University of Maryland reported that Americans, on average, believed that foreign aid accounts for 20 percent of the federal budget, roughly twenty-four times the actual figure.
— The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Author: kaushik
International suffering – Thinking allowed
What does new glacier data mean for the climate debate? | Leo Hickman
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/10/glacier-data-climate-change-debate
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Think . Make . Rest . Decide
Quote of the week
To curb as if in fetters unbridled hopes and a mind obsessed with the future, and to aim to acquire riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune. – Seneca
Angela Davis Weighs in on Black Power versus Occupy Wall St.
Giles Fraser: ‘Economic justice is the number one moral issue in the Bible’
He characterises it as “frustratingly democratic” because when he has said to protesters “take me to your leader”, there has turned out to be no leader. And yet, as he remarks, the advantage of this is obvious: “You have to engage with the issues.”
Source : The guardian
Could the desert sun power the world?
“The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism,” wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.
“In 1986, in direct response to the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he scribbled down some figures and arrived at the following remarkable conclusion: in just six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year.”
Source : The guardian
Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral
Students of the University of California at Berkeley may pay a proposed $23,000 in tuition by the 2015-2016 school year, up from $11,160 this year (2011) that in turn is up from $2,716 in the academic year 2001-2002. In short, tuition for resident undergraduates has more than quadrupled in ten years.
Source : Common dreams
Payroll Tax Cut Raises Worries about Social Security’s Future Funding
The payroll tax cut changes that. Instead being a protected program with its own stream of funding, Social Security, by taking money from general revenue, becomes more akin to other government initiatives such as Pentagon spending or clean-air regulation — programs that rely on income taxes and political jockeying for support.
Source : Common dreams
The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value – Forbes
“It isn’t just about the money for shareholders,” writes Martin, “or even the dubious CEO behavior that our theories encourage. It’s much bigger than that. Our theories of shareholder value maximization and stock-based compensation have the ability to destroy our economy and rot out the core of American capitalism.
Source : Forbes
Collected Reading 