Weekend Economists Hit the Trifecta! June 13-15, 2014
What Is So Rare As a Day in June
by James Russell Lowell
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,
'Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.
for a lovely rendering, see: http://www.vanyamelda.com/poetry/what_%20is_so_rare_as_a_day_in_june.html
Well, up here it's more like April than June, which is fine by me. We had 4 inches of snow in April, so getting some of Spring, however tardy, is welcome.
But as to the rarity of June days, how about this weekend? We have Friday the 13th, Saturday is Flag Day, and Sunday is Father's Day. Talk about cramming it in!
So, what shall we brood upon? That remains to be seen!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here’s a question for you. Why have we heard nothing in the media or parliament about A People’s or a Sovereign Debt Jubilee? Is it because a People’s Debt Jubilee is simply a nice but unworkable fantasy dreamt up by crackpot bloggers like me? This is what I have been wondering. And then in response to the Jubilee article, a regular contributor to this blog, Hawkeye, wrote to me and suggested I take a look at “The Great EU Debt Write Off”. The web site contains details of a ‘proof of concept’ study of the Jubilee idea done by Professor Anthony Evans and his colleagues at The ESCP Europe Business School. The study used up to date figures from the IMF and the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) to see what would happen if Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Britain, France, and Germany simply cross cancelled all the foreign debt they owed each other – a Sovereign debt jubilee.
The web of mutually destroying debt they studied looks something like this. The image is from a New York Times article called Europe’s Web of Debt...
Professor Evans said what he and his colleagues found “was astounding”.
Among the ‘debtor’ nations a Debt Jubilee means Ireland reduces its debt load to from 130% of GDP to under 20%! That would virtually wipe out the crippling cuts being forced upon the Irish. While even among the ‘Creditor’ nations France benefits by nearly eliminating its debt. So the French people too would benefit. Which does beg the question – who is benefiting by enforcing all the debts? I’ll give you one guess. Professor Evans said the main limitation they had was not being able to determine the duration or rates of the different bonds for different countries. So he was cancelling debts which although of the same capital amount would have been worth different amounts because of different interest rates and durations. Understandably this makes him wary of making too much of his results. However he did agree that on such large gross amounts, such interest rates and duration differences could be considered marginal. In the grand scheme of the massive debt reductions achieved the differences of rate and duration could be justifiably seen as a small cost to bear for the over all gain.
Of course there can always be a devil lurking in the detail ready to spoil a happy ending, so I called Professor Evans and asked him about his methods and their limitations. First thing he pointed out is that by ‘All Foreign Debt” he included foreign debts held by Private banks. But as he also said, considering that in many countries the Tax Payer owns large chunks of the Private banks in question and so the line between truly sovereign and private bank debt is already blurred and sadly we ‘own’ both. So there are grounds for criticizing his findings. BUT the criticisms are not so large that they derail the force of the findings. The simple fact of the matter is that the PEOPLE of all our nations would be immensely better off. They would not be facing crippling austerity cuts, nor be being forced into selling their National heritage and wealth at Fire Sale prices to the very banks who are the cause of the debt crisis, and who will profit from the fire sales.
Which brings us back to the reason there has been no discussion at all of a Debt Jubilee. Keeping the debts is going to profit the banks and their bond holders. Not only that, but making sure there is no discussion of mutual debt cancellation, and thereby keeping sovereign debt levels as high as possible, gives those on the political Right the perfect crowbar they have wished for but never had, for forcing through a political agenda of privatizing and destroying the social fabric of welfare. An agenda for which they never quite got a mandate through the ballot box. That is why the debts are being maintained and why there has been no discussion of any alternative. Our politicians are ‘protecting’ the debts and those whose will profit from their payment over and above the welfare of the people they are supposed to serve.
MORE
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Korean scientists have demonstrated that carbon, a precious fuel cell material, can be extracted from dried urine and that it is a powerful conductor of electricity.
The findings, published Monday in Nature, offer an economical way to advance fuel cell technology, and could also improve the environment if deployed on a large scale.
...
Fuel cells — devices which harvest energy from a chemical reaction — often use platinum as a catalyst, making them expensive to produce. Researchers have been exploring ways to replace the metal with carbon. However carbon nanostructures, created synthetically, can also be quite expensive.
Now researchers from South Korea have proven that equally effective carbon compounds can be extracted from urine — making them a cheap stand-in for platinum or synthetic carbon.
...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/06/12/urine-an-ever-flowing-stream-of-fuel-cell-material/#.U5v4164gusQ
Basically they create a lake of urine, let it dry, harvest and heat the powder to create the carbon that is needed for the fuel cell. This also suggests that the salts in the urine could be harvested for use in de-icing roads...
at that point I had visions of county deputies driving pickup trucks of urinating prisoners down the highway in a cost cutting move, so I stopped.
Still, if this would bring the cost of fuel cells down dramatically. 1000 degrees is attainable in a home garage - though urine drying is bound to be discussed by the neighborhood association
In the hands of the people, however distant such a thought might be, it could be a real boon in a time of disappearing resources, and maybe a game changer for who controls power.
And then where would we be?
according to Jerry Baker and his organic gardening tips. Helps break it down quicker.
Anyway, as clean water becomes more scarce, these are the sorts of things that people who will be suffering from the effects of our global climate manipulation will have to turn to because of the lack of other infrastructure.
Not here, perhaps. At least not yet.
Existentialism is a term applied to the work of certain late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.
Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher, though he did not use the term existentialism. He proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely ("authentically" .
Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.
Definitional issues and background
There has never been general agreement on the definition of existentialism. The term is often seen as a historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight, long after they had died. In fact, while existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description was Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre purports the idea that which "all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence", as scholar Frederick Copleston explains. According to philosopher Steven Crowell, defining existentialism has been relatively difficult, and he argues that it is better understood as a general approach used to reject certain systematic philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy itself. Sartre himself, in a lecture delivered in 1945, described existentialism as "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism".
Although many outside Scandinavia consider the term existentialism to have originated from Kierkegaard himself, it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted this term (or at least the term "existential" as a description of his philosophy) from the Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven. This assertion comes from two sources. The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. It is in the first conversation that it is believed that Welhaven came up with "a word that he said covered a certain thinking, which had a close and positive attitude to life, a relationship he described as existential". This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
The second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term "existential" was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that "Hegelians do not study philosophy 'existentially'; to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time when I spoke with him about philosophy". On the other hand, the Norwegian historian Anne-Lise Seip is critical of Slagstad, and believes the statement in fact stems from the Norwegian literary historian Cathrinus Bang.
There also exists the belief that meaningless and absurdity create a behavior pattern that is not consistent with that which is considered "normal". In other words, existentialism "jars you out of your habits." Like war, sexual disease, and the like, the individual consciousness is paramount to the societal impact one may have and it is your reality that dictates your actions, not anybody else's.
http://www.radioastrology.com/audio/Existentialism.mp3
Concepts
Existence precedes essence
A central proposition of Existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals—independently acting and responsible, conscious beings ("existence" —rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit ("essence" . The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:
It is often claimed in this context that people define themselves, which is often perceived as stating that they can wish to be something—anything, a bird, for instance—and then be it. According to most existentialist philosophers, however, this would constitute an inauthentic existence. Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are
(1) defined only insofar as they act and
(2) that they are responsible for their actions.
For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Furthermore, by this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is as opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.
As Sartre writes in his work Existentialism is a Humanism: "... man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." Of course, the more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: A person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person. Here it is also clear that since humans can choose to be either cruel or good, they are, in fact, neither of these things essentially.
I GUESS THERE'S HOPE FOR OBAMA, IF HE CHOOSES TO EXERCISE HIS CHOICES...
Would love to know what the white flowering bush on the right is.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've managed to keep my favorite bush alive, but last year I got three blooms from it. I have a lovely smelling yellow rose that I think didn't survive, but reading what you wrote, I will still give it love. It had a couple of sprouts & I covered it during the very cold winter nights, but I may have missed a late spring night & now the green part is brown. I love roses & it pains me that I cannot grow them.
Lovely post.
It doesn't hurt that so many are classic reruns...
