The environmental impact of animal farming

Two arguments are advanced in favor of veganism and vegetarianism. One is the moral one, that the animals we eat are sentient beings that are similar to humans and that it is wrong for us to kill and eat them, even if we eliminate the cruelty of factory farming. The second is an economic and environmental argument, that animals are a highly inefficient source of protein, requiring the expenditure of a vast amount of resources. The rough rule of thumb is that as we go up the food chain, we lose 90% of the energy at each stage. In other words, by feeding grain to animals for the meat, we get only 10% of the energy that was initially stored in the grain. If the animals are fed a diet of animal protein, then we lose another 90%, leaving us with only 1% of the initial energy. This is highly wasteful.
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How money buys immunization from prosecution

The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.
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More mass murders of Yemeni children by the Saudi-US-UAE coalition

Just weeks after an attack that killed 40 children, the Saudi-US-UAE coalition forces have killed another 26 children and four women in two attacks.

A senior UN official has condemned another deadly Saudi-led coalition air strike in Yemen, which has killed at least 22 children and four women.

The victims were fleeing fighting in the al-Durayhimi district, south of the port city of Hudaydah, when their vehicle was hit on Thursday.

A separate air strike the same day killed four children, according to the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock.
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Mr Lowcock’s statement on Friday confirmed that the victims had been fleeing violence around the rebel-held port city Hudaydah.

He renewed calls for an impartial and independent investigation into air strikes. A report by Human Rights Watch the same day accused the Saudi-led coalition of failing to hold “credible” investigations into such incidents.

The reported attack was condemned by Unicef, Save the Children and other international organisations.

Hidden jokes

I have written before about my enjoyment of the excellent TV comedy The Good Place and gave it a rave review. One of the things I noticed is that there are many hidden jokes that either fly by very fast or that are on the periphery of your vision. Some of those involve the complicated points system for every single action and whose final total at death is used to determine whether you are a good person, deserving to go to the Good Place or a bad person who needs to go to the Bad Place. Samples of the point system flash by on a screen too fast to see more than one or two. You have to freeze the frame to read them all and this website has grabbed a couple of them.
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If you thought US politics was a den of intrigue …

… check out what is happening in Australia which now has its fifth prime minister in five years, most of the changes coming not from general elections but from intra-party leadership struggles within both major parties. The most recent one yesterday resulted in prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being replaced by Scott Morrison as leader of the governing Liberal party. The Liberals have a slim one-seat majority in parliament and is thus already in a precarious position.
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When thieves fall out

[UPDATE: Today it is reported that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, has also been given immunity by the Mueller investigation in return for testimony.

Mr Weisselberg reportedly oversaw the reimbursements Mr Cohen received from the Trump Organization for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels. Depending on how the financial transfer was accounted for, it could run afoul of a number of campaign finance and accounting laws.

What’s more, Mr Weisselberg has been at the beating heart of the Trump Organization since the 1970s. He handles the president’s private trust, is the treasurer of the family’s charitable foundation – currently under investigation by the state of New York – and has, at times, reviewed the Trump presidential campaign’s accounting books.

He’s the man who knows things – and now he’s talking.

Is there going to be anyone close to Trump who is not convicted of a crime or given plea deals and immunity in return for testimony?]

Many people have been involved in the Byzantine world of corruption and sleaze that surrounds this administration like a thick fog. Donald Trump is finding out that he has very few true and loyal friends. This should not surprise him since he himself seems to have no sense of loyalty to anyone but realizing that requires a sense of self-awareness that he clearly does not possess. We are now seeing the classic situation of thieves falling out, when they turn on each other to save their own skins. The latest people to do this are of course Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Cohen.
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The last days of ‘Peter Bergmann’

There is a haunting short documentary about a mysterious man who appeared in 2009 in Sligo, a small seaside town in Ireland, with a carefully laid out plan to get rid of all traces of his identity. He was successful in that no one has since been able to figure out who he was, which is quite surprising in this day and age when it is so hard to hide our traces.

This revelation was no surprise

I started hearing about political commentator Paris Dennard at the time Donald Trump became a candidate for the presidency. Dennard was a vociferous supporter of Trump and appeared frequently on NPR as his spokesperson. He was quite obnoxious, one of those people who aggressively counter-attacks when anything negative is said about his hero rather than use thoughtful arguments. Hence he is ideal for the conflict-based talk shows that cable news thrives on, though I was annoyed with NPR for giving him so much airtime.
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Trump’s obsession with Canadian milk

We know by now that Donald Trump’s bonnet has a very large number of bees. Several of his unshakeable beliefs relate to economics and all of them are highly dubious. One is that budget deficits are bad (unless they are caused by tax cuts for the wealthy) and another is that any trade deficit with any country is bad. He also seems to think that there is close relationship between the two. He also seems to believe that if any country has a trade surplus with the US, it must be because they are indulging in unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation, or providing subsidies for their domestic manufacturers and producers so that they can undercut the prices of US producers, or they are imposing tariffs to make US goods more expensive.
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