Written By:
Bunji - Date published:
9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments
Categories: food, interweb, john key, uk politics, us politics -
Tags: fish, nick clegg, obama, planet key
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.
I’m off overseas for a couple of weeks again, so it’s another short one. First up, British commentators are wondering if Obama is a Tory – a Disraeli figure, who’s pragmatic and conservative in the way he attempts change. Others disagree, although the left of US politics generally is about where the right is in other countries. And their left-right schism is hardening: the BBC also ask how did the US get so divided?
Although we’re currently cosying up to the Americans, there’s one thing we’re disturbingly far from them on – protection for the oceans. Fresh from being the only country in the world to vote against protecting incredibly rare dolphins, and not that long since we bowed into US pressure to stop near-slavery in our fishing vessels, we’re resisting their efforts to create an effective Ross Sea Marine Protection Area. Once again clean green Aotearoa is holding the world back. It’s worth looking at how over-fishing may mean that we’re the last generation to hunt fish in large numbers. 85% of global fish stocks are currently in trouble – we’re plain running out of fish.
For a bit of amusement there were a couple of great pieces on Planet Key at the start of the week – from Steve Braunias and Toby Manhire.
Finally, following Anthony’s Nick Clegg subtitled for honesty, here’s the remix that’s going up the UK charts (for charity):
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Braunias is very good again.
New Scientist article on nanobubbles used to restore toxic lakes. Nanobubbles aren’t even suppose to exist, and “questions about how they form and stay stable remain ‘awkward'”.
10 nanometer oxygen bubbles in clay sprayed on to a biologically dead lake in China – energy efficient, non polluting, using only soil from the lake edge. In a 50000 meter squared test area the 1 cm thick algae bloom was gone in 1 hour, ammonia and nitrate levels plummeted within 24 hrs. 4 months later plant life was rampant and plankton thriving.
Now the Brits want it for their Lake District, and the Canadians for their tar extraction mess.
At least there are some good news environmental stories.
Awesome info, thanks Bud! :-).
This kind of tech is our best answer too all the pollution problems of the world.
But as a science it is a very slow process, with Edison it was …
“1000 ways not to make a lightbulb” , with those cats it’s “10,000+”
hope yet
The World Bank and the development delusion
But what’s most interesting is this paragraph:
And we seem to be doing this “Accumulation by dispossession” voluntarily.
been aware of this for over a decade D; may be that you are younger than moi
I only began to figure this out properly 4-5 years ago…damn you’re good.
Started to work it out in about 2k3 after two years of actually watching politics and economics. Before then I was supportive of this free-market BS that was/is being peddled.
It appealed to all the smaller business people, The reality was almost meaningless too them.
I.E. Don’t regulate and we will own you soon 🙂
Anyone that signed that “Free Trade” agreement, should resign and let the world recover properly.
Governments are meant to feed their people, not let their hard earned TAX dollars vanish in an accounting oversight/screwup/burglary
If we have a zero bank balance and another 30% of the world has a 0 bank balance, what are all those banks that syphoned off our hard earned money gonna do? …… Laugh M8!
It’s not like their budgets allow for paying it back, by definition they are “Valid” transactions.
Team, Guys. Good on you both and et al; keep up the good work, “there must be some way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief, (j to John the thief)
Emancipate ourselves
(slow typing dedicated to The Standard, and all who sail her; Rock On Diversity)
well here goes, hope it is helpful cos i am a freakin slow typer (might hold off dementia and arthritis)
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like a thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
-Louis MacNiece
How Nazis progress
Evil, lets hope good civilised people can shoot them down b4 it gets even more out of control.
bit of a Sunday ‘troika’ here today it appears; human history is a wheel.
synchronicity D and Viper; SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGIST-MASTER OF TOMB
(that is why He is my master; he read the scrolls)
They should have done what Iceland did. Default and make the German bondholders eat it.
and i pray, that in Time, we do the freakin same; on that, and The Big Kahuna we agree