Workers at Aynsley China start producing commemorative plates, cups and mugs to mark the engagement between Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton on November 17, 2010 in Stoke On Trent, United Kingdom. The historic china company has rushed through production of collectable china after the announcement of their royal wedding yesterday. By Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus dust off their Lomborgian song and dance about innovation being the best solution to global warming. David Roberts tweaks their formula:
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have assembled a coalition in support of R&D investment, to their great credit. Yet they claim a peculiar priority for that undertaking. “All questions, political and economic, return to questions of technology,” they assure us. If only we could escape the vagaries of culture and politics so easily.
It’s true that the world’s energy systems are shaped by the relative costs of different technologies. But it’s equally true that those costs are shaped by the distribution of economic and political power. Cost is a cultural artifact–the result of a contingent set of economic models, market regulations, political connections, and consumer habits–as much as an objective feature of technology. Dirty-energy incumbents have spent the last century rigging the rules in their favor. Efforts to change costs must attend to sociopolitical and economic reform as well as technological development.
“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week. Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader," – Tammy Bruce, GOProud.
Room For Debate has taken up the subject:
With litigation costs rising, many plaintiffs and their lawyers do not have the money to hire expensive experts or pay for years of trial preparation. To fill this need, specialized litigation lenders are stepping in to bankroll lawsuits – often providing millions of dollars at very high interest rates because conventional banks typically do not offer such loans.
Borrowing money to sue people: what could better sum up American culture today?
Seth Masket huffs that the chattering class is getting carried away:
Airport security theater does deserve some pushback, and I think it would be great if passengers simply refused to comply with gross violations of their privacy that do nothing to make air travel safer. I doubt too many people will resist, though, since not flying is usually not a realistic option for people who have places to be and have already packed and schlepped everything to the airport. TSA has us, literally and figuratively, by the balls.
That said, this is not the great civil rights battle of our time.
Passengers are not being hauled out of their homes or tortured or placed in prison without access to legal counsel — things that actually have happened to American citizens in recent years in the name of security. Nor are people being turned away from the polls or told they can't unionize or being beaten by police officers — also things that have happened to real live Americans in recent years. What's going on in the airports is simply a form of government humiliation that has hit the professional class.
One wonders when and if the mama grizzly will publicly apologize for her daughter's use of the term "faggot". She cannot claim her children are off-limits, when she uses them constantly to advance her own career. And in the wake of recent young gay suicides, Palin's silence on this demonization of a peer is, while hardly unexpected, troubling. Imagine, for a second, if one of Obama's daughters had done such a thing. Can you imagine the fuss on the right?
The double standards with respect to Palin and her vicious brood remain.
Fred Kaplan tries to see how Jon Kyl could be brought around.
He's anonymous but produced 5,000 pages of scholarly literature in the last year (for lazy students):
I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else…
I know you are aware that cheating occurs. But you have no idea how deeply this kind of cheating penetrates the academic system, much less how to stop it. Last summer The New York Times reported that 61 percent of undergraduates have admitted to some form of cheating on assignments and exams. Yet there is little discussion about custom papers and how they differ from more-detectable forms of plagiarism, or about why students cheat in the first place. It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation.
McCain and Butters have long backed the Treaty. And Reid and Lugar seem fired up by Kyl's nihilism.
If Harry Reid allows a two-week debate on DADT, there may be 60 votes in the Senate for repeal, bypassing McCain's bitter, and incoherent obstructionism. If I were you, I'd email Reid, not Obama, to lobby for repeal. It may be the last chance we get for years, now that the virulently anti-gay Tea Party has taken over the House. You can email Reid here.
The Dish 