From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

This is part of the emerging trend in which Atlantic Caucasian cultural values will no longer be the dominate worldview. Some will find this very uncomfortable, but research data makes it clear it is true. It is the history no one wants to teach, and it isn't just peculiar to us. Throughout history come cultures have dominated and others have been dominated. But we live in this swing of the pendulum.

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Indigenous Groups Challenge Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination

Friday 22 July 2011
by: Jason Coppola, Truthout | News Analysis

Ask of Me and I shall Give to thee the Heathen as Thine Inheritance and the Uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy Possession. -Psalms 2:8

Margarita Gutierrez Romero is the president of the State Coordinator of Indigenous Women Organizations in Chiapas, Mexico. In New York City to participate in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Romero told us, "Indigenous peoples are being permanently alienated from our being. We are being stripped, ripped off, and plundered of our values, our spirituality, our spirits, even of our gods," she said.

During the two weeks of the annual May forum, indigenous peoples and nations from every corner of the globe converge on the original Lenape island of Manhattan in order to have their voices heard by the world body concerning the violations of their rights, environmental destruction, rising suicide rates, water contamination, as well the effects of climate change.

Romero was speaking at a side event about the root of the problems affecting her people - the dehumanization caused by the "Doctrine of Christian Discovery."

The "doctrine," which will be the theme of next year's highly anticipated UNPFII, would have sounded like conspiracy not too long ago.

Today, thanks to exhaustive research by indigenous scholars and law researchers, the doctrine has been brought front and center.

Tonya Gonnella Frichner, of the Onondaga Nation, is an attorney and president and founder of the American Indian Law Alliance. In 2009, Frichner, who was then North American representative to the UN Permanent Forum, was appointed special rapporteur to conduct a preliminary study of the impact on indigenous peoples of the international legal construct known as the "Doctrine of Discovery." She submitted that study to the Permanent Forum in 2010.

Speaking at the same recent side event, Frichner revealed, "What we found is that the doctrine of discovery has been institutionalized in the laws and policies on the national and international level and lies at the roots of the violations of the indigenous people's human rights, both individual and collective."

This institutionalization took time. About 500 years.

Steven Newcomb (Lenape/Shawnee) is the author of the book "Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery" and has redefined the way the doctrine is discussed today. Newcomb explained the doctrine to Truthout, "The Doctrine of Christian Discovery was a claim that the first Christian monarch or people to locate lands inhabited by non-Christians had the right to assume a right of domination over those lands simply because the original nations were not Christians."

This claim was expressed in Roman Catholic papal edicts "dum Diversas" in 1452 and "Romanus Pontifex" in 1455 issued by Pope Nicholas V.

These edicts granted Portugal, as Newcomb quotes them, "the right 'to invade, capture, vanquish and subdue' all non-Christians, 'to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery,' and to 'take away all their possessions and property.'"

This gave Portugal its justification to invade the west coast of Africa and essentially ignite the global slave trade.

Later, in 1493, Pope Alexander VI followed the tradition of his predecessors by issuing the document "Inter Caetera," which continued the claim for Spain following the voyage of Columbus.

In the race for global dominance, King Henry VII of England was not to be outdone. The king granted a commission to explorer John Cabot, adopting similar language in 1495 to claim for the crown the lands of heathens and infidels not yet discovered by "any Christian people" such as Spain or Portugal.

In 1823, it was this commission that served as the foundation of a decision by the US Supreme Court in the landmark case of Johnson v. M'Intosh. The court cited the Cabot charter and eight other such documents to justify its decision on the basis of Christian discovery.

The Johnson ruling then became the legal precedent for future court decisions on US dominion and Indian land policy, cementing the doctrine of Christian discovery in US law.

Chief Justice John Marshall, who presided over and wrote the Johnson v. M'Intosh decision, explained in his 1824 "History of the American Colonies" that King Henry VII, "granted a commission to John Cabot in order to discover countries unoccupied by any christian state and take possession of them in his [the king's] name."

According to Henry Wheaton, the Supreme Court reporter during the trial, "It thus became a maxim of policy and of law that the right of the native Indians was subordinate to that of the first christian discoverer, whose paramount claim excluded that of every other civilized nation and gradually extinguished that of the natives."

Wheaton added, "According to the European ideas of that age, the heathen nations of the other quarters of the globe were the lawful spoil and prey of their civilized conquerors."

The preliminary study submitted by Frichner has documented "that for more than 500 years the Doctrine of Discovery has been global in scope and application. At least two Governments other than the United States, Canada and Australia, have cited the Johnson v. M'Intosh ruling to enforce the Doctrine of Discovery."

In summation of the doctrine's theory, Newcomb told Truthout, "This thinking provided the rationale for claiming the right to invade and assume a sovereign right of conquest and domination over non-Christian lands, territories and resources, anywhere on the planet."

The results of which are very much felt today as Romero told us, "this concept of discovery wants to convince Indigenous Peoples that we are inferior beings, that we don't have souls or spirits and they use that premise to enslave us, to build their churches, to labor on their farms and plantations and to justify raping us as women. We carry this historic burden, this intergenerational sorrow ... which defines us as stupid Indians and savages."

A Framework of Dominance

The language of empire is at the heart of Newcomb's studies. He gave Truthout an example of its importance in understanding what indigenous peoples are really up against. "In the Inter Caetera papal bull of 1493, issued by Pope Alexander VI, a sentence reads in English: 'We trust in Him from whom empires, governments and all good things proceed.' In the original version of the sentence the Latin word for governments is 'dominationes.' Thus, the Latin word for a single government is, 'domination.' For indigenous nations this has a particular poignancy because their experiences of overbearing "government" policies is an experience of domination and its twin, dehumanization," Newcomb explains.

Romero summed this up eloquently, "I wonder why if we still have our language and our traditional dress and our traditional food we aren't happy? It's almost as if we have to ask permission of these foreign laws and frameworks to be happy." She adds, "I've found that there are peoples who've been stripped even of their smiles. So I've concluded that being happy is like part of our exercise of our right to self determination."

The alternative to this construct, says Newcomb, is "models of healing and renewal. I argue that those models are to be found in the traditional knowledge and wisdom systems of Indigenous Peoples. It is now time to actively turn toward and advocate in behalf of those models in this time of intense upheaval and transition."

"The preliminary study," according to Newcomb, "used the 'framework of dominance' to pinpoint the issues of domination and dehumanization that indigenous peoples continue to face on a daily basis everywhere on the planet. Some people, in an effort to legitimize domination, typically call that framework 'conquest.' Our opinion is that 'domination' is not the same as 'conquest' because domination can and must be resisted and eventually overcome. The Recommendation to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is this, 'End the Domination.'"

Source;
http://www.truth-out.org/indigenous-groups-challenge-doctrine-christian-discovery-and-domination/1310736050

"Finally the truth SR readers have been hearing for years is beginning to be confirmed elsewhere. This is why nothing has been done about jobs. As this report makes clear, "Unfortunately for America's workers, men like President Obama put their faith and trust in people like Jeff Immelt. And CEO's like Jeff Immelt admittedly pledge their loyalties not to their country or their countrymen, but instead to maximizing profits for their corporate shareholders. If higher profits come at the price of devastating their country, so be it."

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Jobs Czar Sends Jobs to China

July 27, 2011. Beijing. Workers are celebrating in the streets and thanking America’s Jobs Czar for moving so many high-paying, high tech jobs to their communities today. The only problem is, they are Chinese workers throughout China. Jeff Immelt is not only President Obama’s Jobs Czar, he is also the CEO of General Electric. In addition to being the parent company all the NBC family of broadcasting networks, GE is also one of the largest military contractors in the US.

In 2008, GE CEO Jeff Immelt called China the company’s “second home market”. Today, it might appear the Communist country led by a military dictatorship is General Electric’s new ‘first home’.

In an announcement today, GE said it is moving the company’s headquarters in charge of X-Ray technology to China. In an effort to increase sales to the giant Asian nation, and cut costs in the process, the largest manufacturer of imaging machines in the world is closing its US headquarters after 115 years. Until now, GE’s X-ray business was headquartered in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

GE’s Waukesha headquarters currently employs 120 people in its X-ray division. While company spokespeople insist job losses in the US as a result of the move will be limited or non-existent, the company hasn’t yet released the number of new jobs it intends to create in Beijing instead of Wisconsin.

The news is coming as a painful slap in the face by the Obama administration. General Electric’s CEO, Jeff Immelt, is President Obama’s Jobs Czar. Mr. Immelt is the one man in the country whose main focus is supposed to be on created jobs here in America. To find out that the man most responsible for developing a strategy to create domestic jobs and put Americans back to work is instead spending his time devising clever and profitable ways to send American jobs to China is nothing short of insulting to the average American worker.

Almost as shocking as the news reports declaring that the US government has been funding the Taliban during both the Bush and Obama administrations, today’s news strikes at the core of America’s economic dysfunction.

For decades, Americans have been living in two separate and unequal worlds. One half bases their self-worth on the daily closing price of the stock market. The other half bases their success on whether or not there’s any money left over from one paycheck to the next. For them, still having a job next year is bonus enough.

President Obama’s Jobs Czar, Jeff Immelt, falls into the first category, unfortunately. His definition of an American product is the same as the US auto industry. To the investor class, corporate America and politicians alike, being ‘American Owned’ is more important than being ‘American Made’. President Obama’s choice of Mr. Immelt as his ‘Jobs Czar’ clearly suggests the President shares the same view.

Beginning in the early 80’s, America’s auto workers began warning us. Well-intentioned patriotic citizens insisted that Americans buy American cars as a show of their patriotism and to help the American economy compete with the newly invited foreign competition. Patriotic Americans were proudly driving Fords, Buicks, Chryslers, Oldsmobiles and Chevys. They boisterously displayed bumper stickers proclaiming, ‘Buy American’. And they tormented and ridiculed anyone who crossed their path driving a foreign car, especially a tiny Japanese brand.

But America’s auto workers had a warning – ‘American owned is not the same as American made’. After a little research on their own autos, many Americans were horrified to discover that their ‘American Made’ car was actually made in a distant foreign country like Brazil and assembled in a near-by country like Mexico. At the same time, Americans found out that ‘Foreign’ cars, like Toyotas, Nissans and Hondas, were actually made right here in the good old USA by American workers with good jobs and good paychecks.

Unfortunately for America’s workers, men like President Obama put their faith and trust in people like Jeff Immelt. And CEO’s like Jeff Immelt admittedly pledge their loyalties not to their country or their countrymen, but instead to maximizing profits for their corporate shareholders. If higher profits come at the price of devastating their country, so be it. As Jeff Immelt has said himself, GE has a second home in China.

Source;
http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/wach/jobs-czar-sends-american-jobs-to-china571/

"Yet another example of how the Big Agriculture puts short term profit ahead of any other consideration."

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What the USDA Doesn't Want You to Know About Antibiotics and Factory Farms


Reservoir hogs: According to peer-reviewed research, factory farms may be a
"significant reservoir of resistant bacteria." Yum! Humane Society


By TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones


Here is a document the USDA doesn't want you to see. It's what the agency calls a "technical review"-nothing more than a USDA-contracted researcher's simple, blunt summary of recent academic findings on the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections and their link with factory animal farms. The topic is a serious one. A single antibiotic-resistant pathogen, MRSA-just one of many now circulating among Americans-now claims more lives each year than AIDS.

Back in June, the USDA put the review up on its National Agricultural Library website. Soon after, a Dow Jones story quoted a USDA official who declared it to be based on "reputed, scientific, peer-reviewed, and scholarly journals." She added that the report should not be seen as a "representation of the official position of USDA." That's fair enough-the review was designed to sum up the state of science on antibiotic resistance and factory farms, not the USDA's position ...
Read more here:
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-doesnt-want-you-know-about-antibiotics-and-factory-farms

"Given what is going on here I found this very refreshing. In contrast to the U.S. the population of Iceland told the government whey would not tolerate using taxpayer money to bail out the high roller bankers whose poor decisions and greed caused their institutions to collapse. Now they are rewriting their constitution. Imagine that."

From Agence France-Presse (France)

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Iceland citizens write a new constitution through online collaboration

By Agnes Valdimarsdottir

REYKJAVIK — A group of 25 ordinary citizens on Friday presented to Iceland's parliamentary speaker a new constitution draft, which they compiled with the help of hundreds of others who chipped in online.

The group had been working on the draft since April and posted its work on the Internet, allowing hundreds of other citizens to give their feedback on the project via the committee's website and on social networks such as Facebook.

"The reaction from the public was very important. And many of the members were incredibly active in responding to the comment that came through," Salvor Nordal, the head of the elected committee of citizens from all walks of life, told reporters.

Katrin Oddsdottir, a lawyer who had shared her experience on the committee through micro-blogging site Twitter, said she believed the public's input was "what mattered the most" in preparing the draft.

"What I learned is that people can be trusted. We put all our things online and attempted to read, listen and understand and I think that made the biggest difference in our job and made our work so so so much better," she said.

Iceland's constitution was barely adapted from Denmark's when the island nation gained independence from the Scandinavian kingdom in 1944.

"Since then, a holistic re-examination of the constitution has always been on the agenda, but always halted because of political infighting in the parliament," committee member Eirikur Bergmann, a political science professor at Iceland's Bifroest Unioversity who also tweeted his way through the committee's work, told AFP.

But after Iceland's economic collapse in 2008, which triggered massive social movements, pressure mounted for a revamp of the constitution and for the process to be led by ordinary citizens, he said.

The committee's website (www.stjornlagarad.is, in Icelandic and English) quickly became an incubator for comments, with more than 1,600 propositions and comments on the suggested text.

Moreover, the council was present on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, allowing Iceland -- and the world -- to follow its progress.

Most of the suggestions had to do with an economic model for the island nation of 320,000, committee member Silja Omarsdottir told AFP.

"The other proposals ... that form a noticeable trend have to do with the Internet, web neutrality, transparency and freedom of access to the Internet," she said.

Some citizens also gave specific suggestions.

"It would be be more natural that a parliamentarian would have to resign from parliament should he take on the position of a minister," Bjarni Kristinn Torfason suggested on the council's webpage.

Helgi Johann Hauksson thought the council should be more specific: "who we 'all' are needs to be defined when it is written 'all of us are equal in the eyes of the law," he posted.

The comments of international observers ranged from admiration to the occasional bizarre idea.

"Iceland, you are truly a BIG small country! You bring hope to the hearts of people who are gathering on the squares and streets of Europe these days," said Greek university student Charalampos Krekoukiotis, while others from abroad suggested Iceland "kill all capitalists" or "legalise marijuana."

"It is messy. It is completely messy," Bergmann said of ploughing through the public's comments.

"But take your average legislation in your average parliament in your average country," he said. "That's messy as well."

Parliament's speaker Asta Ragnheidur Johannesdottir said the draft would be examined by a parliamentary committee starting October 1.

"I'm grateful for your work," she told the members. "It is my hope, that in time, Icelanders won't only have a constitution that they accept, but one which they are proud of," she added.

Source;
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/29/iceland-citizens-write-a-new-constitution-through-online-collaboration/
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

"SR reader Amy McBride, in response to a story I ran a few days ago about the Texas drought wrote about her own experience. It made it very real for me, and may do the same for you, which is why I have chosen to publish her account. I think it was her observations about the birds that touched me most deeply."

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A View of the Texas Drought


By AMY MCBRIDE

"What will happen if the Texas drought goes on for another two years?

I live in Budha, Texas, a very typical rural Texas town of less than 2500. What I am describing is taking place within about a 10 mile radius of my house. Ten iddy biddy miles. Expand this out to all of Texas.....

One of the great mystery questions in life is 'what happens to birds when they die, and why don't we ever see them?' - Birds are falling out dead from the trees. Just, plunk, a dead bird.

How many vultures do you usually see around road kill? Four, five, six? Try 30. Thirty birds vying for any kind of moisture from a dead thing, any kind of nourishment.

Last week 100 cattle dropped dead in the field, pretty much all at once. The fire department was called to water down the rest of the herd, trying to save it.

There is no hay, no food, no grass, no insects, no standing water for breeding mosquitos, no mosquitos - in Texas!, nothing to eat. The bats are in peril.

Every morning around 9:00am I go out and water my birds. I take a long hose, put the hand sprinkler on "jet" and send a stream of rationed water up into the trees to come down as rain to water my birds. They are waiting for me these days. All different kinds. No king of the hill. Just all sorts of birds trying to get a drink, trying to wash off any manner of little insects, dust, and sand that they've been carrying around for days because there is no way to take a bath. So many birds are "grounded," too heavy to fly. They hop across parking lots, tiny burning feet, sad open mouths. Those that can fly, fly with opened mouths. They are seen on my back porch, searching for anything moving. Birds are seen in places birds have not been seen before.

In my area we are in fourth stage drought. Second stage allows 4,000 gallons of water per person per household a month. Third stage, extreme drought, allows 3.000 gallons. Fourth stage, exceptional drought, allows 2,000. We cannot water our lawns. We cannot wash our cars. We can bathe, do some laundry, and have water to drink. That's it. If one goes over the allotment one is sent a letter from the water company, as a warning. The second letter imposes a fine of $75.00 and your water is turned off until you pay the fine and the expenses of having it turned back on. I don't know what happens if one commits a second crime and gets a third letter. I don't know anyone who has gone this far.

In Buda we are under severe water rationing because we are built over an aquifer. We don't buy our water and have it piped in from somewhere, like other places. We rely on our own water. This is an important distinction, important to understand. There is an end to our water. We can run out. If we use too much water then we deplete the wells of residents and farmers who must have a reachable water table for themselves and their animals. Otherwise, they don't have water, period. It is a critical situation. We all know it. We all just quit at some point, trying to keep a flower blooming. My husband travels a lot for business and I spend his ration, 2,000 gallons, on my wild birds.

A good friend of mine from high school days made a mint in the medical field and opened a restaurant in Austin, about 25 miles from here. An Austin landmark. Lots of college kids, old hippies like me. Lots of outdoor seating. Mexican food. Incredibly popular place. Last week I and who knows how many other people got an email from my friend saying the restaurant is alive and well, has changes to the menu, and please come visit soon! My friend is looking for his customers! Well, this makes sense. Who wants to go to Happy Hour on an outside patio when the temperature is 106 and the heat index is 111 and the humidity is 78%? And if this keeps up, day after week after month after summer after summer after summer after summer - as it has, these last four brutal summers ---- then this Austin landmark is going to go out of business. Because of the heat. -- What restaurant goes out of business because of the heat?

A Formula One Grand Prix race track is being built 20 miles from my house. The area has rejoiced in what this could mean in terms of jobs and tax income. The first race, however, has reportedly been rescheduled from June, 2012, to November, 2012, as apparently a) they couldn't get the course finished because, in part, the concrete kept cracking in the heat and b) nobody who races cars at this level wants to come to Texas in the heat.

I could go on and on and on about the horrors of this drought. It is the old people, the man on social security, $800 a month, whose electric bill has gone up $80 a month, one tenth of his income. His kids don't come see him anymore because he's cooling off with fans and open windows to keep costs down and they can't take the heat or subject their children to so much heat.

What will happen if this goes on for another two years?
The birds will disappear.
The grass will disappear.
Businesses will disappear.
The good life will disappear. Rather, a normal life will disappear.

No rain. No water. No life."

"The latest in the Homo Superiorus trend."

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Fertility landmark as scientists make sperm from stem cells

Cells taken from infertile men or women could be turned into 'germline' cells that give rise to sperm and eggs.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Friday, 5 August 2011

Scientists have made sperm in a laboratory from converting stem cells, and used them to produce healthy offspring in mice, in technology that could be adapted to help infertile men.

It is believed to the the first time that sperm cells made in the laboratory with stem-cell techniques have been used to generate offspring free of any obvious physical or genetic defects that have grown up and reproduced normally, the researchers said.

Scientists took stem cells from the embryos of laboratory mice and converted them into mature sperm cells, then used them to fertilise eggs and produced the healthy, fertile offspring.

The technology may one day form the basis of a new approach to treating infertile women incapable of making their own egg cells, the scientists said.

One possibility is that skin cells taken from infertile men or women could be turned into stem cells and then converted into the "germline" cells that give rise to sperm and eggs. These sperm and egg cells could then be used in standard IVF procedures.

"This is the first study to create health and fertile offspring from germline cells generated from embryonic stem cells. Previous studies have not demonstrated the generation of such offspring," said Professor Mitinori Saitou, of Kyoto University, Japan, who led the study published in the journal Cell.

"In the future, it may be possible to treat infertile men with a reproductive technology based on our contribution, but there are still a lot – really a lot – of issues that need to be resolved for this purpose," Professor Saitou said.

The Japanese scientists used embryonic stem cells from mice to make primordial germ cells, which are present in the testes and produce a steady flow of sperm cells in fertile males. The scientists also made primordial germ cells from another type of embryonic cell that was converted into a stem cell by a genetic technique called induced pluripotent stem cells. "Primordial germ cells are the precursors both for oocytes [eggs] in females and sperm in males," Professor Saitou said.

Allan Pacey, a male fertility expert at the University of Sheffield, said: "This is a quite a step forward in developing a process by which sperm could be made for infertile men, perhaps by taking as a starting point a cell from their skin or from something like bone marrow. Clearly more work needs to be done, but it's hugely exciting."

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fertility-landmark-as-scientists-make-sperm-from-stem-cells-2332157.html

Note - occasionally i will come across a newsworthy story that fits into the theme of this thread...This next item is very telling in regards to the ever changing evolutionary modes of modern human communication.

from giovonni

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Cultural Studies

Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You

By PAMELA PAUL

NOBODY calls me anymore — and that’s just fine. With the exception of immediate family members, who mostly phone to discuss medical symptoms and arrange child care, and the Roundabout Theater fund-raising team, which takes a diabolical delight in phoning me every few weeks at precisely the moment I am tucking in my children, people just don’t call.

It’s at the point where when the phone does ring — and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter — my first thought is: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” My second thought is: “Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?”

I don’t think it’s just me. Sure, teenagers gave up the phone call eons ago. But I’m a long way away from my teenage years, back when the key rite of passage was getting a phone in your bedroom or (cue Molly Ringwald gasp) a line of your own.

In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”

Though the beast has been somewhat tamed by voice mail and caller ID, the phone caller still insists, Ms. Martin explained, “that we should drop whatever we’re doing and listen to me.”

Even at work, where people once managed to look busy by wearing a headset or constantly parrying calls back and forth via a harried assistant, the offices are silent. The reasons are multifold. Nobody has assistants anymore to handle telecommunications. And in today’s nearly door-free workplaces, unless everyone is on the phone, calls are disruptive and, in a tight warren of cubicles, distressingly public. Does anyone want to hear me detail to the dentist the havoc six-year molars have wreaked on my daughter?

“When I walk around the office, nobody is on the phone,” said Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher at HarperCollins. The nature of the rare business call has also changed. “Phone calls used to be everything: serious, light, heavy, funny,” Mr. Burnham said. “But now they tend to be things that are very focused. And almost everyone e-mails first and asks, ‘Is it O.K. if I call?’ ”

Even in fields where workers of various stripes (publicists, agents, salespeople) traditionally conducted much of their business by phone, hoping to catch a coveted decision-maker off-guard or in a down moment, the phone stays on the hook. When Matthew Ballast, an executive director for publicity at Grand Central Publishing, began working in book publicity 12 years ago, he would go down his list of people to cold call, then follow up two or three times, also by phone. “I remember five years ago, I had a pad with a list of calls I had to return,” he said. Now, he talks by phone two or three times a day.

“You pretty much call people on the phone when you don’t understand their e-mail,” he said.

Phone call appointments have become common in the workplace. Without them, there’s no guarantee your call will be returned. “Only people I’ve ruthlessly hounded call me back,” said Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars.” Writers and others who work alone can find the silence isolating. “But if I called my editor and agent every time I wanted to chat, I think they’d say, ‘Oh no, Mary Roach is calling again.’ So I’ve pulled back, just like everyone else.”

Whereas people once received and made calls with friends on a regular basis, we now coordinate such events via e-mail or text. When college roommates used to call (at least two reunions ago), I would welcome their vaguely familiar voices. Now, were one of them to call on a Tuesday evening, my first reaction would be alarm. Phone calls from anyone other than immediate family tend to signal bad news.

Receiving calls on the cellphone can be a particular annoyance. First, there’s the assumption that you’re carrying the thing at all times. For those in homes with stairs, the cellphone siren can send a person scrambling up and down flights of steps in desperate pursuit. Having the cellphone in hand doesn’t necessarily lessen the burden. After all, someone might actually be using the phone: someone who is in the middle of scrolling through a Facebook photo album. Someone who is playing Cut the Rope. Someone who is in the process of painstakingly touch-tapping an important e-mail.

For the most part, assiduous commenting on a friend’s Facebook updates and periodically e-mailing promises to “catch up by phone soon” substitute for actual conversation. With friends who merit face time, arrangements are carried out via electronic transmission. “We do everything by text and e-mail,” said Laurie David, a Hollywood producer and author. “It would be strange at this point to try figuring all that out by phone.”

Of course, immediate family members still phone occasionally. “It’s useful for catching up on parenting issues with your ex-husband,” said Ms. David, who used to be married to Larry David, the star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “Sometimes when you don’t want to type it all, it’s just easier to talk.”

But even sons, husbands and daughters don’t always want to chat. In our text-heavy world, mothers report yearning for the sound of their teenage and adult children’s voices. “I’m sort of missing the phone,” said Lisa Birnbach, author of “True Prep” and mother of three teenagers. “It’s warmer and more honest.”

That said, her landline “has become a kind of vestigial part of my house like the intercom buttons once used in my prewar building to contact the ‘servants quarters.’ ” When the phone rings, 9 times out of 10, it’s her mother.

There are holdouts. Radhika Jones, an assistant managing editor at Time magazine, still has a core group of friends she talks to by phone. “I’ve always been a big phone hound,” she said. “My parents can tell you about the days before call waiting.” Yet even she has slipped into new habits: Voice mails from her husband may not get listened to until end of day. Phone messages are returned by e-mail. “At least you’re responding!”

But heaven forbid you actually have to listen — especially to voice mail. The standard “let the audience know this person is a loser” scene in movies where the forlorn heroine returns from a night of cat-sitting to an answering machine that bleats “you have no messages” would cause confusion with contemporary viewers. Who doesn’t heave a huge sigh of relief to find there’s no voice mail? Is it worth punching in a protracted series of codes and passwords to listen to some three-hour-old voice say, “call me” when you could glance at caller ID and return the call — or better yet, e-mail back instead?

Many people don’t even know how their voice mail works. “I’ve lost that skill,” Ms. Birnbach said.

“I have no idea how to check it,” Ms. David admitted. “I can stay in a hotel for three days with that little red light blinking and never listen. I figure, if someone needs to reach me, they’ll e-mail.”

“I don’t check these messages often,” intoned a discouraging recorded voice, urging callers to try e-mail. And this is the voice-mail recording of Claude S. Fischer, author of a book on the history of the telephone and more recently, “Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970.”

“When the telephone first appeared, there were all kinds of etiquette issues over whom to call and who should answer and how,” Dr. Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me when finally reached by phone. Among the upper classes, for example, it was thought that the butler should answer calls. For a long time, inviting a person to dinner by telephone was beyond the pale; later, the rules softened and it was O.K. to call to ask someone to lunch.

Telephones were first sold exclusively for business purposes and only later as a kind of practical device for the home. Husbands could phone wives when traveling on business, and wives could order their groceries delivered. Almost immediately, however, people began using the telephone for social interactions. “The phone companies tried to stop that for about 30 years because it was considered improper usage,” Dr. Fischer said.

We may be returning to the phone’s original intentions — and impact. “I can tell you exactly the last time someone picked up the phone when I called,” Mary Roach said. “It was two months ago and I said: ‘Whoa! You answered your phone!’ It was a P.R. person. She said, ‘Yeah, I like to answer the phone.’ ” Both were startled to be voice-to-voice with another unknown, unseen human being.

Source;
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Note:
Pamela Paul is an American journalist, an editor of the New York Times Book Review, and the author of three books. She is also a columnist for The New York Times.

"Although there was a post in the colonial period, the post office as an entity tying the country together is a creation of Benjamin Franklin.
And now, like so much of our infrastructure, it is fading slowly away."

***********

US Postal Service warns it could default

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/05/us-postal-service-warns-it-could-default/

"I think this is a pretty good assessment of the S&P situation."

***********

Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 7, 2011

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects...
read more... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html?_r=2&hp

"I think this is a pretty good assessment of the S&P situation."

***********

Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 7, 2011

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects...
read more...http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html?_r=2&hp

"I think this is a pretty good assessment of the S&P situation."

***********

Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 7, 2011

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects...
read more...http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html?_r=2&hp

"Corporations are spending as never before to keep their Congressional minions in line. However, the polls showing how even long serving incumbents are in trouble may trump the money. For the moment votes still are more important than money."

***********

GOP-leaning lobbying firms thrive despite declining K St. revenue


By Kevin Bogardus - 08/09/11

Business for Republican-leaning lobbying firms has grown this year, despite lobbying revenue declining for many on K Street.
Several shops with ties to GOP leadership in the House and Senate have signed up new clients and seen their revenue grow in the first half of the year. Lobbying has risen by almost half for some, nearly doubling for others.

Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock has reported making more than $5.2 million in lobbying fees so far this year, according to disclosure records. That's a 44 percent jump from the $3.6 million it had taken in at this point in 2010.

'A lot of it is new business combined with the existing book of business that has stayed with us,” said Mark Isakowitz, president of the firm, which has taken on at least eight new clients this year, including tech heavyweights Facebook, Apple and Oracle Corp., according to lobbying disclosure ...
read more
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/176179-gop-leaning-lobbying-firms-thrive-despite-k-st-decline

"This use of social media presages a developing new trend that has profound social implications. It could be positive and useful, or it could turn us into a community
of East German neighborhoods at the height of the Soviet era, in which, by some measures, a third of the population were informants."

***********

Britons use social networking sites to expose rioters

Agence France-Presse (France)

AFP - Britons took to social networking sites on Wednesday to expose the rioters who went on the rampage for four nights, posting photos of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles.

Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of the country, was captured on mobile phone cameras, video recorders or CCTV, and the images quickly found their way into cyberspace.

London's Metropolitan Police made a tentative attempt to use social media to track down suspects, putting up 25 photos of youths breaking into shops and lobbing missiles on photo-sharing site flickr.

But the official effort paled in comparison to the surge of activity by amateur web investigators.

One such project is a web page called "Catch A Looter", which has been set up on blog-hosting website tumblr and features dozens of photos from the London riots...

read more http://www.france24.com/en/20110811-britons-use-social-networking-sites-expose-rioters

very timely...




***********

Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses

Aug 11 03:43 PM US/Eastern

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing,
computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday...
read more http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6e1e2ad90e2d94b12b6258b7e9c5b33d.611&show_article=1

so they came up with somethin' else cuz they knew too many would refuse the chip?
(i still ain't fallin' for it ....)

"We live in the middle of a biosphere, not on top or apart from it. We are part of it, not apart from it as a different order of being.
We are subject to its cycles and trends; not their masters."

***********
From LiveScience

Earth's Surface 'Recycled' Surprisingly Quickly

Date: 11 August 2011


The volcanic islands of Hawaii are thought to be fueled by a plume of hot rock that moves upward from the lower portions of the Earth's mantle.

The ground we stand on seems permanent and unchanging, but the rocks that make up Earth's crust are actually subject to a cycle of birth and death that changes our planet's surface over eons. Now scientists have found evidence that this cycle is quicker than thought: 500 million years instead of 2 billion.

The tectonic plates that make up Earth's crust are constantly jostling against each other: brushing past one another in some places, moving apart in other areas, and butting head-on in still other places.

Where these head-on collisions occur, denser oceanic crust is shoved beneath lighter continental crust, causing it to melt in the ferocious temperatures and pressures of Earth's mantle. This oceanic crust gets mixed into the rest of the mantle, which because of its high temperature and pressure slowly flows and fuels the world's volcanoes.

Virtually all of the world's ocean islands are volcanoes. Several of them, such as the Hawaiian Islands, came from mantle plumes originating in the lowest part of the mantle. This geological process is similar to the movement of a Lava Lamp: hot rock that used to be part of the oceanic crust rises in cylindrical columns from a depth of nearly 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers). Near the surface, where the pressure on it is reduced, the rock melts and forms volcanoes.

Scientists had thought this process took about 2 billion years to complete, but new data suggest it could have happened in a quarter of that time.

Researchers came up with this speedier timeline by conducting a chemical analysis of tiny, glassy inclusions in olivine crystals from basaltic lava on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. The microscopic inclusions in the volcanic rock contain trace elements originally dissolved in seawater that was then soaked up by the oceanic rocks. This allowed the recycling process to be dated.

The age is revealed by the ratio of isotopes of the element strontium, a figure that changes with time. (Isotopes of a chemical element have different numbers of neutrons in their cores.)


These are olivine crystals from Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii, with a width of less than 1 mm. The brown ovals are solidified, glassy inclusions trapped as droplets of melt by the growing olivine crystal. They contain strontium isotope ratios which are inherited from 500-million-year-old seawater. CREDIT: Sobolev, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry

With a specially developed laser, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, measured the strontium in the samples of Hawaiian lava and were surprised when the findings suggested the rock was less than 500 million years old.

"Apparently strontium from seawater has reached deep in the Earth's mantle and re-emerged after only half a billion years, in Hawaiian volcano lavas," said study team member Klaus Peter Jochum. "This discovery was a huge surprise for us."

Source;
http://www.livescience.com/15512-earth-crust-cycling-faster.html

this is very revealing...and comes no less from within the Fed itself...

***********

"As the result of a dinner conversation for about three months I have been looking for some research on exactly how much of consumer spending goes to "made in China" products.
I finally found a trustworthy report, and it contains some major surprises. Click through to see the graphs the report references." S A Schwartz

Galina Hale is a senior economist in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Bart Hobijn is a senior research advisor in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

References:

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010. "Inter-industry relationships (Input/Output matrix)."

U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. "U.S. International Trade Data."

Xing, Yuqing, and Neal Detert. 2010. "How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China." Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper 257.


The U.S. Content of “Made in China”

By Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn

Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the "Made in China" label. Although the fraction is higher when the imported content of goods made in the United States is considered, Chinese imports still make up only a small share of total U.S. consumer spending. This suggests that Chinese inflation will have little direct effect on U.S. consumer prices.

The United States is running a record trade deficit with China. This is no surprise, given the wide array of items in stores labeled 'Made in China.” This Economic Letter examines what fraction of U.S. consumer spending goes for Chinese goods and what part of that fraction reflects the actual cost of imports from China. We ...

read more... http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-25.html

"The next time someone tells you that raising the taxes of the rich will stop the creation of jobs, and similar arguments, tell them to read this."

***********
Buffett: I beg you to raise my taxes



From Politico

Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of about $80 billion, is demanding the U.S. government make the rich like him pay higher taxes and says they should no longer be protected like endangered 'spotted owls.”

In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, titled 'Stop Coddling the Rich,” Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chair and CEO, said he and his 'mega-rich” friends have been spared the 'shared sacrifice” the country's leaders have asked for as the country veers toward a double-dip recession.

'While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he wrote.

'These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered ...

read more... http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61370.html

"I think this is one of the best good news stories I have read in many months. Every train company in the world will watch what is going on in Belgium.
This is not a theoretical solution; this is an operational reality."

Thanks to Sam Crespi.

***********

Solar power for trains dawns in rainy Belgium

* 16,000 solar panels on tunnel power Belgian trains

* Panels produce 3.3 GWh of electricity a year

SCHOTEN, Belgium, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Trains already have a reputation for being a very clean form of transport but Belgian commuters can now boast railways which are partially powered by solar energy.

A public-private consortium consisting of Belgian rail management company Infrabel and solar developer Enfinity has installed 16,000 solar panels on the roof of a 3.4 km (2.1 miles) long tunnel between Antwerp and the Dutch border, creating enough electricity to power 4,000 trains a year.

The unique feature of the project, which is designed to produce 3.3 gigawatt hours a year, is that the energy produced does not flow into the national grid but is used directly by the trains.

Enfinity says that by cutting out the middle man, the grid operator, it can offer electricity about 30 percent cheaper.

Infrabel benefits from being able to sell cheaper electricity to its customers, which include the Belgian railways and private high-speed operator Thalys.

Enfinity and the other investors, such as the councils of the towns of Brasschaat and Schoten which border the tunnel, expect to see a return on their joint investment of 15.7 million euros ($22.12 million) within nine years.

Enfinity says the solar panels used in the project are made by Chinese company Jinko Solar , which it said offered better returns than European competitors.

In terms of sunshine, the summer of 2011 has so far been a disappointing one, even by Belgian standards, with 20 days of rain in July and eight days of misery so far in August according to the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute.

Enfinity's marketing head Jurgen Van Damme told Reuters that bad weather was part of the calculation and that he still expected an average of 900 hours of sun each year.

"There are good wine years and there are good solar years," he said.

Infrabel said it was considering a project fuelled by wind power at another location in Belgium.

Passengers on a train entering the solar tunnel, which was inaugurated in June, reacted positively.

"We have solar panels at home so we know that it works and it's pleasant to see that we don't have to pay too much for electricity. So yes, I think it's a nice initiative," said passenger Els Krols on her way from Antwerp to the small town of Noorderkempen.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; additional reporting by Marine Hass, editing by Paul Casciato)

($1=.7099 Euro)

(Created by Paul Casciato)

Source;
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE77916I20110812?sp=true

Note closing thread ~ Bye bye !

thanks to all here ~ Gio