According to the Washington Post, there is a new movement forming called “take on Wall Street”.
the group expects to galvanize support for breaking up the big banks and reviving a version of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented the combination of commercial and investment banks. It is also expected to push for a transaction tax, which would force some Wall Street traders, particularly high-frequency traders, to pay a fee every time they buy or sell a stock or bond.
This Washington Post article was written after the Paris attacks of fall 2015. It says that after a terrorist attack these things happen:
concerns about terrorism increase suspicion and even intolerance directed at migrants, refugees and Muslims.
On average, leaders who are Republican, male, and have relevant national security experience tend to be viewed as more competent.
terrorist threat advantages Republicans more than Democrats, in part because Republicans are traditionally perceived as better able to handle issues related to national defense.
Leaders who are both female and Democratic may…experience the most negative political consequences of terrorist attacks.
Hillary Clinton is likely to be bolstered by the foreign policy experience she gained as secretary of state and by her tendency to take stands that are more hawkish than those of Bernie Sanders.
Trump is a bit of a wild card, however. His bold style may be appealing in a context of threat. However, he may be hurt by his lack of any significant foreign policy experience
In other words, nobody knows. The general election is going to be interesting, and if god forbid there were to be major terrorist or geopolitical events it will be even more interesting.
Uber is testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh right now. Which is just more evidence that this technology is headed for commercialization in the next few years rather than decades as the cynics would have us believe.
Before I even talk about this Atlantic article on Venezuela, let me say that I don’t know enough about Venezuela to have much of an opinion on it or its politics. And the language in the article is not unbiased, but has an ideological bent. But here’s what it says:
What our country is going through is monstrously unique: It’s nothing less than the collapse of a large, wealthy, seemingly modern, seemingly democratic nation just a few hours’ flight from the United States.
In the last two years Venezuela has experienced the kind of implosion that hardly ever occurs in a middle-income country like it outside of war. Mortality rates are skyrocketing; one public service after another is collapsing; triple-digit inflation has left more than 70 percent of the population in poverty; an unmanageable crime wave keeps people locked indoors at night; shoppers have to stand in line for hours to buy food; babies die in large numbers for lack of simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment in hospitals, as do the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses.
Like I said this article is ideological, blaming the problems on “Chavez’s 21st-century socialism”:
A case in point is the price controls, which have expanded to apply to more and more goods: food and vital medicines, yes, but also car batteries, essential medical services, deodorant, diapers, and, of course, toilet paper. The ostensible goal was to check inflation and keep goods affordable for the poor, but anyone with a basic grasp of economics could have foreseen the consequences: When prices are set below production costs, sellers can’t afford to keep the shelves stocked. Official prices are low, but it’s a mirage: The products have disappeared.
When a state is in the process of collapse, dimensions of decay feed back on each other in an intractable cycle. Populist giveaways, for example, have fed the country’s ruinous flirtation with hyperinflation; the International Monetary Fund now projects that prices will rise by 720 percent this year and 2,200 percent in 2017. The government virtually gives away gasoline for free, even after having raised the price earlier this year. As a result of this and similar policies, the state is chronically short of funds, forced to print ever more money to finance its spending. Consumers, flush with cash and chasing a dwindling supply of goods, are caught in an inflationary spiral.
The Soviet Union taught us that there is such a thing as going too far with price controls, and such a thing as being overly reliant on oil revenues. Maybe leaders of this country missed some of those lessons of history and repeated some of those mistakes. But I also see another lesson here. The article talks about both the collapse in oil prices, which hit government revenues hard, and the severe drought caused by El Nino, which is causing both water shortages and electricity shortages because the country is dependent on hydropower. So whatever the decisions of political leaders, which I take no position on here, the country was clearly not ready for an external shock caused by environmental factors and changes in supply and demand of natural resources. It may be a microcosm for things to come on a larger scale elsewhere in the world.
What are some leading causes of violent death in Philadelphia?
Are we investing our worries and efforts in the right issues?
This article from The Smithsonian presents some ideas on the future of suburbia.
With truly autonomous vehicles still years away, no one can say with much certainty if they will result in people spending less time in cars. But Berger does foresee one big potential benefit—much less pavement. Based on the notion that there likely will be more car-sharing and less need for multiple lanes since vehicles could continuously loop on a single track, Berger believes the amount of pavement in a suburb of the future could be cut in half. You would no longer need huge shopping center parking lots, or even driveways and garages.
Not only would fewer paved surfaces increase the amount of space that could be used for carbon-storing trees and plants, but it also would allow more water to be absorbed and reduce the risk of flooding in cities downstream.
That kind of interdependence between suburbs and downtowns is at the heart of how Berger and others at the CAU see the future. Instead of bedroom communities of cul-de-sacs and shopping malls, the suburbs they’ve imagined would focus on using more of their space to sustain themselves and nearby urban centers—whether it’s by providing energy through solar panel micro-grids or using more of the land to grow food and store water.
I almost liked the article until I got to the Joel Kotkin quote:
“The reality is that the large majority of people want to live in suburbs,” says Joel Kotkin, a fellow of urban studies at Chapman University in California and the author of The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. “People make these choices for all kinds of reasons that urban theorists don’t pay attention to. They’d rather live in a detached house than in an apartment building. Or they can’t afford to live in the middle of a city. Or they’re worried about where their kids will go to school.”
It’s a scare tactic. Yes, dictators of the past may have forced people into high rise housing blocks at gunpoint in a few cases. That is not happening in the United States right now. In fact, most of us are not able to make a choice between car-dependent and walkable communities because walkable communities are in short supply. Things that are in short supply and high demand tend to be expensive. They are expensive because they are desirable and limited, not because they are undesirable and people are being forced to live there against their will. The nascent trend toward city living would have to continue for a long, long time before there is any lack of suburbs to choose from.
I can’t deny that the state of many urban school districts is problematic. Schools in the United States tend to be locally funded, so that areas with higher concentrations of poverty have worse schools. And areas with higher concentrations of minorities have worse schools because racist and ideologically anti-city politicians from rural areas are able to starve them of funding in many states. All this leads to a downward spiral of poor outcomes and low expectations that is hard to break out of.
This article is a bit disturbing, because I have been composting coffee grounds for years with seemingly good results. Then again, I wasn’t doing an actual controlled experiment.
Applying spent coffee grounds directly to urban agriculture soils greatly reduces plant growth
There are frequent anecdotal recommendations for the use of locally produced spent coffee grounds in urban agriculture and gardens, either through direct soil application or after composting with other urban organic wastes. This study investigates the scientific basis for direct application of spent coffee grounds (SCG) and the influence of different: i) plant pH and nitrogen preferences, ii) soil types, and iii) application rates. We specifically consider impacts upon plant growth, soil hydrology and nitrogen transformation processes.
We grew five horticultural plants (broccoli, leek, radish, viola and sunflower) in sandy, sandy clay loam and loam soils, with and without SCG and fertilizer amendments. The same horticultural plants were grown in the field with 0, 2.5, 5, 10 and 25% SCG amendment rates. Plant biomass growth was related to soil pH, soil moisture, nitrogen concentration and net mineralization, as was weed growth after harvesting.
All horticultural plants grew poorly in response to SCG, regardless of soil type and fertiliser addition. Increasing SCG amendment significantly increased soil water holding capacity, but also decreased horticultural plant growth and subsequent weed growth. There was evidence of nitrate immobilization with SCG amendment. Growth suppression was not explained by soil pH change, or nitrogen availability, so is more likely due to phytotoxic effects.
Fresh SCG should not be used as a soil amendment in ‘closed loop’ urban food production systems without consideration of potential growth suppression. Further research is required to determine the optimal composting conditions for SCG and blends with other organic wastes.
I’m not a very scientific composter. I just throw stuff together in an old recycling bin, then when it fills up I move it to another bin, and then a third (despite a few raised eyebrows from neighbors, I rescued all these bins on my old street after they were abandoned for at least a week, and filled with litter and dog crap). At that point it’s usually a nice crumbly organic mix that I can use. I don’t follow any of the rules. I don’t mix green and brown items in the right proportions, I let it get wet and dry according to the rain, I compost perennial weeds, and my pile almost certainly doesn’t get hot enough. I probably wouldn’t give the stuff away because there are weeds in there, but I don’t worry about putting it back on my garden, which is where the weeds came from. If they want to keep pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into organic matter for me, I am fine with that. I would rather be outside pulling weeds than doing almost anything inside.
Here is the Pennsylvania governor talking about how state policy disadvantages cities and what could be done about it.
- Regional land use planning
- Zoning ordinances and planning codes that allow mixed use, high density communities
- Urban growth boundaries like Portland, Oregon
- Inclusive zoning like Montgomery County, Maryland
- Change public infrastructure investment strategy to promote redevelopment of old settlements
- Strike a better balance between highway and mass transit funding
- Consolidate and restore old industrial sites for redevelopment
- Reform local tax policies starting with the state taking a bigger share of funding for public education
In the end, the struggle for our cities will depend on the outcome of the competition between suburbs and cities. The outcome will largely be determined by the extent to which that competition is a fair one.
I like most of this, but I’m not so sure about the city vs. suburb talk. Part of regional coordination and planning would be to think of the success of a metro area as a whole, from its most intensely urbanized core out to the less dense areas. But I like the urban growth boundary concept, because it puts a lower limit on how far out that development can go and how much infrastructure it can gobble up to get services to people who are spread out, at every else’s expense. Education funding could be done well at this metro area scale, rather than pitting many tiny municipalities and school districts against each other as it does now (a problem across the U.S., but Pennsylvania is particularly bad). I am skeptical of the state, which draws much of its political power from the empty spaces between metro areas, being the solution. Its existence depends on sucking resources out of the population centers where economic activity happens and taxes get paid, and redistributing them to the empty spaces. Even more insidious, in our state at least racism plays a role in the urban vs. rural divide, as well as the city center vs. suburban divide.
I remember that one of the (few) things that caught my attention in the last State of the Union address was talk of a new research plan to cure cancer. This article in The Week talks about what that is.
recently, researchers have had very encouraging results with a new approach called immunotherapy. Some patients in advanced stages of the disease, who previously would have been deemed terminal, have undergone rapid and complete recoveries. Hoping to build on that progress, President Obama in January announced a $1 billion “moonshot” to cure cancer, putting Vice President Joe Biden — whose son Beau died of brain cancer last year — in charge of “mission control.” …
Another promising new frontier is genetic analysis, which splits each type of cancer into dozens of subtypes, so that specific chemotherapy drugs can be tailored to each cancer. Experts also now hope they can use the breakthrough gene-editing technique called CRISPR to correct mutations in cancer cells, or perhaps “edit” out mutation-prone genes that people inherit…
In August 2015, former President Jimmy Carter announced he had been diagnosed with advanced melanoma, a type of skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain. “I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” said Carter, then 90. Four months later, Carter announced he was cancer-free. Along with radiation, Carter had been put on pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), a checkpoint inhibitor that stops cancer cells from blocking the immune system’s response. Soon after, Carter’s scans showed no evidence of the original cancer lesions on his brain, or any new lesions. Given that cancer can often reappear years down the line, oncologists prefer to talk in terms of “years of remission” rather than “cure” — but like Carter, some cancer patients on Keytruda have seen their disease disappear completely. Not surprisingly, says melanoma specialist Dr. Patrick Ott, Carter’s miraculous recovery has prompted patients across the country to demand, “I want what Jimmy Carter had.” Doctors caution that in clinical trials, Keytruda shrank the tumors in only 24 percent of patients, and that it only works on certain types of cancer.
I can never get enough Donald Shoup. Here are some policies he suggested at a recent talk in Philadelphia: