Too much stuff. Gonna' do a 
candid style roundup.
The global bubble in paper continues
(The Mess That Greenspan Made)
The U.S. isn't the only country that's been printing money like it was toilet paper, and now multiple nations are poised for a crash as a result. This is why you need to get used to seeing the words "President Hillary Clinton" all together in that order.429truth.com
Looks like my friends list isn't alone in noticing that fire does indeed cause steel structures to collapse.Old Crow In Black & White
(Positive Ape Index aka Coop.)
There was a belly tanker in the streamlining exhibit at the Phoenix art museum. Thanks to Coop's blog, I already knew all about them. (It's a P-51 Mustang fuel tank converted into a minimalistic race car.)No Vacancy
(Futility Closet)
There was an inflection point in world population growth in 1973. I think that's a very useful marker for the point where humanity began to run into the edge of its petri dish.Billions at risk from wheat super-blight
(New Scientist)
Norman Borlaug is the guy whose farming techniques expanded the size of the petri dish by 1 billion people. He is the reason why the mass starvation resulting from overpopulation predicted by people like Paul Ehrlich didn't happen. When Norman Borlaug says "Ok, now we're fucked!", we are well and truly fucked.U.S. housing slump hammers coveted cash flow to Mexico
(Chicago Tribune)
And the first people to get fucked will be those in the third world. Already hard-hit by increases in food prices due to valuable crop land being converted to the production of ethanol, Mexicans are now losing one of their greatest sources of income. Lack of diversity and flexibility is one of the main disadvantages of any lifestyle based on cheap unskilled labor, be it the employers or the employed.“Libertarianism Is Applied Autism”
(VDARE)
As population pressure increases and competition for basic resources like food increases, I suspect that it will become harder and harder for libertarians and other ideologues to discount the importance of physical proximity. The world really isn't flat. Distance makes a difference, and it makes more of a difference as resources become scarce, and some societies make better use of them than others.Germs and the City
(Peter Huber, by way of Art De Vany)
"Public authorities are ponderous and slow; the new germs are nimble and fast. Drug regulators are paralyzed by the knowledge that error is politically lethal; the new germs make genetic error—constant mutation—the key to their survival. The new germs don’t have to be smarter than our scientists, just faster than our lawyers."
