I wonder what was wrong with that bear. It was obviously having trouble before they got there to be 'sleeping' out in the open like that. That's not normal bear behavior.
I wonder if they (the state/rangers) did an autopsy.
I've never seen anything like that in nature.
This makes me really sad, and a bit worried that we might start hearing about BCD (Bear Collapse Disorder-related to CCD in bees). I know up here in N California, we have a serious issue with very low water in our rivers causing warm water, which allows toxic algae to bloom, devastating our salmon (and other river fish) population. I have no idea if that's happening in Alaska too.
I wonder if this is related, either from eating tainted fish or drinking the water. It can kill healthy, well fed dogs within minutes of drinking it, so I'm curious what it's doing to the struggling wildlife that has no other source of water. I've not heard or seen any studies on that.
That's likely just one more part of the disaster that is the California drought. Fingers crossed we get some good rain this winter, if not things here are going to get a bit Thunderdome-y.

As I see it pretty much all mental disorders are an aspect of personality that everybody has, but in some people it is amplified to the point of being harmful or debilitating. If you go through the DSM, you'll frequently say to yourself "yeah, that's me, I've got that" only you probably don't really. I've met plenty of people with Aspergers that I would say definitely had Aspergers (it's generally pretty obvious), and I've also met plenty of people who claim to have Aspergers whom I have doubts about. This probably isn't helped by the fact that if you go to a psychiatrist, convinced you have Aspergers, and tell them all about your Aspergers, many will probably agree and will be happy to take your $150 an hour to talk about it.

Well, he's more of a husband really - but he is extremely tolerant of household disorder. He's a keeper all right

Lmao. Do you live in Egypt, Lantern? Because clearly you're in.. Denial!

Who exactly are those assholes "protecting"? The elevator?

How do you know those kids are criminals?
What crime did they commit while waiting for the elevator?

And why the hell would the city settle a lawsuit for $50,000 if Jaleel Fields, the young man arrested, was some known dangerous thug/drug dealer those officers were "checking up on"?

Did you even read the article Radx post? You know, for like.. facts and context surrounding the video?

No? cause:

In the lawsuit, Fields accused the city and the two officers of violating his civil rights by falsely arresting and maliciously prosecuting him and using excessive force.

..after the video was shown to the DA, all Jaleel's charges were dismissed.

First: disorderly conduct. Police claimed he obstructed "pedestrian traffic" by blocking the elevator doors, which is interesting because the only thing this audio-free New York City Housing Authority video shows absolutely for sure is that Jaleel Fields went out of his way to let people off the elevator.

The second offense? According to Grieco, the police cited Jaleel for telling one of his friends that he didn't have to talk to the police. They called this "obstructing governmental administration."

So "OGA" here presumably would be 5'7", 130-pound Jaleel Fields intimidating the two brawny officers out of performing the "official function" of messing with two other kids in the elevator of their own building.

A spokesman for the New York City Law Department.. declined to comment on the specifics of the case, saying only..

"After reviewing all the evidence, we determined that a settlement was in the best interest of the city."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/a-bad-arrest-on-video-jaleel-fields-20150526#ixzz3bH56yN17

Hah! So right, tell me again about how you're somehow totally-not-a-racist..

Even tho every assumption you just made here was based on stereotypes, prejudice, and your bias toward fellow boys in blue.

Did I mention that the city dismissed all charges and settled a lawsuit for $50,000 after seeing video evidence that literally everything those two officers said was a lie?

But incidence like this aren't worth talking about or being upset about because..
black people kill black people and Barack Obama is president, right?

lol, you asshat.

Genji you are a sad, delusional individual who is doomed to failure because you think you are surrounded by racists who stay up nights thinking of ways to keep you down.

It sounds like a mental disorder.

If I were a racist, why wouldn't I just come out and blame everything on your race?

Of course there is racism, but there is less racism now than at any time in US history. WE HAVE A BLACK PRESIDENT!

We have a whole nation of successful black people, hispanic people, asian people, jewish people.

Racism is your excuse.

But to get back on point, I don't believe that the cops are institutionally racist.

Baltimore, for example, has more black officers than white officers. Are all those black officers racist?

I stand with the black officers, not the antisocial thugs who destroyed that city, who destroyed private property, who targeted other minority businesses simply because they were not black..that's REAL racism.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/other-racial-divide_946670.html#

You ascribe a whole lot of false narratives to me simply because I am a cop...that is a kind of racism. That's is truly prejudicial.

You can't show me one comment from me where I denigrate anyone based on their race.

smh

That's what's left on the table, isn't it? I'd divide the exit option into orderly and disorderly, but the core of it remains the same.

Yet we have to keep in mind, Syriza was elected on a program diametrically opposed to the troika demands. And an EZ exit is equally far outside its mandate. Not to mention that a significant portion of Syriza is made up of former PASOK supporters, who would need a whole lot of convincing to vote for an EZ exit.

A referendum sounds decent enough, but they should have a strategy in place for the post-EZ time. Merely getting rid of the Euro won't get them out of the shit. In fact, I'd argue that a clear strategy is an absolute neccessity to even get a "favorable" outcome from any referendum. The public needs to have a clear picture of what awaits them behind any choice they might be presented with.

For starters, they should be perfectly clear about what it would take to get the Greek economy started again. Greece has very little to offer at this time, so every effort must be made to improve the domestic market. Plans for rebuilding its productive base should be worked out prior to any referendum. Industrial policy spanning at least 5-10 years would be needed.

Question is: can a non-EZ Greece muster up enough political capital to run the vast fiscal programs required to pull the economy out of the shitter? Or would they be stuck with a recessionary focus on balanced budgets, just like the rest of us?

In any case, within the constraints of a monetary union with neo-mercantilist Germany, Greece will not get the fiscal expansion it needs and will remain a shithole, just shy of a failed state.

"The thing that really drives me and pushes me to place Tetris I guess is..." mild to moderate obsessive compulsive disorder.

Wow- he had a seizure disorder and he skydived anyway. You were right billpayer.

dumb

@newtboy, I wonder about foulbrood in this sort of hive. Are you then out the full thing or can it be disenfected since it's plastic? Hive maintenance would still be a thing , people still need to pull the frames on occasion. It won't stop mites. Nosema and other fungai will probably be a bigger issue with this design. Foulbrood and other problems will still be around, as will colony collapse disorder.

Also where are the brood kept since splitting the frame like this seems like it'd kill the brood (okay that one is answered in the KS page and you still have a brood box that you have to supply on your own).

How well does it actually work? Is this all just clever editing and done at peak honey flow season? How well does it work in the fall? Why is Bush shown talking about it, but he himself doesn't mention it on his site? Sure he's selling his own hives and the like, but I'd think if he gave them an actual try I'd think he'd say something, competition or not. It looks

I worry that too many inexperienced people who don't research or care, will try this and perhaps make many bee pests and diseases worse as they won't research things out properly. They'll just buy this and think that's nearly all there is too beekeeping and infect other hives due to their sloppy methods.

Wall of text incoming. Again.

Sorry. Again.

tl;dr:

Debt relief right away was proposed, was neccessary, and was skipped to protect the European financial system.



You are 100% correct, we both are as convinced as one can be that a disorderly collapse would have been much worse for Greece. Might have turned it into a failed state, if things went really bad.

But the situation in Greece at the time the Troika got involved suggested a textbook approach would work just fine. Greece was insolvent, no two ways about it. A debt restructuring, including a haircut, was required to stabilise the system. Yet it was decided against it, thereby creating an enormous debt bubble that keeps growing to this day, destabilising everything.

Why?

People in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin knew in May of 2010 that Greece cannot service its current debt, nevermind pay it back. I remember rather vividly how it was presented to us, as it stirred up a lot of dust in Germany. They pretended as if the problem was a shortage of liquidity, even though they knew it was in fact an insolvency. And to provide an insolvent nation with the largest credit in history (€110-130b) is... well, we can all pick our favorite in accordance to our own bias: madness, idiocy, incompetence, a mistake, intent. They threw Greece into permanent indebtedness(?), and also played one people against another. People in Germany were pissed, still are. Not at the decision makers, but the Greek people.

Again, why?

Every European government, pre-crisis, drank the Cool Aid of deregulation, particularly with regards to the financial sector. When the crisis hit, they had to bail out the banks, a very unpopular decision in Germany, given the scandalous way it was done (different story). Like I pointed out before, when Greece was done for, German banks were on the hook for €17b+, and the French for €20b+. So no haircut for Greek debt.

It gets even better. The entity most experienced in these matters is, of course, the IMF. But IMF couldn't get involved. Its own regulations demand debt to be sustainable for it to become involved in any debt restructuring. Strauss-Kahn had the rules changed in a very hush-hush manner (hidden in a 146 page document) to allow the IMF to lend vast sums to Greece, even though they knew it would not be payed back. Former EC members are on record saying the Strauss-Kahn decided to protect French banks this way as a part of his race for President in France. So they changed IMF rules and ignored European law to bail out German and French banks, using the insolvent Greek government as a proxy.

Several members of the IMF's board were in open opposition. The representatives of India, Russia, Brazil and Switzerland are on record, saying this would merely replace private with public financing, that it would be a rescue package for the private creditors rather than the Greek state. They spoke out in favor of negotiations of a debt relief.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's an IMF email, dated March 25th, 2010, that was published by Roumeliotis, formerly IMF. They put it very bluntly:

"Greece is a relatively closed economy, and the fiscal contraction implied by this adjustment path, will cause a sharp contraction in domestic demand and an attendant deep recession, severely stretching the social fabric."

Even the IMF, who chose parameters according to their own ideology, thought the European program to be too severe. That's saying something.

All that is just about the initial decision. The implementation is another story entirely, with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats telling a democratically elected government what to do. There are former Greek ministers on record, telling how Troika officials basically wrote legislation for them. Blackmail was common, bailout money held as leverage. The Memorandum of Understanding was to be followed to the letter, and the Troika program was as detailed as a government program, so they really had their hand in just about everything.

The specifics of the program are a discussion of their own, with all the corruption going on. The Lagarde list (2000+ Greek tax dodgers) was held in secret by order of an IMF official – that alone should trigger major investigations. The nationalisation and sell-off of the four largest Greek banks, or the no-bid sale of the Hellenikon area to a Greek oligarch – all enforced by Troika officials.

The haircut of 2012, ~€110b wiped out, came two years late. As a result, it didn't hit any German or French institutions in a serious way. Most of the debt was in the hands of these four largest Greek banks -- NBG, Piraeus, Euro, Alpha – who subsequently had to be recapitalised by Greece to the tune of €50b. Cut by 110, up by 50 right away. Banks were nationalised and shares later sold again, at 2/3 the price. Lost another €15b, because the Troika demanded the sale to appease the markets.

The legal aspects of all this are nightmare-inducing as well. They violated numerous European laws, side-tracked parliaments, used governmental decrees, etc.

Let me just say this: when they forced Cyprus to give away two banks' branches in Greece for a fraction of their worth, Cyprus lost €3.5b, at a GDP of €17b, and those two banks went belly-up. It was pure blackmail, do it or you're out. Piraeus Bank received those €3.5b, and its head honcho had €150m of personal bad credit wiped clean right then and there, all at the command of the Troika. Those €3.5b had to be taken from ordinary folks by "suspending" the deposit insurance, perhaps the most stupid decision they had made so far.

Why did they do it? Because Greece was more important than Cyprus, and Cypriot banks were involved in shady deals with Russian oligarchs. Still illegal, and massively so.

Edit: I cut my post in half and it's still too long.

The Latin American countries have some other qualities in common with Greece, I agree they are a good example.

The thing is though that the humanitarian crisis caused by The Austerity has been either almost as bad, or as bad as these disorderly collapses.

Apart from that one point, I largely agree with you here.

As much as I would love to see Syriza pull off a miracle, even with the will of the people to end the culture of patronage I wonder how on earth they would manage it.

I don't actually think Tsipras or Varoufakis really understood how difficult Schäuble or Dijsselbloem would be to deal with, but based on their party platform they were quite compelled to act as they did, so I vote politics.

@radx

Nothing really new I can say again in response.

It's natural that France and Germany being major decision makers in the eurozone will suggest bailouts that also help their own banks, no surprise at all. Witness the US's about turn post WWII from rebuilding Germany into a de-industrialised agricultural state to an industrial powerhouse to counter Soviet influence in about a year.

I think you have to look, not at Troika funding with or without pension cuts and the like, but with or without the funding. See my post above for what I think would happen in a disorderly collapse. I think honestly we can both be certain that the effect on output and unemployment would have been far worse in a disorderly collapse.

Like I said to oritteropo, I'm not debating that the IMF estimates were correct or even that the IMF has a particularly good history of reform (although you could certainly argue that Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia economically at least were successes). As far as low/middle class Greeks suffering, yes I agree it sucks. Most who risk being indicted for corruption are sure to have emigrated permanently to their vacation homes purchased on stolen money, but that doesn't unfortunately change the reality.

@oritteropo

There is a long history of Latin American currency crises which I would refer you to as examples of disorderly collapse. That Tsipras would break most of his electoral promises in his recent 4 month extension agreement should tell you that he knows how catastrophic it would be. You can't quantitatively approximate these kinds of events but qualitatively* (TYPO) the following is likely to occur:

1) Bank run - You saw significant withdrawals even leading up to the meeting with the Troika because of the possibility funding will abruptly stop. A stop to euro lending will see mass outflows with the expectation of bank collapse which will itself likely lead to the collapse of multiple banking institutions.

2) Foreign flows of currencies will dry up - Greek bond yields will spike, in effect no one will lend to the Greek government from overseas. Since like any economy, Greece needs to pay its public sector workers and requires foreign capital for imports, to preserve what it has, it will rapidly convert back to using the Drachma which it can issue and print/create. It is likely the banks will follow in turn and convert deposits to Drachma (another reason why people will withdraw money from banks as soon as they think euro support is over).

3) Drachma collapse - The Drachma will then depreciate rapidly. Again, the expectation of depreciation pretty much causes the depreciation. If people expect their currency to be worth less in the future, they will sell it, causing it to be worth less. Any existing savings accounts remaining will be decimated in value. Wages will fall drastically for everyone. Suddenly the cost of anything that relies on imported products (hint, a lot in any economy, especially Greece) will rise several-fold. This will lead to further job cuts, collapse of industries, which will precipitate further job loss, unemployment, output loss etc etc etc.

The tl;dr version of this is that government funding crises whether caused by debt or currency collapse in the first instance are self reinforcing and the consequences of an unmanaged collapse are all but guaranteed to be much worse than austerity but order. There is some evidence that countries who have a massive collapse and see their currency depreciate are then about to recover faster afterwards (a cheap currency boost exports, tourism etc) but the human toll is much more sudden and much more severe.

As far as IMF estimates being unrealistic, sure. All I'm arguing about is what is likely to happen and which outcome Greeks should prefer.

Sure Syriza has talked about the good kind of reform, but he's also promised the rest of what I talked about. None of which the Troika will let him do if he wants retain their funding. Anyone following this should have known he would not be allowed any of these promises he made in his election. Surely Tsipras himself knew this. It was either posturing/bluster or pure politics. Now the stability of his government is going to depend on how he can manage down his unrealistic expectations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/alexis-tsipras-athens-lightning-speed-anti-austerity-policies

Sorry, my bad. You said 'creed' but what I actually heard/read was "it really rubs me the wrong way getting children to ritually repeat anything without understanding what it is." I have a horrible reading disorder

Yes, it's called Psychopathy, or Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

It doesn't mean you go around killing people (though it certainly lowers the bar!)

Here's a good article about a scientist studying the characteristics of psychopathic brains who accidentally found out that he was a psychopath. He'd never realized it, because everything in life had gone his way, but once he saw what he was, he reflected and found things he'd done without any guilt that ordinary people might have dwelt on (or not done in the first place).

As I understand it, Psychopathy (or ASPD) means that there's no empathy for other people. They can't read emotions like the rest of us can, and so they see other people almost like unfeeling robots. In extreme cases, the psychopath believes they are the only real person in a world of automatons and they think no more of other people than you or I would think of plant life. There's a range, this isn't an absolute on or off switch. About 10% of the male population and 1% of the female population has it to some degree (much higher in politics and executive offices).

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/?no-ist