Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Author: Paul Handover
Sent to me by Neil Kelly, a long-standing friend in Devon, England.
Wish I could add something witty to this, but I can’t! But it does remind me of the saying, there’s no such thing as error-free software!
P.S. the image is too small to read the copyright notice – anyone help out? It would be good to credit it properly.
By Paul Handover
Patrice Ayme believes it is real, on a scientific basis.
On the 16th October, we published a Post called Climate warming?. The sub-heading gave a clue to the content of the Post: What’s the truth about climate warming, e’rr change?
My stance was to express doubt about man causing climate warming. But then, a good friend of this Blog, Patrice Ayme, added this comment:
Lowest ice on record in the Arctic was 2007, then 2008, and now 2009. [More exactly the sea with more than 15% ice reflecting.]
As I pointed out on http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/05/ (May 31, 2009).
The sun has been going down in the last 30 years or so… Watch the nice graph there, extracted from Science Mag…
We are just coming out of a solar minimum so pronounced that cosmic rays, less deflected by the sun’s magnetic field, have become a problem… This explains why greenhouse heating has been less pronounced than some expected in the last few years. Things should pick up in the next 7 years, as the sun heats up. The multiplying factor is 3 or 4…
It seemed appropriate to ask Messrs Ayme and Carlin for permission to reproduce both their Blog articles. Both very kindly agreed – thanks Gents.
These are long articles – but will inform you in a way that the mass media never do.
Here’s Patrice (Alan Carlin’s article tomorrow):
Read more about this important subject
Fingers crossed this becomes a key political statement.
I am indebted to Baseline Scenario for drawing my attention to a recent article in Bloomberg. Greenspan is voicing what many regard as so obvious we wonder why the present US Government haven’t been pushing for this for some time. (And if you want the answer to that question, read this)
Anyway, in the Bloomberg story Greenspan says:
“If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big,” Greenspan said today. “In 1911 we broke up Standard Oil — so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.”
Breathtaking!
And Greenspan goes on to say:
“Failure is an integral part, a necessary part of a market system,” he said. “If you start focusing on those
who should be shrinking, it undermines growing standards of living and can even bring them down.”
Amen to that!
By Paul Handover
Is this, in the end, how our Governments are treating us?
Yves Smith runs the incredibly successful Blog, Naked Capitalism. Frankly, I have no idea where she finds the time to put together her Posts, many of which are constructed on the back of in-depth research.
On Friday, 16th October there was a Post which has huge implications. It is all about Access Journalism. It needs to be read. Here’s an extract.
Let us start with the cheerleading in the media over Wall Street, and in particular, Goldman earnings. Matt Taibbi, in “Good News on Wall Street Means… What Exactly?,” tells us why this is so distorted:
It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality.
I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort, one that might point out that unemployment is still at a staggering high, foreclosures are racing along at a terrifying clip, and real people are struggling more than ever. In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage.
The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control (and it was already pretty good at that, see the BBC series, The Century of the Self, via Google video, for a real eye-opener). I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access.
As I said, please read the Post in full. Oh, and I see Baseline Scenario picked up on this as well.
By Paul Handover
Just a few figures that underline reality.
US rent indexes declined in September. Last time this happened was 1992.
US Consumer Price Index fell 1.3%, year on year, in September 2009. Note that it bottomed at -2.1% y/y in July 2009, making it the largest annual contraction since 1949.
September’s US food prices fell (-0.2%) in September, the first annual decline in over 40 years.
US industrial production, as of August, was down (-10.7%) compared to August 2008.
Just a US problem?
Japanese industrial production, as of August, was down (-22.7%) compared to August 2008.
Britain’s industrial production, as of August, was down (-9.3%) compared to August 2008.
Eurozone area industrial production, as of August, was down (-15.9%) compared to August 2008.
Meanwhile the banks steam ahead reporting huge profits ……
Crazy world!
By Paul Handover
What’s the truth about climate warming, e’rr change?
I will put my hand up to subscribing to the notion of humans having such an effect on Earth’s atmosphere that climate warming was likely, inevitable and could be the destruction of life, as we know it. It seemed to fit the idea of mankind being disconnected from the planet and completely out of touch with the reality that our Earth is a fragile place, our atmosphere a (relatively) very thin ‘skin’ around our planet and few of us spare a second thought for protecting the environment for the generations to come.
But gradually the faint sounds of opposition to the ‘simple’ argument that man is screwing up the Planet have become clearer. The latest is a very clear cry.
One man’s mission to stop the killing and capture of dolphins.
A dolphin is one of the most beautiful creatures on this planet.
I was going to write a very long Post setting out the reasons why everyone who cares for these creatures needs to get involved. But, in the end, a few links and extracts achieve that much more effectively than several hundred words from me.
Dog love
The following is a guest post from Daniela Caride. Daniela is the publisher of The Daily Tail, a Blog about her life with animals. To use her own words, “life with three dogs, three cats, her husband and the countless other animals she meets.”
Dogs inhabit my very first memories. I grew up with dogs as part of my family. They, too, got goodnight kisses from Mom.
In my early years I realized dogs had their own traits, just like humans. While our old boxer China quietly roamed around the house looking for love, Colita, our crazy Dachshund, tried to pee on everyone’s legs. If unsuccessful, the green rug under the dining table was an agreeable option. I don’t blame him. It looked just like a big square of grass.
The coincidence of events
Today started like most days in that after a breakfast with Jean it was time to switch on the PC and review the news that had come in over night and think about what material might be appropriate for the Blog. But that’s as far as it went for a normal day.
Because a number of items came together in a way that left me reeling. Not because it was necessarily new information but because together they represent the most compelling evidence as to why this economic crisis happened and, more importantly, the terrible likelihood that our leaders aren’t go to fix it and that the future will bring an even worse calamity.
What, You Think The Savings Rate Can’t Go Higher?
This Post is entirely indebted to others. It is too important a message not to warrant dissemination on this Blog. (But read to the end to see a valuable tutorial from our own Dr.Jarrell.)
So thanks: First to Naked Capitalism for providing the link (Yves does such an amazing job). Then to Business Insider for the actual article, which is the bulk of this Post, as follows. Finally to David Goldman who provides the data behind the chart.
The article starts thus:
This chart should give chills to anyone hoping that Americans will stop saving and start spending again.
Learning from Dogs 