“What
we want we will not get and what we would like is not on offer...”
Demetrius
Navel
Lint:
Why are various American public figures – from liberal actors to
John McCain (yes, I repeat myself) – calling for the US to do
something militarily
abut the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls, when the same level of
concern doesn't exist for the hundreds of childen forced into the
world-wide sex trade every week, or the thousands of children
suffering in Syrian refugee camps, or the starving in South Sudan, or
the tens of thousand being forced to attend racially segregated
third-rate schools in the US? Why do we think there's a
military solution to every social problem?
Fact,
Jack:
College
graduates (up to age 40) with student loan debts have a net worth
that is 20% below that of equivalent high school grads who cleverly
didn't go into debt to get an education for jobs that don't exist in
today's economy.
Cat
Escapes Bag:
Wal-Mart's problem – despite their readiness to blame cuts in
foodstamps, cuts in unemployment payments and the weather – is that
their customers are not buying as much from them as they once did.
Whether this is due to competitors or simply to the further
impoverishment of their base customer pool is uncertain. It doesn't
mater, profits do, and they're not making as much as investors
expect. Expect
consequences.
Curtain
Call:
Over the last 40 years scientists have gathered enough
data
to positively assert that the retreat of
ice in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica is
unstoppable, that
major
catastrophic
consequences will
result, and that its collapse will most probably set off a chain
reaction leading to the total collapse
of the West Antarctic ice sheet. And
that, over a one to two hundred year span will cause the seas
to at least 12 feet – displacing tens of millions around the world.
Two hundred years may seem like a long time, but there is no easy
way to stop this, and no way to dodge our culpability. It is not just
the ice sheet that is
doomed.
It's
Not Your Imagination:
If you've thought it
was
strange the way you sometimes don't get text messages from until
hours, sometimes days, after they are sent, you are right. Customers
are suing Apple because iPhones frequently either delay or simply
don't deliver text messages to (and from?) Android users. Clearly
the solution is to not buy an iPhone in the first place.
One
More Time:
A new study of
over a million kids confirms, again, that vaccination for measles –
or anything else – does not cause autism, and is not statistically
correlated with it in any way. The study didn't answer the question
of why parents, mostly mothers, cling to this long disproven myth,
but fear and the need to blame someone else are both good candidates.
This
Time It's
Different:
Ken
Rogoff, who
was right about the housing bubble long before he was wrong about
debt percentages, now says there is at least a 20% chance that (a)
China's economy is a bubble and (b) it will burst, dooming
developing countries across Asia, northern Africa and Latin America.
Underdog:
In June, President Obama is expected to announce new EPA regulations
on existing power plants that will reduce carbon emissions without
increasing costs significantly and which will be able to withstand
the inevitable legal challenges from business, the Republicans and 5
of the Supremes.
To
make this work he needs to hit the Trifecta, and that's not going to
happen.
The
Parting Shot:
