Banks’ Ability to Rig Libor Shows a Change Is Needed - NYTimes.com

Banks’ Ability to Rig Libor Shows a Change Is Needed - NYTimes.com 

This is awful. Bank rate manipulation, collusion, insider malfeasance.
How many times does one get pick-pocketed before they secure their wallet?

Completely infuriating, letting the wolves guard the henhouse. Please support banking reform. Contact and support your Congress members for creation of stronger, streamlined, and severely penal regulations to ensure sober and unrigged financial management, investing, and rates policy. Because it all is ultimately tax-payer money.

Bernie Sanders Too Big To Fail petition:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=c53f1aca-5881-403e-928b-a25980cb4e0c

Economic Justice petition:

Jamie Dimon must resign or be removed from the New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors

The 'Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com

The 'Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com 

Great read. Pop culture's noisy self-inflicted busy lifestyle is maybe not as great as advertised. I like where he's coming from.

I've often reflected on expanding capitalism: Starbucks, McDonalds, pollution, and $200-an-hour therapists crammed side-by-side all up and down the concretized banks of the entire stretches of the Nile and Amazon, and any undeveloped regions. Yuck.

Kreider offers an EXCELLENT take on the current American (and elsewhere) Zeitgeist. No direction or finish-line, all running.

Let's envision and participate in more meaningful, sustainable, deep and personal life content. Less busy noise. 4-day workweek? Sane and rewarding rhythm of life? We can help create them.

"Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.

It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day.

...Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed...."

Fun News: Forget hot dogs, glut means cheap lobster prices - Yahoo! Finance

Forget hot dogs, glut means cheap lobster prices - Yahoo! Finance 

"For now, the excess supply in Maine has driven retail prices to under $4 a pound for the smallest of the soft-shell lobsters. Larger lobsters, and those that still have hard shells, are more expensive.

While consumers may be smiling, lobstermen are smarting because of the low prices — between $2.50 and $3 a pound — they're getting for their catches.

The fishing season is young and lobstermen are hopeful prices soon will rebound to their normal levels, said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association."

Report: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was “Manmade” | World | TIME.com

Report: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was “Manmade” | World | TIME.com 

Infuriating.
Not sustainable.
Add in human idiocy, not only in planning, but execution, cost-cutting, etc.
Too many risks, too widespread, too dangerous.
Already caused too much damage.

Clean-energy.
Sustainable.

"A scathing Japanese parliamentary report investigating the circumstances of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster blamed the dangerous incident on collusion between government agencies and Japan's leading energy company."

Here are a few other noteworthy conclusions from the report’s executive summary:

• On ignoring the very real possibility of a large tsunami: “Since 2006, the regulators and TEPCO were aware of the risk that a total outage of electricity at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant might occur if the tsunami were to reach the level of the site.”
• On the lack of a good evacuation plan: “Only 20 percent of the residents of the town hosting the plant knew about the accident when evacuation from the 3km zone was ordered at 21:23 on the evening of March 11
• On incomplete and poorly disseminated information about radiation after the event: “[The government] failed to explain… the risks of radiation exposure to different segments of the population, such as infants and youths, expecting mothers, or people particularly susceptible to the risks of radiation.”
• On the insularity of Japan’s nuclear industry: “The regulators also had a negative attitude toward the importation of new advances in knowledge and technology from overseas. If NISA [Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency] had passed on to TEPCO measures that were included in the B.5.b subsection of the U.S. security order that followed the 9/11 terrorist action, and if TEPCO had put the measures in place, the accident may have been preventable.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/07/05/report-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-was-manmade/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true#ixzz1zmC7dYwt

Fourth of July

Freedom

To Sunscreen, or Not to Sunscreen

Doctors respond to new sunscreen guide's claims - Los Angeles Times 

To sunscreen or not to sunscreen? Interesting sometimes conflicting views from a new report by the Environmental Working Group and dermatologists.

Hard to summarize. SPF over 30 may be just hype, don't stay out too long just because the sunscreen will 'save your skin,' and use "...those that contain 3% avobenzone (for UVA protection) and avoid "the notorious hormone disrupter oxybenzone."

Mali Islamists Destroy Ancient Timbuktu Sites « VOA Breaking News

Mali Islamists Destroy Ancient Timbuktu Sites « VOA Breaking News 

This is incredibly unsustainable. In this day and age, this behavior will only ostracize these groups further. And the rich global history there needs to be protected, as the diversity and beauty of those past cultures gives us hints at the direction of our future.

"Hamadoune Toure, a spokesman for Mali's interim government, told VOA the government is investigating whether it can file war crimes charges with the International Criminal Court.

“We know it is something unacceptable; it has nothing to do with religion. It's a violation of our culture, but they can do whatever they want. They cannot destroy the links we have with our people who are resting there in peace.”"

More here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9368213/Islamist-militants-attack-historic-Timbuktu-sites.html

By Associated Press, Published: June 29
"BAMAKO, Mali — Islamist fighters with ties to al-Qaida declared that they now control the northern half of Mali after driving out an ethnic Tuareg separatist group. However, the Tuareg group says it still controls at least 90 percent of northern Mali, and has lost only the main towns.

The development is more worrying news for the landlocked nation of 15.4 million, which was plunged into chaos after a coup in March."

“Our fighters control the perimeter. We control Timbuktu completely. We control Gao completely. It’s Ansar Dine that commands the north of Mali,” said Hamaha, who served as chief of security for the group in Gao. “Now we have every opportunity to apply Shariah.”

Asked if the faction would impose the strict Islamic code against the wishes of the population, which has long practiced a moderate form of the religion, Hamaha replied: “Shariah does not require a majority vote. It’s not democracy. It’s the divine law that was set out by God to be followed by his slaves. One hundred percent of the north of Mali is Muslim, and even if they don’t want this, they need to go along with it.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/islamists-chase-tuareg-separatists-out-of-northern-mali-towns-clearing-obstacle-to-shariah/2012/06/29/gJQAEuFeBW_story.html 

The Future: Millions without power as heat wave hammers eastern US - Weather - msnbc.com

Millions without power as heat wave hammers eastern US - Weather - msnbc.com 

The future, now?

Japan Status: Good New Energy & Protesting Unpopular Old Nuclear Plant

Solar farms are blooming in Japan. Good article, and news. 49 of their 50 nuclear reactors are shut down. Godspeed to the Japanese pushing to invest in renewable energy. They, and Germany, are still poised (oddly like post-WWII) to be the most modern nations. 

And good on the Japanese people staying on the streets and in the face of the power companies and politicians demanding clean energy. New York Times detailed story here. Tens of thousands - possible 150,000 - protesting the restarting of a nuclear power plant.

"TOKYO — Japan opened several solar energy parks on Sunday as a new law came into force requiring companies to purchase renewable energy at a fixed price in a push for alternatives to nuclear power....
The government estimates the power provided by renewable energy this year in Japan will attain 2,500 megawatts, the equivalent of two medium-sized nuclear reactors."

So that is 4% of the way to replacing the nuke plants. Here's to betting that % snowballs in the next few years.