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Javier E

Italian PM urges UK to do right thing on Brexit deal | Giuseppe Conte | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-on-brexit-deal-giuseppe-conte

Italy pandemic response

shared by Javier E on 08 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Conte won the hearts of many Italians during the early stages of the coronavirus emergency with his calm, assured and empathic messages. As he announced a national lockdown, he said: “Let’s remain distant today so we can hug with more warmth tomorrow.”
  • The words made an impact. “It was a message to Italian citizens calling them to make great sacrifices, but it was also a message of hope and confidence in the future,” he said in the interview. “Deaths were increasing every day and this was very painful. We had to stay focused and ask for maximum cohesion of all citizens while trying to maintain a relationship of trust – this was fundamental.”
  • “Behind the reality of the Italian epidemiological data there is no miracle, but the very hard efforts and sacrifices of the entire country, which allowed us to overcome the most acute phase of the pandemic and now allows us to face this new phase with a great sense of responsibility and attention,” Conte said.
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  • “We are living in a situation that was unthinkable for all of us. Some accuse me of having done too much, of being a liberticide, while others accuse me of having done too little. I’m aware that before responding to public opinion or a judicial authority, I should respond to my conscience. And I say this humbly: I think I did everything possible to manage a really difficult situation.”
Javier E

Why a Belgian insurer studies the impact of air pollution on health | Air pollution | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...impact-air-pollution-on-health

air pollution trees effects study response climate policy

shared by Javier E on 22 Sep 23 - No Cached
  • hy would a health insurance company study air pollution? Because, as Christian Horemans, an environment and health expert with the Belgian mutual insurer Mutualités Libres, explains: “It has an enormous impact on public health and an enormous cost for the Belgian compulsory health and disability insurance
  • The insurer’s recent study , carried out by a team that included Belgian and Dutch universities and research centres, compared health insurance claims from 1.2 million people in Belgium in 2019 with particle pollution in their neighbourhoods. The financial results were startling.
  • the study found associations between GP and hospital emergency visits and particle pollution (PM2.5), and when it applied the results to Belgium as a whole, researchers estimated that reducing air pollution to match the least polluted 25% of places in Belgium would have saved €43m (£37m) in GP and emergency hospital visits in 2019.
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  • “The lower the concentrations of PM2.5, the fewer people need to see the general practitioner. So improving air quality not only benefits public health, but also ensures the financial sustainability of the social security system.”
  • The study also found that more tree and grass cover in a neighbourhood was associated with less demand for GP and hospital visits. This was especially true of cities and accords with wider evidence on green space in urban areas.
  • The World Health Organization already recommends that we have access to 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres) of public green space, about two-thirds the size of a football pitch, within 300 metres of our homes.
  • The urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk recently suggested a 3-30-300 rule of thumb for urban forestry and urban greening – every citizen should be able to see at least three trees (of a decent size) from their home, have 30% tree-canopy cover in their neighbourhood and not live more than 300 metres from a park or green space.
  • “Based on these results, we need more, not fewer initiatives, like Barcelona’s Superblocks. Political pressure to reverse urban planning initiatives that reduce air pollution and increase tree cover seem ridiculous.”
Javier E

Is the N.R.A. Un-American? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...is-the-n-r-a-un-american

guns rebellion right constitution history culture US politics

shared by Javier E on 14 May 13 - No Cached
  • In 1990, Fred Romero, an N.R.A. field representative, put the case as clearly as possible: “The Second Amendment is not there to protect the interests of hunters, sport shooters and casual plinkers.” Rather, the “Second Amendment is … literally a loaded gun in the hands of the people held to the heads of government.”
  • how can the people’s enemy be the representatives elected by the people?
  • The N.R.A. militants have an answer. The purpose of the American Revolution was to secure the freedom of individuals and that means a minimally intrusive government. Representatives elected to safeguard that freedom may become intoxicated by their power and act in ways that restrict rather than enhance individual choice. At that point it is the people’s right and duty to rise against them. Measures limiting gun ownership are a sure sign that government is moving in the direction of central control and tyranny.
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  • But who gets to decide that tyranny is imminent, and by what measure is the imminence of tyranny determined?
  • A commenter posting under the name Sanchez explained that “Tyranny consists of many things we have experienced the last 4 years, the firearm issue the latest in the line of them.” The point was echoed and amplified by another commenter, William Gill: “The second amendment is the only one that can assure the protection of your other rights which are being attacked almost daily by the current administration.” (In short, the Obama administration = tyranny.)
  • A commenter posting as Steve responded, “It’s not ‘Tyranny’ just because you were outvoted. That’s Democracy.”
  • he is met immediately by two responses from other commenters. First, “Steve, you’re assuming that the voting process was above board! Let’s face it, this election in November was by no means above board.” That is, the election results did not reflect majority will but some form of corrupt manipulation. (Those conspiring to overthrow government cite a conspiracy theory as their justification.)
  • The second response cuts deeper: “We live in a Republic Steve … majority rules is a problem indeed” (Buck Harmon). Harmon is invoking the familiar distinction between a democracy and a republic. In a democracy the majority determines what the law is and could, at least theoretically, take away the rights of individuals for the sake of the “public good.” In a republic, majority will is held in check by constitutional guarantees that forbid legislation encroaching on individual rights even if 51 percent or 95 percent of the population favors it
  • It follows from this distinction that a government elected by the majority can begin to think it can do anything it wants to, can begin to act as if we lived in a democracy rather than in a republic, and when that happens, or is in danger of happening, there is what the former Senate candidate Sharron Angle called a “Second Amendment remedy.”
  • So for Angle and others, that’s the shape of tyranny — legislation that, in their judgment, abridges constitutionally protected rights. Sanchez explains: “We are all to decide what tyranny is. Just as we decide what law we obey or not.”
  • This antinomian declaration — our inner light will tell us when and when not to obey — flies in the face of another commonplace of democracy: ours is a government of laws not men (a declaration found in the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts).
  • Another version of the commonplace is, no man is above the law.
  • C. P. takes the logic to its conclusion: “Secession is near. Can’t wait. Which by the way is Constitutional.” It’s constitutional, in this view, because a government in the act of eroding constitutional values is itself unconstitutional and has become a tyranny. Therefore to oppose it by whatever means available, including force, is not to undermine constitutionality, but to affirm it.
  • is it — to return to my original musings — un-American? Yes and no. On the one hand, nothing can be more American than throwing off the shackles of a government that has overstepped its bounds and disregarded the rights of its citizens.
  • on the other hand, the American tradition of accepting the results of elections — even when they bring with them policies you believe to be misguided at best and disastrous at worst — is in danger of being undermined when groups of armed people decide that the present leadership is infected by unpatriotic, socialist ideas and must be resisted at all costs.
  • A government founded in a revolutionary moment is always vulnerable to a determination by a zealous minority that its revolutionary ideals have been compromised by itself. When that happens, each side will engage in its favored rhetoric,
abbykleman

No 'G'day, mate': On call with Australian prime minister, Trump badgers and brags - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html

shared by abbykleman on 02 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 02 Feb 17
     
    It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief - a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America's staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week. Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S.
Sean Kirkpatrick

THE WORLD; Return From the Dustbin of History - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...om-the-dustbin-of-history.html

shared by Sean Kirkpatrick on 06 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Sean Kirkpatrick on 06 Mar 12
     
    "I appeal to you, a future generation of Party leaders, whose historical mission will include the obligation to take apart the monstrous cloud of crimes that is growing ever more huge in these frightful times. . . . -Nikolai Bukharin I am roleplaying nikolai bukharin in the simulation in class. I think it is important to note how he gets underlooked when in comes to his role in the 1917 revolution.
Conner Armstrong

U.S. Stock Values Have Analysts Worried - MoneyBeat - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...k-values-have-analysts-worried

US economic stock values wsj

shared by Conner Armstrong on 20 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Money managers are wondering whether soft earnings will justify more stock gains, given the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 26.5% rise last year. That helps explain why the Dow is down 118 points to start the year.
  • hey are far from most extremes of 2000, however. So while many investors are turning cautious, few are pulling back wholesale.
  • Goldman SachsGS +0.63% investment strategist David Kostin startled investors a week ago by warning that prices are high compared to analysts’ forecasts. The chances are two out of three that the S&P will fall at least 10% sometime this year, before finishing with an overall yearly gain of around 3%, he said.
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  • The S&P 500 trades at 16 times forecast earnings, he calculates, well above 13, the average going back to the 1970s. Since 1976, it has hardly ever surpassed 17 times forecast earnings. The main exception came during the stock bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
  • His conclusion: Investors are overexposed to stocks, but they haven’t gone to bubblelike extremes
Javier E

GOP's Long-Predicted Comeuppance Has Arrived | TPM Editors Blog - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...ed_comeuppance_has_arrived.php

republicans budget government coalition

shared by Javier E on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • TPM Editor’s Blog GOP’s Long-Predicted Comeuppance Has Arrived Share this story on Facebook Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Tweet this story Email this story to a friend Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., right, the Republican Conference Chair, arrive at the House of Representatives. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Brian Beutler July 31, 2013, 5:55 PM 65028 Republicans have dealt with some embarrassing moments on the House floor over the past year, but none so revealing or damning as today’s snafu, when they yanked a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Even the recent farm bill fiasco wasn’t as significant an indictment of the GOP’s governing potential. It might look like a minor hiccup, or a symbolic error. But it spells doom for the party’s near-term budget strategy and underscores just how bogus the party’s broader agenda really is and has been for the last four years. In normal times, the House and Senate would each pass a budget, the differences between those budgets would be resolved, and appropriators in both chambers would have binding limits both on how much money to spend, and on which large executive agencies to spend it. But these aren’t normal times. Republicans have refused to negotiate away their budget differences with Democrats, and have instead instructed their appropriators to use the House GOP budget as a blueprint for funding the government beyond September. Like all recent GOP budgets, this year’s proposes lots of spending on defense and security, at the expense of all other programs. Specifically, it sets the total pool of discretionary dollars at sequestration levels, then funnels money from thinly stretched domestic departments (like Transportation and HUD) to the Pentagon and a few other agencies. But that’s all the budget says. It doesn’t say how to allocate the dollars, nor does it grapple in any way with the possibility that cutting domestic spending so profoundly might be unworkable. It’s an abstraction.
  • It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House.
  • many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.
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  • “With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted three months ago,” said an angry appropriations chair Hal Rogers (R-KY). “Thus I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration — and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts — must be brought to an end.”
  • It also suggests that the GOP’s preference for permanent sequestration-level spending, particularly relative to increasing taxes, is not politically viable. If they want to lift the defense cuts, they’re going to have to either return to budget negotiations with Democrats, or agree to rescind sequestration altogether.
grayton downing

BBC News - Japan will stand up to China, says PM Shinzo Abe - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-24684683

japan china politics crisis

shared by grayton downing on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Mr Abe told the Wall Street Journal there were "concerns that China was trying to change the status quo by force, rather than by the rule of law".
  • Relations between China and Japan have been strained over recent years.
  • using air force planes to shoot down unmanned Chinese aircraft in Japanese airspace.
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  • Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.
  • China has warned against Japanese nationalism in a region where Japan's colonial expansionism is still bitterly remembered.
  • "There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," Mr Abe says.
  • On Saturday, China's defence ministry responded saying: "If Japan does resort to enforcement measures like shooting down aircraft, that is a serious provocation to us, an act of war.
Javier E

From Inside and Outside the Iron Dome, Once Again - James Fallows - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...374709

israel morality palestine conflict extremism leadership

shared by Javier E on 21 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • When you write that many "vastly more Palestinian families have been killed..because of differences in offensive weaponry and defensive systems and other factors" you might mention that the "other factors" included the Hamas government's refusal to build shelters and defensive systems to protect their people, as well as their use of civilians as shields to hide behind when they shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.
  • From Inside and Outside the Iron Dome, Once Again "If you continue looking up to the sky, you will not notice that the house is already burning from within." A reader in Jerusalem on the real threat to his country. James Fallows Jul 19 2014, 1:17 PM ET
  • When you write that many "vastly more Palestinian families have been killed..because of differences in offensive weaponry and defensive systems and other factors" you might mention that the "other factors" included the Hamas government's refusal to build shelters and defensive systems to protect their people, as well as their use of civilians as shields to hide behind when they shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.
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  • there is an inexhaustible supply of passionate but irreconcilable, and familiar, statements of who is "more to blame" for the escalating violence and who originally wronged whom. 
  • For us living here, the current military operation and the ongoing drizzle of rockets are neither unbearable nor threatening in an existential way. Iron Dome has enabled Israelis to continue with their normal lives neither terrified nor terrorized.
  • this video because watching it reminded me, through its absence, of the quality of moral breadth, compassion, and bravery that distinguishes people willing to take risks for peace.
  • When you write that many "vastly more Palestinian families have been killed..because of differences in offensive weaponry and defensive systems and other factors" you might mention that the "other factors" included the Hamas government's refusal to build shelters and defensive systems to protect their people, as well as their use of civilians as shields to hide behind when they shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.
  • consider this recent CNN exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Israeli Economics Minister Naftali Bennett. I have heard from people in Israel, America, and Europe who say that Bennett is speaking tough, plain, necessary truths. I have heard from others in those same places who think, as I do, that Bennett sounds appallingly callous about other people's loss of life—in this case, the deaths of the four little boys on the beach. Wolf Blitzer himself seems taken aback by what he is hearing. It's worth noting that Bennett features this clip on his own YouTube site. 
  • the rabbi grossly exaggerated the impact of Hamas terror on Jerusalem and portrayed it with unduly epic dimensions. In so doing, he distorts the actual power imbalance in this tragic situation, in addition to victimizing me and my fellow Israeli citizens.
  • As a society, we are a (powerful) side in this conflict, not a helpless victim.
  • The blinding victimhood embodied in the rabbi's comments is shameful because it points at an abject moral, spiritual and leadership failure.
  • The rockets are not really scary nor are they a true existential threat. Racism, radicalism, and religious intoxication from brute power has become an imminent danger to our old and beloved peoplehood. When people are accustomed to hearing that they are perpetual innocent victims of Palestinian aggression, they eventually translate they frustration into rage and start seeking justice in revenge. If you continue looking up to the sky, you will not notice that the house is already burning from within. 
Emilio Ergueta

Narendra Modi to become first Indian PM to visit Israel - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-india-32955116

indian israel bbc history politics

shared by Emilio Ergueta on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Narendra Modi is to become the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel, India's foreign minister has said.
  • The two countries have shared 23 years of diplomatic relations and are working together on counter-terrorism, defence, agriculture and the water and energy sectors.But no Indian prime minister or president has ever visited Israel.
  • The two countries have shared 23 years of diplomatic relations and are working tog
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  • "High level visits between both countries... are a natural ingredient of tightening relationship between Israel and India," Mr Carmon was quoted as saying by The Hindu newspaper.
  • Emilio Ergueta on 01 Jun 15
     
    Indian president plans to visit Israel
qkirkpatrick

​Israel could lose 'credibility' over Netanyahu's stance on Palestine - Obama... - 0 views

rt.com/...-israel-lose-credibility-obama

israel palestine US history

shared by qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • sraeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s inconsistent views on Palestine could cost Israel its world “credibility,” US President Barack Obama has warned. This is the latest jab at Netanyahu in the ongoing US-Israeli rift over Palestinian statehood.
  • Obama was responding to a question regarding Netanyahu’s contradictory comments made about the creation of a Palestinian state before and after the March’s general electio
  • From Obama’s point of view, Netanyahu is someone who is driven by fear. He is “predisposed to think of security first. To think perhaps that peace is naive … To see the worst possibilities, as opposed to the best possibilities in Arab partners or Palestinian partners, and so I do think that right now, those politics, and those fears are driving the government’s response," Obama said.
  • qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15
     
    Israeli Palestine conflcit
Javier E

The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices - Derek ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...267255

rational choice rationality psychology consumer economics

shared by Javier E on 20 May 15 - No Cached
  • Atlantic.displayRandomElement('#header li.business .sponsored-dropdown-item'); Derek Thompson - Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website. More Derek has also written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. All Posts RSS feed Share Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter « Previous Thompson Email Print Close function plusOneCallback () { $(document).trigger('share'); } $(document).ready(function() { var iframeUrl = "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"; var toolsClicked = false; $('#toolsTop').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'top'; }); $('#toolsBottom').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'bottom'; }); $('#thanksForSharing a.hide').click(function() { $('#thanksForSharing').hide(); }); var onShareClickHandler = function() { var top = parseInt($(this).css('top').replace(/px/, ''), 10); toolsClicked = (top > 600) ? 'bottom' : 'top'; }; var onIframeReady = function(iframe) { var win = iframe.contentWindow; // Don't show the box if there's no ad in it if (win.$('.ad').children().length == 1) { return; } var visibleAds = win.$('.ad').filter(function() { return !($(this).css('display') == 'none'); }); if (visibleAds.length == 0) { // Ad is hidden, so don't show return; } if (win.$('.ad').hasClass('adNotLoaded')) { // Ad failed to load so don't show return; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('display', 'block'); var top; if(toolsClicked == 'bottom' && $('#toolsBottom').length) { top = $('#toolsBottom')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsBottom').height() - 310; } else { top = $('#toolsTop')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsTop').height() + 10; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('left', (-$('#toolsTop').offset().left + 60) + 'px'); $('#thanksForSharing').css('top', top + 'px'); }; var onShare = function() { // Close "Share successful!" AddThis plugin popup if (window._atw && window._atw.clb && $('#at15s:visible').length) { _atw.clb(); } if (iframeUrl == null) { return; } $('#thanksForSharingIframe').attr('src', "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"); $('#thanksForSharingIframe').load(function() { var iframe = this; var win = iframe.contentWindow; if (win.loaded) { onIframeReady(iframe); } else { win.$(iframe.contentDocument).ready(function() { onIframeReady(iframe); }) } }); }; if (window.addthis) { addthis.addEventListener('addthis.ready', function() { $('.articleTools .share').mouseover(function() { $('#at15s').unbind('click', onShareClickHandler); $('#at15s').bind('click', onShareClickHandler); }); }); addthis.addEventListener('addthis.menu.share', function(evt) { onShare(); }); } // This 'share' event is used for testing, so one can call // $(document).trigger('share') to get the thank you for // sharing box to appear. $(document).bind('share', function(event) { onShare(); }); if (!window.FB || (window.FB && !window.FB._apiKey)) { // Hook into the fbAsyncInit function and register our listener there var oldFbAsyncInit = (window.fbAsyncInit) ? window.fbAsyncInit : (function() { }); window.fbAsyncInit = function() { oldFbAsyncInit(); FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); }; } else if (window.FB) { FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); } }); The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices By Derek Thompson he
  • First, making a choice is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced to make a number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb.
  • Second, having too many choices can make us less likely to come to a conclusion. In a famous study of the so-called "paradox of choice", psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar found that customers presented with six jam varieties were more likely to buy one than customers offered a choice of 24.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • neurologists are finding that many of the biases behavioral economists perceive in decision-making start in our brains. "Brain studies indicate that organisms seem to be on a hedonic treadmill, quickly habituating to homeostasis," McFadden writes. In other words, perhaps our preference for the status quo isn't just figuratively our heads, but also literally sculpted by the hand of evolution inside of our brains.
  • The third check against the theory of the rational consumer is the fact that we're social animals. We let our friends and family and tribes do our thinking for us
  • Many of our mistakes stem from a central "availability bias." Our brains are computers, and we like to access recently opened files, even though many decisions require a deep body of information that might require some searching. Cheap example: We remember the first, last, and peak moments of certain experiences.
  • The popular psychological theory of "hyperbolic discounting" says people don't properly evaluate rewards over time. The theory seeks to explain why many groups -- nappers, procrastinators, Congress -- take rewards now and pain later, over and over again. But neurology suggests that it hardly makes sense to speak of "the brain," in the singular, because it's two very different parts of the brain that process choices for now and later. The choice to delay gratification is mostly processed in the frontal system. But studies show that the choice to do something immediately gratifying is processed in a different system, the limbic system, which is more viscerally connected to our behavior, our "reward pathways," and our feelings of pain and pleasure.
  • the final message is that neither the physiology of pleasure nor the methods we use to make choices are as simple or as single-minded as the classical economists thought. A lot of behavior is consistent with pursuit of self-interest, but in novel or ambiguous decision-making environments there is a good chance that our habits will fail us and inconsistencies in the way we process information will undo us.
  • Our brains seem to operate like committees, assigning some tasks to the limbic system, others to the frontal system. The "switchboard" does not seem to achieve complete, consistent communication between different parts of the brain. Pleasure and pain are experienced in the limbic system, but not on one fixed "utility" or "self-interest" scale. Pleasure and pain have distinct neural pathways, and these pathways adapt quickly to homeostasis, with sensation coming from changes rather than levels
  • Social networks are sources of information, on what products are available, what their features are, and how your friends like them. If the information is accurate, this should help you make better choices. On the other hand, it also makes it easier for you to follow the crowd rather than engaging in the due diligence of collecting and evaluating your own information and playing it against your own preferences
grayton downing

'Airpocalypse' Hits Harbin, Closing Schools - NYTimes.com - 0 views

sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/...hina-closing-schools-and-roads

china pollution smog culture closing crisis

shared by grayton downing on 21 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • School was canceled, traffic was nearly paralyzed and the airport was shut down in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin on Monday as off-the-charts pollution dropped visibility to less than 10 meters in parts of the provincial capital.
  • A dark, gray cloud that the local weather bureau described as “heavy fog” has shrouded the city of 10 million since Thursday, but the smoke thickened significantly on Sunday,
  • “You can’t see your own fingers in front of you,”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “You can hear the person you are talking to, but not see him
  • The Chinese government describes air with an AQI between 301 and 500 as “heavily polluted” and urges people to refrain from exercising outdoors; the elderly and other vulnerable populations are supposed to stay indoors entirely
  • between 301 and 500 as “hazardous.”
  • Beijing declared an “airpocalpyse” last January when the U.S. Embassy reported an AQI equivalent of 755, with a PM2.5 concentration of 866 milligrams per cubic meter.
  • The pollution in Harbin has caused a 30 percent surge in hospital admissions
  • In the meantime, residents were left comparing the air to something out of a horror film
Emilio Ergueta

Biden calls Iraqi PM to calm outcry over Carter remarks on fight against Isis | World n... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...iraq-us-squabble-isis-advances

Iraq syria ISIS world news politics US Biden

shared by Emilio Ergueta on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • US vice-president Joe Biden on Monday spoke to the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to reassure him of US support, a day after controversial remarks by the defense secretary, Ash Carter, sparked an argument over the recent military successes of Islamic State.
  • A White House statement on Monday said Biden recognised “the enormous sacrifice and bravery” that Iraqi forces had displayed over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere, and welcomed an Iraqi decision to mobilise additional troops and prepare for counterattack operations.
  • Nonetheless, rival powers and allies traded barbs and accusations over the recent successes of Isis, amid warnings that it may execute hundreds of hostages captured in its latest battles. In Iran, Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards, said the US had “no will” to fight Isis.
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  • Last week, the militant group seized the capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, its greatest victory in Iraq since its conquest of Mosul last summer and its declaration of a caliphate spanning swaths of Iraq and Syria. Isis advances have not been limited to Iraq. Last week, the group took control of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra and strategic gas fields nearby after a week-long siege that routed forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The victory has triggered a humanitarian crisis, due to the flight of thousands of residents.
qkirkpatrick

Israel PM Netanyahu attacks Orange boss for pulling deal - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-33013390

israel palestine history crisis culture

shared by qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Israel's Prime Minister has attacked the boss of the French telecom giant Orange for looking to pull out of a deal with an Israeli partner.
  • Partner controls close to 28% of Israel's mobile market and while Orange has a licensing deal with Partner, allowing it to use the Orange brand name, it does not have a controlling stake in the company.
  • On 6 May, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a Paris-based NGO, said: "Partner is building infrastructure on confiscated Palestinian land and offers services to settlers and the Israeli army."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Jewish settlements on occupied territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Neither Israel nor Partner commented on the FIDH report.
  • At a conference in Cairo on Wednesday, Mr Richard said: "I am ready to abandon this [partnership] tomorrow morning but the point is that I want to secure the legal risk for the company.
  • "We want to be one of the trustful partners of all Arab countries."
  • "Simultaneously, I call on our friends to say in a clear and loud voice that they object to any kind of boycott against the Jewish state."
  • qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15
     
    Company pulls deal with Partner Communications after finding out they build infrastructure on confiscated Palestinian land
Javier E

Inventing Attention < PopMatters - 0 views

www.popmatters.com/...138256-

attention focus information surplus filtering technology

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Olcott wants to know how to measure the return on investment for attention spent, so that individuals could determine how to invest attention rather than merely expend it.
  • I wonder if our awareness of attention as a quantity to spend is the problem, burdening us with a kind of reflexivity that cannibalizes our experience of being engrossed in an activit
  • Olcott brings up the received wisdom that our sense of the scarcity of our attention is a product of the sudden information surfeit, which has made us aware of how little time we have for the information we want to consume, or—the same thing—the elasticity of our curiosity when information becomes cheap. Olcott has even attempted to quantify this: “the flow of information clamoring for attention has been increasing at somewhere between 30 and 60 percent per year for the past two decades, while our ability to absorb information has been growing at only about 5 percent per year (and that primarily through our growing tendency to multitask, or do several things superficially rather than one or two things deeply).”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “When technology made the threshold of entry into communication high, the amount of attention relative to the amount of information to which it could be paid was relatively large.” That made the limits of our media-consumption time irrelevant. But now the analog limits are gone.
  • we become aware of its value, and we want that value to be convertible into other forms of value (as capitalism trains us to expect).
  • The open-endedness makes us feel the information flow as “overload”—it is never simply settled as what it is, and requires continual decisionmaking from us, continual reaffirmation of the filters we’ve chosen. My RSS feed demands more from me than a newspaper, because I’m responsible at a meta level for what information it brings me; before, my decisionmaking would end with the decision to buy a paper. Now I have to tell myself I have enough, even as the culture tells me that in general, too much is never enough, and “winning” is having more.
  • As a result, I start to feel cheated by time because I can’t amass more of it. I become alienated from it rather inhabiting it, which makes me feel bored in the midst of too many options. The sense of overload is a failure of our focus rather than the fault of information itself or the various media. Calling it “attention” in the contemporary sense and economizing it doesn’t repair focus so much as redefine it as a shorter span, as inherently fickle and ephemeral.
  • I fear that expecting to profit from paying attention is a mistake, a kind of category error. Attention seems to me binary—it is engaged or it isn’t; it isn’t amenable to qualitative evalution. If we start assessing the quality of our attention, we get pulled out of what we were paying attention to, and pay attention to attention to some degree, becoming strategic with it, kicking off a reflexive spiral that leads only to further insecurity and disappointment. Attention is never profitable enough, never sufficient.
  • serendipity is a better attention-management strategy, a more appropriate way to deal with those times when we can no longer focus and become suddenly aware that we need to direct our attention somewhere.
prendergastja

US unveils 1st plan of its kind to fight drugs in Caribbean - AP News 1/16/2015 8:00 PM - 0 views

townhall.com/...ht-drugs-in-caribbean-n1944390

shared by prendergastja on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • he flow of cocaine from the Caribbean to the U.S. has more than doubled in the past three years.
  • t is the
  • first federal plan of its kind that outlines the steps federal authorities are taking and will take to crack down on drug trafficking specifically in both U.S. territories.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Some 100 tons (91 metric tons) of cocaine passed through the Caribbean in 2013,
  • at least 90 percent of the drugs that enter Puerto Rico end up in the U.S.
  • suspects relying on go-fast boats, ferries, yachts and even cruise ships to transport drugs.
  • Cash seizures at Puerto Rico's main international airport are at an all-time high, according to the plan.
  • Drugs are blamed for more than 80 percent of killings in Puerto Rico,
  • prendergastja on 17 Jan 15
     
    The U.S. is showing a new plan to fight drug trafficking made by the Obama administration. This plan will focus on the Dominican Republic and especially Puerto Rico. These countries have been used heavily to traffic cocaine into the U.S. The DEA is going to focus more on the vehicles coming in and out of these countries including go-fast boats, ferries, and planes.
maddieireland334

Czech tourists freed in Pakistan after two years - 0 views

diigo.com/07h3ke

Abduction Pakistan crisis negotiation

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • maddieireland334 on 29 Mar 15
     
    Two Czech women tourists who were kidnapped two years ago in Pakistan have been released and have returned home, Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka says. Hana Humpalova and Antonie Chrastecka, both 26, were abducted while travelling on a bus in south-western Balochistan province in March 2013. A Turkish Muslim humanitarian body helped negotiate the release.
johnsonma23

International Women's Day Rally in Turkey Turns Violent - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...y-turkey-turns-violent-n532926

international turkey rights

shared by johnsonma23 on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Mar 6 2016, 3:08 pm ET International Women's Day Rally in Turkey Turns Violent
  • Turkish police on Sunday briefly detained at least one woman and fired rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of hundreds of people trying to mark International Women's Day in central Istanbul.
  • Women's Day commemorations on March 8 in order to draw more supporters on a Sunday, had ignored a ban on the march by the Istanbul governor who scrapped this year's rally, citing security concerns.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The government frequently faces criticism for its handling of women's issues, including the failure to stem high rates of violence and low female participation in the workforce.
  • Plainclothes police began shoving members of the group, and many women fled the square when riot police fired rubber bullets into the crowd.
  • You see the power of women. We are here despite every obstacle and we will continue to fight for our cause."
  • Turkey has sharply limited the right to peaceful assembly in recent years, giving police wider powers to detain protesters and the courts more power to prosecute them.
redavistinnell

Pineapple Pesticide Linked to Parkinson's Disease - NBC News - 1 views

www.nbcnews.com/...ked-parkinsons-disease-n477346

pineapple pesticide linked disease nbc news

shared by redavistinnell on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Dec 9 2015, 6:55 pm ET Pineapple Pesticide Linked to Parkinson's Disease
  • A pineapple pesticide that made its way into milk in Hawaii also made its way into men's brains, and those men were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, a new study finds. It's the latest in a very long series of studies linking various pesticides to Parkinson's, which is caused by the loss of certain brain cells.
  • The researchers also looked for the pesticide heptachlor, which was taken off the market for most uses in the U.S. in 1988.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • For the study, Dr. Robert Abbott of the Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan, and colleagues studied 449 Japanese-American men living in Hawaii who were taking part in a larger study of aging. They gave details of how much milk they drank as part of a larger survey, and they donated their brains for study after they died.
  • A pineapple pesticide that made its way into milk in Hawaii also made its way into men's brains, and those men were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, a n
  • "Among those who drank the most milk, residues of heptachlor epoxide were found in nine of 10 brains as compared to 63.4 percent for those who consumed no milk," the researchers wrote.
  • "The researchers could not test whether the milk the men drank was contaminated with pesticides (heptachlor, in this case), and no one knows how long or how widespread the contamination was before being detected," the Parkinson's Disease Foundation said in a statement on its website.
  • "This study is unique because it brings together two critical but different pieces of information — environmental exposure and physical changes in the brain — to understand potential contributors of Parkinson's disease," James Beck, vice president of scientific affairs at the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, said in a statement.
  • The Parkinson's Disease Foundation estimates that 1 million Americans have the condition, marked by tremor, rigid muscles and problems with movement. There is no cure, although early treatment can delay the worst symptoms.
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