Obama should rev it up against big oil

Gingrich Bets Big Oil Will 'Crater The Economy' To Defeat Obama | ThinkProgress: "But the oil industry has been shutting down oil refineries, reducing production, and exporting gasoline, putting the squeeze on gasoline prices to ensure continued record profits. Further refinery shutdowns are planned, guaranteeing further gas price spikes in the future. Rampant speculator activity accelerates the flow of wealth from drivers’ pockets at the gas pump to the one percent."

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Let's see if the media deals with this revealing paragraph. I welcome the challenge for the President because it will force a teaching moment about the depth of our need to reformulate society.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Interest in Peirce has grown enormously in recent years

"Interest in Peirce has grown enormously in recent years, and estimates of his significance as a thinker continue to run high. His work in logic, algebraical and graphical, has come to be regarded as substantial both for its historical impact and its enduring importance for research. Hilary Putnam expressed his surprise upon discovering "how much that is quite familiar in modern logic actually became known to the logical world through the efforts of Peirce and his students," (4) and W. V. Quine dates modern logic from "the emergence of general quantification theory at the hands of Frege and Peirce." (5) More recently, John Sowa has demonstrated how Peirce's graphical system of logic (his existential graphs) improves on other logics for the representation of discourse, and the study of language generally, and he has used the existential graphs as the logical foundation for his own conceptual graphs, "which combine Peirce's logic with research on semantic networks in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics." (6)" MORE

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

David Brooks Fights All Alone

Super Pac! Super Bad! - NYTimes.com: "David: Not over, but in hibernation. On Tuesday I wrote a column calling for mainstream Republicans to get in there and fight for their party. The very same day, Snowe decides to call it quits. Shows my influence.

There’s no way the Republicans can continue to drift inevitably into a protest movement, though. The electorate has moved right, but not that far right.

Here’s what I think may happen. Romney gets the nomination and is defeated. Republicans decide they are sick of nominating “moderates” and next time they go haywire. Then the party gets really crushed and sanity returns."

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Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Jon Stewart Skewers GOP Idiocy (Video)

Commission: Impossible - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Chief Appointment - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 01/05/12 - Video Clip | Comedy Central:

Thank Abba for a glimmer of sanity.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

The deficiencies of the diet industry

| worldwide hippies: "Unfortunately, weight-loss clubs such as Weight Watchers and Slimming World are part of the problem in that dieting only contributes to weight gain. It doesn’t matter which approach the slimming club takes—be it a point system, a “healthy lifestyle” change or using pre-packaged foods or supplements—clients usually lose weight in the beginning. But this initial weight loss is deceiving because after the diet, often a month or so, most people will regain most of the weight they lost. More seriously, within 4 to 5 years 95% will gain back the lost weight and one-third to two-thirds of their clients ultimately end up being fatter than their pre-diet weight. They don’t help the individual understand their appetite, how to eat with their hunger, how to recognise fullness and not override it"

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To the usual statement that there is no one way, I say there is one way. Calories in-calories out. Most of what we pay for comes from businesses created to profit by strategies of obfuscation. Genet understood this. Mostly we don't, at least at a conscious level.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Tornado Gallery and My Usual Screed

Entire Month's Worth of Tornadoes Strike in One Day Photos | Entire Month's Worth of Tornadoes Strike in One Day Pictures - Yahoo! News: "Entire Month's Worth of Tornadoes Strike in One Day"

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We should build habitats that make it harder for tornadoes to inflict lethal damage. My cyber-communities in the wide tornado swath could all include in their base a completely safe evacuation area. This cannot be created house to house but it can in a car-free community with 10,000 living within a square mile. There is no reasons why the edges of a car-free cyber-community cannot be constructed as a sort of firewall to deflect a direct hit. Someone will catch on someday. Until then we will continue to have these massive damages.



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

And a bunch of teens shall lead us

Does the U.S. Have a Legal Responsibility to Stop Climate Change? by Lindsay Kucera — YES! Magazine: "Seven teenagers set a new precedent for environmental action in May 2011 by suing the federal government for not taking measures against climate change. They claim that the government’s policies regarding climate change are squandering natural resources.

The young plaintiffs, led by 17-year-old Alec Loorz, filed a total of 10 suits against the federal government and individual states under the public trust doctrine, a legal principle derived from English Common Law which holds that the government is responsible for protecting resources—like water and wilderness—in trust for the public and future generations"

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Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Isn't the cloud supposed to end downloading?

AT&T speed and data greed: Throttling limits on 'unlimited' data users | ZDNet:

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It seems absurd to me that a text or video needs any more to be downloaded. Technology should aim for online everything. We have been hobbled by bells and whistles as code-writers show their stuff when what we need is simplicity, clarity and reasonable speed. The idea that I need to fill up my hard drive with zillions of things that are similarly cluttering elsewhere is the height of stupidity.



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

The Right To Life Problem

Rick Santorum’s Journey From ‘Nominal Catholic’ to Clarion of Faith - NYTimes.com:

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If the right to life is a Christian tenet how about we look to Jesus.

The New Testament makes crystal clear that Jesus was on the side of children and women. If I need to spell this out I will, but there should be no need. The only other group that Jesus is as solicitous about are sinners - those who understand who they are and are daily penitent.

The right to life folk do not act as Jesus did. If they did they would be up in arms about the treatment of children and women. They would see patriarchy as a problem to be resolved by empowering women. They would defend children from abuse and bullying. They would champion economic and social equality and universal education.

They would further advocate for peace because killing is a monstrous sin.

But right to life has every appearance of being concerned only with the right to birth. It is Abba who sees us to birth. It is not something we can or should force. When there is a child it is our sacred obligation to nurture her. When there is a conflict that could lead to war it is our sacred obligation to nonviolently protest and create alternatives.

The right to life folk do not subscribe to these logical inferences with anything like the zeal with which they now score contraception under the rubric of religious freedom. So transparent is this contradiction that right to life loses traction daily.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

My solution to the population problem

How Many People Can Manhattan Hold? - NYTimes.com:

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10k persons can live within a square mile on no more than four levels, car-free, zoned for all elements needed to create a community of residence, work, commerce, health and recreation.

The NY Metro Area is a shade under 7,000 square miles and has a population a shade under 20,000,000.

A million persons requires but 100 square miles. 20 million requires 2000 square miles.

In the most populous area in the United States, my cyber-community configuration would occupy no more than 25 percent of the available land.

You could therefore double the population of the area and use less than half the available land.

And each cyber-community would have its own character and design. They would be linked by public transportation. Cyber-communities would have all aspects of a city and therefore could be anywhere. I have no doubt that they will be in time.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Some Differences Between Obama and Romney

Obama was consistent in his positions from the start 

Romney NOT

Obama had a viable sense of what was needed 

to keep the country from falling off the cliff 

Romney NOT

Obama was and remains willing to take a centrist path 

toward debt reduction 

Romney NOT

Obama is organised not merely financially 

but in terms of people on the ground 

Romney NOT

The ultimate difference between Obama and Romney 

is that Obama has the prospect of 

uniting and enlarging the Democratic party behind him 

while Romney has a scant chance of creating 

similar enthusiasm among Republicans

Updated May 20, 2012

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes