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Goog;e' Carbon Dioxide Impact–Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Strip mine media

Why is it that when companies (even google) respond to these kinds of accusations I jut automatically cringe?

UPDATE: Google responds, claiming the Wissner-Gross estimate “is *many* times too high”: “Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ … In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.”
Still, the numbers add up. Google says “the average car driven for one kilometer … produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.” That means that the billion searches Google is estimated to do a day are equivalent to driving a car about a million kilometers. And that doesn’t include the energy used to power the PCs of the people doing the searches, which Google says is greater than the power it uses.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Strip mine media.

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Advice For The PE–This Is Your Brain on Prosperity: Andrew Lo on Fear, Greed, and Crisis Management – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com

Excellent Advice for the PE Obama.

In the long run, more transparency into the “shadow banking” system; more education for investors, policymakers, and business leaders; and more behaviorally oriented regulation will allow us to weather any type of financial crisis. Regulation enables us to restrain our behavior during periods when we know we will misbehave; it is most useful during periods of collective fear or greed and should be designed accordingly. Corporate governance should also be revisited from this perspective; if we truly value naysayers during periods of corporate excess, then we should institute management changes to protect and reward their independence.

If “crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” as some have argued, then we have a short window of opportunity — before economic recovery begins to weaken our resolve — to reform our regulatory infrastructure for the better. The fact that time heals all wounds may be good for our mental health, but it may not help maintain our economic wealth.

This Is Your Brain on Prosperity: Andrew Lo on Fear, Greed, and Crisis Management – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.

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Not Yet–All by ourselves alone – Roger Ebert's Journal

But let me stop place-dropping. These places do not involve only a visit, but a meditation: I have been here before, I am here now, I will be here again. Robert Altman told me he kept track of time not by the years, but by the films he was working on. “I’m always preparing the next film,” he said. That is living in a time outside time. Of course everyone’s time must run out. But not yet. Not until I’m finished touching a few more bases. I will sit in the corner by the fire in the Holly Bush again, and stand in the wind on top Parliament Hill, and I know exactly how to find that cafe in Venice, although I could never describe the way. Oh, yes I do.
All by ourselves alone – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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Enormous Happiness– All by ourselves alone – Roger Ebert's Journal

This made me remember how i text myself whenever I am truly happy. I haven’t for a while. This made me realize how rare being truly happy is. What I mean is that the peaks, being enormously happy in the words of Roger Ebert, Is not something we have control over.
To complete the thought. It is entirely out of your control to be enormously happy but to be happy is totally within your power. Cherish the rare moments and work for the happiness.

Suddenly I was filled with an enormous happiness, such a feeling as comes only once or twice a year, and focused all my attention inward on the most momentous feeling of joy, on the sense that in this moment everything is in harmony. I sat very still. I was alone at a table in a square where no one I knew was likely to come, in a land where I did not speak the language, in a place where, for the moment, I could not be found. I was like a spirit returned from another world. All the people around me carried on their lives, sold their strawberries and called for their children, and my presence there made not the slightest difference to them. I was invisible. I would leave no track in this square, except for the few francs I would give to the cafe owner, who would throw them in a dish with hundreds of other coins.
All by ourselves alone – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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At McDonald’s, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits – NYTimes.com

Photo of a 20-piece box of McDonald's Chicken ...
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They still don’t do this here in the Philippines, except that we have lots of 24 hour McDonald’s store here. Maybe in a year or two. People mainly go to Starbucks to be seen, and moves like improving the interior design and making it a hip again would do wonders. In the Philippines McDonald’s is being squeezed at both ends. Local food Giant Jollibee has the lower end markets cornered whilst Starbucks has the middle to higher end markets for itself. McDonald’s here is finding it hard to find an image for itself. I think that their approach in the USA would also be a great fit for the Philippine market.

CHRIS WARD, 23, didn’t go to McDonald’s much because it wasn’t open late enough for after-hours snacks.
Casey Fillian, 32, and her friend Carol Milano, 33, gave up their teenage McDonald’s habit when they became more health-conscious adults.
And Russ Green, 47, wouldn’t go to McDonald’s because, among other things, he thought its food was unhealthy.
Yet here all four of them are, lined up at McDonald’s one recent morning, lured back by new menu items, longer hours and a sparkling new building that includes flat-screen televisions and video games for children.
Mr. Ward says he’s a regular again because his McDonald’s is open until 1 a.m. Ms. Fillian and Ms. Milano, now moms, say they often bring their children to the playroom and feel no guilt serving them apple slices and white-meat Chicken McNuggets. Mr. Green was drawn back in — grudgingly — because McDonald’s lattes are cheaper and more convenient than those at Starbucks.
At McDonald’s, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits – NYTimes.com.

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CSIS Reports – The War in Gaza – Center for Strategic and International Studies

Thanks To ForeignPolicy blog for the pointer here

This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?
To blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent.
As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel’s top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.
CSIS Reports – The War in Gaza – Center for Strategic and International Studies .

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Medical Expenses –Angry Bear: Who has "bad credit" when a million Americans file for bankruptcy?

Also in 2005, researchers at Harvard University completed a study that found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. The average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000 and that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. The study concluded that every 30 seconds in the United States, someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
Angry Bear: Who has “bad credit” when a million Americans file for bankruptcy?.

I had intuited this, but have no real evidence.  It is heart wrenching to see families that could have had a much better life except for the ravages of medical expenses.
Sadly most families even those in the Philippines middle class can barely afford one time costly medical procedures let alone conditions which require prolonged treatment .

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The Law of Jante at Paulo Coelho’s Blog

from paolo coelo:

Of course I had never heard of this, so he explained what it was. I continued on my journey and discovered it is hard to find anyone in any of the Scandinavian countries who does not know this law. Although the law exists since the beginning of civilization, it was only officially declared in 1933 by writer Aksel Sandemose in the novel “A refugee goes beyond limits.”
The sad truth is that the Law of Jante is not restricted to Scandinavia: this is a rule applied in every country in the world, despite the fact that Brazilians say that “this only happens here,” and the French claim that “unfortunately, that’s how it is in our country.” Now, the reader must be annoyed because he/she is already half way through the column and still does not know what the Law of Jante is all about, so I’ll try to explain it here briefly in my own words:
“You aren’t worth a thing, nobody is interested in what you think, mediocrity and anonymity are your best bet. If you act this way, you will never have any big problems in life.”
The Law of Jante at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

I believe that people inherently want to be the great, its just that fear stops them from even trying. Whenever anyone haas the courage to try to be really great, to really blaze a trail we are faced with our initial inability to overcome our fear. The existence of someone courageous enough to try rubs our insecurities and inabilities to even try.
Whenever faced with this I tell myself this from here:

Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson
it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson