I see corrupt politicians deciding it is more profitable, and also more secure, to “sell off” their countries than to oppress them in the traditional manner. I see a new kind of tax farming, based on the extraction and exploitation of resources and raw materials, with African labor along for the ride.
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Marginal Revolution: The future of Africa? (via jryu) (via mikehudack)
The last sentence of the above paragraph:
It will mean higher living standards and better infrastructure, but probably not along a path that will look very appealing to most Western observers.
Bleak with a forecast for eventual good?
Corrupt politicians (everywhere) need to be shown that it is more profitable and more secure to be loved than hated. Take care of your people, and they will take care of you.
Anyone know any VC’s interested in funding a “boot camp” for the re-education of dictators / corrupt politicians?
I’m only half-joking. I see Africa as a sleeping giant. One day she will wake and realize she is strong.
FYI: (as some, but not all, know) most of the divisions in Africa were not made by Africans, are not the outcome of a “natural” process but like the partitioning of Pakistan and India, partly a European contrivance. It’s important to keep this in mind when thinking about the problems facing the continent today.
There are many paths to the future.
billydalto:
noosphere:
Sexless Sea Creatures Steal Foreign Genes
[snip]
any comment, billy? can they come to the diatom party if they behave themselves?
They’re in because I like their genomic style. However, I’ve been burned a few times recently, and will be enforcing two new rules: 1) No eating other guests, even if you’re really hungry. 2) A diatom party is no place for prurient discussions of the source of my mitochondrial DNA.
I discussed it with the ladies, & they agreed to abide by the new party rules. It may be a good idea, tho’, to have some microarrays on hand in case things get out of hand.
BTW, if things do get out of hand & the microarrays do not suffice, I’m not sure what we’ll be able to do about it. “We kept exposing them to more and more radiation, and they didn’t die and they didn’t die and they didn’t die,” says Mark Welch. (source: Staq Mavlen + Evidence for degenerate tetraploidy in bdelloid rotifers. 2008. Mark Welch, D.B., J.L. Mark Welch and M. Meselson. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105 (13): 5145-5149.)
However, I know some water bears (Hypsibius dujardini) that might be willing to work security. Despite their cuteness (moss piglet mode), they’re a tough bunch. You might check with your fellow Ills Manorian; being an extremophile himself, he may know some tardigrades as well.
re: rule #2: related yet unrelated: Unfortunately, there’ve already been some titters from some of the ladies regarding the Paisley Cave incidentals.
If Ms. Totten and Mr. Hirshberg are correct, the potential for health care savings is huge. A study in the January-February 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs concluded that 75 percent of the country’s $2.5 trillion in health care spending has to do with four increasingly prevalent chronic diseases: obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Most cases of these diseases, the report stated, are preventable because they are caused by behaviors like poor diets, inadequate exercise and smoking. Obesity alone threatens to overwhelm the system. In a recent study, Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the department of health policy and management at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, found that if trends continued, annual health care costs related to obesity would total $344 billion by 2018, or more than 20 percent of total health care spending. (It now accounts for 9 percent.) Dr. Thorpe also said that if the incidence of obesity fell to its 1987 level, it would free enough money to cover the nation’s uninsured population.
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Health Care Savings May Start in Employee Diets - NYTimes.com (via evangotlib)
Saving healthcare will start with individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and improving their behavior. (via jayparkinsonmd)
If it were only that easy. We are social beings surrounded by so many conflicting signals and requests for input. If we lived in a society where being poor did not effect the kinds and types of food we could purchase, if we lived in a society where we were not inundated daily with requests to purchase bad food, if we lived in a society where we actually understood the mechanisms which fueled our self-destructive behavior…. I could go on and on.
The problem is systemic. The sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we can begin to offer true healing.
Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling
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Richard Dawkins (via macmankev)
Dude, it’s the thrill of miracle you are experiencing. This is why I cannot take Dawkins and anything he says on religion seriously; he just doesn’t get it.
Hegelian kiss: dialiptical technique in which the kiss incorporates its own antithikiss, forming a synthekiss.
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The Philosophy of Kissing.
Apropos, I’ve been reading about Plato’s thoughts on love, and really felt like slapping him, because, as far as I can tell (this is a secondary source, alright), he makes it into a grand philosophical theory, which is basically the opposite of love, which if anything is immediate, not theoretical. But then I read this great quote:
The stories of all the other symposiasts, too, are stories of their particular loves masquerading as stories of love itself, stories about what they find beautiful masquerading as stories about what is beautiful. For Phaedrus and Pausanius, the canonical image of true love — the quintessential love story — features the right sort of older male lover and the right sort of beloved boy. For Eryximachus the image of true love is painted in the languages of his own beloved medicine and of all the other crafts and sciences. For Aristophanes it is painted in the language of comedy. For Agathon, in the loftier tones of tragedy. In ways that these men are unaware of, then, but that Plato knows, their love stories are themselves manifestations of their loves and of the inversions or perversions expressed in them. They think their stories are the truth about love, but they are really love’s delusions — “images,” as Diotima will later call them. As such, however, they are essential parts of that truth.
I like that: in trying to be general, everyone paints a picture of their own love; but of course, love is the aggregate of all these loves.
(via dailymeh)
