Happy Columbus Day! We start a new weekly feature today, the Monday Wake-up Call, with a music video to get your body and mind up and going on Monday, along with links to a few of last week’s articles that you probably missed, and the Wrongologist found interesting.
Here we go: The Monday Wake-up video is “Life in Wartime” by the Talking Heads. This version is from their movie, “Stop Making Sense”. Get up and dance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAtn6I5rbY
Now, a breakfast buffet of links to underreported news:
There have been a tsunami of TV ads for the Senate campaigns. Candidates, political parties and outside advocacy groups have aired 991,835 Senate campaign spots from January through October 6th 2014.
Got Drones? Here is a list of everyone authorized to fly drones in the US.
It costs the US $500,000 to take out an ISIS Toyota truck. War has always been about inflicting greater costs on the enemy than the costs that you take, but the new business model is way more efficient. The US Military-Industrial Complex (USMIC) now controls the entire deal. They supply the arms to the insurgents, and to the allies, some of whom give them to the insurgents. Then we destroy them. The costs may be higher, but the USMIC makes way more profit.
There is a huge methane hotspot in the 4 Corners: Satellite imagery has revealed a methane hotspot that is leaking methane (a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide but not as long lasting) into the atmosphere near the “Four Corners” area where the borders of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico meet.
Why the Ebola fight can’t be won in Africa. Ian Welsh links Western efforts to fund/finance development in Africa over the past 50 years to the current public health crisis.
Research shows the Ebola virus can be found in survivors’ semen for months after recovery. So, it’s not enough to survive the disease, men can be infectious for up to 90 days after their symptoms are gone. Not Typhoid Mary, its Ebola Eddie…Yikes!
Edward Snowden’s girlfriend is living with him in Moscow. Apparently, she moved in with him in July, but the US media didn’t think you needed to know, since we were told that his life in Russia was grim, and that was the price he paid for being a whistle-blowing turncoat. The joke is that Snowden has not only profoundly changed how the world thinks about government spying on its citizens, as well as its allies and enemies, he has built a happy life for himself.
An idea to frame your week:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you
(Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”)
The following is something that is a retelling of a story for which I cannot provide any citations: in the late 50s a Japanese trade group was visiting the West (probably the US) with the purpose of seeing how best to develop their economy. Had they followed classical economic theories, they would have left automobiles and especially heavy trucks and equipment to the West and kept on making trinkets. They did not, and instead developed heavy industry.
Economists and experts in developments are able to have entire careers telling folks what to do without ever demonstrating that they really know what to do.