that could have been avoided by not abandoning the relatively trivial cost in net human experience quality of life vs how …
The harder things are, the better few are found? "Look at how great Britain was after the war." The 80s drive defined by greed resulted in inflated property prices funded by an unrestrained banking sector. The economy inflated, however due to the nature of compound interest the banker made disproportionately more than the average person. …
A generation or two of high unemployment and low wages is considered a price worth paying to bring down the deficit. This makes little sense economically (no jobs means less tax revenue, hence Osborne's frantic borrowing) Guardian article If the Government believes that it is good to take from the majority because they a) either …
So, the government bails out a bank that sailed too close to the wind with their wild investment arms flailing about enthusiastically until it all went wrong. And Stephen Hester goes in to save the day and even though the bank continues to make losses there is "progress". Huge bonuses attract much media attention. Are …
How the head of JP Morgan got bit by the derivatives market and what this says about financial regulation when it comes to taking risks with our pension funds. Krugman - NY Times