Wednesday, August 8, 2012

SAR #12220

Expediency guarantees unintended consequences.

Collateral Damage: Greece's economic distress has now led to over 7,000 immigrants being detained on suspicion of not being Greek. National insecurity expressed as paranoia and aimed at the “other”. More to come.

About Face: Germany's manufacturing PMI reflects strong declines in both output and orders – the worst since April 2009. It was the 4th month in a row of lower production and the 13th month of declining orders. Germany's export chickens are struggling home from Greece and Portugal and Spain and Italy to roost.

Droning On: The drone-genie is out of the bottle and is not going to go away and will not long remain under government control. Yes, they have a monopoly today, but they once owned all the submarines, too. What fun we'll have when the drug lords, the terrorists, the local cops and the international corporations get in on the game!

Can You Hear Me Now? The National Academy of Sciences reports that – just as the USGS reported this spring – the injection wells used to dispose of fracking fluids “are linked to” an increase in earthquakes.

Steps: Heat and drought will cripple crops, leading to rising food costs. Rising food costs – and outright hunger – tend to lead to unrest around the globe. Widespread social unrest leads to conflict, which leads to social and political change. Often violent political change. Thought you'd appreciate the heads-up.

Occam's Razor: The primary reason that basing teacher pay on student achievement or other forms of merit pay doesn’t improve student scores is that most teachers on most days are doing their best to teach their students, despite the obstacles that indifferent or hostile parents pose.

Qualifications: HCA, the nation's largest hospital chain, insured its profits by performing unnecessary cardiac procedures – as many as 1,200 in one facility. Florida Governor and wannabe Romney VP Rick Scott was in charge of HCA at the time.

Another Thing To Worry About: Take a break from worrying about the euro and spend some time with Argentina, where inflation is growing rapidly, the nation's reserves are down to a paltry $6 billion and the government is trying to tightly control currency markets.

Clarification: Fox “judicial analyst” Andrew Napoitano say the killing of seven people in a Sikh temple was “not domestic terrorism.” Terrorism is when they kill white Americans. Got it?

Porn O'Graph: Not very interesting.

The Parting Shot:

120808 

Networking.

2 comments:

Reino Ruusu said...

Interesting. Maybe fracking wells could be used for keeping quake-prone faults stress-free by triggering quakes early and often.

OkieLawyer said...

Re: Occam's Razor

Another aspect of merit pay is that it will create more discrepancies in pay in wealthy areas, where kids, in general, do better and have stable homes; versus areas where kids have more challenges that can prevent them from succeeding, no matter what their intentions.