ΩΩEach nationalist sector has various attributes and cultures across the planet. For example, almost all peasant cultures depending on agriculture such as what we see in Central America or parts of Central Africa and most of Europe and Asia leads to creating hard workers whereas the ‘cowboy’ cultures produce people who are mostly relaxed for long periods of time interspaced with great, violent eruptions of tremendous energy and bravery..
ΩΩAll civilizations without exception, are built on the backs of hard-working peasant laborers. The ‘money in the bank’ since the great city of Ur was founded are grains and nuts put into storage and later on, wine and olive oil of the Minoan Empire or rice in Asia. All civilizations since the City of Ur had someone in power control speculation in food prices because the one way to destroy a civilization is to let food suddenly be too expensive for the populace to eat.
.
ΩΩGenerally speaking, civilizations which don’t wish to be in the ‘Let them eat cake!’ guillotine messes tend to keep a lid on food prices via having the government either regulate prices or hoard and release food during weather-related bad harvest famines. This is so very ancient, it is part of the ‘Moses’ story about the dream of 7 FAT COWS AND 7 STARVING COWS: WEALTH CYCLES in Egypt.
.
Wheat Futures Extend Surge on Russia Drought; Buyers ‘In Shock’ – Bloomberg.com
Wheat extended a rally to the highest price in 23 months on concern that the worst drought in at least half a century in Russia, the third-biggest grower, will wilt crops, threatening to push food inflation higher. Buyers of the staple are “in shock,” according to Australia’s CBH Group.
.
There’s “a little bit of panic,” said Michael Pitts, director for commodity sales at National Australia Bank Ltd. Russian officials are discussing limits to exports, according to Arkady Zlochevksy, president of the Grain Union, which represents producers and traders. Wheat has surged about 82 percent since this year’s low on June 9 to $7.765 a bushel.
.
ΩΩAs the numbskulls at the apex of society talk about deflation the Medusa-snake-goddess, Inflation, is taking off like a rocket in important sectors. That is, the life and death parts of society. Things we don’t need very much are seeing zero or negative pricing. But things that sustain life and limb have jumped greatly in the last decade starting with oil. This sort of inflation, the one that our Federal Reserve and our government has minimized or denied are key to social disorder and collapse of civilizations.
.
The biggest international banking houses such as the odious Goldman Sachs gang make big profits on driving up commodities. They have switched to this business since 2008 due to the collapse of the much more profitable and easy OTC/CDS markets which were pure helium balloons to wealth. Now, they are back, noses to the ancient grinding stone, eking out bonuses via driving up various commodity sectors.
.
This need to cause ceaseless balloons here, there and everywhere, are quite inflationary and very destructive to society at large which is why, throughout history, good governments suppressed or controlled this sort of thing and bad ones encouraged it and were party to it (such as pre-revolutionary France). When the government protects, bankrolls and enables commodity speculators including giving them access to ZIRP loans to use to play games, this leads to social collapse and this is why the government has to be a countervailing force, not an enabling force.
.
ΩΩOn to the biggest depressed ZIRP economy on earth next to the depressed but suffering from commodity inflation US, Japan: I read the Japanese news and there is an interesting scandal brewing which should interest us since we are going down the same road to destruction that Japan is well along...Officials fail to keep track of oldest people | The Japan Times Online
Only 23 of the nation’s 47 prefectures have confirmed through meetings that their oldest residents are alive, a Kyodo News survey showed Tuesday. All prefectural governments said they make periodic checks, but only 23 use face-to-face meetings while most of the others rely on phone calls to their family members.
.
The survey comes on the heels of recent revelations in Tokyo that a man who was supposed to be the capital’s oldest man at age 111 died three decades ago and that no one seems to know where the city’s oldest woman can be found.
.
The cases may throw Japan’s longevity title into question. Suspicions have also been raised that the children and grandchildren of centenarians may be deliberately hiding the deaths of their elderly kin to bilk the government for their pension money
.
ΩΩAcross all of Japan, families are hiding their dead elderly so they can collect pension funds. These phone calls to family members is very funny in that it is obvious now, people lie in Japan just like they would anywhere else on this planet. Once one person got away with hiding dead gramps and then having fun with the new income, everyone else rushed to do the same.
.
ΩΩAs Japan ages and the balance between children and elderly continues to get worse and worse due to a birth dearth, this sort of scheme will increase since it makes perfect economic sense. The government has a duty to be more vigilant. In Greece, for example, there was this swimming pool tax. But after a number of homeowners bribed inspectors to ignore pools, everyone did this and when the Germans insisted on checking satellite photos with pool tax tables (Germany basically is now the taxman in Greece) they found that the legal pools were less than 500 and the illegal ones were over 16,000.
.
ΩΩThis illustrates how swiftly things can lurch out of whack if allowed to do so. In the US our problem is mainly at the other end of the age scale: many people in the lower classes have discovered that if they abandon their children and go off to use drugs or lie about, drunk, the state will farm them out to near relatives and pay a handsome stipend.
.
ΩΩSince drug use and drinking are basically rewarded, there is an epidemic of drugged out, drunk parents ravaging poorer communities to the point of disintegration. Many times, the drugged parents will farm their children off on granny and then, after the social services start paying granny to raise the children, they move back into granny’s home and leech off of both.
ΩΩThis takes me to the recent news in Virginia, a state that like many others, chooses to not really be very vigilant about illegal aliens: Illegal immigrant who killed nun in accident was released by feds – Washington Times. This criminal who began his career by illegally coming to our country, used at least three fake IDs, drank and drove vehicles and in general, was a total outlaw. He was arrested again and again and ignored court dates because he was…an outlaw!
.
ΩΩThe nuns forgave him because I am presuming, the Catholic Church is OK with Catholics flooding into America killing people but I doubt they would be so eager to have a billion Muslims do this, too. This goes back to the idea of a civilization: governments MUST control alien populations, borders and keep taxes current and fair as well as prevent commodity speculation surges in necessities that keep people alive.
.
ΩΩCountries that fail to do these key things including defensive military forces, end up dead. Here is more news from Japan concerning the use of English for business: Rakuten’s all-English edict a bold move, but risky too | The Japan Times Online
Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. surprised the public by announcing early this year it will make English its official language by 2012.
.
All internal meetings will be in English whether foreigners are present or not. Board meetings and weekly all-company meetings have been in English since March, and President Hiroshi Mikitani has said board members who can’t speak English in two years will be fired. Cafeteria menus are now in English.
.
The Rakuten group has 6,000 employees globally, of whom about 400 are non-Japanese, spokesman Naoki Mizushima said. The firm doesn’t keep track of how many non-Japanese it has in Japan, while the 16 board members at its headquarters in Tokyo are all Japanese, he said.
.
ΩΩI say, anyone in our Federal Reserve or Treasury selling bonds should be required to hold all of their meetings in either Japanese or Chinese! This will keep our government and bankers on their toes and stop them from living in lunacy land. The Japanese, by the way, are still resisting learning Chinese because they still ache from their defeat in China during WWII. Pride prevents them from facing the truth: the future of Asian business is in Chinese.
.
ΩΩIn NYC, the Great Melting Pot of America, we have lots of ‘diversity’. But there are problems with this when it comes to exclusive schools and tests to determine which minorities get to go there: Diversity Debate Engulfs Hunter High in Manhattan – NYTimes.com
As has happened at other prestigious city high schools that use only a test for admission, the black and Hispanic population at Hunter has fallen in recent years. In 1995, the entering seventh-grade class was 12 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic, according to state data. This past year, it was 3 percent black and 1 percent Hispanic; the balance was 47 percent Asian and 41 percent white, with the other 8 percent of students identifying themselves as multiracial. The public school system as a whole is 70 percent black and Hispanic….
.
…They had been labeled “gifted,” he told them, based on a test they passed “due to luck and circumstance.” Beneficiaries of advantages, they were disproportionately from middle-class Asian and white neighborhoods known for good schools and the prevalence of tutoring.
.
“If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city,” he said, “then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights. And I refuse to accept that.”
.
The entire faculty gave him a standing ovation, as did about half the students….Mr. Collins acknowledged that the notoriously difficult test, which has math, English and essay sections and is given in the sixth grade, “isn’t a good indicator of giftedness. It is a good indicator of whether you will be successful at Hunter,” he added.
.
ΩΩMy own family is very mixed including Jewish, Northern European, Asian, even native American Indian elements and people. Whatever the birth genes, the true force at work here is obvious: it is very much cultural. Children living in literate families who admire academic people, think ‘brainy’ is better then ‘brawny’ and who invest in education at the expense of self-indulgence (rather than farming out the kiddies to granny and getting drunk) tend to produce high-energy scholars who work very, very hard to win scholarships and gain positions in schools!
.
ΩΩIn the US, Asians are very much a minority especially since there were severe restrictions on Asian immigration during the flood of European immigrants that poured mostly into NYC from the end of the Civil War to WWI. Pushing Asians into the ‘white European’ category is racist. If we look at ‘brown skin color’ then Asian children are, especially if they are from say, India, are much closer to ‘blacks’ than any Hispanics, many of whom have a lot of European blood.
.
ΩΩThere is no ‘math’ or ‘learn a language’ gene that isn’t shared by most humanity. There are people who have genetic problems that make it hard or even impossible to learn these things but the vast majority of children who do worse than Asians on exams do worse mostly because they don’t want to study as hard or work as much at learning things. Period.
.
ΩΩThe State and schools reward dark-skinned, black-haired Asians because this is due to their MERITS which they gain via HARD WORK. The ‘gangsta’ culture which infests most of our systems these days can even destroy the meritorious learning systems adhered to by the Asians. Certainly, gangsta ethos is ravaging our nation. It has mostly devoured the African-heritage communities and has moved very aggressively into the Hispanic community and is rapidly destroying it, too.
.
ΩΩNot to mention the sacrosanct ‘white’ community: this is a cultural catastrophe that is across the board because it is so alluring. That is, a culture of dependence, refusing to nurture children while using drinking and drugs as an excuse and then getting extra tax benefits from living a very destructive life, coupled with mockery of smart people, snide jokes, contempt towards scholars while worshipping movie stunt stars (they don’t act much anymore) and sports kings has destroyed even the slightest desire to excel in intellectual matters.
.
As Finances Tighten, Furloughs Give Way to Pay Cuts – NYTimes.com
Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs. A new report on Tuesday showed a slight dip in overall wages and salaries in June, caused partly by employees working fewer hours.
.
ΩΩThe US civilization has tipped the scales. Asian children who are studious will be punished by being shoved aside by ‘talented’ children who are less serious and less industrious, and so it is across the board: the US chatters a lot about how we need to be technologically superior and smarter than Asia while Asia beats us dead in intellectual matters so we turn around and say, we have to attract more smart Asians with good work ethics so we can continue to dominate the earth.
.
ΩΩMeanwhile, the mass bulk of the middle class which gained so much thanks to unions and World War victories in the past, are decomposing and collapsing rapidly. This is a problem that can’t be wished away via handing out lots of fiat funny money dollars courtesy of our government. We see in the slums how this doesn’t work. We need incentives to work harder and better but the incentives to offshore overwhelm this no matter how studious or hardworking our children become.
.
ΩΩBack to the above issue of the Japanese company using English, they do this for one reason only: to take over our domestic jobs and markets: US foreign aid to subsidize outsourced jobs in South Asia | Raw Story
The US Embassy in Sri Lanka announced late last week that it will be funding a new program in the South Asian country that will help train workers to speak English and business managers to take advantage of business outsourcing.
.
The program will be involved in “training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers in each of the five districts in the Northern Province,” the Embassy announced on its Web site. “Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms.”
.
The program to teach Sri Lankans how to benefit from outsourcing joins three other projects that USAID, the State Department’s foreign aid arm, is funding in the country. Another of these projects involved USAID helping “a major garment manufacturer to expand its operations to northern Sri Lanka.
.
ΩΩIncidentally, here is a link to an ad posted with this story: Offshore Software Development: Software Development Company India Nagarro
Founded in 1996
Headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in New York, Chicago, Mexico, India, Sweden and Germany
.
ΩΩHAHAHA. Maybe I should whore out my own site this way! Donations are useful to me, it gives me more incentive to do my studious work here.
.
ΩΩHere is the ever-odious Council of Foreign Relations study about how the US has sold our soul to the world for a heap of big, fat, juicy debts: http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/ForeignOwnershipofUSAssets.pdf
ΩΩIt is obvious and stark: the sudden, rocket-upwards of foreigners buying our Treasuries, etc began INSTANTLY when Nixon cut the gold peg! During the middle years, the Presidents negotiated with Germany and Japan various agreements that would raise the value of their currencies. This process ended with a thunderclap in 1992 when Japan’s real estate bubble popped.
.
ΩΩSince then, foreign powers buy up our debts like crazy in order to keep the dollar strong and keep inflation out of the US so we will buy their manufactured stuff and offshore all our manufacturing and office jobs. Back to the issue of inflation in commodities and how this is overturning the ZIRP apple cart: Interest rates will go up quicker than anyone expects, ex-Bank of England officials warn – Telegraph
Sir John added: “I think the Bank will have learned a lesson from the Greenspan years after the dotcom boom when the US was very slow to raise rates back to normal levels. When the Bank thinks recovery is established they will want to normalise quite quickly.”
.
Mr Goodhart is less optimistic about the economy but fears the Bank will have to raise rates to tame inflation as food prices soar. The price of bread is poised to climb after wheat futures rose in July at their fastest monthly rate in 51 years, partly a result of wildfires in Russia’s fertile Volga River region. Data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) today shows that food inflation increased from 1.7pc in June to 2.5pc in July, fuelling Mr Goodhart’s fears.
.
ΩΩThe US studiously ignores food inflation. But when I go shopping, it infuriates me. What $50 used to buy now costs me over $100 and this is in just the last 8 years! Oil inflation boosted food inflation, as always, but speculators are directly responsible for both. Not to mention, the US putting various oil pumping nations in embargo such as Iraq and Iran which artificially reduces oil stocks and thus, causes price hikes.
.
ΩΩThen there is this other very important factor: a billion Chinese climbing rapidly up the economic ladder: China overtakes US as world’s biggest energy consumer | Environment | The Guardian
According to the respected International Energy Agency, China’s use of coal, oil, wind and other sources of power more than doubled in the past decade to reach the equivalent of 2.26bn tonnes of oil in 2009, creeping past the US total of 2.17bn tonnes.
.
This is a major turning point. Energy use is closely related to carbon dioxide emissions, economic expansion and the global balance of power. The US has been the world’s biggest energy user since records began.
.
ΩΩAnd more Chinese news. The government is, as I figured they would, ruthlessly pushing out the low-end jobs and are working on increasing high end jobs like making autos: Beijing seeks to reduce its low-end workforce
An investigation team tasked by the MPC with studying Beijing’s transient population, which numbers 7.6 million people, and over 10 million when military personnel and unregistered short-term visitors are taken into account, issued a report in late July that made the following recommendations:
.
Improve withdrawal mechanisms, decisively eliminate a number of low-end and labor-intensive industries, force the withdrawal of the “five small enterprises” and “six small venues,” and increase the barriers to entry to all markets. Increase government support for reorganizing the traditional service industry and social-oriented service industry to modernize its organizational system, centralize management, and increase efficiency through staff reductions. On the urban outskirts and in rural areas, push for the development of supermarkets, convenience stores, and specialty stores. Plan a unified, city-wide, improved recycling system and offer support to a number of leading enterprises in the recycling sector.
.
ΩΩChina finalized the buying of Volvo from Ford. It is obvious, who has the upper hand here. We are selling off things, China is buying things and we flounder about, worried that children who aren’t studious are being passed over for promotions while Asians move heaven and earth to insure their own children are very competitive and hard working. It is obvious, who will win this race to world dominance.
“The nuns forgave him because I am presuming, the Catholic Church is OK with Catholics flooding into America killing people but I doubt they would be so eager to have a billion Muslims do this, too.”
Very cynical speak, I’d hope the nun would also forgive the muslim, atheist, etc. You may believe that Catholics only forgive Catholics, but it is not so. What is most relevant aspect of this crime – that he was illegal or that he was a drunk driver murderer? The illegal adjective is played up to stoke most outrage, but it is the drunk driving that killed the nun. Again its our legal system NOT functioning and the anger should also be directed there. Why are courts letting out repeat ANY drunk drivers?
Really…do a billion Muslims want to enter the US to kill us? Hadn’t known this…and don’t believe this neocon agitprop. They’d be content for US to just leave them alone.
I agree that a nation that wants to protect its sovereignty needs to protect its borders. The US federal government obviously does not. This fundamentally latino immigration issue is all about cheapening labor and driving living US standard down. The borders are open for latin american peasants to flood in, but remain relatively tight and controlled for more specialized labor pools from other countries (fillipino catholic nurses, doctors from ME, engineers from Korea, etc.).
This schizo “policy” and position taken by the federal gov is meant to divide US. So while I share frustration at this open border nonpolicy, I feel the truer villian is our own government which is colluding with large corporations needing cheap labor and enabling this destruction to american worker and culture.
“This goes back to the idea of a civilization: governments MUST control alien populations, borders and keep taxes current and fair as well as prevent commodity speculation surges in necessities that keep people alive.”
I do think that we are in a mostly deflationary enviroment (wages, consumption, housing down in spite of stim support), gas, oil, food becoming more expensive because money changers are masssively speculating in commodities –wheat, oil, cocoa, etc. — to keep this economic game from collapsing on them. This is driving up those prices now. But what happens if/when the gov cannot continue to support/manipulate housing and employment markets?
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: The Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades: yes, the Catholic Church has very bloody hands. I am married to a Catholic, by the way, but he hates the Pope.
How droll, I just started a very low carb regimen ( less than 50 grams/2 oz a day). No grain products at all. Lots of meat, lots of fats, lots of veggies and fruits.
No ‘taters, sugars, processed corn crap.
“…this is why the government has to be a countervailing force, not an enabling force.”
Well that concept should bring out a few anti-”socialist” free-market screech monkeys.
Seems obvious to me that this is part of the purpose of a democratic, representative government – especially with responsibility to “Regulate Commerce” enshrined in its’ constitution.
Regarding language, math and scholastic achievement – I think it is left-brain linear-logic dominance vs. right-brain holistic, intuitive conceptualization dominance – deductive linear logic vs. conceptual thinking.
My preference would be for full integration of both ways of seeing and analyzing the world. But the sad reality is that since the Cold War (and perhaps going back at least to WW1) the drive has been to educate and reward linear logical thought at the expense of intuitive/holistic conceptualized thinking.
One form of dominant thinking is rigid, predictable, for the most part provable, and highly valued. The other is more open to interpretation and opinion which are often culturally-based and valued. Art is the most obvious example. In the U.S. art programs are among the first to be sacrificed when budgets call for cut-backs – in public education and the in Arts-based professions. Both suffer from economic downturns perhaps more than any other areas of thought and discovery. But science is sacrosanct and only attacked when it conflicts with rigid, nonsensical religious dogma. Math relies on presumed fixed concepts and advanced math is difficult for the vast majority of people to prove or disprove, let alone fully understand.
As a child (after the Korean War) I remember seeing Korean children excel year after year in math competitions. I think it goes hand in hand with militarization of societies, and utilization of selective sciences. Oddly, after a war, art from the regions of conflict and suffering is held in high esteem globally.
Just my two-cents worth…
A final thought:
The push to reduce the low-end work force sounds a lot like what has been happening in the U.S since the Reagan Revolution. With its’ centralization of their economy, I suspect the progress of a science and technology-based economy will bring great achievements and success stories, but also the bleak outcome that so many in North America are experiencing. When that happens, I doubt all that international capital will be able to pick-up and leave as easily as has happened in our country.
charlottemom@ 4:03 pm
Great comment!
Absolutely agree.
Dong Feng 21D, Chinese Missile, Could Shift Pacific Power Balance
U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China – an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175281/tomgram:_bill_mckibben,_a_wilted_senate_on_a_heating_planet/
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: And a mere 15 years ago, we went through one of the coldest years. Sigh.
Yep, charlottemom, I was going to say something similar regarding forgiveness. When it comes to religion, Elaine is a blind, misguided, and angry fool, who doesn’t understand forgiveness, nor compassion. She probably wants the drunk driver put to death. Christians are all about forgiveness, regardless of circumstances of the offense or the offender. Take for instance Pope John Paul II, who forgave his Turkish assassin, who I’m pretty sure was not Catholic, or Jesus himself who said “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” as he was being tortured to death.
Those nuns are good, loving people:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/03/AR2010080302519.html
This was a tragedy about a drunk who needed help, who just happened to be here illegally. And it’s also a lesson about forgiveness.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Drunks who kill others but survive themselves should be executed.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/08/forgiveness_at_benedictine_nuns_silent_retreat.html
The nuns forgave him because I am presuming, the Catholic Church is OK with Catholics flooding into America killing people but I doubt they would be so eager to have a billion Muslims do this, too.
.
wouldnt bet on it… the church is hyper sensitive to its faithful… become to arrogant and the rest of humanity will notice
.
my bet is its pure native identity US/Mexico style playing out surrounded by Big Government that doesnt know if its a UFC Bout or a Porno
.
you know money is unknowable when you can hide dead bodys and get paid…
.
http://www.cahrecords.com
.
mafia goldfish bowl
Harry Potter Star Emma Watson’s Spell-Binding New Hair Style
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2010/08/harry-potter-star-emma-watsons-spell-binding-new-hair-style
.
hated it
Great post as always Elaine! Your description of the difference between genetics and culture in regard to the murky questions of race and ability is spot-on with my own opinion. I wondered what you think about this story, and thought your readers might enjoy as well:
http://blog.swiftkickonline.com/2010/07/valedictorian-speaks-out-against-schooling-in-graduation-speech.html
I also wanted to chime in regarding US foreign aid helping train those who could take over the jobs of american workers. Now, my opinion here is in no way related to the race question as above, I’m strictly talking about large pools of workers here, but I believe that, for the elite, ensuring there is global labour competition, corporations can perform a sort of arbitrage of morals, in the same way that wage pressure is applied when new competitors emerge, so are the choices that individuals might make in regard to doing what is right to put bread on the table. Just a thought.
I guess that’s a bit of a glum thought, though. To end on a higher, if off-key, note, then, here’s one more link:
http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs90s/taodial.php
Best regards
@ Elaine
Re: Each nationalist sector has various attributes and cultures across the planet.
I was reminded of your above comment and your “China 5) year plan” by the article below.
The two quoted paragraphs encapsulated your favourite themes.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LH06Ad02.html
A daring departure from Deng
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
QUOTE
In I978, Deng visited Japan to sign the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Asked about the disputed Diaoyu Islands (called Senkaku in Japanese), Deng said both sides should set aside the dispute: “Our generation is not wise enough to find common language on this problem. The next generation[s] will certainly be wiser, who then will surely find a solution acceptable to both sides.”…….
…..After the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Deng set the 24-character taoguangyanghui policy: “Observe calmly; take a firm stand; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never try to take the lead.” Later, another four-character phrase was added: “Make efforts to get some things done.”
UNQUOTE
Maybe China and India DO produce more studious and hard working students. But they have an advantage as well. The Chinese for examle have 1.2-1.4 billion people versus the US which has 310–315 million people. If BOTH countries produce brilliant mathematicians and scientists at the same percentage rate, of course there will be more Chinese Math and Science whizzes. I really don’t think that is a good measurement of academic success. Personally, I would be more impressed with an education system that can equip a high percentage of its entire student population with as high a level of competence in math and science-and reading and writing skills–as possible. Math and science whizzes are impressive, but they don’t a society make. What makes a society successfull, imho,is having as many people as educated as possible. We should concentrate on ‘raising the floor’ for as many people as we can, then we can worry about cultivating our math and science whizzes.
Also: in the US, there is WAY too much reliance on the use of drugs such as Ritalin. This is used all too often in children who do NOT need it. The US educational system needs a broad based reform, imho, not a focus on developing math and science whizzes.
Asian students who excel often do hard, hard work. I used to win intellectual prizes in school and I sweated bullets to do this! Other kids made fun of me. But they didn’t do well in exams, either.
As for drunk drivers who murder people: ahem.
Drinking is a CHOICE. I used to drink but never drove after drinking anything. I didn’t even have a car for many years!
People who get smashed and then drive know full well, they shouldn’t do this but they do it anyway. If they do choose to do this and kill someone, I firmly believe they should be executed, in public and their bodies hung from a lamp post as a warning to others.
Maybe this will deter people.
And those auto-de-fe Catholics shouldn’t talk about ‘mercy’ so much. After they make all of the victims, the ‘witches’ and the Jews and intellectuals and other Christian groups, into ‘saints’ and relegate all of the previous popes who did these burning at the stakes into hell, I will think they are sincere.
So far, they still claim their victims were satanic.
@EMS
“I firmly believe they should be executed, in public and their bodies hung from a lamp post as a warning to others.”
Yes, do that for anybody who drives a car, drunk or sober,’d be good way to stop Global Warming ( and dependence on imported oil.)
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Yes, crushing the big high-energy cars and hanging the rich drivers would do the trick on CO2. Burning down their mansions: ditto!
After all, we are told over and over again, burning too much fossil fuels will mean an end to ALL life on earth as it will be warm as it was back when dinosaurs were huge giants and trod the verdant earth…oops.
You know, the last 2.5 million years has been incredibly cold compared to previous eras….
Have you Catholic supporters read the detailed reports of child abuse, physical and sexual, by Catholic priests and nuns, at all levels, for many decades, in Ireland ? and the continual cover ups by the Bishops and Archbishops ? And the present Pope was responsible for that. And it’s not just Ireland, it’s the same in every country where the Catholic church operates, worldwide.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Choir boys and orphans didn’t drive cars and run over nuns. So they don’t get this sort of forgiving luv.
Most of the burning of witches in Europe (and in America) was done by Protestants.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/m004rpInquisition_Jan04.htm
Catholic Church apology for the methods of the Inquisition:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/2004/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_20040615_simposio-inquisizione_en.html
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Geeze, so it was called ‘Auto de fe’ because…it was done by German protestants? Hell’s bells, ALL the ‘Christians’ burned witches and religious deviants at the stake! This is why I find Christian chatter about love and forgiveness to be really perverse.
My personal experience growing up in a fanatical Christian family is, this type of person is totally unforgiving and even filled with rank hatred if you don’t worship this peculiar god. And if you talk about the Goddess of Infinity or Mother Nature as ‘gods’ this gets Christians burning hot with fury.
If this illegal alien drunk was shouting ‘Hare Krishna’ while running into the nun, the forgiveness level would be decidedly lower. Much lower.
@Elaine
ELAINE: And a mere 15 years ago, we went through one of the coldest years. Sigh.
Elaine, you really are hopeless, clueless, about climatology. How can somebody who won intellectual prizes and understands financial graphs make such a dumb statement ? You still don’t yet understand the difference between WEATHER and CLIMATE !
What matters is the TREND, a scientific, statistical term. And the trend has to be over a 30 year period. Less than that it’s WEATHER. Not climate.
And it is the average temperature over the globe. Not locally in any one place.
Please ! Meteorology and Climatology are separate scientific disciplines, studying different things.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: Odd how every winter, nearly always, I suffer ‘weather’ but if it warms up a tad here, it is ‘climate’?
@ Yep
And the Popes are INFALLIBLE ? And it took them 400 years plus, to notice that the Inquisition was wrong ?
And now an apology makes it alright ?
It’s like saying a brutal murderer should be let off, because he’s a nice guy really, very kind to his mother, says he’s sorry….
Well, Elaine, thank you again for an excellent post … I am actually reading all the debates about the Hunter School in NY…very enlightening … I am coaching ( not teaching, since some of the kids definitely are smarter than me ) G.T. kids. I also volunteered to teach math for free in a local high school, with a high school graduation rate of 33%. I NEVER heard a “Thank you” from ANY students I taught. It is not about IQ, it is about a dysfuntional culture and like a cancer that is eating away one community after another. Asian kids are getting it but parents, including me, are resisting with a vengeance.
The debate here makes enlightening but depressing reading
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/nyregion/05hunter.html?sort=oldest&offset=4
@ ELAINE: Odd how every winter, nearly always, I suffer ‘weather’ but if it warms up a tad here, it is ‘climate’?
Well, I am trying hard to educate you. I suppose somebody has to do it, even if it is a thankless task…
It’s not about how YOU use the words weather and climate ( or how the uneducated millions out there use those words ) it’s how the *scientists* use them.
What you are doing is as silly as confusing geology and geography, and not being able to see the distinction. Or thinking that physicians study physics.
As with many subjects, there are precise scientific definitions of terms. They do that so they, the scientists, can be certain they are all talking about the same thing.
Think, for example, *organic* chemistry and *organic* farming. Same word, completely different meaning.
You talk to a chemist, they’ll know exactly what the terms organic and inorganic mean.
Talk to a farmer or gardener, about organic, or non-organic, they ought to know what that means.
However, the word ‘organic’, in those two contexts, has totally different meanings.
If the layperson doesn’t understand that, they’ll be very confused, as you demonstrate, Elaine.
Same goes for *weather* and *climate* as scientific terms. Meteorologists study weather. That’s the short term ups and downs, wind, rain, snow, sunshine, etc., in a local area.
Climatologists study climate. That’s the long term development and behaviour of atmospheres around planets, going right back to how the gases got there in the first place thousands of millions of years ago, and how they change and develop over time and how they produce ice ages, are effected by ocean currents, or sun spots, or volcanoes or whatever. Milankovitch Cycles, and all that stuff.
Climate effects weather. Weather doesn’t effect climate. Weather is what you have today as you look out of the window. To know what climate is doing, you need a minimum of 30 years of weather data, to see the trend, i.e to distinguish the signal from the noise.
You know, it’s called ‘statistics’ ?
What’s of concern is Global ( i.e. effecting the whole planet ) Warming ( the whole planet surface and oceans heat up ),
a. k. a.
Climate ( effecting the whole planet ) Change ( not allowing time to adapt )…
and it’s of concern because it’ll have an effect on everybody’s weather, on sea level, on water supplies, etc, etc, etc.
The effects aren’t good, and may be catastrophic.
Any help ?
Phew ! Don’t blame me that the English language is confusing, and that words don’t always mean what you assume they mean. I didn’t invent it or make the rules.
‘k ? r u a fast learna ?
Once upon a time, THERE WAS NO WINTER. That is, for a vast majority of the planet’s existence, we had few to NO GLACIERS.
We are in a brief interglacial period which features ferocious winter cold still. This is NOT NORMAL AT ALL.
We are USED TO THIS so we want it to continue as our status quo BUT WE HATE THE COLD. Much more than the warm which is why people, when given a choice, most often move to HOT PLACES which is why Arizona and Florida has many retired people who fled the cold weather up north.
But this is NOT NORMAL, our weather. It is UNUSUAL when we look at THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF EARTH. See?
Once, Antarctica was warm and lush and so was Alaska even though both were in the far extreme ends of the planet.
We must fear the next ice age, it is most dangerous and much more likely to happen. This is due to it being caused by a drop in solar energy production since these Ice Age cycles began very mysteriously and suddenly and reoccur like clockwork via a mechanism (the sun, most likely) we still struggle to understand.
@ems
“But this is NOT NORMAL, our weather. It is UNUSUAL when we look at THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF EARTH. See?”
That’s not WEATHER. That’s CLIMATE.
“We must fear the next ice age, it is most dangerous and much more likely to happen. This is due to it being caused by a drop in solar energy production since these Ice Age cycles began very mysteriously and suddenly and reoccur like clockwork via a mechanism (the sun, most likely) we still struggle to understand.”
Not so, it is understood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
We don’t need to worry about an Ice Age at all. We do need to worry that we destroy our own civilization by our own stupid behaviour, pumping gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere and wrecking the climate.
All this stuff about people liking warm climates is irrelevant. They like food too. Global agriculture will collapse, is collapsing, because of increasingly frequent severe weather events, as predicted by climatologists.
14 out of 15 all time records for severe weather events have been broken this year. And it is only August.
It’s not the climate change itself that matters, we are extremely adaptable, like all species, or we wouldn’t be here. We found ways to survive from the equator to the pole. But, the agriculture and cities which the vast majority depend on, developed in a benign, stable climatic period, and the changes are now happening too fast for us, let alone all the ecosystems, to be able to adapt. What with Peak Oil on top, and all the other horrors, I simply don’t understand how anybody cannot see that this ship is sinking fast, so to speak….
@wb
See how Sahara turns green with just original seeds (Bill Gates knows this). And how we make all the wrong things in Africa.
The Famine Scam” is a controversial documentary which has won several awards, and was awarded third prize in the Monte Carlo TV festival in June 2008.
1993-4 were unusually cold (compared to a running average) especially in the northern hemisphere.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.B.lrg.gif
However, they were roughly as warm as the WARMEST years of the period 1880-1980.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
@JT
I watched the video. I’m no expert in that area, although I do have the general impression that ‘aid’ has become an industry, a racket. I heard a report about a disaster in S. Sudan. There was a nice little town with a simple peasant economy. No disaster there. The NGOs and UN moved in, massively increased the size of the place, building numerous hotels and recreational facilities, swimming pools and air conditioning, completely wrecked the local farming market economy with imported American grain, lots of the young locals became prostitutes to service the wealthy foreigners, etc, etc. The Aid Industry WAS the disaster, for those people…
The silence coming from the great wasteland is deafening.
Too quiet, considering the people living in tent cities, the ghosts of 19 million empty houses, and the sick on the Gulf of Mexico.
I look for the next war, shortly, plus another pandemic, and a few false flag nukes thrown to up the ante.
is it related to global warming ?
Global warming was all about Cap & Trade … and UN funding. Big flop in Copenhagen, leaving UN screaming for money.
Climate change is the new propaganda paradigm promoting chemical warfare and depopulation. Ozone is BIG … killer of trees, crops, and the weak. Nitrogen cycle fucked up.
Nuke false flags EVENT … complete with new terrorism agenda, should be along shortly.
@PLovering
Global Warming is shown to be happening by climate science…
Climate science is old !
Aristotle divided the world into torrid, temperate, and frigid zones around 300 BC.
Galileo invented the thermometer in 1610.
Torricelli invented the barometer c. 1660. Shortly thereafter he showed that temperature generally declines with altitude.
Hadley worked out the basics of the general circulation in 1735.
Fourier discovered the greenhouse effect in 1824.
Agassiz established that there had been at least one ice age in 1837.
Tyndall identified the major greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere as water vapor and carbon dioxide through spectroscopic lab work in 1859.
Langley got a rough picture of the absorption intensity spectra of different gases c. 1880.
Svante August Arrhenius proposed the theory of anthropogenic warming in a paper in 1896. In it, he prediced several features such as polar amplification, and made a numerical estimate of climate sensitivity.
In 1901, Angstrom and Koch thought they had shot Arrhenius’s paper down with a lab experiment on saturation.
In 1938, Callendar revived AGW theory.
In the 1940s, high altitude observations made during the war showed that absorption parameters changed radically with pressure and somewhat less so with temperature. This invalidated the work of Angstrom and Koch.
In 1956 Gilbert Plass once again reintroduced AGW theory. Since then, no one familiar with the field has doubted it.
Smagorinsky et al. wrote the first tentative global circulation model in 1955.
Manabe and Strickler wrote the first radiative convective model in 1964; such models are now a staple of planetary astronomy.
So climatology is a very old field, and even AGW theory predates relativity and quantum mechanics.
People who ‘don’t believe in science’ have a slight problem if they’re using computers to read this…
What folks choose to *do* about AGW, if anything, is another matter. That’s politics.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/More-evidence-than-you-can-shake-a-hockey-stick-at.html
We are still very much in the Ice Age cycle here. I see little sign of us departing from the peculiar situation where the earth has major ice fields covering entire continents.
Yes, it is warming up. This is NOT a sign that we are dying, this is a sign we are returning to NORMAL which is NOT Ice all over a number of continents.
@emsnews, “We are still very much in the Ice Age cycle here.”
Yep, wasn’t so long ago that the goblinoids were mired in Ice Age fears … 1945 -1970.
Satanists deal in fears to keep us distracted.
NSA kept a list of fears for President Nixon … to whip out on a moments notice.
@wb
“I watched the video. I’m no expert in that area, although I do have the general impression that ‘aid’ has become an industry, a racket.”
Now take that exact same formula and apply it to climate science.
They can do whatever they want with the money.
Remember; look at their hands not their faces
.
@JT
“Now take that exact same formula and apply it to climate science.”
Nonsense, JT. I’m not saying ( re aid ) that there are no disasters or famines, or that people shouldn’t help those in distress. I said that there maybe cases where people exploit those situations ( which your video seems to indicate ), but I have not investigated that area, so I don’t know.
Climate science is entirely different. It’s a branch of science. If they can read, anybody can study it, just as anybody can study mathematics or geology or botany or medicine.
“They can do whatever they want with the money.”
Who are ‘they’ ? What money ?
Global warming isn’t interested in people or money, it’s arises from basic physics.
If you’re suggesting that some corrupt people will exploit the situation for their own advantage, or whatever, well, what’s new about that ? Naomi Klein is constantly documenting examples of disaster capitalism.
Nice article.