Bird’s Eye: In the past fortnight Greece, France, and Germany all have voted against austerity as a solution to economic problems. We precede individual articles about each with two overviews: Paul Krugman looks at the possible breakup of the Euro, while Adam Gopnik writes about how successful the EU has been at reining in European nationalism. It remains unclear where we’re going, or why everyone is in these hand-baskets.

* Eurodämmerung Paul Krugman New York Times

Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

* Hollande, Sarkozy, and Democracy in France Adam Gopnik The New Yorker

The hope of American liberals that an Hollande victory would vindicate their position that austerity is bad policy—even though that may be the case—seems unlikely to take hold here. To the American right, anything that goes wrong in Europe does so because Europe is wrong, and not because of austerity, because austerity is right.

This anti-European bias is producing an indecent-seeming amount of schadenfreude—on the right but also on the left—about the prospect of the dissolution of the European Union. The potential Franco-German split, Germany’s own ambivalences, the Greek crisis, the fall of the Dutch government, the backslide of the British economy—the tone about all this is oddly punitive here, as though the E.U. had been the product of some Brussels bureaucrat’s utopian folly rather than a miracle of coexistence wrought by a handful of quiet visionaries after more than fifty years of catastrophe. In thinking about Europe and its union, the number that one needs to keep in mind is not the rate of the euro exchange or the measure of the Greek deficit but a simpler one, of sixty million.

That is the approximate (and probably understated) number of Europeans killed in the thirty years between 1914 and 1945, victims of wars of competing nationalisms on a tragically divided continent. The truth needs re-stating: social democracy in Europe, embodied by its union, has been one of the greatest successes in history.

* Eurozone crisis: Merkel tells Athens and Paris to stick to spending limits  The Guardian

Europe’s 30-month effort to save the euro by slashing spending and debt levels risks turning into a crisis of political legitimacy after EU leaders’ strategies collided spectacularly with the wishes of voters inGreece and France.

The impasse was most graphically demonstrated when Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted Athens must comply with the stringent terms of its €130bn (£100bn) bailout even though more than 60% of the Greek electorate had voted for parties rejecting those terms.

Following a French election campaign in which she strongly backed the loser, Nicolas Sarkozy, and snubbed the president-elect, François Hollande, Merkel stressed her opposition to Hollande’s central campaign pledge: reopening the euro’s new rulebook, or fiscal pact.

“That’s just not on,” she told a Berlin press conference called to address the huge shift from right to left in France.

* In Rebuke to Merkel, Social Democrats Win German Vote New York Times

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered a stinging defeat in Germany’s most populous state, one likely to embolden her opposition both at home and abroad as the European debt crisis enters a critical new phase.

One week after Socialists seized the French presidency, the Social Democrats won the parliamentary election in North Rhine-Westphalia, early results and exit polls released Sunday showed….The strong showing for Ms. Kraft and the Social Democrats, as well as what the German news media described as a “debacle” and a “disaster” for the conservatives, sends a clear signal that Ms. Merkel could face a difficult road to re-election.

* Greece Takes A Leap Into The Dark, Driven By Defiance And Despair  Maria Magaronis The Guardian

The message of Sunday’s election in Greece is clear: the Greeks have said no to more of the cuts and austerity measures that have devastated the country, pushing unemployment above 20%, shattering the healthcare system, tearing families apart and leading some to suicide. It was above all a vote of rage against the two major parties, Pasok and New Democracy, which between them ran the economy into the ground, signed up to a disastrous austerity programme in exchange for dead-end bailouts from the EU and IMF, and then allowed the blows to fall on the most vulnerable.

The medium, though, is more confused and troubling. As elsewhere in Europe, the draining away of the centre has revealed a jagged landscape: the shorthand of “extremes of left and right” doesn’t begin to map it. The most obvious rift in Greece in the last months – a rift that’s been described to me more than once as a “civil war”– has been between those who are for and against the “memorandum”, the EU/IMF schedule of demands. The pro-memorandum forces want to keep Greece in the eurozone at any cost; most of their opponents also want to stay in Europe – but not of “Merkozy”, austerity and the banks.

* US Think Tank Compares Belief In Global Warming To Mass Murder Guardian

It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:

“Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.
Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream” media, and liberal politicians say about global warming.”

But then comes the best bit:

“Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.”

* Conservative Thinktanks Step Up Attacks Against Obama’s Clean Energy Strategy The Guardian

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.

* Tories Admit To Closing Enviro Research Group Because They Disliked Results   The Hook

The federal government has confirmed what the rumour mill suspected: it shut down an arm’s length, independent advisory group because it didn’t like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change. Funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) was cut in the last budget, giving the group just one year to live. Since 1988, it has been producing research on how business and government policies can work together for sustainable development — including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.

Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.

“Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?” Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period. “It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government.”

* Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act Elizabeth May The Tyee

Here’s what is in C-38 on the environment. (C-38 threatens more than environmental damage, but this should give you a sense of why I am determined to stop this bill.)

Canadian Environmental Assessment Act ditched. 

Canadian Environmental Protection Act undercut. 

Fisheries Act seriously weakened.

Energy Board Act neutered. 

Species at Risk Act hamstrung. 

Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act made more industry friendly. 

Canada Seeds Act inspections privatized.

Editor’s note: 11 more items in full list, with explanations

* The Netanyahu-Mofaz Pact Uri Avnery Counterpunch

THE MASTER magician has drawn another rabbit from his top hat. A real and very lively rabbit. He has confounded everybody, including the leaders of all parties, the top political pundits and his own cabinet ministers. He has also shown that in politics, everything can change – literally – overnight.

At 2 a.m. the Knesset was busy putting the finishing touches to a law to dissolve itself – condemning half of its members to political oblivion. At 3 a.m. there was a huge new government coalition. No elections, thank you very much.

An operetta in 5 acts.

Act One:  Everything tranquil. Public opinion polls show Binyamin Netanyahu in absolute control. His popularity is approaching 50%; nobody else’s even approaches 20%. The largest party in the Knesset, Kadima, sinks in the polls from 28 seats to 11, with all indications that it will continue to fall. Its new leader, former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, gets even less points as candidate for Prime Minister. Netanyahu could sun himself on the roof of his luxury villa and contemplate the future with equanimity. All is well in the best of all Jewish states….

*  New Israeli Government Likely Won’t Launch Iran Attack Juan Cole Informed Comment

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu moved from the far right to just the Right on Tuesday by bringing into his government the center-right Kadima Party, led by Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz has been sharply critical of reported plans by Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak, to launch a go-it-alone military attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mofaz is not opposed to military action against Iran in and of itself, but wants it coordinated with the United States. He last week aligned himself with the views of former Israel domestic intelligence head Yuval Diskin, who strongly opposed a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran and who attacked Netanyahu as erratic. Mofaz said, “Let President Obama handle Iran. We can trust him…”

Having Mofaz in the cabinet makes Netanyahu less dependent on extreme hawks, and makes it highly unlikely that Israel will act on its own against Iran. 

* Many Winners, Few Losers In Deal To End Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike   Haaretz Daily Newspaper 

The agreement that brought the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike to an end on Monday, alongside a decision to return 100 bodies of Palestinian terrorists buried in Israel, as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, were less about possible progress in peace attempts as much as they were about an Israeli effort to preserve the relative silence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Despite the fact that peace negotiations aren’t likely to restart, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Israel are all interested in getting rid of anything that could pose a threat to stability in the region. And so, while the Middle East continues burning (Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon and others), and on a day that was once considered highly likely to draw violent confrontations in the Palestinian territories, the Shin Bet and prisoner’s leadership managed to reach a deal that essentially had many winners and few losers.

The Shin Bet has emphasized their significant “achievement” in the deal: having the Palestinian prisoners sign that they will not return to terrorist activities within the prison walls. One does not need to be a security analyst to understand that despite the deal, at least some of them will repeatedly engage in terrorist activity. Their real achievement lies elsewhere: the fact they could neutralize the ticking bomb of 1,500 hunger-striking prisoners.

*  In Support of the “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” Rabbi Brant Rosen

After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands…This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers.  But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression. 

Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. As a Jew, I’m particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians’ “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.

* To End The Strike Michèle Ouimet LaPresse via  Google translate

First negotiate. And if it does not work, a moratorium on rising tuition. Yes, a moratorium until the next elections to end the conflict that is rotting and becoming more radical. Because the crisis will not disappear by magic.

But before a moratorium must be allowed one last chance for negotiations. Student leaders are willing to negotiate, even if their past experience left a bitter taste. The last weekend, students, ministers, presidents and labor leaders negotiated. After a sleepless night, they came out, pale, bloodless, a room where they had been cooped up for 23 hours. The frenzied marathon has produced results: a tentative agreement.

…The next day, Jean Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp, lifted the nose of the agreement. Jean Charest has repeatedly said he had not sold, and Line Beauchamp has added minimizing the gains made by students. A bit like if they had spat in the soup after it simmered for 23 hours.

Students had the impression of having been had. However, student leaders and ministers had negotiated in good faith an agreement that seemed to satisfy them, but the irresponsible statements of Charest and Beauchamp have screwed up.

* Quebec Student Crisis Badly Mismanaged By Jean Charest Chantel Hébert The Hamilton Spectator

When crisis management experts dissect the ongoing standoff between Quebec and its student movement, they will be hard-pressed to find any evidence of a coherent government strategy. The surprise resignation Monday of Line Beauchamp, Premier Jean Charest’s lead minister on the file, fits that haphazard pattern.

Over the course of three rancorous months, Charest and his ex-education minister have proven unable to talk the province’s way out of a messy confrontation with the students over a planned increase in tuition fees. Every government move has either misfired or backfired. From one resolution attempt to the next, it has become harder to follow the thread of its thinking.

One has to go back 22 years to find a Quebec crisis as mismanaged as this one. The 1990 Oka standoff that saw a major Montreal bridge blockaded by armed Mohawk activists started off as a local dispute over land use. It festered for the better part of a summer before the army was called in to restore some order to the community. That crisis accelerated the demise of the then-Liberal government, not because it was on the wrong side of public opinion but because its clumsy handling exposed a fatigued regime suffering from a beyond-repair case of wear and tear. History is repeating itself.

* Student Protests Pushing Quebec Liberals Into Lead, Poll Suggests The Montreal Gazette

 Forum Research poll, offered exclusively to The Gazette, suggests the Quebec Liberals have edged into the lead, in the 14th week of the tuition-fee conflict pitting university and CEGEP students against the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest.

Pollster Lorne Bozinoff concluded that Quebecers are losing patience with the students. “The Liberals have improved their standings incrementally, and this may be due to increasing public impatience with the striking students,” Bozinoff said. “Certainly Quebecers now see the Liberals as the best party to deal with the situation.”

Previous Forum Research polls this year have given the advantage to the Parti Québécois under Pauline Marois.

*  Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders  AlterNet

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

…The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale… Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” 

At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

* Louisiana Is The World’s Prison Capital nola 

The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s. The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations. If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

* One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton Atlantic Magazine

One year at Princeton University: $37,000. One year at a New Jersey state prison: $44,000. Prison and college “are the two most divergent paths one can take in life,” Joseph Staten, an info-graphic researcher with Public Administration, says. Whereas one is a positive experience that increases lifetime earning potential, the other is a near dead end, which is why Staten found it striking that the lion’s share of government funding goes toward incarceration…..

[T]his chart helps illustrate a large discrepancy in this country: America has the highest incarceration rate by population, but is only 6th in the world when it comes to college degrees. Our government’s spending reflects that fact accordingly.

* F35: The Jet That Ate The Pentagon The Toronto Star

Already unaffordable, the F-35’s price is headed in one direction — due north. The F-35 isn’t only expensive — it’s way behind schedule. The first plan was to have an initial batch of F-35s available for combat in 2010. Then first deployment was to be 2012. More recently, the military services have said the deployment date is “to be determined.” A new target date of 2019 has been informally suggested in testimony — almost 10 years late.

If the F-35’s performance were spectacular, it might be worth the cost and wait. But it is not. Even if the aircraft lived up to its original specifications — and it will not — it would be a huge disappointment. The reason it is such a mediocrity also explains why it is unaffordable and, for years to come, unobtainable.

….This grotesquely unpromising plan has already resulted in multitudes of problems — and 80 per cent of the flight testing remains. A virtual flying piano, the F-35 lacks the F-16’s agility in the air-to-air mode and the F-15E’s range and payload in the bombing mode, and it can’t even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude close air support for troops engaged in combat. Worse yet, it won’t be able to get into the air as often to perform any mission — or, just as important, to train pilots — because its complexity prolongs maintenance and limits availability. The aircraft most like the F-35, the F-22, was able to get into the air on average for only 15 hours per month in 2010 when it was fully operational….

The bottom line: The F-35 is not the wonder its advocates claim. It is a gigantic performance disappointment, and in some respects a step backward. The problems, integral to the design, cannot be fixed without starting from a clean sheet of paper.

* Geo-Engineering The New Yorker

For years, even to entertain the possibility of human intervention on such a scale—geoengineering, as the practice is known—has been denounced as hubris. Predicting long-term climatic behavior by using computer models has proved difficult, and the notion of fiddling with the planet’s climate based on the results generated by those models worries even scientists who are fully engaged in the research. “There will be no easy victories, but at some point we are going to have to take the facts seriously,’’ David Keith, a professor of engineering and public policy at Harvard and one of geoengineering’s most thoughtful supporters, told me. “Nonetheless,’’ he added, “it is hyperbolic to say this, but no less true: when you start to reflect light away from the planet, you can easily imagine a chain of events that would extinguish life on earth.” There is only one reason to consider deploying a scheme with even a tiny chance of causing such a catastrophe: if the risks of not deploying it were clearly higher. No one is yet prepared to make such a calculation, but researchers are moving in that direction.

….Unfortunately, the least risky approach politically is also the most dangerous: do nothing until the world is faced with a cataclysm and then slip into a frenzied crisis mode. The political implications of any such action would be impossible to overstate. What would happen, for example, if one country decided to embark on such a program without the agreement of other countries? Or if industrialized nations agreed to inject sulfur particles into the stratosphere and accidentally set off a climate emergency that caused drought in China, India, or Africa?

“Let’s say the Chinese government decides their monsoon strength, upon which hundreds of millions of people rely for sustenance, is weakening,” Caldeira said. “They have reason to believe that making clouds right near the ocean might help, and they started to do that, and the Indians found out and believed—justifiably or not—that it would make their monsoon worse. What happens then? Where do we go to discuss that? We have no mechanism to settle that dispute.”

* The Radical History of Mother’s Day Nation of Change

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

* Would the Last Civil Right in America Please Remember to Close the Door on Its Way Out?   Lowering the Bar

Q: What do all of the following have in common?

• Prolonged isolation;
• Deprivation of light;
• Exposure to prolonged periods of light and/or darkness;
• Extreme variations in temperature;
• Sleep adjustment;
• Threats of severe physical abuse;
• Death threats;
• Administration of psychotropic drugs;
• Shackling and manacling for hours at a time;
• Use of “stress” positions;
• Noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose;
• Withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket;
• Constant surveillance;
• Incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period;
• Denial of medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions, resulting in severe and continuing mental and physical harm, pain, and profound disruption of the senses and personality.

Any guesses? Time’s up!

A: They’re all things that government officials could do to an American citizen and still claim later that they didn’t know they were “torturing” that citizen, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

* The War of the Sexes by Paul Seabright   review  The Guardian

What has capitalism ever done for women? Not much, you might think. Half the top companies in Britain still have all-male boards, 19 chief executives out of 20 are men, and so are two managers out of three. Women are good at flying planes, but 99% of pilots are men. Women with equal qualifications have to work six hours to get what a man will earn in five, and still they run a much greater risk of losing their jobs. Unfair or what?

… Seabright is no neuromaniac: our outdated emotions are facts we need to live with rather than laws we have to obey. We sexual gods and domestic goddesses are not automata driven by basic instincts, but dupes of the obsolete publicity machines in our heads. When men try to big up their stamina, or women make a display of conscientious self-sacrifice, they are falling into a “signalling trap” that they could avoid if they wanted to. And employers with a bit of imagination need not be taken in either. They can train themselves to see that the hero of labour who makes a point of working long hours is really engaged in a form of wasteful display, the human equivalent of a peacock’s tail, and that the reticent woman need not care any less about her work because of her childcare obligations. And they might well find that male employees would be more productive if they could be induced to take career breaks at least as often as women. Employers who fall for the signalling trap are not only doing women an injustice, but missing a commercial opportunity as well. All we need do, if we are worried about sexual inequality, is give capitalism a chance.

* ‘The Richer Sex,’ on contemporary women, by Liza Mundy   Book review The Washington Post

Are women about to replace men as the high-achieving sex? Women now earn the majority of academic degrees conferred in the United States. Their real wages have risen steadily over the past three decades, while men’s have stagnated. Today, wives in dual-earner families contribute, on average, 47 percent of family earnings. In 2009, nearly 38 percent of employed wives outearned their husbands.

Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy argues that “the Big Flip” in gender roles “is just around the corner.” Soon, she says, “women, not men, will become the top earners in households,” transforming the dynamics of male-female relationships. Mundy deftly summarizes the remarkably rapid expansion of women’s economic and educational achievements over the past 40 years, demonstrating that women’s empowerment is an international phenomenon. 

* Women Cyclists Are More Likely To Be Killed In Traffic Because They Obey Traffic Rules More Rudi.net

Women cyclists are far more likely to be killed by a lorry because, unlike men, they tend to obey red lights and wait at junctions in the driver’s blind spot, according to a study. The TfL study has not been published – a move that has angered many campaigners. The report by Transport for London’s road safety unit was completed last July but has been kept secret. It suggests that some cyclists who break the law by jumping red lights may be safer and that cycle feeder lanes may make the problem worse.

The study claims that 86 per cent of the women cyclists killed in London between 1999 and 2004 collided with a lorry. By contrast, lorries were involved in 47 per cent of deaths of male cyclists. The findings help to explain why the growing popularity of cycling by city commuters is resulting in frequent deaths of young women in similar circumstances.

* Welcome to Life Youtube 2 minutes

* Sharing on the Internet Teddy Wayne  The New Yorker

…all I need to do is be self-referential about the technology you all use and I’ll replicate like the virus in “Contagion,” a movie that, if any of you saw it, will inspire you to now post me to the “Contagion” Facebook page. Look: “The Hunger Games,” “The Smurfs,” “ ‘The Smurfs’ Meets ‘Shame.’ ” This is too easy.

Hmm . . . What kind of ominous, doctored statistic can I make up? Did you know that twenty-four per cent of Facebook users have unwittingly divulged their credit-card information to third-party venders? Or that iPhone owners are more likely to suffer from thumb-stress-induced depression? Or that having an Android means you possess the gene for racism? True or not, you’ll post it, and fourteen of your friends will comment and repost it and feign concern about privacy issues and worry that they’re sad racists with carpal-tunnel syndrome, although they’ll stay online because they’re addicted and their lives are too humdrum for them to care about the protection thereof anyway.

What will Mark Zuckerberg do next? Who cares! You do, in an involuntary, Pavlovian way, which is why you’re reading me when you should be outdoors, talking with a loved one, listening to live music, knitting, doing nearly anything else! Make a limp statement about your technocratic dictator that masquerades as wit, you enslaved peon, and pass me on!

Interesting article—I’m referring to myself—about the death of bookstores and print media you just posted. Way to stave off the inevitable end in a gesture whose irony you seem to be only vaguely aware of. Put it on the “I Know the Difference Between Irony and Sarcasm” fan page!

* Traps pw0nd.com

* A Letter from Mark Zuckerberg  Borowitz Report

Dear Potential Investor:

For years, you’ve wasted your time on Facebook.  Now here’s your chance to waste your money on it, too. Tomorrow is Facebook’s IPO, and I know what some of you are thinking.  How will Facebook be any different from the dot-com bubble of the early 2000’s?

For one thing, those bad dot-com stocks were all speculation and hype, and weren’t based on real businesses.  Facebook, on the other hand, is based on a solid foundation of angry birds and imaginary sheep. Second, Facebook is the most successful social network in the world, enabling millions to share information of no interest with people they barely know.

…One last thing: what will, I, Mark Zuckerberg, do with the $18 billion I’m expected to earn from Facebook’s IPO?  Well, I’m considering buying Greece, but that would still leave me with $18 billion.  LOL.

Friend me,

Mark

* Who’s In Charge – You Or Your Brain? David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis The Observer

David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas and bestselling author

It is clear at this point that we are irrevocably tied to the 3lb of strange computational material found within our skulls. The brain is utterly alien to us, and yet our personalities, hopes, fears and aspirations all depend on the integrity of this biological tissue. How do we know this? Because when the brain changes, we change. Our personality, decision-making, risk-aversion, the capacity to see colours or name animals – all these can change, in very specific ways, when the brain is altered by tumours, strokes, drugs, disease or trauma. As much as we like to think about the body and mind living separate existences, the mental is not separable from the physical. 

Raymond Tallis, former professor of geriatric medicine at Manchester University and author

Yes, of course, everything about us, from the simplest sensation to the most elaborately constructed sense of self, requires a brain in some kind of working order. Remove your brain and bang goes your IQ. It does not follow that our brains are pretty well the whole story of us, nor that the best way to understand ourselves is to stare at “the neural substrate of which we are composed”.

This is because we are not stand-alone brains. We are part of community of minds, a human world, that is remote in many respects from what can be observed in brains. ….Trying to understand the community of minds in which we participate by imaging neural tissue is like trying to hear the whispering of woods by applying a stethoscope to an acorn.

* Taste Buds Data Visualizations Information is Beautiful

* Spinning Girl Illusion

* Monster Brains Jordu Schell / Schell Sculpture Studios

* May Day Around the World   In Focus – The Atlantic

* Ways of the Wind   The Big Picture

* Truck Meets Bus at Hairpin Curve Youtube

* Skating   The Big Picture

* Animals in the News   In Focus

* Beautiful Bird Huddles Buzzfeed

* Out for a Walk with 42 St Barnards Youtube

* Jumping Goat Presurfer

* Jumping Spiders National Geographic

* Tigers National Geographic