http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html

As many of you know, I’m a pretty staunch climate change skeptic. From the “value added” and selective temperature readings to the evidence that CO2 has not been the primary driver of climate in the distant past to the even tacitly agreed upon increase over the last 100 years (~.6C) being too small to worry about to – I just don’t agree that catastrophic AGW is even close to likely.

But I could be wrong.

And while I don’t think that CO2 is a pollutant, combustion does result in other pollution that I’d rather see curbed.

But not by scams like cap and trade.

The solution is to take all this money we are pouring into climate change bullshit, and funnel it instead developing and mass producing modern nuclear power plants and distributing them all over the world: like 20,000 of them. Take all that money that our government is going to use to “create jobs” and instead use it to create nuclear power plants and ship them all over the world.

Iran says their nuclear program is only to produce nuclear power. Well, let’s build 4 nuclear power plants over there for free them and sell them the energy.

Forget telling developing countries that they need to cap emissions. Let’s build nuclear power plants everywhere and sell the energy. We can even discount the sale at first to help them spur their economy. Think in terms of something like the Marshall plan but on a Global scale for nuclear energy.

If we start doing this, China will do it too. I’m sure some other countries will get into the mix as well. Then we’ll have real competition in the nuclear reactor space.

Let’s make energy so damn cheep that only a fool would use Oil, Gas or Coal.

If you recall, I wrote about Giggle, Google’s upcoming twitter clone.

Apparently, they went with the name Buzz instead.

My guess is that no one but SEOs will use it. And then once SEOs figure out it’s not effecting rankings, even they won’t bother.

But what the hell do I know? I still have no fucking clue why people twitter.

“First they came …” is a popular poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. In Niemöller’s first utterance of it, in a January 6, 1946 speech before representatives of the Confessing Church in Frankfurt, it went (in German):

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me. – Wikipedia

Now “they” are coming for the bankers.

Is there Anything more anti-capitalist than executive salary caps and / or regulating the maximum that people can make? Well yes: those bailouts in the first place. But it actually appears that the US will recover almost all the TARP money that was not given out as a freebe to the unions (read the American Auto Industry). That money was thrown into a black hole. Many of the banks were really on sound financial footing, but were forced to take the money so as not to single out the ones that actually needed it.

Now there is all this talk about limiting the salaries of bankers. Over in the Police State of England, “Banks told to comply on bonuses or lose UK banking licences in shock FSA ultimatum“.

The shocker here is that the UK has said in effect that the banks must BREAK their existing contracts with employees in order to comply with regulations:

One pay executive in a major bank told The Daily Telegraph: “The message came back that while the FSA agreed that it does not have jurisdiction over contractual law, it does have jurisdiction over issuing bank licences in London, and that we should go away and unwind the contracts.”

Wow.

But that’s England. They’re accustomed to Big Brother. There are more public video cameras in London than their are American Made Cars (Hell, I think there were 15 public camera’s in that Brothel I visited . .. but I digress).

Here in America, it seems to be some kind of top priority to limit the pay of Banking executives. The line goes “That kind of outlandish blah blah blah is what got us into this recession.”

No.

The pay of executives is not what caused the recession. What caused the recession was people buying a payment, rather than house, getting in over their head, inflating housing prices and now defaulting in droves.

Someone needs to stand up for the bankers. Put aside that this is antisemitism wrapped in the cloak of populism. Jews have their roots in finance going back to when usury (then lending with interest) was considered a Sin by the Church.

The real issue here is that limiting the compensation of private industry will stifle innovation and growth. If we let it happen to the bankers, Internet Marketers can’t be far down that list. We’ll wake up one day and find that the best Gormet Chef is only allowed by law to make $100k per year. Then, before we know it, we’ll have a command economy where the only way to get your pay raised in any industry is through political influence rather than through merit.

Stand up for the Bankers. It’s not the popular thing to do. But it’s the right thing to do.

If you don’t speak out, you’ll have only yourself to blame when they come for you.

Update: Related.

All it takes to make a successful pop song:

1. Good Looking Artist.

2. Autotune just about any lyrics (probably best about love or relationships)

3. Set to a beat with a catchy synth.

Check this video out for a great examples of 2 + 3: