06 Jan 2011
Forecast 2011 - Gird Your Loins

I gotta say up front that there are many times Jim Kunstler comes off like an elitist snob. Nor does he have a particluarly good track record on predictions: he was all over Y2K, for example.

Yet for all that, he has some very interesting ideas. I've read The Long Emergency, and while I didn't necessarily agree with all his premises (and certainly not all of his prescriptions) I have to say it was a fascinating book. And the man can write - with style and panache.

So click through to read his entire set of predictions for 2011: maybe you'll giggle over their absurdity next January or maybe you won't, but in either case you'll get a kick out of reading them now.

What's left of the American economy is a web of financial rackets divorced from the production of real wealth, dependent on an elaborate computerized three-card-monte edifice of swindling. Those groans and creakings you hear are the agonies of this edifice swaying under its burden of lies, while underneath it the ground of history shifts.

(link) [James Kunstler]

21:25 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Placebos work, even when patients are in the know

I have no idea what to think about this. Fascinating.

In what researchers call a novel 'mind-body' therapy, most patients in a study suffering from irritable bowel syndrome reported relief after receiving pills they were told contained no real medicine.

(link) [LA Times]

21:03 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link