As Brazil’s corruption scandal expands and encourages others throughout Latin America—Peru issued an arrest warrant for a former president; former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli is under investigation—the mind-numbingly expensive Olympics stadiums that were built largely on the taxpayer’s dime sit empty and vandalized. ↩︎ posted Feb.
Engineers and environmentalists saw issues coming. Now a “nightmare scenario” is in play. “It worked fine until it had to be used, in which case it didn’t work so well.” Regarding the Oroville disaster, California water districts refused to pay the cost it would take to pave the spillway;
After surviving ISIS brutality, Iraqi civilians are dying at record rates from US-led bombings. ↩︎ The Daily Beast, posted July 18, 2017 The conflict in Yemen is not one that can be fixed easily. Trump’s botched military raid certainly didn’t help matters. As the consensus around Trump’s
A great quick video by Vanessa Hill and BrainCraft about the psychology of me vs. you, us vs. them, “ingroups, outgroups, and social identity theory.” Get ready to remember, in a nice way, that doing nice things for other people is good for you. As to social identity theory, aka
White supremacists operate at ease in positions of authority within law enforcement and defense. After a 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security identified right-wing terrorism as a growing threat, Tea Party backlash put the issue on the back burner. But the white terrorists didn’t go away.
Sen. Warren, please shut up. In case you missed it, after she read negative quotes from Sen. Ted Kennedy and Coretta Scott King about Jeff Sessions, Republicans in the Senate voted along party lines to officially block Elizabeth Warren from commenting at all during the rest of Sessions’ hearings (see
Take us to your breeder: The superbugs have arrived. One percent of e. coli and Kleibsella pneumoniae in China has developed resistance, mainly because of overuse of colistin to speed livestock growth. And last week we learned that a Nevada woman died last fall from a “nightmare” infection resistant to
Lawyer gets out of speeding ticket and sparks Constitutional questions in the process. A traffic camera caught his car speeding, but he got the police to admit they had no way to prove he was the driver at the time. And, if no one is injured, the city has no
In push for investors to disclose carbon risks, California moves ahead of the pack. The state insurance commissioner unveiled a tool for his charges to assess exposure to investments that will decline as the climate changes and the economy shifts. Insurers, who are required to make low-risk investments, have
The National Security Council is now a political pawn for Trump, Bannon, and Republicans. As Goldman Sachs banker-turned-Hollywood producer-turned-Breitbart neo-Nazi-in-chief Stephen Bannon ascends to the National Security Council—previously an extremely apolitical body meant to advise the President on national security, as well
