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The Archdruid Report

The Archdruid Report
Last week’s post on the vacuous catchphrases that so often substitute for thought in today’s America referenced only a few examples of the species under discussion. It might someday be educational, or at least entertaining, to write a sequel to H.L. Mencken’s The American Credo, bringing his choice collection of thoughtstoppers up to date with the latest fashionable examples; still, that enticing prospect will have to wait for some later opportunity.In the meantime, those who liked my suggestion of Peak Oil Denial Bingo will doubtless want to know that cards can now be downloaded for free. What I’d like to do this week is talk about another popular credo, one that plays a very large role in blinding people nowadays to the shape of the future looming up ahead of us all just now. In an interesting display of synchronicity, it came up in a conversation I had while last week’s essay was still being written.

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Modern agriculture cultivates climate change – we must nurture biodiversity As a new year dawns, it is hard not to be dazzled by the current pace of technological change in food and agriculture. Only last month, news emerged of a crop spray with the potential to increase the starch content in wheat grains, allowing for yield gains of up to 20%. This development comes hot on the heels of major breakthroughs in gene-editing technologies – using a powerful tool known as Crispr – over the course of 2016. A future of continually increasing food supplies and ever more sophisticated manipulation of agro-ecosystems seems to be upon us. However, there is a risk that these technologies blind us to the very real problems facing modern agriculture – problems that are rapidly undermining the previous round of technological advances.

Global Revolution Underway Revival of local currencies during the past 25 years proves that communities can issue money to create green jobs, fund local nonprofits and farms, make interest-free loans, and connect residents as fellow workers. The Ithaca HOURS money that I started in 1991, for example, has traded millions of dollars value among thousands of residents and 500 businesses. Each colorful HOUR, depicting local children, trolleys, waterfalls and bugs, is valued at one hour of common labor or $10.00, which doubled the 1991 minimum wage. Responding to explosive media interest, by 1995 I wrote the book Hometown Money: How to Enrich Your Community with Local Currency. Thousands more such currencies have since emerged worldwide, both paper and electronic credits.

Media & web mentions/coverage of recent Wikistrat International Grand Strategy Competition Rounding up for the record the various sorts of coverage Wikistrat enjoyed over the course of the competition, I wanted to highlight the following: Brian Hasbrouck over at Political Risk Explored wrote up his impressions of the first week, when - unsurprising to me as Head Judge - he cited the eventual winner Claremont Graduate University's entries as being the most impressive and eye-popping. CGU played Pakistan 1. One participant, Timothy Nunan, wrote a nice bit about how the game play allowed a bigger input role for those players with a more historical bent: While I’m normally not so big of a fan of “strategic studies” and much of the direction of the discipline of international relations, I find the collaborative aspect of the Wiki tremendously useful, and it’s certainly more interactive and a richer learning experience to have content up online instantly, rather than the turnaround time associated with sending out drafts of papers.

Technology Review: Over the Horizon: A Moore's Law for Genetics Nanofluidic arrays made by BioNanomatrix could make it possible to sequence an individual genome for $100. Sequencing the first human genome cost $3 billion–and it wasn’t actually the genome of a single individual but a composite “everyman” assembled from the DNA of several volunteers. If personalized medicine is to reach its full potential, doctors and researchers need the ability to study an individual’s genome without spending an astronomical sum.

Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.

Global Warming Arguments You'll Hear for the Next Four Years As Donald Trump’s inauguration day approaches, uncomfortable conversations seem inevitable. And no topic can heat up a room quite as fast as global warming, as many Americans view this subject through a political lens rather than a scientific microscope. Back up your arguments with facts with this list of five global warming arguments for 2017.

intellectual heritage and foundation to #OccupyWallStreet: the Madagascar connection “Occupy Wall Street’s most defining characteristics—its decentralized nature and its intensive process of participatory, consensus-based decision-making—are rooted in other precincts of academe and activism: in the scholarship of anarchism and, specifically, in an ethnography of central Madagascar. It was on this island nation off the coast of Africa that David Graeber, one of the movement’s early organizers, who has been called one of its main intellectual sources, spent 20 months between 1989 and 1991. He studied the people of Betafo, a community of descendants of nobles and of slaves, for his 2007 book, Lost People.

Beyond space-time: Welcome to phase space - space - 08 August 2011 Read full article Continue reading page |1|2|3 A theory of reality beyond Einstein's universe is taking shape – and a mysterious cosmic signal could soon fill in the blanks IT WASN'T so long ago we thought space and time were the absolute and unchanging scaffolding of the universe. Then along came Albert Einstein, who showed that different observers can disagree about the length of objects and the timing of events. Mind on Money Economics has been around for almost four hundred years as a field of study. For most of its existence, it was known as “political economy.” Glasgow University was the last academic holdout, only changing the name of its department to “Economics” in 1998. Too bad.

Beyond the Limits of Neoliberal Higher Education: Global Youth Resistance and the American/British Divide “We need a wholesale revision of how a democracy both listens to and treats young people.”[1] The global reach and destructiveness of neoliberal values and disciplinary controls are not only evident in the widespread hardships and human suffering caused by the economic recession of 2008, they are also visible in the ongoing and ruthless assault on the social state, workers, unions, higher education, students, and any vestige of the social at odds with neoliberal values. Under the regime of market fundamentalism, institutions that were meant to limit human suffering and misfortune and protect the public from the excesses of the market have been either weakened or abolished, as are many of those public spheres where private troubles can be understood as social problems and addressed as such.[2] Privatization has run rampant, engulfing institutions as different in their goals and functions as public schools and core public services, on the one hand, and prisons, on the other.

Rex Tillerson and “We’ll Adapt” to Climate Change: Millionaire Oilmen Say the Darndest Things People tell me that Rex Tillerson stands a good chance of being confirmed as Secretary of State this month. In the spirit of not going quietly, Senators should press him on many fronts, not least his statements about climate change adaptation. When Rex Tillerson says we’ll just have to adapt to climate change—whether it’s hubris, ignorance, or deception talking—it’s a dangerous view. It’s playing with other people’s lives. When I first heard it—Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State—I thought, good one! Wait, wait: Slender Man for Health and Human Services.

Why does #OccupyWallStreet succeed and endure where previous movements failed? Micah Sifry reflects on a analysis by Andrew Boyd. Andrew Boyd: “* The tactic of occupation: The permanence of it. We’re not going to leave, we’re going to stick it out. The personal commitment and determination of people on the ground to see that through. That creates a human story and drama and a demonstration of personal commitment that matters, regardless of whether people think they’re “dirty hippies.”

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