Tim's Tumblr

"My beef with Waterhouse is really a beef with the gambling industry as a whole, and in fact with..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:54:32 -0400

“My beef with Waterhouse is really a beef with the gambling industry as a whole, and in fact with anyone who profits from the misery of others. I think someone as talented as Tom Waterhouse – who by all reports is a very intelligent individual – could apply his efforts to any one of a million different pursuits which would make the world better for him, and for others. Instead, he’s chosen a pursuit which makes him rich at the expense of untold thousands of others. So in my opinion, he can get fucked.”

- http://www.spookmag.com/2013/05/16/place-your-bets-mothercussers/

"It’s a strange reversal. For most of history, the poor would have eaten the local pigs and known the..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:34:19 -0400

“It’s a strange reversal. For most of history, the poor would have eaten the local pigs and known the origin of their socks, and the rich had better access to a global marketplace. But changing elite tastes and the relentless efficiency of supply chains have slowly inverted tastes: In many categories, the poor now buy from the exotic unknown, and the rich insist on what can be traced, from the pig next door to the locally sewn sock.”

- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/the-hidden-costs-of-buying-on-the-cheap.html

"‘I think some of them are very skilled at the art of bullshit; I think some of them are just..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:08:13 -0400

“‘I think some of them are very skilled at the art of bullshit; I think some of them are just deluded; some of them aren’t very smart; some of them are immoral; some of them are well-intentioned but wrong; some of them are behaving as party hacks. And there’s not a lot of incentive for them to change that.’ Most columnists are ‘a waste of space’, he says. ‘A lot of them are nice people, but they’re literally a waste of column inches. It’s like “We’ll put the stuff that has the ring of fact and truth in the news section” and so what does that imply about the stuff that’s not in the news section?’”

- http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/books/2013/05/nate-silver-interview-politics-is-uniquely-full-of-bullshit/

"in half a generation, green-minded intellectuals, movements and political parties have helped ensure..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:09:49 -0400

“in half a generation, green-minded intellectuals, movements and political parties have helped ensure that such matters as chemical pollutants, nuclear power, carbon emissions, climate change and species destruction are ‘in the air’ and firmly on the policy agenda of democratic politics. Public awareness that humans are the only biological species ever to have occupied the entire planet, with potentially catastrophic consequences, is growing. Green politics has helped popularise precautionary attitudes towards ‘progress’ and its blind embrace. It has also tabled vital tactical questions: for instance, should priority be given to civic initiatives and social movements or to the formation of political parties and alliances with mainstream parties? How can green parties best be kept ‘democratic’? Does their political success require broadening green politics to include themes such as immigration and gender discrimination? Despite these notable achievements, or so runs the argument, the profoundly radical implications of green politics for the way people imagine and live democracy remain poorly understood.”

- https://theconversation.com/the-greening-of-democratic-politics-14249

"Over the past few days, I have asked the Shell Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford, the university..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:23:44 -0400

“Over the past few days, I have asked the Shell Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford, the university itself and the umbrella body Universities UK to explain the ethical difference between taking tobacco money for cancer research and taking fossil fuel money for energy research. None of these great heads, despite my repeated attempts to engage them, were prepared even to attempt an answer.”

- http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/14/la-nouvelle-trahison-des-clercs/

"There is one thing that we know for sure in this strange period when bankers have tried to manage..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 05:31:05 -0400

“There is one thing that we know for sure in this strange period when bankers have tried to manage reality in the absence of truth: that advanced industrial-technological economies designed to run on $20-a-barrel oil can’t run on $100-a-barrel oil, and that is why the US economy was subject to financialization in the first place — to offset declining productive activity by an attempt to get something for nothing. Notice that this macro-trend coincided exactly with the rise of legalized gambling all over America. That is how the idea that you could get something for nothing got to be normal. The world is about to find out that you really can’t get something for nothing. It will be a harsh lesson.”

- http://kunstler.com/blog/2013/05/no-mo-pomo.html

"markets reduce moral concerns. This is the main result of an experiment conducted by economists from..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 04:43:00 -0400

“markets reduce moral concerns. This is the main result of an experiment conducted by economists from the Universities of Bonn and Bamberg. The results are presented in the latest issue of the renowned journal Science. “In markets, people face several mechanisms that may lower their feelings of guilt and responsibility,” explains Nora Szech. In market situations, people focus on competition and profits rather than on moral concerns. Guilt can be shared with other traders. In addition, people see that others violate moral norms as well.”

- http://phys.org/news/2013-05-causal-evidence-affect-moral-values.html

"There’s something seriously wrong when TV networks are happy to show gambling, rape and..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 02:51:44 -0400

““There’s something seriously wrong when TV networks are happy to show gambling, rape and pillage, but are too afraid to air an ad for recycling.””

- http://www.theage.com.au/environment/ad-dumped-as-nine-gives-greenpeace-the-bird-20130510-2jc67.html

"People need to realise that that NBN Corporation is set up as a government-owned corporation. The..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 01:27:24 -0400

“People need to realise that that NBN Corporation is set up as a government-owned corporation. The government holds an equity stake with the remainder of costs being financed using privately placed debt. The money isn’t being “spent”, it’s being invested. It’s the distinction between buying a carton of beer and consuming it versus buying a share in a brewing company. Over the life of the project, NBN Co is expected to generate a return of investment of 6-7%. The NBN will be valuable asset, generating steady, stable, cash flows into the future.”

- http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/05/10/conroys-new-bff-spills-on-how-fast-is-the-nbn-site/

"The industry calls its product “natural gas,” but there’s nothing natural about upending half a..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:46:20 -0400

“The industry calls its product “natural gas,” but there’s nothing natural about upending half a billion years of safe storage of methane and everything that surrounds it. It is, in fact, an act of ecological violence around which alien infrastructures — compressor stations that compact the gas for pipeline transport, ponds of contaminated flowback, flare stacks that burn off gas impurities, diesel trucks in quantity, thousands of miles of pipelines, and more — have metastasized across rural America, pumping carcinogens and toxins into water, air, and soil.”

- http://grist.org/climate-energy/fracking-ourselves-to-death-in-pennsylvania/

"I have come to a most repugnant conclusion. It pains me to even think about it for I am a Chinese..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:35:30 -0400

“I have come to a most repugnant conclusion. It pains me to even think about it for I am a Chinese person who has often defended the traditions, institutions, values and dignity of the Children of Heaven. But the truth is often painful at first. I realize now that much of the problems in Chinese society, and a plethora of problems there are, are not from the Chinese government (not a surprise to me since I am a long time China watcher suspicious of the anti government rhetoric of the west). What is surprising is that the myriad problems within Chinese society comes from the behavior, values and the beliefs of its people, a people that with all their traditions of wisdom behave in the most atrocious, despicable manner towards each other today. In a sense, I’d always expected this but were perhaps too proud to admit it and needed first hand experience for verification. Now I cannot escape that basic truth.”

- http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2013/05/whats-wrong-with-china-hint-its-not-the-government/

"If you were to ask wealthy Americans to visualise the future, they might well describe it as a..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:18:31 -0400

“If you were to ask wealthy Americans to visualise the future, they might well describe it as a carefully calibrated road along which they expect to travel. But if you ask poorer Americans, who are scrambling from pay check to pay check, they are more likely to perceive the future as a chaotic series of short-term cycles. Economic polarisation, in other words, creates different cognitive maps, and also creates, of course, those subtle shifts in spending patterns that the big data experts in consumer goods companies now want to track.”

- http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f5763610-b2bb-11e2-8540-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2SVGTS7XI

"If we were all as alarmed as the science warrants, then I believe we would make a WWII-scale effort..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:21:44 -0400

“If we were all as alarmed as the science warrants, then I believe we would make a WWII-scale effort and take the world to near zero net emissions in a couple of decades and then start sucking CO2 out of the air and go back to 350 ppm this century and perhaps even lower next century. No, that wouldn’t give us a 100% certainty of avoiding serious consequences, but it would give us a near-certainty of avoiding hell and high water.”

- http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/01/1931491/ny-times-criticizes-itself-for-touting-myth-that-it-is-too-late-to-avoid-climate-catastrophe/

"If the environment were a bank and species its money, it would need a rescue package that would make..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:17:32 -0400

“If the environment were a bank and species its money, it would need a rescue package that would make the recent European bail-outs look insignificant…If Earth were a house, it would be as though we had listed the contents of only one room, and even then were not aware of their true value, while simultaneously the house was being demolished.”

- https://theconversation.com/extinction-just-how-bad-is-it-and-why-should-we-care-13751

"You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class..."

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:20:57 -0400

“You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do…And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies? I hope not; I’d like to believe that ideas and evidence matter, at least a bit. Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? But I guess we’ll see just how much cynicism is justified.”

- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/krugman-the-one-percents-solution.html

"The bees have, in other words, created a simple culture. It is a criminal culture, admittedly. But..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:20:09 -0400

“The bees have, in other words, created a simple culture. It is a criminal culture, admittedly. But no one ever said that nature was pretty.”

- http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21576627-strange-case-bandit-bumblebees-bad-beehaviour?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/bad_beehaviour

"The fact that departments like UMass exist is incredibly important. The reason we are in this..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:26:24 -0400

“The fact that departments like UMass exist is incredibly important. The reason we are in this economic crisis is because of the extraordinary conformity of thought among top economists in the years leading up to the collapse of the housing bubble. In the summer of 2005, when all the alarm bells should have ringing at top volume, the Fed devoted its annual meeting of central bankers to an Alan Greenspan retrospective. They debated whether he was in fact the greatest central banker of all time.”

- http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-university-of-massachusetts-econ-department-how-we-know-reinhart-and-rogoff-were-wrong

"Seriously, think about it. What else do you produce in bulk, but impoverished Australians? Go on,..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:28:26 -0400

“Seriously, think about it. What else do you produce in bulk, but impoverished Australians? Go on, write the angry letter, add to the writ, but I challenge you to give an answer to that question: What else do you produce in bulk, but impoverished Australians? …In sum, your submission is a joke, your industry is a painfully poisonous parasite on Australia’s arse, and I will, I daresay, see you in court.”

- http://www.smh.com.au/sport/waterhouses-submission-is-a-joke-thats-not-funny-20130424-2ieyc.html

"What’s more, a new report, Unburnable Carbon 2013, showed that stock markets worldwide are..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:02:54 -0400

“What’s more, a new report, Unburnable Carbon 2013, showed that stock markets worldwide are cumulatively valuing coal, oil and energy companies’ huge reserves of fossil fuels as if they will all be burned, even though, at best, only 40% could ever be used if the world is to cap the increase in global temperatures by 2C this century. Further, in 2012, the top 200 energy companies spent $674bn on finding new reserves, reinforcing the collective absurdity. In other words, there is either a carbon bubble with investors and companies wildly over-speculating on the value of owning fuel reserves that can never be burned, or nobody believes there is the remotest chance that the world will stick to the limits on fossil fuel use congruent with containing global warming.”

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/carbon-problems-financial-crisis-hutton

"Derrida put the “con” in deconstruction"

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:27:39 -0400

“Derrida put the “con” in deconstruction”

- http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2013/4/derrida-and-the-destruction-of-the-humanities