Jason Sutter//blog

Filed under: rockaway beach  oregon 

Via: thisisnthappiness | Filed under: ui  scroll bar 

Clayton Christensen; New York Times

In the last three recoveries, however, America’s economic engine has emitted sounds we’d never heard before. The 1990 recovery took 15 months, not the typical six, to reach the prerecession peaks of economic performance. After the 2001 recession, it took 39 months to get out of the valley. And now our machine has been grinding for 60 months, trying to hit its prerecession levels — and it’s not clear whether, when or how we’re going to get there. The economic machine is out of balance and losing its horsepower. But why?

The answer is that efficiency innovations are liberating capital, and in the United States this capital is being reinvested into still more efficiency innovations. In contrast, America is generating many fewer empowering innovations than in the past. We need to reset the balance between empowering and efficiency innovations.

Via: scifihifi | Filed under: capitalism  innovation  empowering  sustaining  efficiency 

On a trip to San Francisco, in a room at the Hotel Palomar, there was a goldfish on the desk. It would watch me undress before bed; It had nowhere else to go.

Filed under: goldfish  hotel  ocean beach  san francisco 

Owen Bowcott; The Guardian

“The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone programme of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …

[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.”

Via: Evening Edition | Filed under: drones  war on terror  obama  romney 

Before the young creatives came the young civic–minded

Carl Abbott and Ethan Seltzer; The Oregonian

Portland already had a “brand” by 1978, when my wife and I (Carl Abbott) decided to leave two good jobs in Virginia and move to Portland, a city we knew only by reputation. That reputation – the Portland brand – was civic engagement. A study sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency had recently declared Portland the most livable city in the country, in good measure because of high scores on indicators such as newspaper readership, voting and library circulation.

Keeping downtown Portland vibrant requires rethinking what it means to live, work in the central city planners say

Anna Griffin; The Oregonian

As they work on a wide-ranging plan for the future of the central city, a blueprint to ensure that downtown Portland’s next 20 years are as successful as its past 40, planners and citizen volunteers have come up with a strange, fascinating, seemingly counterintuitive equation. For Portland to remain the healthy cultural and financial heart of the region, they say, the number of trips made downtown each day must double. The amount of greenhouse gas emitted must remain the same. And the number of vehicle miles traveled in the central city – the average number of miles each of us put on our odometer on any given day – must drop by close to 40 percent.

Filed under: urban planning  history  progress  anna griffin  carl abbot  ethan seltzer 

Justin Krebs; WNYC

What would have been so radical about Stein’s presence? She probably wouldn’t have raced against the two men on stage to see who could go furthest in boasting about oil production. While the president skewered the Governor over the 47 percent, Stein may have asked the president where his plan has been for helping Americans facing foreclosure. While Romney chatted on about the engine of business, Stein may have asked about punishing the titans of Wall Street who had cost us so many jobs - a measure neither party has pursued in full. And as both men jousted over America’s role in the Middle East and North Africa, Stein may have made the case that drone attacks, assassinations and undeclared wars are only imperiling us, not making us safer.

But you wouldn’t think that a presidential candidate would voice those ideas if you only know about the Democrats and Republicans.

Filed under: politics  third parties  jill stein  justin krebs 

The problem with voting against someone is that you aren't voting for anything.

Filed under: election  2012  debates  obama  romney  climate change