Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Science Has Lost Its Way, At a Big Cost to Humanity
October 27th, 2013I’ve posted about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Via: Los Angeles Times: In today’s world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you’d think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You’d be wrong. Many billions of dollars’ worth of wrong. A few years ago, […]
French IT School ’42’
October 26th, 2013The application process for 42 reminds me a bit of what happens to people who try to get into the French Foreign Legion. The Legion doesn’t care about your background, they just want to know if you’re up to the job. If you don’t know about the French Foreign Legion, take a few minutes to […]
Not Round Up Ready: El Salvador Votes to Ban Glyphostate
October 23rd, 2013Via: GM Watch: El Salvador has voted to ban glyphosate, the pesticide that most GM crops are designed to be grown with, along with 52 other chemicals.
Saudi Arabia Set for Diplomatic Shift Away from U.S.
October 23rd, 2013Via: Guardian: Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a “major shift” in dealings with the US in protest at perceived American inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday. The source said that Prince Bandar bin Sultan had told European […]
The Rise of Geoengineering
October 22nd, 2013Via: Independent: Geoengineering technologies are the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies. Researchers have suggested sending a giant glass sunshade into space to reflect light; the eruption of artificial volcanoes, or spraying of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere; dissolving mountains and putting remains in the sea; and, least dramatically, perhaps, filing the ocean with iron filings […]
Fructose: The Poison Index
October 21st, 2013Via: Guardian: The battle over the compound fructose now reaches new levels of obfuscation. The food industry is a strong – and loud, and rich – proponent, hard to ignore. The European Food and Safety Agency has just weighed in, in favour of the substitution of sucrose (table sugar: a disaccharide composed of the monosaccharides […]
JPMorgan Agrees to Tentative $13 Billion Settlement with U.S. Over Bad Mortgages
October 19th, 2013Woh. It they are agreeing to a $13 billion settlement, one has to wonder about the true magnitude of the damage caused by JPM’s behavior. These settlements typically represent pennies-on-the-dollar wrist slaps which seem to encourage companies to attempt even greater frauds. Via: Washington Post: JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, has reached a tentative […]
France to Increase Troops in Central African Republic
October 15th, 2013Via: Reuters: France will boost its troop presence in the Central African Republic by the end of the year under a forthcoming U.N. resolution to help prevent the country from spiralling out of control, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday. Fabius and the European Union aid chief, Kristalina Georgieva, are in the country to […]
In Big Win for Defense Industry, Obama Rolls Back Limits on Arms Exports
October 15th, 2013Via: ProPublica: The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world’s conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions. Come tomorrow, thousands of parts of military aircraft, such as propeller blades, […]
The Russia Left Behind
October 15th, 2013Via: New York Times: A few times every day, the high-speed train between St. Petersburg and Moscow barrels through the threadbare town of Lyuban. When word gets out that the head of Russia’s state railway company — a close friend of President Vladimir V. Putin — is aboard, the station’s employees line up on the […]
