Economic Recovery and Splitsville
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Economy | Leave a Comment
Taking up smoking cigarettes has got to be one of the most dumb-ass things I’ve ever done in my life — except maybe for being married twice!
From AFP in honor of Kate and Bill and economics:
A telltale sign of US economic recovery: the divorce rate is on the rise, after falling sharply in 2008 and 2009.
“People were afraid they were going to lose their jobs so they were very cautious about getting a divorce because you have to split your assets,” said Linda Lea Viken, the president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
(Illustration found here).
Even at this hour in the morning, the UK’s royal wedding is a media nut crusher.
Usually, I watch CBS and ABC‘s news cycle — thirty minutes of updates and then spool the whole segment again, over and over until it’s time to leave for work.
By then I’ve seen all the news that fits at least three or four times.
Not this morning — all Kate and William.
Divorce, of course, is not on their menu.
Continuing from the AFP report:
According to figures provided by the Academy, the United States has the world’s highest divorce rate, with 4.95 divorces for every 1,000 inhabitants.
The marriage rate is 9.8 for every 1,000 people, according to the US Census Bureau.
Traditionally, in periods of economic downturn, there is less divorce and fewer separations, divorce lawyers say.
But there are also fewer marriages and people often hold off on having a child.
A Pew Research poll taken at the end of 2009, when the US economy was slowly recovering from its 19-month recession, found that some 15 percent of adults younger than 35 years old had postponed getting married because of the recession while 14 percent said they had delayed having a baby.
The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control show a sharp drop in the divorce rate between 2007 and 2009.
In New York state, for example, the number of divorces dropped from 51,626 to 41,899; in Florida, there were 78,357 divorces in 2007 and 73,860 in 2009; and in Pennsylvania, the numbers dropped from 32,293 to 25,690.
Economics does have a strong influence on a marriage, even in the rack.
In a new book called, “Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage and Dirty Dishes,” there’s a claim the best tips for keeping a marriage strong come not from Oprah or Dr. Ruth but from close economic analysis.
From ABC News:
Most all married couples say they want to have more sex, but the number-one thing that stands in the way is exhaustion. People say they’re too tired for it at the end of a long day.
“Glamour” magazine might say that couples should spice things and make sex more special with some candles or a massage, but according to the authors, economics says it’s better to just get on with it.
“Some mediocre sex is better than no amazing sex,” said Anderson (one of the book’s authors).
It all boils down to simple supply and demand.
In business, when the cost of something goes up, the demand goes down.
“This can be true for sex as well,” said Anderson.
“When you make it cheaper — and we don’t mean in monetary terms, we mean in terms of time and energy — demand for it can rise.”
“The more expensive sex is, you are celibate, and the cheaper it is, you are a rabbit,” added Szuchman (the other book author).
Couples can have “cheaper” sex, the economists say, by finding different times of the day.
Make it a priority and don’t wait until you’re in bed ready for sleep.
The bottom line is that if you have more sex, you’ll have more sex.
Cheap sex with more money makes for a very-expensive divorce lawyer — that’s just economics, baby.
Perilous World
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Weather | Leave a Comment
Weather horror back East is only a prelude to the coming commonplace.
A tornado onslaught yesterday killed 159 people across the US south, 128 in my birth state of Alabama — a catastrophic situation which will only get worse as man-influenced climate change increases these “extreme events” to a weather-related new normal.
Film of the twister in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is like something out of a movie (‘Twister,’ maybe) with devastation near-beyond the imagination: “It literally obliterated blocks and blocks of the city,” Mayor Walter Maddox said, describing Tuscaloosa’s infrastructure as “decimated.”
Scary shit, believe me.
(Illustration found here).
Growing up in Alabama, these storms were pants-shitting frightful.
A lot of people had shelters — my grandparents (on my daddy’s side) had one built into the side of a small hill near the house, but to my recollection was never used — and as kids we played in and around the small, frame dugout sort of structure with the biggest threat (as our parents continually warned) was rattlesnakes.
Tornadoes seemed to come out of nowhere, although the wind and blowing rain presented a great stage for the damn things to form — and then suddenly there she was hollowing like a banshee making everybody scream and run around like crazy folks (which we were for a few minutes).
Lightening storms were another horror and as a kid I would listen intently as the storm approached — first the flash of sharp, nasty light followed by thunder, and if one counted ‘one-thousand one, two-thousand two, three-thousand three…’ and so on to track the approaching shitstorm until lightening and thunder became one horrifying single event.
My daddy’s mother was a screamer and she’d start wailing as soon as the wind picked up, scaring the living shit out of us kids.
I hated bad weather to happen while I was at my grandmother’s house — she was wonderful and sweet, but mercy, she’d lose that wonderful, sweet sense at the onslaught of hurtling wind.
Ah, the good old days.
My grandparents storm shelter looked something similar to the one at left, although in my memory’s eye it didn’t seem as dilapidated, and there weren’t that much weed growth around it.
Nowadays, the shelters come already made by different companies, including one with the logo “Have Storm Shelters Will Travel,” which ain’t really the strongest selling point in high winds.
This pictured shelter looks like a total rattlesnake den.
(Illustration found here).
And the twisters are becoming more frequent, and although there’s reports climate change will enhance these storms, no one seems to know for sure how much.
From the New York Times this week:
Now, as the country braces for several more days of potentially violent weather, meteorologists say the number of April tornadoes is on track to top the current record.
There have been, according to preliminary estimates, about 250 tornadoes so far this month and, in all likelihood, more are still to come, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
…
Although the average number of April tornadoes steadily increased from 74 a year in the 1950s to 163 a year in the 2000s, nearly all of the increase is of the least powerful tornadoes that may touch down briefly without causing much damage.
That suggests better reporting is largely responsible for the increase.
There are, on average, 1,300 tornadoes each year in the United States, which have caused an average of 65 deaths annually in recent years.
The number of tornadoes rated from EF1 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita scale, used to measure tornado strength, has stayed relatively constant for the past half century at about 500 annually.
But in that time the number of confirmed EF0 tornadoes has steadily increased to more than 800 a year from less than 100 a year, said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Crazy climate makes for crazy weather.
Dr. Jeff Masters, at Wunderblog: An average April has “only” 163 tornadoes, so we are already 300% over average for the month, and may approach 400% after today’s outbreak.
Masters also contends massive flooding in the upper Midwest — the rare high-levels of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers — has been caused in part by the near-record temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico: The deluge of rain that caused this flood found its genesis in a flow of warm, humid air coming from the Gulf of Mexico. Sea surface temperatures (SSTs )in the Gulf of Mexico are currently close to 1 °C above average. Only two Aprils since the 1800s (2002 and 1991) have had April SSTs more than 1 °C above average, so current SSTs are among the highest on record.
Read a good analysis of that aspect at Climate Progress.
Buckle up, or run for that shelter, and watch out for rattlesnakes, and, don’t pay any attention to that screaming grandmother over there, she’s only a bit worried is all.
Shame
Filed Under Bullshit | Leave a Comment
George W. Bush, president: “We don’t torture.” (November 2005)
George Jr., nit-twit civilian: “I sanctioned torture of 9/11 mastermind.” (November 2010).
Another excerpt from the US shame files was cut open this week with the New York Times release of some WikiLeaks documents on the nefarious Guantanamo Naval Base — most likely you’ve heard or read already — and how Americans misbehaved way-badly, doing shitty things to people, which in reality and which in the end, gained nothing but the hatred and loathing of the entire freakin’ planet (not to mention a massive recruiting tool for insurgencies everywhere).
And on top of that, and as it turned out, a goodly group of these so-called inmates weren’t the bad guys: In at least 44 cases, U.S. military intelligence officials concluded that detainees had no connection to militant activity at all, a McClatchy Newspapers examination of the assessments, which cover both former and current detainees, found.
(Illustration found here).
Even as this torture, oops, I really meant “enhanced interrogation,” was going on at Gitmo, physicians on duty there, and it was there duty to call this shit out, turned a blind eye away.
From the abstract of a study conducted by the Public Library of Science (h/t antiwar.com):
The medical affidavits in each of the nine cases indicate that the specific allegations of torture and ill treatment are highly consistent with physical and psychological evidence documented in the medical records and evaluations by non-governmental medical experts.
However, the medical personnel who treated the detainees at GTMO failed to inquire and/or document causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed.
Psychological symptoms were commonly attributed to “personality disorders” and “routine stressors of confinement.”
Temporary psychotic symptoms and hallucinations did not prompt consideration of abusive treatment. Psychological assessments conducted by non-governmental medical experts revealed diagnostic criteria for current major depression and/or PTSD in all nine cases.
And concluded:
The findings in these nine cases from GTMO indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DoD neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.
Another take on the NYT Wikileak-Gitmo-dump comes from the searing keyboard of Chris Floyd and how torture is downplayed against the bad guys:
Money words:
Almost as sickening as the atrocities themselves, however, is the way the release has been played in the New York Times, whose coverage of the document dump will set the tone for the American media and political establishments.
The Times’ take is almost wholly devoted to showing how evil and dangerous a handful of the hundreds of Gitmo detainees were, and to justifying Barack Obama’s betrayal of his promises to close the concentration camp.
We are treated to lurid tales (many if not most of them extracted under torture, but who cares about that?) of monsters seething with irrepressible hatred of America, and so maniacally devoted to jihad that they inject themselves with libido-deadening drugs to ward off any sexual distractions from their murderous agenda.
Ugly, huh — read the whole post.
One main reason for all this horror is the institutional lie that’s become the norm, especially among the GOP, which just loves war, torture and death panels.
A great post on this shameful aspect was up yesterday at Mother Jones.
Rick Perlstein starts with the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor and works up to the current line of bullshit from Republican assholes:
And here, in the end, is the difference between the untruths told by William Randolph Hearst and Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the ones inundating us now: Today, it’s not just the most powerful men who can lie and get away with it.
It’s just about anyone — a congressional back-bencher, an ideology-driven hack, a guy with a video camera — who can inject deception into the news cycle and the political discourse on a grand scale.
Sure, there will always be liars in positions of influence — that’s stipulated, as the lawyers say.
And the media, God knows, have never been ideal watchdogs — the battleships that crossed the seas to avenge the sinking of the Maine attest to that.
What’s new is the way the liars and their enablers now work hand in glove.
That I call a mendocracy, and it is the regime that governs us now.
And when a US senator gets on the floor of the US Senator and lies through his asshole, and then later walks back the lie by proclaiming the statement was “not intended to be a factual statement,” and no one calls the shithead a freakin’ liar, then something’s way-wrong.
And no amount of clothing will cover the shame.
Dr. Methane Gun, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Extinction
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment | Leave a Comment
In viewing climate change, every so often there comes along some aspect of that horror-in-coming that’s even more morbid, more dark-cast depressing than normal, and one of those is the impact of methane gas deposits blasting out of the Arctic permafrost (or permamelt, ha,ha,HA) thawing at an accelerating rate, beyond predictions.
These methane ‘burps’ are nothing new — I’ve posted on the phenomenon before — but this process continues and the terror is this: Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species.
(Illustration found here).
Joe Romm at Climate Progress: Methane release from the not-so-perma-frost is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle…Methane (CH4) deserves attention it is such a highly potent greenhouse gas — 25-33 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year time-horizon, but as much as 100 time more potent over 20 years…
And last year, the National Science Foundation released this:
The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.
“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center.
“Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”
In a post yesterday, Romm explored a new Geophysical Research Letters study on a long-ago methane eruption and how that’s extremely pertinent right now.
A couple of nuggets:
Methane (CH4) is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, 20-30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) on a century timescale.
Fortunately it normally occurs in very low concentration in the atmosphere — about 0.3 to 0.4ppm during glacial periods and 0.6 to 0.7ppm during warmer periods.
In 1750 the concentration was ~0.7ppm.
By 2010 it had reached >1.8ppm, and is now at its highest level in 500,000 years.
This is largely due to human activity, particularly the keeping of large herds of cattle and flocks of chickens and the production of fossil fuels.
Methane has a relatively short life in the atmosphere where it oxidizes into CO2 over a period of 9-15 years.
…
Very rapid and massive release of carbon deficient in ∂13C, does put one in mind of the Methane Gun hypothesis.
It postulates that methane clathrate at shallow depth begins melting and through the feed-back process accelerate atmospheric and oceanic warming, melting even larger and deeper clathrate deposits.
The result: A relatively sudden massive venting of methane — the firing of the Methane Gun.
Recent discovery by Davy et al (2010) of kilometer-wide (ten 8-11 kilometer and about 1,000 1-kilometer-wide features) eruption craters on the Chatham Rise seafloor off New Zealand adds further ammunition to the Methane Gun hypothesis.
…
While natural global warming during the ice ages was initiated by increased solar radiation caused by cyclic changes to Earth’s orbital parameters, there is no evident mechanism for correcting Anthropogenic Global Warming over the next several centuries.
The latter has already begun producing methane and CO2 in the Arctic, starting a feedback process which may lead to uncontrollable, very dangerous global warming, akin to that which occurred at the PETM.
This extremis we ignore – to our peril.
Romm adds: It is worth noting that no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. Indeed the NSIDC/NOAA study I wrote about in February on methane release by the land-based permafrost itself doesn’t even incorporate the carbon released by the permafrost carbon feedback into its warming model!
So now, Major ‘King’ Kong can instead ride that methane gun into oblivion.
‘Cold, Cruel and Irresponsible’
Filed Under Everything, Media, Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment
Never in US political memory has the discourse become so full of one-sided hate and animosity toward the unwashed masses, i.e., the poor and other meaningless pieces of considered flotsam supposedly throttling the rich from getting even-more richer — Republicans are ranting against humanity.
And the shocker is that these GOP claptrap assholes appear not to give a shit anymore and will say the first mean-spirited thing that apparently comes to mind, like that Kansas state representative who claimed illegal immigrants should be hunted down and shot like feral hogs.
(Illustration found here).
One thing, however, is that these guys are monstrously naive and stupid about the general public — people will take this shit for so long — like that Kansas asshole, for instance.
Democratic leaders in the Kansas state legislature reported Friday they will offer up a resolution condemning Virgil Peck (the asshole): “Although Rep. Peck has the right to free speech … that right does not include the advocacy of gratuitous, deadly violence against other human beings,” the resolution states.
Peck squeezed his shriveled nut-sack a bit and blubbered out what was put forth as an apology, that he’d made “an inappropriate comment,” but the offering didn’t impress anyone and didn’t “display the remorse that is necessary to remedy this wrong.”
The unrepentant Peck ain’t the only turd coming under the stern, hot light of reality.
David A. (“visit to the woodshed“) Stockman in Sunday’s New York Times:
Trapped between the religion of low taxes and the reality of huge deficits, the Ryan plan appears to be an attack on the poor in order to coddle the rich.
To the Democrats’ invitation to class war, the Republicans have seemingly sent an R.S.V.P.
The backlash is flaring up amongst common folk against GOP mean-spirited political bullshit in nasty, town hall confrontations, and even some Republicans, like Stockman, pointing out just how “cold, cruel and irresponsible” are these people with their antics.
The above utterance of ‘cold, cruel‘ came from the lips of GOP flak Alex Castellanos, who let it slip out Sunday morning on NBC‘s Meet The Press, and although he tried to back-peddle a bit, the words betrayed truly the vicious, uncaring sentiment seeping from the right onto everything they do. (h/t and good look at Castellanos’ TV appearance at Crooks and Liars).
In fact, the ‘cold, cruel‘ attitude has so scared GOPers, especially those in the US House who voted on that Paul Ryan bullshit earlier this month (which included a sweeping overhaul of Medicare): House leaders have scheduled a Tuesday conference call in which members are expected in part to discuss strategies for defending the vote they took this month on a budget that would transform the popular entitlement program as part of a plan to cut trillions in federal spending.
Anything helpful to the poor is government waste.
Prime fat-ass example: New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christy’s attempt to slash $820 million in state aid to schools was found last month by a state court to be in direct contradiction to state law because the cuts were slanted too heavily towards poor districts.
Christy, however, claimed Friday he just may defy the court order.
From newjersey.com:
Paul Tractenberg, a Rutgers law professor and founder of the Education Law Center, which filed the lawsuit challenging the cuts, said Christie’s comments go far beyond the usual grumbling about the court’s decisions.
“I don’t think governors have ever said flat-out they were thinking of ignoring a court order,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted terrain … We essentially convert government into a dictatorship.”
And in Tennessee on Friday, legislation prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality, even saying the word “gay” in kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms was approved by a key committee in the state senate.
Via Raw Story:
The bill’s sponsor, Republican State Senator Sen. Stacey Campfield, said he was not homophobic, but the progressive blog ThinkProgress recently dug up a 2009 radio interview in which he compares homosexuality to bestiality.
“You teach about the Civil Rights Movement,” the state senator was asked. “Why not teach about the Gay Rights Movement?”
“Because they’re different types of movements,” Campfield responded. “If I want to talk about the bestiality movement, do you think we should be teaching that?”
Is the current GOP the party of Eisenhower, or even freakin’ Dick Nixon?
Hard to say, but they are indeed cold, cruel and irresponsible.