Corporate Attack on Education

Plenty of Chomsky's lectures available on YouTube are great, but I thought this one was particularly good since as a parent I'm interested in education.

Study on the Effects of Austerity

Republicans today recommend austerity in the face of our economic problems. The same kind of austerity we are watching fail so spectacularly in Europe right now. The idea is that austerity boosts investor confidence and spurs growth. But it's not panning out.

A recent study by the IMF looked at 173 attempts to bring growth in the face of an economic downturn through austerity over the last 30 years. The result? Austerity under these conditions does not produce growth, reduces wages, and increases long term unemployment.

Given that this strategy always fails, why would Republicans pursue it? Possibly it's just a tool to undermine Social Security and other welfare state measures, which are very much hated by some conservative politicians and their backers.

Episode 2

I speak with Jonathan from Wisconsin, the friend I mentioned in the prior pod cast. He's a Walker supporter from Wisconsin, so we discussed issues related to that. A fun chat. Thanks for participating Jonathan. Download here or listen below.

Planned Obsolescence

The big white ogre is down due to a serious bicycle accident, so blogging will be light. Here's an interesting documentary that explores how our economy is wasteful by design.

Prove Me Wrong Podcast

I've decided to try my hand at pod casting. It something that sounds like fun to me. My plan is to talk about what's going on in the world, maybe have discussions with people. If you like to comment here and would like to try it over the phone we can do that and make it part of this podcast. Here's my first effort embedded below. It's downloadable here.



In this episode I talk about why I'm doing this, Obama's drone program, and a little on global warming.

The Sophistication of Native Americans

I've been reading an interesting book by Charles Mann called "1491". It's presented as an overview of the latest scholarly consensus regarding Native American societies. As you may suspect, much of what you were taught in grade school is wrong. The Americas weren't relatively desolate lands inhabited by few unsophisticated and disconnected peoples. Cities existed as large as London. Technology was different, but advanced in it's own way. Native bows were more accurate than guns, could shoot further, and could penetrate deeper through shields. Suspension bridges existed nowhere else but here. We're still not sure how corn was developed. The population of both North and South America was on the order of tens of millions, approaching 100 million.

Europeans were able to conquer the lands for one simple reason. Disease, which killed tens of millions. Europeans would encounter towns that had been completely wiped out by disease and would conclude that the race was unsophisticated and unintelligent on the basis of the appearance of the few surviving stragglers. It was as if American troops freed Jews in concentration camps, looked at their emaciated bodies, and concluded that as a people they were unintelligent.

A fun brief overview of some of these facts is located at this Cracked.com article. 6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America.

Paul Krugman Debates Two British Austerians