Tag Archives: michigan

Twitter fell for a hoax that Trump’s camp deleted his Chinese hoax tweet.

by KandiRiggs Posted on September 27, 2016

Yes, if Sen. Debbie Stabenow has her way. The Michigan Democrat announced The Urban Agriculture Act in Detroit on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture already offers support for city farmers, but this bill would add to those grants, loans, and education programs. It would also provide $10 million for urban ag research, $5 million for community gardens, incentives for farmers to provision neighbors with fresh food, and resources for composting and cleaning up contaminated soil.

So far Stabenow hasn’t released much more than a list of bullet points. The road from proposing a bill and passing a law is long, and details could change, which means there’s not much to analyze. But in general, urban ag is a mixed bag of policy greens.

Urban farms can build community, teach people about farming, and provide extra cash to laborers in cities, but they don’t create many good-paying jobs. If we farm vacant lots, rooftops, and former lawns, that’s likely a win for the environment. But if farms displace housing and spread cities out, that’s a loss. Similarly, if we replace plants grown under the sun with plants grown indoors under artificial lights, that’s no good for the climate.

For more on urban farms see our previous work, and this Next City analysis.

View original article – 

Twitter fell for a hoax that Trump’s camp deleted his Chinese hoax tweet.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Oster, RSVP, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Twitter fell for a hoax that Trump’s camp deleted his Chinese hoax tweet.

What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

by PilarErtel48 Posted on September 26, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
People pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the first presidential debate. Mary Altaffer/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change is a grave threat to our future, but it probably won’t come up at Monday’s presidential debate. Topics for the event include “Securing America,” and although you’d think issues of national security might involve climate change (the military certainly does), if history is any indication, it likely won’t get mentioned at all.

But if it does get the attention it deserves, here’s where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand:

Dirty energy: Clinton supports some natural gas extraction on public lands, is against offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, and has pledged $30 billion to provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining as we move away from coal as a source of energy.

Trump has promised to boost coal production, ease environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas extraction, and increase permits for oil pipelines. He also is considering appointing an oil executive to head the Department of Interior and a fracking mogul to lead the Department of Energy.

Clean energy: Clinton has said she would install more than half a billion solar panels in the United States by the end of her first term, and that under her presidency, we will generate enough clean energy to power every home in America by 2027.

Trump has said wind power is a great killer of birds (it’s not) and that solar is too expensive to be a viable source of energy, despite the fact that the cost of solar has now reached record lows—and with proper government investment, it would get even cheaper. Trump also objects to Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan, as well as the Paris Climate Accord, which he says he would cancel.

Environmental justice: After a debate in Flint, Michigan, in April, Clinton said she would require federal agencies to devise plans to deal with lead poisoning and other environmental justice issues, and she pledged to clean up more than 450,000 polluted sites around the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, mocked the Democratic National Committee for including climate justice in the party’s platform, and has previously vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—or, as he calls it, “the Department of Environmental”—although he’s recently backtracked on that particular idea.

Fossil fuel donations: While Republican presidential candidates can usually count on generous support from the fossil fuel industry, this year is the exception. Between both individual and corporation donations, Clinton has taken nearly twice as much from Big Oil as Trump, and some oil execs may even vote for her. Looks like we can add this to the list of things the great race of 2016 has upended.

Third and fourth party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate Monday night, which is too bad, because they tend to have the most interesting answers on climate change…and everything else.

Continued here: 

What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, solar panels, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

The US Just Met Its Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees

by EloisaBastow Posted on August 29, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

It’s been one year since President Barack Obama announced that the United States would take in 10,000 Syrian refugees by this September. After much criticism from Republican politicians and a slow start, the administration picked up the pace of resettlement and met its goal a month ahead of schedule. Today, the United States is resettling its 10,000th Syrian refugee.

In a statement, National Security Advisor Susan Rice welcomed the newcomers. “On behalf of the President and his Administration, I extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals,” Rice said.

The newest group of Syrian refugees are arriving in California and Virginia from Jordan. Among them is Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh, a 49-year old former construction worker from Homs. He, his wife Rajaa, and their four children are being resettled in San Diego. Jouriyeh told the Associated Press that in anticipation of his journey, he feels “fear of the unknown and our new lives, but great joy for our children’s lives and future.”

Most of the 10,000 Syrian refugees who have been granted asylum in the United States look a lot like the Jouriyeh family. According to the State Department, approximately 80 percent are women and children. Roughly 60 percent are under the age of 18. The vast majority of male refugees are fathers, grandchildren, or older siblings. Only 0.5 percent are adult men unattached to families.

var embedDeltas=”100″:510,”200″:455,”300″:427,”400″:400,”500″:400,”600″:400,”700″:400,”800″:400,”900″:400,”1000″:400,chart=document.getElementById(“datawrapper-chart-eRc6p”),chartWidth=chart.offsetWidth,applyDelta=embedDeltasMath.min(1000, Math.max(100*(Math.floor(chartWidth/100)), 100))||0,newHeight=applyDelta;chart.style.height=newHeight+”px”;

In the last year, Syrian refugees have been placed in 39 different states, with California and Michigan hosting the largest numbers. More than half of have been resettled in eight states—California, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and New York.

Although the goal of admitting 10,000 Syrians in this fiscal year marked a six-fold increase over last year, the number of refugees resettled this year only accounts for about two percent of the total number of Syrian refugees the United Nations says are in need of resettlement. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has proposed a target of admitting 65,000. Donald Trump has ridiculed that proposal. In April, he told supporters in Rhode Island to “lock your doors” to stay safe from Syrian refugees. “We don’t know who these people are. We don’t know where they’re from,” he warned. In December 2015, Trump tweeted that a Syrian family who crossed the US-Mexico border were “ISIS maybe?”

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security told Mother Jones that the Syrian refugees it is currently vetting are subject to the same stringent security and medical requirements as other asylum-seekers. Those applying for refugee status must go through a 21-step vetting process that includes security screenings by the National Counterterrorism Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that Obama plans to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States by “a few thousand more” next year. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to put the administration’s proposal before Congress in the coming weeks. Any increase is likely face opposition from Republican lawmakers who have resisted the introduction of more Syrian refugees to the United States. “The president would like to see a ramping-up of these efforts but he’s realistic,” said Earnest.

Source:

The US Just Met Its Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The US Just Met Its Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees

Pro-tip: It costs a lot when you spill tar sands oil into a river

by Franklyn86C Posted on July 20, 2016

You Break It, You Bought It

Pro-tip: It costs a lot when you spill tar sands oil into a river

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

One of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history will result in a fine second only to the one levied for the Gulf’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster — and the largest ever for a pipeline accident. Canadian-based Enbridge will pay $61 million for violating the Clean Water Act and $110 million in safety upgrades for its pipeline system that spans the Great Lakes, the U.S. government announced Wednesday.

The 2010 rupture near Marshall, Michigan, polluted the Kalamazoo River and tributaries with more than a million gallons of dirty tar sands oil. Workers in the Enbridge control room initially ignored automated warnings about the rupture and continued forcing oil through the broken pipe for several hours. Enbridge has already spent close to $1 billion on clean-up and related costs.

Although Enbridge initially denied its line was carrying bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, it became quickly apparent that this was no ordinary spill. The heavy oil sank to the bottom of the riverbed, increasing the length and difficulty of the clean-up. The spill occurred just as the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline, proposed by an Enbridge competitor, was gaining momentum. President Obama ultimately denied Keystone’s construction permit last year.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Originally from:

Pro-tip: It costs a lot when you spill tar sands oil into a river

Posted in alo, Anchor, bigo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pro-tip: It costs a lot when you spill tar sands oil into a river

Brexit Now Looking Like It Will Probably Fail

by JenniGerken Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Peter Eavis says that Brexit is likely to lose and Britain will remain part of the EU:

Asking people to predict a result of an election has, over time, provided more accurate forecasts than asking people their voting intentions, according to a study by Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist and an Upshot contributor, and David Rothschild, of the Microsoft Research and Statistics Center.

When Survation asked, “Regardless of how you plan to vote, what do you think the result will be?” just shy of 40 percent of people said the “remain” camp would win. Only 26 percent said that “leave” would prevail.

The betting markets agree:

The betting odds for the EU referendum changed direction over the weekend and now firmly favour a Remain vote with just three days to go….Ladbrokes has given just a 27% chance of a Vote Leave while William Hill has it as 28.5%. Ladbrokes added that 95% of betting on was a Remain vote on Monday.

My sense—though I’d prefer actual data if anyone has collected it—is that secession votes usually follow a pattern: the leavers get an upward bump a few weeks before voting day, but stayers get a bump in the few days before voting day. A fair number of people flirt with the idea of leaving, but then get scared at the last minute and decide to vote for the status quo instead. Basically, in any secession referendum, I figure that Leave needs to be polling at 55 percent or higher to have a realistic chance of winning.

As of today, the polls are still tied, so my guess is that Brexit will fail on Thursday. If I’m right that about 5 percent of the leavers will get cold feet and change their minds, the final tally will be something like 53-47 percent in favor of remaining in the EU. We’ll find out in a couple of days.

Read article here:

Brexit Now Looking Like It Will Probably Fail

Posted in Brita, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Brexit Now Looking Like It Will Probably Fail

When Parole Boards Trump the Supreme Court

by DesireeNMKC Posted on May 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story is published in partnership with The Marshall Project.

Almost everyone serving life in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles deserves a shot at going home. That’s the thrust of a series of Supreme Court rulings, the fourth and most recent of which was decided this year. Taken together, the high court’s message in these cases is that children are different than adults when it comes to crime and punishment—less culpable for their actions and more amenable to change. As such, court rulings have determined all but the rarest of juvenile lifers are entitled to “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”

When He Was 16, This Man Threw One Punch—and Went to Jail for Life Courtesy of Deborah Buchanan

The court left it up to states how to handle this year’s new ruling but suggested parole boards were a good choice. “Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in January, gives states a way to identify “juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity—and who have since matured.” Most states have taken this option, changing juvenile lifers’ sentences en masse from life without to life with the possibility of parole.

But prisoner’s rights advocates and attorneys have begun to argue that parole boards, as they usually operate, may not be capable of providing a meaningful opportunity for release. A handful of courts have agreed.

Last month, a New York state appeals court judge ruled that the state’s parole board had not “met its constitutional obligation” when it denied parole to a man who had killed his girlfriend when he was 16. Dempsey Hawkins is now 54 and has been denied parole nine times in hearings that, the court said, did not adequately weigh what role his youth and immaturity had played in his crime.

Also last month, a group of juvenile lifers in Maryland filed suit, arguing that not a single juvenile lifer had received parole in that state in the last 20 years. “Rather than affording youth a meaningful and realistic opportunity for release…grants of release are exceptionally rare, are governed by no substantive, enforceable standards, and are masked from view by blanket assertions of executive privilege,” the lawsuit says.

Similar suits are proceeding in Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, where a judge heard oral arguments last week.

“There are just two relevant kinds of sentences: those that provide a meaningful opportunity for release and those that don’t,” says Sarah French Russell, a Quinnipiac University law professor who studies juvenile justice. “Sentences that are not technically labeled life without parole can deny a meaningful opportunity for release because of the procedures or criteria used by the parole board.”

In almost every state, parole board members are political appointees with little incentive to release prisoners who committed violent crimes, The Marshall Project has reported. Boards operate with wide discretion to make decisions for almost any reason, and in many states, their decisionmaking is shielded from public view and not subject to appeal. A recent analysis by the University of Minnesota law school found that parole release rates in many states remain stuck under 10%, even as the country searches for solutions to mass incarceration. In Ohio, 7% of hearings result in parole being granted. In Florida, the 2014 grant rate was 2%.

One common basis for parole denial is the seriousness of the crime. This may be an allowable metric for adult offenders, these lawsuits argue, but in light of the Supreme Court’s rulings, juvenile lifers must be judged by a different standard.

“No meaningful opportunity to prove rehabilitation can be granted where the only consideration at a parole hearing is the severity of the offense,” wrote attorneys for Blair Greiman, who was sentenced as a teenager in Iowa to life without parole for kidnapping and rape, then re-sentenced after the Supreme Court’s rulings.

At 16, high on horse tranquilizers he had stolen from the veterinary supply at his family’s farm, Greiman raped a woman, stabbed her, and left her for dead. Now 50, Greiman says he has a “simple desire to live a decent life and not be defined by the worst act of my life.” In prison, he has earned a degree, become a master woodworker, participated in counseling and treatment and published a novel, the lawsuit says. Yet, repeatedly denied parole because of the seriousness of his crime, Greiman “is effectively placed in the same situation as he was previously—a juvenile offender serving life sentences without eligibility for parole,” his lawyers argue. Fred Scaletta, assistant director of Iowa’s corrections department, said the board cannot comment on pending litigation. Since Greiman filed suit, the board has approved him for placement in minimum security, a step towards work release, and will review him again next year, Scaletta said.

A handful of states have implemented special parole board procedures for juvenile lifers. Massachusetts and Connecticut provide funding for attorneys to represent juvenile lifers before the board. The Massachusetts Supreme Court also said juvenile lifers were entitled to fees for expert witnesses and to appeal the outcome to a judge—all protections that adult offenders do not enjoy.

“In the case of a juvenile homicide offender—at least at the initial parole hearing—the task is probably far more complex than in the case of an adult offender,” the Massachusetts court wrote. Juvenile lifers must be given the chance to prove that their crime was committed, at least in part, because they were young—immature, impressionable, dependent on adults—but to do that requires gathering educational, medical, and legal paperwork, sometimes decades old, from behind bars. “An unrepresented, indigent juvenile homicide offender will likely lack the skills and resources to gather, analyze, and present this evidence adequately,” the court wrote.

California, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Nebraska have all passed laws providing new rules and procedures for parole boards to follow in cases of juvenile lifers.

In New York, attorneys for Mr. Hawkins are lobbying the governor to widen the scope of the court’s ruling in his case and put protections in place for all juvenile lifers facing the state’s parole board.

Even with special protections, lawyers and advocates say, whether juvenile lifers get parole is still largely dependent on the political atmosphere and whims of the board members. From 2013 until last year, half of juvenile lifers who went before the Massachusetts board were granted parole; that rate dropped to zero when a new board chair took over last September. Lawyers for the last 14 juvenile lifers to go before the board—all of whom were denied parole—say they plan to begin filing lawsuits.

Link to original – 

When Parole Boards Trump the Supreme Court

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on When Parole Boards Trump the Supreme Court

BinC Watch: It’s Sunday Morning, So Today It’s "Meet the Press"

by MackBlank40688 Posted on May 8, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, is upset with the way the press treats Donald Trump:

Most politicians will drop a talking point if it gets labeled with Four Pinocchios by The Fact Checker or “Pants on Fire” by PolitiFact….But the news media now faces the challenge of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Trump makes Four-Pinocchio statements over and over again, even though fact checkers have demonstrated them to be false. He appears to care little about the facts; his staff does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries.

But, astonishingly, television hosts rarely challenge Trump when he makes a claim that already has been found to be false.

This has been a problem during the primaries, but I’m pretty sure it’s set to change. Now that Trump is the presumptive nominee for a major party, with a real shot at becoming president, he just can’t get away with being the bullshitter-in-chief. The press is going to treat him a lot—

Hmm? What’s that? I should check out Meet the Press this morning? Sigh. What fresh hell awaits?

Trump has been retailing this particular tidbit of bullshit for months, and it’s not just untrue, but obviously untrue. Conservatives know it perfectly well, because they’re constantly talking about the high tax rates in Sweden and Germany and France and so forth, and trying to demonstrate that these high tax rates have strangled their economies. There’s really no disagreement about this.

But there’s good news! Since Trump has said this before, I already have the relevant chart at hand. No need to waste my time looking up the numbers and tossing them into Excel. So here it is. Not only are we not the highest, we’re the third lowest among rich economies:

Jump to original – 

BinC Watch: It’s Sunday Morning, So Today It’s "Meet the Press"

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BinC Watch: It’s Sunday Morning, So Today It’s "Meet the Press"

A Vote For Not-Trump Is a Vote For Hillary

by WendellReuter Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Jay Nordlinger is confused at the idea that if he doesn’t vote for Donald Trump, he’s effectively voting for Hillary Clinton:

People tell me that, if I don’t vote for either Trump or Hillary, I’m voting for Hillary. My first response is, “So?” My second response is, “What are you smoking?” If it’s true that, if I don’t vote for either Trump or Hillary, I’m voting for Hillary, why isn’t it equally true that I’m voting for Trump? You see what I mean? How come Trump doesn’t get my non-vote? Why does just Hillary get it?

Am I missing something?

Perhaps it’s this: Perhaps people think that Trump has some kind of claim on my vote, because I’m a conservative (and, until earlier this week, I was a Republican)….

Let’s stop right here. I think I see the problem. If not-Trump voters are distributed randomly, the effect would indeed be small. That’s what happened with Ross Perot in 1992. But if millions of people who otherwise would have voted for the Republican nominee are defecting, then the effect is large and decidedly non-random. You really are effectively voting for Hillary since there’s no plausible third-party candidate to take votes away from her.

And it doesn’t even take millions. Ralph Nader effectively elected George W. Bush in 2000 with only a few thousand votes in Florida. It wasn’t his intent, and the odds against it were high, but nonetheless that’s how it worked out.

This is all predicated on the fact that Nordlinger almost certainly votes for Republicans most of the time and for Republican presidential candidates all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s true. And if millions of formerly loyal Republicans stay away from the polls or vote for Gary Johnson or just leave their ballots blank, then Hillary is a shoo-in. I kinda hate to be the one making this case, but there’s really no way around this.

See original article here:  

A Vote For Not-Trump Is a Vote For Hillary

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Vote For Not-Trump Is a Vote For Hillary

Here’s the Latest From the Bullshitter-in-Chief

by DellBartels Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump knows exactly how to appeal to the women’s vote:

“Have you ever read what Hillary Clinton did to the women that Bill Clinton had affairs with? And they’re going after me with women?” he added, incredulously, without citing any specific examples or sources.

Oh goody. I guess in a few days we’ll be treated to a barrage of thumbsuckers relitigating the titillating tales of Kathleen Willey, Gennifer Flowers, and Paula Jones. Christ. But the BinC didn’t stop there:

Trump also took sharp aim at Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren….In front of a crowd of thousands on Friday night, Trump unveiled a new nickname for the Massachusetts senator: “Goofus.”

Clinton’s “got this goofy friend Elizabeth Warren, she’s on a Twitter rant, she’s a goofus,” he said. “This woman, she’s a basketcase. By the way, she’s done nothing in the United States. She’s done nothing.”

Well, nothing except for all the stuff that conservatives apparently hate her for. Like being the godmother of the CFPB, which is great for most of us but loathed by banks—and therefore also loathed by Trump and the entire Republican Party. And despite being in the minority party and therefore having zero power, she’s been a pretty effective advocate for reining in Wall Street during her 39 months as a senator. Effective enough to piss off Donald Trump, anyway.

Next up: Trump claims that Chelsea Clinton knew all about Benghazi. Huma Abedin is disgusting for sticking with her husband. Beyoncé wouldn’t have any fans if she were a man. Shonda Rimes is an affirmative-action hire who has ruined ABC’s Thursday-night TV lineup. Malia Obama is going to Harvard on the taxpayer’s dime. Kim Kardashian is a total slut. Laura Bush is a loser. Amal Clooney defends terrorists. Gloria Steinem sure hasn’t aged well. Natalie Portman was terrible in Star Wars.

Keep it up, Donald. You’re doing great so far.

UPDATE: This should help him out with the little ladies:

See original article: 

Here’s the Latest From the Bullshitter-in-Chief

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the Latest From the Bullshitter-in-Chief

Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America

by AdanPrimrose Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Forget ethnic profiling. The real danger facing America these days is economists and their differential equations:

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive-skinned and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

….The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over….He appeared laser-focused — perhaps too laser-focused — on the task at hand, those strange scribblings.

….Then, for unknown reasons, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate….Finally the pilot came by, locking eyes on the real culprit behind the delay: that darkly-complected foreign man….The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed. He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or some other terrorist code. They were math. Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

It’s about goddam time, I say. Personally, I’d say that economists and their math have done a lot more damage to the world recently than terrorists and their bombs. We owe this flip-flop-wearing woman our thanks.

On a more serious note, can it really be true that no one recognized what decorated young Italian economist Guido Menzio was doing? Sure, maybe his seatmate didn’t recognize math. But neither the flight attendant nor the pilot recognized math-ish scribblings when they came back to take a look at things? “What might prevent an epidemic of paranoia?” Menzio wrote on Facebook. “It is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of Donald Trump’s voting base.” And that’s quite true: Donald Trump is notoriously an idiot at math. I suppose his followers are too.

POSTSCRIPT: You know what’s missing from this story? The actual page of math Menzio was working on in the plane. Admit it: you want to see it too. You’re all such a bunch of nerds.

Original link – 

Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America

Posted in Accent, alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America