What about a few nuclear plants in Poland?

A free fox in a free henhouse!

[Drew's WHEEEEE™ Technology]

(That is all.)

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Going to Munich this weekend. It looks likely that the weather will be reasonable, better than Lyon anyway.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Jeremy Paxman has told the Leveson Inquiry Piers Morgan explained to him 10 years ago how to hack mobile phones.

The Newsnight presenter said it happened at a lunch at which Mr Morgan, then Daily Mirror editor, teased Ulrika Jonsson that he knew about her phone conversations with Sven-Goran Eriksson.

He said the incident happened at a lunch organised by Trinity Mirror.

First, intentions can be respectable without being clearheaded, and the foundations of the current austerity policy, combined with the rigidities of Europe's monetary union (in the absence of fiscal union), have hardly been a model of cogency and sagacity. Second, an intention that is fine on its own can conflict with a more urgent priority -- in this case, the preservation of a democratic Europe that is concerned about societal well-being. These are values for which Europe has fought, over many decades.

...

The cause of reform, no matter how urgent, is not well served by the unilateral imposition of sudden and savage cuts in public services. Such indiscriminate cutting slashes demand -- a counterproductive strategy, given huge unemployment and idle productive enterprises that have been decimated by the lack of market demand. In Greece, one of the countries left behind by productivity increases elsewhere, economic stimulation through monetary policy (currency devaluation) has been precluded by the existence of the European monetary union, while the fiscal package demanded by the Continent's leaders is severely anti-growth. Economic output in the euro zone continued to decline in the fourth quarter of last year, and the outlook has been so grim that a recent report finding zero growth in the first quarter of this year was widely greeted as good news.

There is, in fact, plenty of historical evidence that the most effective way to cut deficits is to combine deficit reduction with rapid economic growth, which generates more revenue. The huge deficits after World War II largely disappeared with fast economic growth, and something similar happened during Bill Clinton's presidency. The much praised reduction of the Swedish budget deficit from 1994 to 1998 occurred alongside fairly rapid growth. In contrast, European countries today are being asked to cut their deficits while remaining trapped in zero or negative economic growth.

Few people will develop cancer as a consequence of being exposed to the radioactive material that spewed from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last year -- and those who do will never know for sure what caused their disease. These conclusions are based on two comprehensive, independent assessments of the radiation doses received by Japanese citizens, as well as by the thousands of workers who battled to bring the shattered nuclear reactors under control.

The first report, seen exclusively by Nature, was produced by a subcommittee of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in Vienna, and covers a wide swathe of issues related to all aspects of the accident. The second, a draft of which has been seen by Nature, comes from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, and estimates doses received by the general public in the first year after the accident. Both reports will be discussed at UNSCEAR's annual meeting in Vienna this week.

The UNSCEAR committee's analyses show that 167 workers at the plant received radiation doses that slightly raise their risk of developing cancer. The general public was largely protected by being promptly evacuated, although the WHO report does find that some civilians' exposure exceeded the government's guidelines. "If there's a health risk, it's with the highly exposed workers," says Wolfgang Weiss, the chair of UNSCEAR. Even for these workers, future cancers may never be directly tied to the accident, owing to the small number of people involved and the high background rates of cancer in developed countries such as Japan.

European Parliament chief Martin Schulz has launched a scathing attack on the German chancellor for promoting policies he says drive up the borrowing costs of other euro-countries, while Germany has just hit a record zero-percent interest rate on its bonds.

"Germany sold €4.6 billion worth of bonds at a record 0.0 percent interest rate today. Meanwhile, borrowing costs for other countries are soaring. This imbalance is destroying Europe," Schulz said on his way into the EU summit on Wednesday (23 May).

...

The German politician put the blame on Chancellor Angela Merkel for allowing policies that fuel this imbalance and warned that this will eventually backfire against Germany as well.

If we look back at recent history, [European countries]'ve tried in the past to have rigid exchange rates, and each time it has broken down. 1992, 1993, you had the crises. Before that, Europe had the snake, and then it broke down into something else. So the verdict isn't in on the euro. It's only a year old. Give it time to develop its troubles.

...

We know from the past that interest rates can be a very deceptive indicator of the state of affairs. A low interest rate may be a sign of an expansive monetary policy or of an earlier restrictive policy. And similarly, a high rate may be a sign of restriction, of trying to hold things down; or it may be asign of past inflation.

...

... Now, the Bank ofJapan's argument is, "Oh well, we've got the interest rate down to zero; what more can we do?"

It's very simple. They can buy long-term government securities, and they can keep buying them and providing high-powered money until the high powered money starts getting the economy in an expansion. What Japan needs is a more expansive domestic monetary policy.

British celebrities and sportspeople have long complained that the tabloid press "builds them up and knocks them down". Newspaper coverage is initially excessively positive, but, as the public begins to tire of the latest flavour of the month, it switches to being excessively negative, with the slightest misdemeanour enough to attract vitriolic coverage in the press.

Is there a similar phenomenon in political reporting? Recent experience suggests there might be: the highest-profile political scandals, such as the cash for questions affair and the MPs' expenses scandal, seem to hit governments that are already unpopular. In contrast, when Tony Blair was at the height of his powers he earned the nickname "Teflon Tony" for his ability to emerge from sleaze allegations unscathed.

The recent furore over the relationship between the government and the Murdoch media empire is also a case in point. Many of the key elements of the allegations (the close relationship between senior politicians and the Murdochs, the possibility that Andy Coulson might have known about the phone-hacking while he was editor at the News of the World) have been known for some time. However, it is only now, after the coalition's honeymoon period has ended, that the media storm has begun in earnest.

Since he first revealed his conspiracy theory-fueled investigation into Obama's birth certificate and threatened last week to keep the president off the state's ballot, Bennett [Arizona Sec. of State] and his staff have been ducking for political cover behind the people they say really started it: the 1,200 constituents who sent angry emails begging him to take up their cause.

It was only because of them, Bennett said, that he began to look into the birth certificate issue in the first place. His spokesman, Matt Roberts, told TPM "with complete and utter honesty" it has nothing to do with Bennett's affiliation as a Republican or his role as Romney's Arizona campaign co-chair.

[...]

Balanced is one term for it. Tipped the scales might be another. At least one progressive online network, Left Action, took up the cause this week under the theory that if 1,200 emails can convince Bennett to investigate one conspiracy theory, maybe they can cobble together enough support to get him to investigate anything.

As of Tuesday afternoon some 15,000 people and counting had already put their names on Left Action's online petition asking Bennett to investigate whether Mitt Romney is really a unicorn. (Yes, a unicorn. The petition even has its own domain name: MittRomneyIsAUnicorn.com.) That's more than 10 times the number of people who asked Bennett to investigate the president in the first place.

(h/t Varoufakis)

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

There's been a dramatic zero-point shift in the polls since Obama came out for gay marriage.

(Revisiting this data set)

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

Objectivist-C.

Objectivist-C was invented by Russian-American programmer Ope Rand. Based on the principle of rational self-interest, Objectivist-C was influenced by Aristotle's laws of logic and Smalltalk. In an unorthodox move, Rand first wrote about the principles of Objectivist-C in bestselling novels, and only later set them down in non-fiction.

Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Texas told The Daily that his department is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone.

"Those are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out and in certain situations it might be advantageous to have this type of system on the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)," McDaniel told The Daily.