The Surprising Reason Why Americans Are So Lonely, and Why Future Prosperity Means Socializing with Your Neighbors

Excerpted from the book EAARTH: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2010 by Bill McKibben. Community may suffer from overuse more sorely than any word in the dictionary. Politicians left and right sprinkle it through their remarks the way a bad Chinese restaurant uses MSG, to mask the lack of wholesome ingredients. But we need to rescue it; we need to make sure that community will become, on this tougher planet, one of the most prosaic terms in the lexicon, like hoe or bicycle or computer. Access to endless amounts of cheap energy made us rich, and wrecked our climate, and it also made us the first people on earth who had no practical need of our neighbors.

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Chernobyl demands a REAL climate bill

This week 24 years ago, untold quantities of lethal radiation began pouring into the atmosphere from the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl Unit 4. Nearly a million people have died because of it. And on this horrific anniversary we have now seen the stumble of a very bad climate bill. The events are directly related.

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Can't Concentrate? Maybe It's the Fast Food

Americans have been saving less and less of their income in recent decades, a trend that has only recently abated. At the same time, we have been eating more and more meals at fast-food restaurants. Coincidence? Perhaps not. A new study suggests thinking about fast-food chains — or even being exposed momentarily to their logos — can increase impatience and intensify one’s desire for immediate gratification. Two University of Toronto researchers, Chen-Bo Zhong and Sanford DeVoe, reach that conclusion in a paper titled “You Are How You Eat,” just published in the journal Psychological Science. It is, appropriately, a quick read.

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World Bank Accused of Promoting Land Grabbing

WASHINGTON - April 27 - Friends of the Earth International warned today that voluntary principles on land acquisitions announced by the World Bank and supported by the UN will legitimize and promote land grabbing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. [1]

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Low testosterone tied to frailty in older men

Older men with relatively low testosterone levels may be at greater risk of frailty than those with higher levels of the hormone, new research suggests. In a study of more than 3,600 Australian men age 70 and older, researchers found that those with lower-than-average testosterone levels were more likely to be frail or to develop frailty over the next several years.

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Goldman Sachs Faces New Accusations

WASHINGTON - More evidence has been found that the investment bank Goldman Sachs developed a strategy to profit from the housing meltdown at the expense of clients, US senate investigators say. Why is this man smiling? Blankfein, facing a congress hearing, said the bank 'certainly did not bet against (its) clients.' (Reuters)

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Economics in Crisis: What Do We Tell the Students?

The profession of economics requires a revolution in thinking if it is to play a constructive role in solving the multiple and multi-dimensional crises that so engulf our world, our species, and the fabric of human community. We are running out of time.

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The New Secessionists

Acts of rebellion which promote moral and political change must be nonviolent. And one of the most potent nonviolent alternatives in the country, which defies the corporate state and calls for an end to imperial wars, is the secessionist movement bubbling up in some two dozen states including Vermont, Texas, Alaska and Hawaii. These movements do not always embrace liberal values. Most of the groups in the South champion a “neo-Confederacy” and are often exclusively male and white. Secessionists, who call for statewide referendums to secede, do not advocate the use of force. It is unclear, however, if some will turn to force if the federal structure ever denies them independence.

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Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?

So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality. Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s – and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease. When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.

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The Swine Flu Panic of 2009: Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria

By Philip Bethge, Katrin Elger, Jens Glüsig, Markus Grill, Veronika Hackenbroch, Jan Puhl, Mathieu von Rohr, Gerald Traufetter Swine flu kept the world in suspense for almost a year. A massive vaccination campaign was mounted to put a stop to the anticipated pandemic. But, as it turned out, it was a relatively harmless strain of the flu virus. How, and why, did the world overreact? A reconstruction. By SPIEGEL staff.

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