A Twitter feud in June between the Estonian president and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who questioned the impact of Estonia's austerity measures, is being turned into an opera.

EU hints at banning insecticides over threat to bees | The Raw Story

The European Commission hinted on Wednesday that it could ban several insecticides, some made by German chemicals giant Bayer, after scientists found disturbing evidence of harm to bees.

The EU's food safety agency had reported "disturbing conclusions on three types of insecticides," a spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said.

Following the findings, the Commission would be writing to manufacturers Bayer, Syngenta and Cruiser OSR to seek their response by January 25, the spokesman said, adding that the topic would be taken up again on January 31.

Publisher Criticized for Removing Racist Terms from Children's Book - SPIEGEL ONLINE

A German publisher is being accused of excessive political correctness for removing controversial language from a classic children's book, sparking debate about how to handle outdated and offensive words in the genre.

Last month German Family Minister Kristina Schröder incited the ire of her fellow conservative politicians when she took aim at politically incorrect content in classic children's literature. In addition to suggesting that God should be gender neutral, she criticized sexist and racist messages in some of these tales too. If she were to read aloud to her daughter from one of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books, called "Pippi in Taka Tuka Land" in German, she would leave out the word "negro" in order "to protect my child from taking on such expressions," Schröder told the daily newspaper Die Zeit.

... The past few decades, there's been a shift in the financial system towards things that, economically-speaking, look like a bank, act like a bank, but technically aren't banks. Institutions like hedge funds, structured investment vehicles, and money-market funds all borrow short and lend long, just like a bank, but do so outside the web of regulations that control, and safeguard, regular, old banks. In other words, they trade FDIC insurance and access to the Fed window for complete financial freedom.

They are the shadow banking system, and they didn't really exist back in 1979. At least not anywhere near today's scale. And they, along with conventional banks that have gotten into the game, use Treasury bonds as a kind of money. They use Treasuries as collateral for cash in repurchase agreements (repos) to fund their daily trading, with those same Treasuries often getting "rehypothetecated" -- that is, reposted as collateral by whoever first got it as collateral -- in a dizzying chain of financial connections. It's almost impossible to predict what would happen to these collateral chains if there was any kind of default on Treasuries, but it would almost certainly be 1) bad, and 2) very bad. Think about it this way. Treasuries are supposed to be the safest of safe assets, and as such are the lifeblood of the financial system, which has been running low on safe assets since mortgage bonds turned out not to be so. Removing the system's blood is not something we want to try. The last time something like that happened was, of course, back in 2007-08 with subprime bonds, and it set off and old-fashioned bank run on the uninsured assets of the shadow banking system that nearly brought down the world economy.

Kevin Kelly, The Post-Productive Economy

Take a look at these farm houses which I saw under construction in remote areas of Yunnan province China. They were not unusual; farmsteads this size were everywhere in rural China. Note the scale of these massive buildings. Each support post is cut from a single huge tree. The massive earth walls are three stories high and taper toward the top. They are homes for a single extended family built in the traditional Tibetan farmhouse style. They are larger than most middle-class American homes. The extensive wood carvings inside and outside will be painted in garish colors, like this family room shown in a finished home. This area of Yunnan is consider one of the poorer areas in China, and the standard of living of the inhabitants here would be classified as "poor."

Part of the reason is that these homes have no running water, no grid electricity, and no toilets. They don't even have outhouses.

But the farmers and their children who live in these homes all have cell phones, and they have accounts on the Chinese versions of Twitter and Facebook, and recharge via solar panels.

This is important because a recent thought-provoking article by a renowned economist argues that the US economy has not been growing during the internet boom and probably will not grow any more than it has already because computers and the internet are not as productive as the last two industrial revolutions.

Technology will continue to increase productivity for the commodities of life, even if it takes another 80 years. But the next phase we are rushing into -- the 3rd Industrial Revolution, the world of networks -- the non-commodities of life will play a greater role in economic terms. When science fiction author Neal Stephenson laments: "I saw the best minds of my generation... writing spam filters" he should not give up. It's not that different that the best minds of a former generation designing oil filters. These are the unglamorous but essential tasks in constructing a whole new infrastructure.

Is Kevin Kelly's thesis worth a discussion?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Wind on the grid doesn't need storage as it just gets used when made. It just a strawman argument by those who don't want wind or other alternative energy.

Facts are demand is far more variable than wind ever could be and the grid has handled it easily for 100+ yrs now.

And as more wind is put in over wider areas they like demand averages out making reliable power. Utilities don't have a problem with wind, just talking heads mostly from the coal, battery, etc industry that are the losers as they should be.

And I don't see anyone mentioning nuke power which when a plant scrams, which is far more often than most people think, all of a sudden they have to make up a whole Gw vs a few Mw for wind. Which is barely a rounding number on the grid for either supply or demand.