They're in deep trouble, but they won't die, because our current president, like the last one, apparently believes it's better to project a false image of financial soundness than to allow one of our oligarchic banks to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. Last year, the Federal Reserve allowed Bank of America to move a huge portfolio of dangerous bets into a side of the company that happens to be FDIC-insured, putting all of us on the hook for as much as $55 trillion in irresponsible gambles. Then, in February, the Justice Department's so-called foreclosure settlement, which will supposedly provide $26 billion in relief for ripped-off homeowners, actually rewarded the bank with a legal waiver that will allow it to escape untold billions in lawsuits. And this month the Fed will release the results of its annual stress test, in which the bank will once again be permitted to perpetuate its fiction of solvency by grossly overrating the mountains of toxic loans on its books. At this point, the rescue effort is so sweeping and elaborate that it goes far beyond simply gouging the tax dollars of millions of struggling families, many of whom have already been ripped off by the bank – it's making the government, and by extension all of us, full-blown accomplices to the fraud.
I was recently sent this infographic on the TSA. You'll see the sources for this information at the bottom:
Created by: OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.com
Yesterday, my son shared the video below - Neil deGrasse Tyson's "We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1)". It took me back to childhood memories when I was inspired to be a scientist. I remember watching the Apollo launches. I think I remember listening to the Gemini 4 space walk – I was four, and my father recorded it on reel-to-reel, but I don’t remember him ever replaying it. I remember staying up late and falling asleep…thankfully to be awoken by my mother just before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. ...Skylab, ...the test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
Years later, I left behind aspirations of a science career (practicalities…how much money does the average physicist make anyway?) for one of engineering, but the love of space, cosmology, NASA…all still with me…which is why what Neil deGrasse Tyson is saying in this video saddens me all the more.
I worry that decisions Congress makes doesn't [sic] factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow.
Apart from the applicability of that to just about any of the current Congress's decisions, he’s dead right in this specific instance. We are not funding science. We are not encouraging and developing engineers. We are failing in educating our young people, not only in the technical fields, but in general.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compares 15 year olds in 65 industrial countries. From the 2009 report:
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort among OECD member countries to measure how well 15-year-old students approaching the end of compulsory schooling are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking: rather than focusing on the extent to which these students have mastered a specific school curriculum, it looks at their ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in curricular goals and objectives, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school.
“…to meet real-life challenges.†Care to guess how the U.S.A. fared in the latest, 2009, assessment? You can see here for yourself, but I’ll spoil it:
Reading – 17th (out of 65)
Mathematics –31st (significantly below the average)
They [American students] are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs – not $40 to $50 an hour.â€
I don’t know what the answer is. I admit a selfish cop out - we home educate our children – so I don’t think often on what can or should be done; we've taken responsibility for preparing our children ourselves. Still, one simple solution seems to be to promote science, math and engineering.
And we start doing that by not cutting NASA’s budget.
Fat chance. How much would YOU pay for the universe?
I really enjoy a good quote; it's like getting a novel in a sentence or two. Here's are some quotes that I've collected over the past couple of months. No particular topic. I hope you enjoy them:
“The initial mystery that attends any journey is how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place.â€
Louise Bogan, Journey Around my Room
"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
“Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever going to get better again!â€
Kurt Vonnegut (at a graduation speech) (mentioned by Lawrence Krauss at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo )
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.â€
Clarence Darrow
"It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up."
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940), "The Crack-Up" (1936)
"My point in Sexual Personae is that one cannot make any kind of firm line between high art and pornography. In fact, porn permeates the high art tradition."
Camille Paglia Vamps and Tramps, p. 123
"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today."
Lawrence Krauss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo “A Universe from Nothing†(min 16:40)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss
[More . . . ]
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