Too true
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 22:18 - Category: Unfiled Tags: China;
Via Adam Curry.
Archive for April 17th, 2008
Why commodity prices are so high
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 16:26 - Category: Unfiled ;
People who hold billions in derivative bets on higher wheat and soybean prices are also buying the companies that stock grains. They are taking wheat off the physical market to manipulate the price upwards and to profit on their bets while elsewhere people die of hunger. Today such behaviour is legal.
You probably thought spot prices set the futures prices. Nope, it’s the other way around. Thus, spot prices in any commodity can and are manipulated by speculators.
Twitter wisdom on the debate
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 14:06 - Category: Election 2008 ;
Sure - we’re drowning in Iraq, mired in recession, #28 in infant mortality, but flag pins are the story. No wonder we elect morons.
ABC Democratic Debate
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 12:53 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Clinton, Obama;
WaPo: Debate hosts Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos “turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”
Clinton needed a knockout to get back in the race, but came nowhere close as this shoddy excuse for a debate instead showed the inane and vapid state of too much of US journalism with few questions of substance being asked.
On a possible recession and the Black Death
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 10:30 - Category: Climate change, Peak oil ;
Watched a documentary recently about the Black Death. The known world had death rates of 25-50%. Think about that. No family was spared. Things got completely psychotic for a while, what with flagellants whipping themselves publicly (when they weren’t partying with the fair maidens) and Jews being slaughtered (surely they must be to blame, let’s torture them until they confess.) But the Black Death did finally burn itself out. When it was over, the population size was much less, so there were no more food shortages. Thus, peasants didn’t have to indenture themselves to royalty any more, they simply moved on. With more spare time, culture began to flower, and this eventually led to the Renaissance.
What we’re going through now is a blip compared to the Black Death. Still, there are unsettling parallels. The slaughter and torture of innocents by frenzied mobs looking for someone to blame, happens too often in history. Religion can provide a rationalization for it too. We are to blame for letting the Jew spread the Black Death, so torturing him is only just and might save his soul too. Uh huh. Or maybe that Jew had been a moneylender and if he’s dead, then the debts never need be repaid, now do they?
Will our planet, currently straining to provide resources to all, have another Die-off? Or will climate change and peak oil will somehow lead to another flowering of culture and technology?
Steve Earle - F the CC
Bob Morris @ Apr 17th 2008 06:11 - Category: Unfiled ;
Steve Earle on our governmental attempts at censorship. Recorded live at Operation Ceasefire Concert in Washington DC on 9/24/2005. (Lyrics not work safe, but that’s precisely his point, isn’t it?)
