A Grandma Protesting In Turkey

Can you imagine seeing anything like that in the States? Me neither.

2013: A Year Of Political And Weather-Related Extremes

The Article: More Heat, Drought and Floods in 2013 by Christa Marshall in The Scientific American.

The Text: Global average temperatures in June were the fifth highest on record, as above-average heat conditions continued a multidecade streak, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported yesterday.

June marked the 340th consecutive month — a span of time more than 28 years — that global temperatures surged above the 20th century average, according to the agency.

“The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985,” NOAA said in a release.

At the same time, it is too early to determine whether the stifling heat wave bringing misery to much of the eastern United States for the past week is unusual.

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Thailand Gets Family Planning Right

Want to curtail fights about welfare? About “entitlement programs”, poverty and abortion? Support family planning services! Starting in the 1970s, Mechai Viravaidya combatted all of the above just by educating about and distributing contraception…and Thailand has seen incredible success.

The NSA’s Biggest Mistake

Just goes to show what getting the short end of the stick can really do to a fella.

Capitalism’s Greatest Threat Is One Republicans Ignore

The Article: The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

The Text: Over the weekend, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story about how Wall Street investment banks are slyly manipulating commodities markets to make billions at the expense of consumers.

Is that description too abstract? Here’s the lead example:

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back-and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country. Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

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