Sunday, December 29th, 2013
HANS STRENG, - Clean Technica
Stephan: Here is some very exciting good news on batteries.
We are now in a transition period where battery prices are dropping by 20-30% each year. The consequences for the automotive industry are mindboggling.
About a century ago the nascent automotive industry started out by producing electric vehicles. Even big names such as Porsche started their business on a pure-electric basis. In the hundred-year hiccup that followed we have burned billions of tons of fossil fuel, but the clean times of pure electric are returning.
The trigger to this all is simple: affordable batteries. Just as the television business was turned upside-down by the prices of flat-panel TVs in the 90’s and similarly the solar business by plummeting panel prices in the decade thereafter, we are now in a transition period where battery prices are dropping by 20-30% each year. The consequences for the automotive industry are mindboggling.
Battery prices are the main cost drivers of electric vehicles. Last year Volkswagen stated that it would be possible to manufacture a 100% electric vehicle more cheaply than a car with a combustion engine within three years.
Three years ago it was a challenge to produce an electric vehicle with a 300km range for an affordable price. Well, we have seen what happened to the stock […]
No Comments
Sunday, December 29th, 2013
Stephan: I had a reader, who opposes the ending of Marijuana prohibition, write to tell me exactly what this headline says. Here is a good essay that reflects my own thinking as to the response to that charge.
Speaking recently with the Los Angeles Times, UCLA professor and former Washington state
No Comments
Sunday, December 29th, 2013
KEVIN MATHEWS, - Truthout
Stephan: Anyone who reads me regularly in either SR or Explore knows my views about the privatization of the American gulag, turning it into a profit making enterprise. Here is further evidence as to how truly bad this idea is.
As private prisons become the norm in the United States, it’s time society takes a look at the institution and asks, ‘Are prisons really being used as rehabilitation/deterrence for crime, or have private interests started attaching price tags to lawbreakers’ heads and exploited their incarceration for profit?’
Here are several key statistics that paint an ugly, troubling picture of the for-profit prison system in America:
500% Increase
The biggest private prison owner in America, The Corrections Corporation of America, has seen its profits increase by more than 500% in the past 20 years. Moreover, the business’ growth shows no sign of stopping, having already approached 48 states to take over government-run prisons.
10-60 Pounds Lighter
One way for-profit prisons to minimize costs is by skimping on provisions, including food. A psychiatrist who investigated a privately run prison in Mississippi found that the inmates were severely underfed and looked ‘almost emaciated.
No Comments
Saturday, December 28th, 2013
ROD BASTANMEHR, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: For reasons that are obvious I love this story. If Ronlyn and I were 25 and working out where to settle, I think I would go for this. It has the potential to become epoch. Like living in the French Quarter as jazz evolved. Or San Francisco in the 60s. Paris in the 20s. And it will prove a double benefit of life affirming policies. It provides wonderful support for the arts, while it also heals the city.
Good news for struggling writers: the key to sustaining your lifestyle is to go to a city that’s struggling more.
A new nonprofit organization called Write-A-House, located in Detroit, Michigan (which, earlier this year, became the largest city in the United States to file for and enter bankruptcy) has found something creative to do with the city’s seemingly endless blocks of vacant homes-gut them from the inside-out, fix them up, and give them to writers.
Sarah Cox, one of the founders of Write-A-House, and an editorial director for the real estate site Curbed, moved to Detroit from New York in 2010 in order to start the site’s Detroit blog. There, she witnessed the city’s desire to rebuild and rebrand, and found what was missing in order to make the dream into a reality.
‘In the past three years, I’ve seen incredible progress, but there is still so much room for more in the literary arts,
No Comments
Saturday, December 28th, 2013
SCOTT KAUFMAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is the human cost of theologically based social policy. In Saudi Arabia it means women going around in black burkas. In the U.S. it means this. Imagine how you would feel if you had to go through this: Having to maintain a brain dead woman and her non-viable fetus, against her explicit wishes, and the wishes of her husband and family. Who will, of course, nonetheless be getting the bill for 20 weeks of high technology care.
A Texas man who wants his pregnant wife removed from life-support is being thwarted by hospital officials who insist that Texas law states they must continue to care for her.
Under Texas law, ‘[a] person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.
No Comments
