Tag Archives: greek

Greek Media Really, Really Wants Yes Vote On Euro-Bailout

by MerrillTerrell Posted on July 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Henry Chu of the LA Times reports on how the Greek media is presenting Sunday’s upcoming vote on the bailout:

Strong emotions are in abundant supply. But impartial reporting is not.

Along with Skai TV, nearly all the mainstream press and television stations in Greece have skewed their coverage or are openly in favor of the “yes” campaign, throwing in doubt just how fair Sunday’s election will be. The snap referendum has already come under criticism for being called with too little notice by the left-wing Greek government — which is urging a “no” vote — to allow for proper campaigning and educating of voters.

….In a widely circulated examination of how the six biggest TV networks treated the rival referendum rallies Monday and Tuesday, freelance journalist Markos Petropoulos found that the pro-government “no” demonstration got about 81/2 minutes of coverage, whereas the “yes” protest received more than five times that much.

In another newscast, one network devoted 18 minutes to warnings and statements from European leaders about the breakdown of bailout negotiations with Athens and the surprise referendum announcement that had precipitated it. The Greek government’s position got two minutes.

The bias toward the “yes” side reflects the fact that many of Greece’s biggest news outlets are owned by corporate titans and other “oligarchs” whose business interests would be directly threatened by a “no” victory and the potential abandonment of the euro in favor of the drachma, Nikolas Leontopoulos said.

I suppose it’s no surprise that Greece’s corporate class is deeply unthrilled by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist government, and would be happy to see him humiliated and tossed out of office. I assume that they also prefer the devil they know—grinding European-imposed austerity for years—to the devil they don’t—exiting the euro amid chaos and eventually rebuilding their economy with a devalued drachma. After all, they’ll stay rich either way, and sticking with their fellow European moguls probably seems the better bet by far.

Less than 48 hours to go now.

Continued:

Greek Media Really, Really Wants Yes Vote On Euro-Bailout

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Greece Is Just a Few Days Away From Unconditional Surrender to Germany

by AnnX48qpyih Posted on July 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apparently the Greek prime minister is blinking:

In a letter sent on Tuesday to the creditors — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other eurozone countries — Mr. Tsipras said Greece was “prepared to accept” a deal set out publicly over the weekend by the creditors, with small modifications to some of the central points of contention: pension cuts and tax increases. In the letter, released publicly on Wednesday, Mr. Tsipras linked Greece’s acceptance of the terms to a new package of bailout aid that would need to be negotiated.

The development initially raised the prospect of progress in resolving a financial crisis that has sent shudders through global markets and deeply strained European unity. President François Hollande of France called for talks in the hopes of getting a deal by the weekend, saying, according to Agence-France Presse: “We need to be clear. The time for a deal is now.”

But other European leaders, fed up with Mr. Tsipras and in no mood for quick compromise, dashed any hopes of an immediate breakthrough.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany responded by repeating her position that there should be no further negotiations until Greece holds the referendum on Sunday.

In other words, Merkel is not even willing to grant Tsipras a few meaningless face-saving concessions. Why? I think Merkel believes she now holds all the cards and has no reason to make any concessions at all, no matter how small. And I suspect she’s right. In the end, the Greek public will be unwilling to back Tsipras in Sunday’s referendum and will vote to accept the European deal as is. The potential catastrophe of default and leaving the euro is just too scary for most of them to contemplate.

So Tsipras will be out and Europe will effectively have total control of Greek finances. After six months of cage rattling, the Greek revolt will be over and future governments will simply have to accept whatever pain Merkel wants to deal out. At that point, with Tsipras gone, it’s actually possible she’ll agree to a few concessions here and there. Policy issues aside, there’s little doubt that Merkel’s personal contempt for Tsipras has done a lot to cement her hard line toward Greece.

So that’s my prediction. Unless Tsipras caves completely beforehand, the referendum will be held on Sunday and Greeks will vote to stay in the euro and accept Germany’s terms. It will basically be an unconditional surrender.

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Greece Is Just a Few Days Away From Unconditional Surrender to Germany

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Greece Gives Europe What It Wants, Europe Says No Anyway

by Amado57Ehyyanr Posted on June 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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European leaders were in final, last-ditch, eleventh-hour, crisis talks with their Greek counterparts today, which by my count is at least the third time we’ve held final, last-ditch, eleventh-hour, crisis talks in the past two weeks. This leaves me a little unsure of when the real “world will explode” deadline is anymore. But soon, I’m sure.

In any case, as Paul Krugman notes, the Europeans are no longer merely demanding concessions of a certain size from the Greeks, they now want final say over the exact makeup of the concessions:

The creditors keep rejecting Greek proposals on the grounds that they rely too much on taxes and not enough on spending cuts. So we’re still in the business of dictating domestic policy.

The supposed reason for the rejection of a tax-based response is that it will hurt growth. The obvious response is, are you kidding us? The people who utterly failed to see the damage austerity would do — see the chart, which compares the projections in the 2010 standby agreement with reality — are now lecturing others on growth? Furthermore, the growth concerns are all supply-side, in an economy surely operating at least 20 percent below capacity.

Basically, the Europeans just can’t seem to say yes even when they get what they want. Besides, although tax increases probably will hurt Greek growth, so will spending cuts. There’s just no way around it. The Greek economy is completely moribund, and any kind of austerity is going to make it worse. But the Europeans want austerity anyway, and they have the whip hand, so now they’ve decided they also want to dictate the exact nature of the concrete life preservers they’re throwing to Greece.

The Greeks have little choice left, unless they’re willing to leave the euro, which would cause massive short-term pain at home. Maybe they will, but it would take a backbone of steel to do it. Voters would probably cheer raucously the first night, but be in a mood to vote the entire team out of office after about the second day, when their savings and pensions were converted into New Drachmas and suddenly slashed in half. There is no happy ending to this.

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Greece Gives Europe What It Wants, Europe Says No Anyway

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Greek Charm Offensive Is Charming No One So Far

by DortheaBlackmor Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is apparently on a “charm offensive” to persuade his European counterparts—i.e., the Germans—to allow Greece to end its brutal austerity program and spend more money. The Germans, so far, are not charmed:

After a meeting in Berlin on Thursday with his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the two sides could not even agree on whether they had “agreed to disagree.” Schaeuble said they did. Varoufakis said they didn’t get that far. “We did not reach an agreement; it was never on the cards,” he said. “We didn’t even agree to disagree from where I’m standing.”

That’s not very promising, is it? Overall, though, my takeaway from this story is that the new Greek government, after winning office based on a very hardnosed platform of vilifying its European creditors, has decided in practice to adopt a fairly conciliatory negotiating strategy. The Times says that Varoufakis has “backed away from the party’s pledges to negotiate a debt write-down” and is instead merely seeking “a compromise that would benefit Greece and its creditors.”

So it’s sort of a good-cop-bad-cop routine: prime minister Alexis Tsipras stays in Athens and continues to insist that Greece won’t buckle under to European threats, while Varoufakis makes the rounds of finance ministries and tries to make nice.

Still, keep in mind something I mentioned a few days ago: “backing down” from demands to reduce Greece’s enormous debt doesn’t mean much, because the issue of the debt write-down has always been a bit of a charade. It’s an easy thing to demagogue, but everyone understands privately that Greece will never pay it all back. At this point, then, Greek debt is less a measure of what Greece actually owes other people than it is a crude means of political control: whenever Greece needs to roll over its debt, it’s an opportunity for Germany to hold out until they approve of Greece’s spending plans. This effectively gives them control of Greece’s budget, and they’ve insisted on huge spending cuts and a future path toward big budget surpluses.

And that’s what Varoufakis really cares about. Not the debt, which is basically just a symbol at this point, but control over Greece’s budget. He wants to reverse the austerity and increase spending, which he thinks will boost Greece’s economy and allow it to get back into growth mode. What’s more, he’s arguing—none too subtly, as it happens—that this is something important to all of Europe, not just Greece. After all, Greek unemployment is currently at 26 percent, and youth unemployment is nearly 50 percent. This is dangerous territory for any country. Here’s Varoufakis:

“Germany must and can be proud that Nazism has been eradicated here, but it’s one of history’s most cruel ironies that Nazism is rearing its ugly head in Greece, a country which put up such a fine struggle against it,” Varoufakis said. He was referring to Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party, which came third in January’s elections and has 17 seats in the Parliament sworn in Thursday.

Translation: the Greek public won’t put up with this stuff forever. You may think Syriza is a radical far-left party, but there are worse things than far left parties. If we don’t get relief soon, the far right will be up to bat next. And that’s something nobody wants to risk.

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Greek Charm Offensive Is Charming No One So Far

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Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

by CandacePapst Posted on September 12, 2014

Cheeri-NOs

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

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12 Sep 2014 5:40 PM

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The New York Times crunched the nation’s cereal-eating numbers this week, and it looks like the typical American breakfast is starting to include fewer sugary flakes and moon-shaped marshmallows.

The Times’ Stephanie Stroml reports that in the past decade, Americans have been eating less boxed cereal, preferring healthier options like juiced fruits and veggies and probiotic-rich Greek yogurt. Between 2003 and 2013, sales of the once-beloved flaky cereals (Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, etc.) decreased by 5.5 percent. Children’s cereals (Lucky Charms and good ol’ Cap’n Crunch) have plummeted 10.7 percent. Meanwhile, Muesli, a favorite of health nuts everywhere, is steadily gaining popularity, increasing in sales by 1.8 percent.

The article reads:

For the last decade, the cereal business has been declining, as consumers reach for granola bars, yogurt and drive-through fare in the morning. And the drop-off has accelerated lately, especially among those finicky millennials who tend to graze on healthy options — even if Cheerios and some other brands come in whole-grain varieties fortified with protein now.

As a millennial myself, I’d like to take this opportunity to say a little something to big breakfast cereal companies to give them a heads-up on why young people like me are opting out of their morning Cap’n Crunch:

Dearest Big Breakfast Cereal Companies (BBCCs),

Hello, I am your loyal fan Liz. I am particularly fond of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch, the perfect blend of whole-wheaty oats and sun-dried raisin chewiness. It’s my favorite thing to snack on while I scroll through my Instagram feed. So, to you I extend the deepest of gratitude.

But, BBCCs, I’m writing to tell you to CUT THE CRAP. We millennials are having a tough time believing the whole “Lucky Charms are a great source of whole-grains” thing when they actually contain 40 percent more sugar by weight than typical adult cereals. C’mon, people, we both know this is bogus. Sugary breakfast cereals are not health food, even if you pump them up with protein. It’s like trying to make “fetch” happen. And it’s not going to happen.

You see, it’s not that we don’t enjoy the taste of sugary deliciousness, it’s that we’re becoming smarter consumers. We’re smarter, BBCCs, because we’ve seen these tricks before. Other companies have been trying to sell us products that cater to millennial interests — by making cars more tech-friendly and fast-food look quaint and local. But those marketing ploys that tell us we should be slaves to the automobile, or that food products are healthy when the nutrition label reads, “sugars: 19 grams” — well, they’re starting to feel a little stale.

I probably won’t give up eating a bowl or two of cereal for dinner once in a while, but if you’re wondering why your sales continue to drop despite your new “heath conscious” advertising campaigns — it’s because when millennials want to get their daily fix of whole grains, we’ll reach for the organic barley, not the box of Fruit Loops.

Source:
Cereals Begin to Lose Their Snap, Crackle and Pop

, New York Times.

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Is this train the “little engine that could” for clean energy storage?

by GretchenBamford Posted on March 26, 2014

Track star

Is this train the “little engine that could” for clean energy storage?

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ARES

In Greek mythology, the story of Sisyphus endlessly rolling a boulder uphill is meant to be a cautionary tale. Gravity, in this case, worked against the poor chump. But the smart folks at Advanced Rail Energy Storage North America (ARES) asked: Why not make gravity your friend?

ARES has pioneered a train full of rocks that climbs up a hill, only to roll back down again and repeat the process, Sisyphus style. But instead of a metaphor of futility, this new train technology offers a breakthrough opportunity in clean energy storage.

It isn’t easy to find feasible solutions for storing grid-scale renewable energy loads for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Pumping water through turbines only returns about 70 percent on energy inputs, while the big battery business comes with its own set of environmental and cost concerns.

That’s what makes the ARES technology all the more exciting. The group repurposed train cars originally meant for (ironically) Australian ore mining to use gravity and friction to store renewables. Each car can haul up to 230 tons of rock up a hill (heavier is better since it will generate more energy when it inevitably rolls downhill).

Here’s how it works: When electricity is at low demand, surplus energy gets sent from the grid to power a chain that hauls the weighted rail cars uphill. Then, when energy demand climbs, the train car’s motor becomes a generator as it rolls downhill, and the momentum pushes the stored energy back through the grid via regenerative braking. Scientific American reports:

 ”They go up, they go down, Slinky fashion,” said Francesca Cava, chief operating officer at Advanced Rail Energy Storage North America, the company behind the Nevada project. “For the most part, the technology we’re using is over a hundred years old – we’re not waiting for any scientific breakthroughs to be profitable.”

The benefits are that it’s less expensive than other storage solutions like pumping hydro through turbines, and it has a small environmental footprint — no water, no emissions, and no synthetic methane needed. ARES says that the energy stored can stabilize the grid and help make the power generated by renewables less intermittent.

The new railcars have been piloted in California, which recently approved a plan to use energy storing technologies to meet the goal of having 33 percent of its power supply from renewable sources by the year 2020. Now ARES has big plans for a large-scale commercial venture that could help the state get on track with its energy-on-demand needs. If this pilot program is successful, other states and countries could soon be riding this gravy train to clean energy storage.


Source
Energy Storage Hits the Rails Out West, The Scientific American

Amber Cortes is a Grist fellow and public radio nerd. Follow her on Twitter.

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Yes, "Cosmos" Fans, Creationists Also Deny the Science of Comets

by ArielO42brir Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last night, Fox’s Cosmos series yet again waded into a bizarre politico-scientific controversy. This time, though, it wasn’t about evolution, or climate change, or even the Big Bang.

No. This time, it was about comets.

The Cosmos episode was about what comets are, and why they are not, as humanity believed until quite recently, evil omens. Before the age of science, explained host Neil deGrasse Tyson, “comets were portents of doom” across cultures. Tyson also pointed out that the word “disaster” itself means “bad star” in Greek. The show then dove into the history of science to tell the story of Edmund Halley, who realized how comets work and that the comet that now bears his name returns roughly every 75 years (most recently in 1986; next up, 2061). Halley also inspired Sir Isaac Newton to publish what may be the most important book ever in the history of science, the Principia Mathematica.

So why does the science of comets irk some creationists?

Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton hanging out on Cosmos Fox

To understand that, you first need to understand that Young Earth creationists don’t just deny the science of evolution; they deny all science that suggests that either our planet or anything else in the universe is more than a few thousand years old. That includes comets, of course, many of which are not exactly young.

On the latest Cosmos, Tyson explained that some comets come from the Oort Cloud, an extremely distant region of icy bodies far beyond Pluto, but still in orbit around our sun. There are as many as 2 trillion of these frozen objects, and occasionally, one will get knocked off its course and travel on a very long journey into the inner part of the solar system. As an object nears the sun and heats up, the sublimation of ice and gases give it a tail, and if it is close enough to Earth, we see it as a comet. Other comets, meanwhile, come from the Kuiper Belt, the neighborhood of Pluto, which also contains a huge number of icy bodies.

But here’s the problem for creationists: According to NASA, “The objects in the Oort Cloud and in the Kuiper Belt are presumed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.” The Oort Cloud extends from about 5,000 to 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, according to NASA, where each AU is equal to the distance between Earth and the sun, or 93 million miles. That means that it also takes these comets very long periods of time to travel into the inner solar system, earning them the name of “long-period comets.”

Comets that are vastly older than creationists believe all of creation to be present a bit of a problem. Hence, if you visit the website of creationist Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis and search for “Oort Cloud,” you will find multiple articles providing a creationist take on the origins and nature of comets. In one of them you will find the assertion that there is “zero observational evidence that the Oort cloud exists,” followed later by this observation: “but if the solar system is only thousands of years old, as God’s Word clearly teaches, there is no problem.” In another article, you get this:

Actually the Oort cloud, like Peter Pan’s Neverland, has never been observed. The Oort cloud was imagined to provide a birthplace for new comets, since comets like ISON could not exist in a billions-of-years-old universe without some renewable source. The Oort cloud is thus a convenient fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.

In other words, the problem for creationists is the idea that comets are ancient and are sometimes traveling vast distances, from the Oort Cloud, into the inner solar system, a journey that would take a huge amount of time. Now you see why the Oort Cloud is such a threat to their worldview.

Fox

But of course, creationists are wrong, wrong, wrong. If you want an extensive rebuttal of creationist claims about comets, go here. The gist: We have plenty of evidence for the existence of both the Oort Cloud and, especially, of the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is more distant and dark, and not easily observed. However, notes one NASA site, it is “the best theory to explain how long-period comets exist.”

Anyway, it’s not as if creationists are denying the existence of the Oort Cloud after a careful consideration of the evidence. Rather, they start from an impossible theory, and then dismiss evidence inconsistent with it. What’s truly sad is the smallness of the universe that therefore results.

UPDATE: We got a comment from astronomer and Slate blogger Phil Plait about creationists and comets (and how wrong the former are about the latter). Here it is, in its entirety:

One of the funny things about believing the Earth is young is that sometimes there’s a consistent internal logic to it. That doesn’t mean it’s right, just that it’s self-contained. In this case, astronomers see comets coming in every few months from deep space. We assume there has to be a repository of billions or trillions of them out there, or else we would’ve run out of them long, long ago — that’s because we assume the Earth is old, billions of years old. So the Oort Cloud is where we think those comets are. If you assume the Earth is 6000 years old, you don’t need an Oort cloud to supply you with comets, so some creationists deny it exists.

Problem is, if the Oort cloud is there, then the physics of it demands there should be an intermediate population, out just past Neptune; thousands or millions of icy bodies a few miles across. And lo, we found it: the Kuiper Belt. Quite a few denizens of it have been seen.

So once again, science was right, and creationism wrong. The Earth is old, the Kuiper belt exists, and the Oort Cloud must as well. But somehow I don’t think this rock-solid proof of science will change any creationists’ minds, any more than the thousands of other such pieces of evidence routinely denied by those who feel that reality must bend to belief, and not the other way around.

On a recent episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, we were thrilled to host Cosmos‘ Tyson, who explained why he doesn’t debate science deniers; you can listen here (interview starts around minute 13):

Link – 

Yes, "Cosmos" Fans, Creationists Also Deny the Science of Comets

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A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming – Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel & Thomas Peisel

by Myrna Posted on September 8, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming

Mastering the Art of Oneironautics

Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel & Thomas Peisel

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $9.99

Expected Publish Date: September 10, 2013

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Seller: Workman Publishing Co., Inc.


Imagine being able to fly. Walk through walls. Shape-shift. Breathe underwater. Conjure loved ones—or total strangers—out of thin air. Imagine experiencing your nighttime dreams with the same awareness you possess right now—fully functioning memory, imagination, and self-awareness. Imagine being able to use this power to be more creative, solve problems, and discover a deep sense of well-being. This is lucid dreaming—the ability to know you are dreaming while you are in a dream, and then consciously explore and change the elements of the dream. A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming , with its evocative retro illustrations, shows exactly how to do it. Written by three avid, experienced lucid dreamers, this manual for the dream world takes the reader from step one—learning how to reconnect with his or her dreams— through the myriad possibilities of what can happen once the dreamer is lucid and an accomplished oneironaut (a word that comes from the Greek oneira , meaning dreams, and nautis , meaning sailor). Readers will learn about the powerful REM sleep stage—a window into lucid dreams. Improve dream recall by keeping a journal. The importance of reality checks, such as “The Finger”—during the day, try to pass your finger through your palm; then, when you actually do it successfully, you’ll know that you’re dreaming. And once you become lucid, how to make the most of it. Every time you dream, you are washing up on the shores of your own inner landscape. Learn to explore a strange and thrilling world with A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming .

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A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming – Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel & Thomas Peisel

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