Why Obama Now?

October 7, 2012

Obama’s own words, with animation provided by Lucas Gray, a veteran animator from The Simpsons and Family Guy.

Andre Tartar wrote about it at the New York Magazine website:

Your average campaign ad involves lots of black and white B-roll, ominous music, and floating newspaper headlines. So this nearly 4-minute illustrated reel by Lucas Gray, a veteran of the Simpsons and Family Guy animation departments, is a welcome bit of color. Using audio from a speech President Obama gave at the Associates Press Luncheon in April, “Why Obama Now” is a jaunty mix of cartoon Americans driving their Model T Fords off the assembly line onto the American Dream, graphs and charts sprouting up as the president rattles off statistics, and little bobblehead meanies providing comic relief: Bush and Cheney with a pile of gold (the Clinton surplus), Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of the conservative pundit gang. It also includes the best (though not most convincing) explanation of trickle-down economics we’ve seen yet: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the sparrows.”

At the website for WhyObamaNow.org, the sources are listed:

  1. Obama’s speech to the Associated Press luncheon on April 3, 2012, at the Marriott Wardman Park
  2. Other sources for graphs shown throughout the video
  3. Transcript of the entire speech

The entire speech (58 minutes — 36 minutes for the prepared text, plus Q&A):

Leave a Comment » | animation, Barack Obama, Economics, History, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Doubt, about the science of tobacco consumption, DDT, and global warming

October 6, 2012

From The Climate Reality Project.

(Yes, there is a bias.  Several biases exist there simultaneously, actually, so we should say there are biases.  The most important for you to know about are the biases for good science and accuracy, especially historical accuracy.)

More:

Graffiti: BIAS

Graffiti: BIAS (Photo credit: Franco Folini, via Flickr) (Creative Commons)

15 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, CO2, DDT, Environment, Environmental protection, Health care, How do we know what we know, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Banned Books Week: Still time to read

October 6, 2012

Liberty reading Banned Book; Banned Books Week 2012

Read for Freedom; it’s the patriotic thing to do.

Click on the image for more information about Banned Books Week.

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4 Comments | History | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Veterans speak out: We’re not just laundry

October 6, 2012

From the Truman National Security Project, a video featuring testimony from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan especially, questioning whether Mitt Romney has what it takes to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces:

This is rather the opposite of  “swift boating,” isn’t it?  An established organization active on national security issues, with a distinguished staff and board of directors, working on a shoe-string, with identified spokesmen.

The Truman Project’s blog lays out the case for President Obama’s election with respect to his initiatives on behalf of veterans.  As much as I would prefer to see those positive achievements emphasized, campaigns don’t really allow much time for careful, thoughtful explanation.

Will there be any effect from this advertisement?  What do you think?

More:  

1 Comment | History, National Security, veterans, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Autumn in Glacier National Park?

October 5, 2012

No, this is not an archives photo — it’s autumn, in Glacier National Park.  Photo from sometime in the past week.

https://i0.wp.com/24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbfcgwpRfI1r81c8do1_500.jpg

View from Wild Goose Island Overlook in Glacier National Park; NPS photo

From the Interior Department Tumblr, America’s Great Outdoors:

The popular overlook at Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park has a different look this week with fresh snow on the trees and mountains. Fall has definitely arrived!

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Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) in Glacier Natio...

When I was in Glacier N.P., there was a lot of this stuff at higher elevations.  I don’t recall seeing it anywhere else.  An odd plant.  “Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. Original caption: In addition to a host of various wildflowers, Beargrass, a lily native to Glacier, blooms in abundance along the Iceberg Lake trail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)”

Leave a Comment » | National Parks, Travel | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Growing up in East Texas, we didn’t have any money for books” – Moyers on Banned Books Week

October 4, 2012

Since the death of Radio Free Texas, banned books take on even more importance in the history of freedom and free thought, in Texas.

This is the state where, still, even the governor and the State Board of Education carry on unholy crusades against books and ideas, like evolution, racial equality, and voting rights.  Moyers knows what he’s talking about.

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1 Comment | Banned Books, Books, Free press, Free speech, Free Thought, Freedom - Political, Freedom of the Press, Liberty, Libraries | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Banned Books Week! Are you with the banned, in 2012?

October 4, 2012

It’s almost gone, and I haven’t even posted on it yet:  Happy Banned Books Week!

We’re celebrating this week from September 30 to October 6 — you’ve got two more days.

Can you identify each of these banned books?

Courtesy of Bookman’s, a book store in Arizona.

A two-minute video produced by Bookmans, an Arizona bookstore, is helping launch a national read-out from banned and challenged books that is being held on YouTube in conjunction with Banned Books Week, the national celebration of the freedom to read (Sept. 30-Oct. 6). The video presents Bookmans’ customers and staff urging people “to turn on the light” by celebrating freedom of expression. With light bulbs burning brightly above their heads, each of them reads a single line from a banned or challenged book that testifies to the importance of reading, books and freedom of speech. “It is a wonderfully creative and inspiring video,” said American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression President Chris Finan. “We hope all supporters of Banned Books Week will use social media to share it with their friends and the rest of the world, giving a big boost to this year’s read-out.” More than 800 people posted videos on YouTube during Banned Books Week last year. More information about the read-out, including updated criteria and submission information, is available here.

Which are your favorite Banned Books?

News and More:

1 Comment | Banned Books, Books, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Free Thought, Freedom - Political, Liberty, Libraries | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

One more time, again: Why “supply side” economics doesn’t work without demand

October 4, 2012

I posted a short excerpt from a recent column by economist Paul Krugman, explaining why GOP reliance on magic to fix the economy probably won’t work.  Commenter David Xavier took issue with Krugman’s analysis.  David’s comment brought home to me just how badly many self-described conservatives misunderstand basic economics, especially the keystone free enterprise principles of supply and demand.

My explanation of why supply side economics can’t work came out for the 21st time at least.  Let’s make a post of it, in hope that more people may read it and view it, and understanding may increase.

David Xavier said:

Krugman wants the government to spend as this will drive demand. But “demand is constituted by supply”. To buy something you must first produce and sell something. The selling is what gets you the money, but the production of value adding output is what first allows you to sell. Without value adding activity, there is nothing to sell and therefore there is no basis for demand.

I replied:

Well, there’s the problem. You don’t understand either the law of supply, nor the law of demand. You’re talking “supply side” economics, which we discovered didn’t work way back in 1982 through 1988.

Supply does not stimulate demand, ceteris paribus. It’s the other way around. Henry Ford’s Model A didn’t created demand for transportation; the demand for transportation, coupled with a demand for transportation that didn’t involve horses and their natural effluents, created a demand for a horseless carriage. Ford created a machine that met that demand, and could manufacture it in enough quantity to matter.

Demand is not “constituted from supply.” Demand comes from needs, and wants. If supply can be created to meet that demand, demand can be met from supply.

But demand comes first, as Krugman, a Nobel-winning economist, well understands.

If consumers have no money to buy, the quantity supplied cannot matter in the least. If there were no demand for transportation at all, Henry Ford is sunk.

The law of supply explains how producers go about meeting demands — if prices are higher, they are happier to supply more. Again, if consumers have no money to purchase the good or service offered, the amount of supply is completely irrelevant.

Before Henry Ford’s mass production of automobiles created a demand for gasoline, gasoline was cast off from oil refining as a waste product from the production of kerosene for lanterns. Refineries from Standard Oil dumped millions of gallons of gasoline into rivers — no demand, the massive supply simply did not matter.

And as we can see from that example, demand not only creates the market, it can make a product considered to be waste, into the economic equivalent of gold.

Without demand, supply is simply excess manure, or gasoline by-product from the production of kerosene, to be dumped into a river (and thereby pollute the hell out of the river).

You’re right to say that without value-added activity, there is no economic activity. But tell that to Mitt Romney, who thinks finance is the magic, and not production.

A key problem with all of Republican economics is the ignoring of consumers, and ignoring the reality that consumers need money to stimulate demand. Tax cuts can’t help the hungry, who cannot eat tax cuts, nor the unemployed, who cannot take to the bank tax cuts on non-existent income.

Your odd myopia — maybe blindness — to the reality of how economics works, is shared by a lot of so-called conservatives. It’s a tragedy; it’s a tragedy I hope voters will put an end to, soon.

Did you ever notice that no supply-side economist has ever won a Nobel? Have you noticed that few supply-side economics articles are available in journals? Has your search for the numbers to back up the Laffer curve been as unproductive as they have been for everyone else — including Arthur Laffer? (Laffer promised to publish an article explaining how supply side economics work, as soon as he got the numbers together. That was in 1982. 40 years later, there is still no real intellectual foundation for GOP claims of tax cuts creating wealth. Those studies that have been done suggest tax rates maximize revenue when taxes hit about 70%, more than three times the rates Laffer proposes. History shows a much different story than Laffer claimed: Tax cuts in the Harding and Coolidge administrations led to bubbles that collectively burst in October 1929, leading to the Great Depression; tax cuts in 2001 led to bubbles in housing and the stock market, which burst in 2008, leading to our Great Recession.)

Right now, businesses are sitting on a pool of about $2 trillion, profits they’ve accumulated since 2008. If supply side economics worked, that money would be invested in manufacturing and service creation, and we should have an unemployment rate in negative numbers. The disproof of supply side economics is our current situation. Employers have plenty of supply of money, but they refuse to hire without demonstration of demand from consumers. Unemployed consumers, lacking money, cannot make that demand up from thin air. Magic does not work, in the real world of supply and demand, in economics.

Nota bene:  Videos come from a delightful series on economics created and put up on YouTube by Dr. Mary J. Glasson, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.  Glasson’s series is available at YouTube and covers almost every topic in an entry-level survey undergraduate economics course.  Look for “mjmfoodie” at YouTube.com.

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2 Comments | 1929, 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Economics, Elections, Great Depression, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

More magic than a cape and red underpants needed to fix economy; but that’s all GOP offers

October 4, 2012

Despite the few details he leaked in the Denver debate — which contradict almost everything he and his campaign had said earlier, not to mention the GOP platform — Mitt Romney offers not much in the realm of a program to do better than President Obama in economics, in pulling the nation out of our economic doldrums.  Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman explains:

Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman - Tavis Smiley Productions image

Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman – Tavis Smiley Productions image

As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.

In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”

Are you feeling reassured?

In fairness to Mr. Romney, his assertion that electing him would spontaneously spark an economic boom is consistent with his party’s current economic dogma. Republican leaders have long insisted that the main thing holding the economy back is the “uncertainty” created by President Obama’s statements — roughly speaking, that businesspeople aren’t investing because Mr. Obama has hurt their feelings. If you believe that, it makes sense to argue that changing presidents would, all by itself, cause an economic revival.

There is, however, no evidence supporting this dogma. Our protracted economic weakness isn’t a mystery; it’s what normally happens after a major financial crisis. Furthermore, business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly since the official recession ended. What’s holding us back is mainly the continued weakness of housing combined with a vast overhang of household debt, the legacy of the Bush-era housing bubble.

By the way, in saying that our prolonged slump was predictable, I’m not saying that it was necessary. We could and should have greatly reduced the pain by combining aggressive fiscal and monetary policies with effective relief for highly indebted homeowners; the fact that we didn’t reflects a combination of timidity on the part of both the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, and scorched-earth opposition on the part of the G.O.P.

But Mr. Romney, as I said, isn’t offering anything substantive to fight the slump, just a reprise of the usual slogans. And he has denounced the Fed’s belated effort to step up to the plate.

Read more at the New York Times.

Why do I disbelieve?

  1. For more than a year Romney’s been pushing tax cuts as a solution to everything.  It’s rather late to back out of that now.
  2. Tax cuts can’t stimulate the economy — we tried them for 8 solid years, and they crashed the economy.  One can make a great case that the Obama economy is not soaring because he agreed to extend the tax cuts, in return for getting about half of the stimulus we needed.  At some point, people hurting in this economy will realize that they can’t benefit from a tax cut if they aren’t paying huge taxes, and they aren’t paying huge taxes if they are unemployed.
  3. Tax cuts cannot be revenue neutral.  They hurt deficits.  For months Romney’s been talking about defense spending and tax cuts that add between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in to the deficit.  If he wishes to argue that deficits hurt, he’s in trouble.  If Obama argues that deficits should be used to help people, Romney will be unable to make the math work on his plan if he tries to reply.
  4. Economic theory isn’t with Romney.  Can he make that big of a snow job on voters?  Even if he does, the economy won’t take it.

Now’s a good time to beef up on the high school economics most of us took, or the college class we took.  Can you see any way to make an austere, Spain-style economy work in the U.S. without putting us into a death spiral?

More:

9 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Economics, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Box office slaps Hollywood: ‘Don’t talk jive smack against teachers’

October 3, 2012

Teacher and education blogs were all atwitter — and Twitter was all ablog, I suppose you could say — about the opening this past weekend of the movie “Won’t Back Down.”

“Parent trigger” laws bubble up in discussion a lot recently — laws that allow a group of parents to petition a school district, or the state, and say that they want to take over a local school.  Conservatives and other anti-teacher groups promote these laws as a means of education reform.  Generally, in the few cases in which a school is taken over by parents, teachers and local administrators are fired, and the school operates much like a charter school.

“Won’t Back Down” professes to be “based on a true story.”  I am reminded that both “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also professed to be based on a true story — the same story, in fact.  I’ve written about this before — based on a true story, except not in Texas, no chainsaw, no massacre, nor was there a hotel and a shower.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more carefully based on a true story — there is a Mississippi River; or The Bald Soprano — there are bald people, and there are sopranos.  But I digress.

The film has a cast of some great star power — Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter.  It was produced by the documentary group that also produced Al Gore‘s “Inconvenient Truth,” and then moved to the popular but wildly polemical “Waiting for Superman,” another hit on teachers.  They should have stopped with that one, instead of raising the ante (raising the “anti?”).

Audiences don’t like films that cast teachers as villains, it would appear.

Stephanie Simon of Reuters wrote:

(Reuters) – Education reform film “Won’t Back Down” opened Friday to terrible reviews – and high hopes from activists who expect the movie to inspire parents everywhere to demand big changes in public schools.

The drama stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spirited mother who teams up with a passionate teacher to seize control of their failing neighborhood school, over the opposition of a self-serving teachers union.

Reviewers called it trite and dull, but education reformers on both the left and right have hailed the film as a potential game-changer that could aid their fight to weaken teachers’ unions and inject more competition into public education.

Yahoo!’s Movie Talk got to the point:

Even an Oscar-caliber leading cast couldn’t save this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest film “Won’t Back Down,” also starring Viola Davis and Holly Hunter, set the record this past weekend for the worst opening of a film that appeared in more than 2,500 theaters, making a mere $2.6 million [via Box Office Mojo].

Yes, all three of these former Oscar nominees — Hunter having won a golden statuette in 1994 for “The Piano” — now have a pretty bad blemish on their resume. But they aren’t to blame, say industry watchers, who are reacting to the film with a resounding face palm. “‘Won’t Back Down’ wore the dunce cap last weekend, mostly because its marketing was almost non-existent,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

“Record for the worst opening?”  Ouch.

Back to the “based on a true story” issue:  We may understand why the screenwriter and director of the first Texas Chainsaw movie, Tobe Hooper took the liberties he did to add elements to the story.  He knew the original story of a disturbed man in Wisconsin who was jailed for corpse mutilation.  He knew that was the foundation for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”  How to update it, to make the story bankable from the box office?  Move it to Texas, add a chainsaw with all its terrifying whine, and add in the standard teenager murder story elements; maybe put a mask on the villain/evil beast, to make it more terrifying — there is great terror in being pursued by nameless, faceless folk as Orwell showed us.  Both Hitchcock and Hooper fully understood that the real, dull story, wasn’t something people would pay to sit through while eating grossly-overpriced popcorn.

“Won’t Back Down” suffered from sticking too close to the facts.  If you’re going to claim the antagonist is psycho, you have to give them a big butcher’s knife or a chainsaw, and a costume, in order to make really, really scary.

Teachers just are not that scary in real life.  Teachers are not the villains, in real life.

More (from various viewpoints):

8 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Politics, Teachers, Teaching, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

In Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, Wayne Powell

October 2, 2012

Our best bet to get the economy growing at a fast enough pace to create jobs for the unemployed, and create jobs for new graduates from high school and college, is to get a Congress that will vote for employment bills instead of making legislative gridlock.

Virginia's 7th Congressional District, 2012 - from US Atlas

Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, 2012 – from US Atlas

In Virginia, in the 7th Congressional District, Wayne Powell runs to replace GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor. You might remember Cantor as the guy who said he would not support disaster relief for Virginia’s 7th after the 2011 earthquake.  Powell is a retired Army Colonel  and Richmond attorney.

On almost every issue, Powell runs circles around  Cantor.  In debates, for example, Powell challenges Cantor to explain his votes to extend perks to Congressmen, while shorting the pay of active duty military and veterans — to no avail, Cantor won’t explain.  What could he say?

Especially, what could Cantor say to a decorated veteran like Powell?

Powell can use your help, and contributions.  Check him out at his campaign website, PowellforVA.com.

No, this isn’t the Welsh former soccer player Wayne Powell.  The Welsh Powell would probably represent Virginia better than Cantor, too, but he’s still managing Leamington FC, last I heard.

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Coda:  Yeah, Powell’s probably more conservative than most Democrats; he’ll still be better than Cantor, for Virginia, and for the nation.

Leave a Comment » | 2012 Elections, Economics, Politics, U.S. House of Representatives | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

MacArthur grants announced; 23 lucky people to follow, or not

October 2, 2012

I got the press release three minutes early, actually — not that I could have gotten anything published in that time.  At the promised time, in other words.

MacArthur grant announcement time!  It’s one of those things I take some delight in, to see who are the unsung (usually) from whom much will be expected.  With 23 grantees this year, it’s about as much fun as the Rhodes Scholar announcements.  Rhodes Scholars at least know they are in contention, having had to apply and go through rigorous interviews.  MacArthur fellows don’t know they’ve been nominated.

So, of course, the stories about the grantees often start with the surprise announcement.  The Foundation’s press release starts there, too.  I wonder how many news stories will replicate the press release in that?

23 MacArthur Fellows Announced
One call out of the blue – $500,000 – No strings attached

The MacArthur Foundation today named 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2012. Working across a broad spectrum of endeavors, the Fellows include a pediatric neurosurgeon, a marine ecologist, a journalist, a photographer, an optical physicist and astronomer, a stringed-instrument bow maker, a geochemist, a fiction writer, and an arts entrepreneur. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

The recipients learned, through a phone call out of the blue from the Foundation, that they will each receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached support over the next five years. MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations or reporting requirements and offer Fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore. The unusual level of independence afforded to Fellows underscores the spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors. The work of MacArthur Fellows knows neither boundaries nor the constraints of age, place, and endeavor.

“These extraordinary individuals demonstrate the power of creativity,” said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci. “The MacArthur Fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future. We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the Fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world.”

Meet the 2012 MacArthur Fellows ››

An eclectic group.  Already Larry Ferlazzo posted that one of the awardees is the young economist who bashes teachers, Raj Chetty — there is no requirement that awardees be universally loved, but someone who courts controversy rarely makes the list.  (An exception might be Eugenie Scott , the genius behind the National Center for Science Education, whose winning a MacArthur grant forever tainted such awards to creationists, to the delight of fans of science.)

Go noodle around at the MacArthur Foundation site — each awardee has a bio, a couple of very nice photos, and a video on their work.  Good stuff.

Here they are, in alphabetical order, straight from the MacArthur Foundation.  Hot links go to more information at the Foundation’s site.

Meet the 2012 MacArthur Fellows

Profile portrait of Natalia Almada

Natalia Almada

Altamura Films

Mexico City, Mexico

Age: 37

Documentary Filmmaker capturing complex and nuanced views of Mexican history, politics, and culture in insightful and poetic works that affirm the potency of documentary film as both an art form and a tool for social change.

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Profile portrait of Uta Barth

Uta Barth

Los Angeles, CA

Age: 54

Conceptual Photographer exploring the nature of vision and the difference between how we see reality and how a camera records it in evocative, abstract compositions that focus attention on the act of looking and the process of perception.

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Profile portrait of Claire Chase

Claire Chase

International Contemporary Ensemble

Brooklyn, NY

Age: 34

Arts Entrepreneur forging a new model for the commissioning, recording, and live performance of classical music and opening new avenues of artistic expression for the twenty-first-century musician.

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Profile portrait of Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA

Age: 33

Public Economist elucidating key policy issues of our time in theoretical and empirical studies that refine our understanding of the impact of public finance on economic activity.

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Profile portrait of Maria Chudnovsky

Maria Chudnovsky

Columbia University

New York, NY

Age: 35

Mathematician investigating the fundamental principles of graph theory and laying the conceptual foundations for deepening connections between graph theory and other major branches of mathematics, such as linear programming and geometry.

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Profile portrait of Eric Coleman

Eric Coleman

University of Colorado School of Medicine

Denver, CO

Age: 47

Geriatrician addressing system-wide deficiencies in patient transitions from hospitals to homes and other sites of care and improving the health outcomes of millions of older adults suffering from chronic illness.

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Profile portrait of Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, MA

Age: 43

Fiction Writer using raw, vernacular dialogue and spare, unsentimental prose to draw readers into the various and distinct worlds that immigrants must straddle.

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Profile portrait of David Finkel

David Finkel

Washington Post

Washington, DC

Age: 56

Journalist pushing beyond the constraints and conventions of traditional news writing to craft sustained narratives that heighten the reality of military service and sacrifice in the public consciousness.

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Profile portrait of Olivier Guyon

Olivier Guyon

University of Arizona

Tucson, AZ

Age: 36

Optical Physicist and Astronomer designing telescopes and other astronomical instrumentation that play a critical role in the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

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Profile portrait of Elissa Hallem

Elissa Hallem

University of California, Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA

Age: 34

Neurobiologist exploring the physiology and behavioral consequences of odor detection and chemoreception in invertebrates and identifying interventions that may eventually reduce the scourge of parasitic infections in humans.

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Profile portrait of An-My Lê

An-My Lê

Bard College

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Age: 52

Photographer approaching the subjects of war and landscape from new perspectives to create images that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and are rich with layers of meaning.

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Profile portrait of Sarkis Mazmanian

Sarkis Mazmanian

California Institute of Technology

Pasadena, CA

Age: 39

Medical Microbiologist illuminating the complex interplay between microbes and the host immune system and the role certain bacteria may play in the development, or mitigation, of a broad range of human diseases.

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Profile portrait of Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu

Washington, DC

Age: 34

Writere nriching understanding of the little-explored world of the African diaspora in America in tales distilled from the experience of immigrants whose memories are seared by escape from violence in their homelands.

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Profile portrait of Maurice Lim Miller

Maurice Lim Miller

Family Independence Initiative

Oakland, CA

Age: 66

Social Services Innovator designing programs of mutual support and self-sufficiency that break the cycle of economic dependency for low-income families and build more resilient communities from the ground up.

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Profile portrait of Dylan C. Penningroth

Dylan C. Penningroth

Northwestern University

Evanston, IL

Age: 41

Historianunearthing evidence from widely scattered archives to shed light on shifting concepts of property ownership and kinship among African American slaves and their descendents following emancipation.

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Profile portrait of Terry Plank

Terry Plank

Columbia University

New York, NY

Age: 48

Geochemistprobing the usually invisible but remarkably powerful thermal and chemical forces deep below the Earth’s crust that drive the motion of tectonic plate collisions.

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Profile portrait of Laura Poitras

Laura Poitras

Praxis Films

New York, NY

Age: 48

Documentary Filmmaker revealing the consequences of military conflict abroad in illuminating documentaries that portray the lives and intimate experiences of families and communities largely inaccessible to the American media.

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Profile portrait of Nancy Rabalais

Nancy Rabalais

Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium

Chauvin, LA

Age: 62

Marine Ecologist documenting the environmental and economic consequences of hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico and informing strategies for restoring the degraded waters of the Gulf and the Mississippi River basin.

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Profile portrait of Benoît Rolland

Benoît Rolland

Benoît Rolland Studio

Boston, MA

Age: 58

Stringed-Instrument Bow Maker experimenting with new designs and materials to create violin, viola, and cello bows that rival the quality of prized nineteenth-century bows and meet the artistic demands of today’s musicians.

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Profile portrait of Daniel Spielman

Daniel Spielman

Yale University

New Haven, CT

Age: 42

Computer Scientist connecting theoretical and applied computing to resolve issues in code optimization theory with implications for how we measure, predict, and regulate our environment and behavior.

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Profile portrait of Melody Swartz

Melody Swartz

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Lausanne, Switzerland

Age: 43

Bioengineer enhancing understanding of the dynamic processes of tissue vascularization and immune responses to tumor invasion using a large toolbox of concepts and methods from biophysics, cell culture, molecular genetics, engineering, and immunology.

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Profile portrait of Chris Thile

Chris Thile

New York, NY

Age: 31

Mandolinist and Composer creating a new musical aesthetic and a distinctly American canon for the mandolin through a lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass orchestrations with a range of styles and genres.

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Profile portrait of Benjamin Warf

Benjamin Warf

Children’s Hospital Boston

Boston, MA

Age: 54

Pediatric Neurosurgeon revolutionizing treatment of hydrocephalus and other intra-cranial diseases in very young children and advancing standards of and access to health care in both the developed and poorest regions of the world.

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Annals of global warming: Insurance companies note increasing costs of floods, due to climate change

October 1, 2012

Note today in Al Gore’s Journal:

Flooding Costs October 1, 2012 : 10:32 AM

Time cover from April 28, 2008 - how to win war on global warming

Time Magazine cover for April 28, 2008 – How to Win the War On Global Warming

A new report from Swiss Re finds that the financial impact of flooding has doubled in the past decade – climate is a major driver:

“Flood losses are increasing at an alarming rate while the insurability of floods provides unique challenges for the industry, according Swiss Re’s latest report, “Flood – an underestimated risk: Inspect, inform, insure”.” …

“No other natural catastrophe impacts as many people as flooding with an estimated 500 million people affected every year. Insured flood losses are also increasing significantly; 1970’s annual claims were between USD 1–2 billion, whereas insured flood losses amounted to USD 15 billion in 2011. Recent flood events in Thailand, Australia and the Philippines have shown that floods are now rivalling earthquakes and hurricanes in terms of economic losses.” …

“Population growth, demographic change, a higher concentration of assets in exposed areas, greater vulnerability of insured objects and climate change are all contributing to the increasing costs of flood damage. The rising costs of floods are creating challenges for the insurance industry and the economic viability of flood insurance is currently an issue under scrutiny.”

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20 Comments | Business, Climate change, climate_change, Disasters, Geography - Physical, Global warming, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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