(4 PM – promoted by TheMomCat)

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and is the author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” (1968 & 2003), “Trade, Development and Foreign Debt” (1992 & 2009) and of “The Myth of Aid” (1971).

ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.

Here Hudson talks with The Real News Networks’ Paul Jay about the 800+ empire of military bases the U.S. has established around the globe, about how all of the money that the military spends abroad is spent on foreign economies and is then “siphon[ed] up into the central banks. And the central banks would have nothing to do with these dollars but to keep their currency stable by recycling the dollars into US Treasury bills.” and about how “If it weren’t for the military deficit, America would have had to finance its own domestic budget deficit. It’s been foreigners that are financing the budget deficit.”

Hudson concludes here with the observation that “Now that foreigners are essentially saying, we don’t want any more dollars, we’re not going to fund your deficit, all of a sudden they think: who’s going to fund the deficit if not foreign central banks? The answer is: American labor, the American middle class and working families are going to fund it, not the military.”

The rest of the world has had enough of financing it’s own encirclement and subjugation by the U.S. military.

From here on in it is you who is going to be paying the bill…

Transcript:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay and we’re in New York City. Joining us again now is Michael Hudson. He’s a former Wall Street economist, a distinguished research professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and the author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire and Trade, Development, and Foreign Debt. Thanks for joining us again.

MICHAEL HUDSON, RESEARCH PROFESSOR, UMKC: Thank you.

JAY: So, first of all, tell us a little bit of background of you, in terms of your work on Wall Street.

HUDSON: Well, I was Chase Manhattan’s balance of payments economist during the 1960s, and that was at a time when the balance of payments became very important, because during the ’60s and ’70s the entire US balance of payments deficit was military. The private sector was exactly in balance, and government foreign aid actually made a surplus because all we gave was tied aid and other countries had to pay us interest. But the entire deficit was military in character. So today when people talk about the declining dollar–.

JAY: So by that you mean the cost of the Vietnam War.

HUDSON: The Vietnam War and other spending in Asia and Europe. Right now America has over 850 military bases abroad. All of these military bases have huge spending. In Afghanistan and in Iraq, they’re sending hundred dollars bills by the cartload, literally, to give away. So there’s a huge deficit for military spending.

JAY: Let’s dig into that a bit, because I know while it gets positioned rhetorically as defense of American safety and against foreign threats and terrorism and all the rest, and perhaps there’s some element of that, certainly there’s a big piece of that that this helps, this military footprint helps to protect or advance American commercial interest. So even though it may be a big cause of debt, does it have such a plus side in terms of commercial endeavor?

HUDSON: Well, as you know, in 1971, President Nixon had to take the dollar off gold. So it was the Vietnam War that forced the dollar off gold and ended its role as a monetary standard as good as gold. I’ve just got back from a tour of Asia and Brazil, and these countries are saying, because the dollar is being used so much to fund the military deficit, when we run a balance of payments surplus with America, we get dollars, we export, the dollars are turned over to the central bank. There’s nothing central banks can do with dollars but buy US Treasury bonds. And we’ve been financing, with our Treasury bond purchases, the military spending that’s responsible for the US federal deficit, for our encirclement. So by keeping the dollar, we’re keeping ourselves encircled. We don’t want any more dollars. That’s what I’m told–Brazil, China, even Australia.

JAY: Yet everybody’s buying American Treasury bonds.

HUDSON: That’s because they’re still making exports to the United States. They–in the last year you’ve had the BRIC countries–Brazil, Russia, India, and China–saying, we’re trying to avoid using the dollar anymore so that we don’t have to buy Treasury bills. And when they say, we don’t want to hold dollars, they mean, we don’t want to finance our military encirclement, which is what the dollar standard has financed. So two weeks ago, China and Russia made a deal to transact all of their mutual trade and investment in their own currencies, rubles and RMB, not dollars. The president, Hu, of China had just got back from Turkey and negotiated a similar swap agreement there. So China and other countries–Brazil, Venezuela, the oil-producing countries–are all now shunning the US dollar. That means that the whole world economy is fragmenting into a dollar bloc, meaning–.

JAY: You can’t say–they haven’t shunned the dollar. They may be trying to wean off a little bit, but, I mean, the dollar is still the dominant reserve currency.

HUDSON: They have made a policy decision not only to avoid holding the dollar but to decouple their economies from the dollar area. Now, that’s not good for the American economy.

JAY: Now, this has to be a very long–like, for China, a very long-term issue. They hold trillions of American dollars.

HUDSON: Yes. These things usually happen fairly rapidly, much more rapidly than people think. China holds $4 trillion of foreign exchange reserves now.

JAY: Mostly American.

HUDSON: About two point–about half of that is in American dollars [snip] euros and others. China has said, we don’t want to make any more foreign exchange reserve of any paper currency, because all the paper currencies are government debt currencies. So what are they going to do? The way you avoid getting foreign currency is to export less. They’ve made a policy decision in China: now that we have got in place productive power, we’re going to use our factories and our productive power to begin raising living standards, we’re going to raise wages, we’re going to raise living standards and consume our own output, rather than exporting them for paper dollars or electronic dollars [inaudible]

JAY: That’s a 15-, 20-year plan. And not only that, let’s see if they can actually accomplish it, because a lot of the big Chinese capitalists may not be so happy to go along with that.

HUDSON: The Chinese capitalists see that they’re able to make more money in China than they are here, just like the American capitalists. American, European, and Latin American capitalists are putting their money into Asia because that’s where the growth is, because Asia is the only part of the world left with a mixed economy, government and private, public and private. And the way America got rich was by a government acting as a subsidizer, building internal improvements, supplying the infrastructure, supplying the subsidy to industry. That’s how America got rich in the 19th and 20th century. It’s how England got rich in the 18th and 19th century. You need a mixed economy in order to get rich. But if in the process of fighting labor you say, oh, it’s socialism to have government, then you’re not going to have the government able to help industry as well as able to help labor, and the economy’s going to shrink. So you have a kind of junk economics that’s in the mind of the policymakers today that by cutting away government, they prevent the infrastructure from essentially enabling this economy to lower its costs.

JAY: Now, let’s go back to the issue of the military budget and the reason for 800-plus bases, and maybe a trillion-dollar military budget if you throw everything in. It was pretty clear, you know, in the older days of American Empire, and you go back to Latin America in–say, in the 1930s, you know, we want this country–we want this country’s bananas; we will have the government we want so we can get this country’s bananas. But has anything really changed, in the sense–does the US elite not see that even if this is a big cause of American debt, for the purpose of commercial advantage this dominant role the US is able to play because of this military is worth it?

HUDSON: What’s changed is the technology of military strategy. In the 1930s, when a country was a military power, they were talking of sending in the Marines, sending in the gunboats, and sending in people. America is musclebound, which is why Mao called it a paper tiger. There’s only one kind of war that a democracy can afford: atomic war. A democracy can only afford hydrogen bombs. It can’t afford fighting with real bullets. In Vietnam, every soldier in Vietnam used one ton of copper per year. You’d think they were fighting each other with ingots over there. There’s not enough copper to produce the bullets. You don’t have a draft anymore. That’s different from the 1930s. You don’t have a population that’s willing to go to war. So the American war in the Middle East is basically an air war. You can bomb people, but you can’t occupy them, you can’t fight them, you can’t do what was realized in the 19th and 20th century, you can’t have an army that actually fights. It’s an eating army or a bribing army or a military-industrial complex without the ability to fight a war,–

JAY: Why?

HUDSON: –what America has. We can’t invade a country like Ecuador. I made a list of countries that America could invade. Grenada was one of the top of the lists, and I met with the State Department and they agreed and they invaded Grenada. That’s about what America can do–old-time army. But you have to realize how the Grenadian revolution occurred. The revolutionaries sent a trumpeter outside of the police station at four in the morning, blew the “come out and stand at attention”; they all came out and stood at attention and were arrested. You needed 10 people for a revolution. That’s the kind of revolution that America, with maybe 20 or 30 people [inaudible]

JAY: So then what’s the point of the 800 bases, then? I mean, when Britain was in a somewhat analogous situation with these colonies costing so much, they said, well, let’s get rid of the colonies ’cause they’re like boat anchors.

HUDSON: That’s right.

JAY: Well–but you don’t hear that in the United States very–I mean, you hear it from very few people saying, let’s get rid of 800-plus military bases ’cause they’re boat anchors.

HUDSON: The reason you don’t is, in the past, all of the money that the military spent abroad would be spent on foreign economies, and then they’d siphon up into the central banks. And the central banks would have nothing to do with these dollars but to keep their currency stable by recycling the dollars into US Treasury bills. If it weren’t for the military deficit, America would have had to finance its own domestic budget deficit. It’s been foreigners that are financing the budget deficit. Now that foreigners are essentially saying, we don’t want any more dollars, we’re not going to fund your deficit, all of a sudden they think: who’s going to fund the deficit if not foreign central banks? The answer is: American labor, the American middle class and working families are going to fund it, not the military.

JAY: Thanks for joining us. Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: The Finite World

Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.

So what’s the meaning of this surge?

Is it speculation run amok? Is it the result of excessive money creation, a harbinger of runaway inflation just around the corner? No and no.

What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story.

Robert Kuttner: No Connection: Obama’s Tax Deal and the Lame Duck Congress’s Victory Week

President Obama and the late Democratic Congress had a terrific valedictory week. Obama reminded us of the leader whom we elected. His December 22 press conference was one of his best performances as president.

Democratic senators rose to rare heights of leadership.

Obama seems to rally mainly when his back is against the wall, after much damage has already been done. But unlike his 2008 election victory, the prior damage cannot be undone this time by one heroic come-from-behind sprint. Next week, Republicans will formally take over the House thanks to the 2010 midterm election debacle, and they will make their 2009-2010 brand of obstruction seem tame.

What’s astonishing is that the several unlikely legislative wins were accomplished in the waning days of the lame-duck session, when Republicans had every possible motivation to obstruct. Yet somehow, more difficult legislating was done by the Senate in the final week of the session than was done in the whole prior year, when Democrats had a much more secure majority. How do we explain that?

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Don’t spin the Civil War

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart. . . . .

Why does getting the story right matter? As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s recent difficulty with the history of the civil rights years demonstrates, there is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been. We will dishonor the Civil War if we refuse to face up to the reason it was fought.

Fred Hiatt: How did obesity become a partisan fight?

Is Elmo a Kenyan, too? Or maybe a Socialist? He is awfully red, after all.

I ask because the Sesame Street puppet recently visited the White House to support “Let’s Move,” first lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity. And that campaign has become, in one of the more striking political stories of the past year, the latest battleground in the left-right culture wars. . . . .

Insinuations from her critics notwithstanding, Obama has not endorsed nanny-state or controversial remedies such as ending sugar subsidies, imposing soda-pop taxes or zoning McDonald’s out of certain neighborhoods. Instead, she is pushing for positive, voluntary change: more recess and physical activity, more playgrounds, more vegetable gardens, fresher food in schools and grocery stores, better education on the issue for parents and children. . . . . .

“It’s not going to be easy,” Michelle Obama says. She’s right – but also right to keep pushing.

Jacob Weisberg: Obama’s War on Inequality

How he’s losing it

Wasn’t reversing the decades-long trend toward income inequality supposed to be the big theme of the Obama administration? The new president sounded it strongly in his inaugural address, stating that “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” He followed up with a 2010 budget proposal that sought, in the words of the New York Times’ David Leonhardt, “to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.” Obama has raised the issue at major occasions since, including his first State of the Union address in 2010, when he noted, “We cannot afford another so-called economic ‘expansion’ like the one from last decade … where the income of the average American household declined.” . . . . .

Obama deserves fault for failing to articulate this abstract threat in a way ordinary people can appreciate. Like the deficit, income inequality never killed anybody-it merely has the potential to sap the entire country’s health and spirit. Moving toward an income distribution like Brazil’s threatens individual happiness, social peace, and American values. But so far, the president hasn’t figured out how to get the public to relate to the issue. In April, Obama told a group of frowning bankers at Cooper Union, “There is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street.” But there is, and it is growing deeper every year.

.

Elliot D. Cohen: Help Stop Destruction of the Free Internet Now

The recent Federal Communications Commission decision to “protect” net neutrality was long awaited by activists, but it turned out to be smoke and mirrors, catering largely to service providers such as Comcast and AT&T. What is needed now is a collective movement by all Internet users throughout the world, not just the relative few who have been fighting on our behalf, to stop the demise of Internet freedom before it’s too late.

While the new FCC ruling requires that telecom and telephone companies maintain transparency in their policies, it does little to regulate those policies. Chief among the dangerous practices that it will fail to adequately regulate is the imminent “pay for priority” system desired by a few dominant Internet service providers. The FCC’s impotent ruling comes just as it is about to put its seal of approval on Comcast’s merger with NBC International, one of the world’s largest content providers. The conflict of interest is glaring, yet the FCC seems to have missed it; or just maybe regulators intend their decision as a Band-Aid to try to fix the problem.

Brilliant original economic insight (not that I ever have any) is in short supply this morning, but perhaps there will be some later if I collect my thoughts.  In the mean time here are the Business News headlines and TheMomCat has a very good interview with Roubini which will follow soon.

1 Chinese web users sceptical on inflation-busting moves

by Susan Stumme, AFP

Mon Dec 27, 2:34 am ET

2 Spanish auto sector wraps up bleak year

by Katell Abiven, AFP

Sun Dec 26, 4:35 pm ET

3 Sales stall for world’s cheapest car

by Penny MacRae, AFP

2 hrs 11 mins ago

4 Breakdown in defenses caused BP spill: NY Times probe

AFP

Sun Dec 26, 3:28 pm ET

5 Britain mulls new airports law after Heathrow chaos

by Alice Ritchie, AFP

Sun Dec 26, 10:12 am ET

6 Apple, Steve Jobs hit new heights in 2010

by Veronique Dupont, AFP

Sun Dec 26, 7:43 am ET

7 Strong franc tests Swiss nerves

by Peter Capella, AFP

Sat Dec 25, 10:36 pm ET

8 Eurozone reform moves: deep revamp or just tinkering?

AFP

Sat Dec 25, 11:04 pm ET

9 French smartphone users get holiday gift — their phones

by Alix Rijckaert, AFP

Sat Dec 25, 10:41 pm ET

10 S.Africa formally invited to join BRIC: minister

by Jean-Jacques Cornish, AFP

Fri Dec 24, 11:27 am ET

11 Vietnam shipbuilder Vinashin defaults on loan: report

by Ian Timberlake, AFP

Fri Dec 24, 3:58 am ET

12 Toyota 10-million-dollar crash deal revealed

by Michael Thurston, AFP

Thu Dec 23, 6:13 pm ET

13 Frugality and excess to mark 2011

By Emily Kaiser, Reuters

Sun Dec 26, 3:04 pm ET

14 New claims may add to Nakheel’s legal woes: sources

By Shaheen Pasha, Reuters

Sun Dec 26, 5:30 am ET

15 China’s Wen confident on inflation after rate rise

By Langi Chiang and Chen Aizhu, Reuters

Sun Dec 26, 6:09 pm ET

16 China fights inflation with Christmas rate rise

By Ben Blanchard and Zhou Xin

Sat Dec 25, 9:18 am ET

17 Japan government meets budget targets but faces hurdles

By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Rie Ishiguro, Reuters

Fri Dec 24, 6:27 am ET

18 Toyota settles suit over California crash for $10 million

By Steve Gorman, Reuters

Thu Dec 23, 10:23 pm ET

19 Russian tycoon Khodorkovsky again found guilty

By LYNN BERRY and NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press

2 hrs 20 mins ago

20 For Japan, 2010 was a year to forget

By MALCOLM FOSTER, Associated Press

2 hrs 53 mins ago

21 Man quits job, makes living suing e-mail spammers

By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 4:04 pm ET

22 Cheap concert seats due after cruel summer of ’10

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer

Mon Dec 27, 12:06 am ET

23 Mubarak’s son promises more Egypt economic reform

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 11:15 am ET

24 Playboy pins hopes on clubs, license deals in Asia

By KELVIN CHAN, AP Business Writer

Sun Dec 26, 5:17 am ET

25 Ivory Coast strike called to force Gbagbo out

By MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 6:10 pm ET

26 Ex: Woman who died at Busch home had heart issue

Associated Press

Sat Dec 25, 6:26 pm ET

27 US Muslims: a new consumer niche

By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer

Mon Dec 27, 2:02 am ET

28 Fed board: Keep companies from oil spill evidence

By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press

Fri Dec 24, 3:16 am ET

29 New GOP wave pushes pro-business agenda in states

By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

Thu Dec 23, 9:54 pm ET

30 Toyota to pay $10 million in runaway Lexus crash

Associated Press

Thu Dec 23, 7:50 pm ET

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 27 is the 361st day of the year (362nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are four days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1932, Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

The 12-acre complex in midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center was developed between 1929 and 1940 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on land leased from Columbia University. The Radio City Music Hall was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and interior designer Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style. Rockefeller initially planned a new home for the Metropolitan Opera on the site, but after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the plans changed and the opera company withdrew from the project.

Its originally planned name was International Music Hall. The names “Radio City” and “Radio City Music Hall” derive from one of the complex’s first tenants, the Radio Corporation of America. Radio City Music Hall was a project of Rockefeller; Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who previously opened the Roxy Theatre in 1927; and RCA chairman David Sarnoff. RCA had developed numerous studios for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, just to the south of the Music Hall, and the radio-TV complex that lent the Music Hall its name is still known as the NBC Radio City Studios.

The Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932 with a lavish stage show featuring Ray Bolger and Martha Graham. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class variety entertainment. The new format was not a success. The program was very long and individual acts were lost in the cavernous hall. On January 11, 1933, the Music Hall converted to the then familiar format of a feature film with a spectacular stage show which Rothafel had perfected at the Roxy Theatre. The first film was shown on the giant screen was Frank Capra’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen starring Barbara Stanwyck and the Music Hall became the premiere showcase for films from the RKO-Radio Studio. The film plus stage spectacle format continued at the Music Hall until 1979 with four complete performances presented every day.

By the 1970s, changes in film distribution made it difficult for Radio City to secure exclusive bookings of many films; furthermore, the theater preferred to show only G-rated movies, which further limited their film choices as the decade wore on. Regular film showings at Radio City ended in 1979. Plans were made to convert the theater into office space, but a combination of preservation and commercial interests resulted in the preservation of Radio City and in 1980, after a renovation, it reopened to the public.

Radio City Music Hall is currently leased to and managed by Madison Square Garden, Inc. Movie premieres and feature runs have occasionally taken place there but the focus of the theater throughout the year is now on concerts and live stage shows. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular continues to be an important annual event. The Music Hall has presented most of the leading pop and rock performers of the last 30 years as well as televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, and the MTV Music Awards.

 537 – The Hagia Sophia is completed.

1512 – The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regards to native Indians in the New World.

1657 – The Flushing Remonstrance is signed.

1703 – Portugal and England sign the Methuen Treaty which gives preference to Portuguese imported wines into England.

1814 – Destruction of schooner Carolina, the last of Commodore Daniel Patterson’s make-shift fleet that fought a series of delaying actions that contributed to Andrew Jackson’s victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

1831 – Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate the theory of evolution.

1836 – The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing 8 people.

1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Williamson Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

1918 – The Great Poland Uprising against the Germans begins.

1922 – Japanese aircraft carrier Hosho becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.

1923 – Namba Daisuke, a Japanese student, tries to assassinate the Prince Regent Hirohito.

1932 – Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1939 – Erzincan, Turkey was hit by an earthquake.

1942 – The Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia is founded.

1945 – The World Bank was created with the signing of an agreement by 28 nations.

1949 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesian independence.

1968 – Apollo Program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.

1978 – Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship.

1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan

1985 – Palestinian guerrillas kill eighteen people inside Rome and Vienna airports.

1996 – Taliban forces retake the strategic Bagram air base which solidifies their buffer zone around Kabul.

1997 – Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland.

2001 – The People’s Republic of China is granted permanent normal trade relations with the United States.

2002 – Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya.

2002 – The company Clonaid announces that it has successfully cloned a human being, although it has never presented any verifiable evidence.

2004 – Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.

2007 – Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a shooting incident.

2008 – Israel launches 3-week operation on Gaza – Operation Cast Lead

Holidays and observances

   * Christian Feast Day:

         o Fabiola

         o John the Apostle

         o Nicarete

   * Constitution Day (North Korea)

   * St. Stephen’s Day (Eastern Orthodox Church; a public holiday in Romania)

   * The third day of Christmas (Western Christianity)

It’s A Good Thing Republicans Are Paranoid  



That Way They Can Hate All Those Not Like Them

When Republican lawmakers take over the House and gain strength in the Senate after the new year, a decadelong drive to overhaul the immigration system and legalize some of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants seems all but certain to come to a halt.

When New York Republican Peter T. King takes over the House Homeland Security Committee in January, he plans to propose legislation to reverse what he calls an “obvious lack of urgency” by the Obama administration to secure the border.

Among other initiatives, King wants to see the Homeland Security Department expand a program that enlists the help of local police departments in arresting suspected illegal immigrants.

What’s More Important? If A Drug Actually Works Or The Companies Profits?  

 

The Companies Profits Of Course  

French politiciansof both the right and left are facing severe embarrassment and legal recriminations with the forthcoming publication of an official report on what could become the worst health scandal in the country’s history.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised “the most complete transparency” on how a drug which is now suspected to have killed up to 2,000 people was officially approved, and subsidised, for 33 years by the French health service.

Despite repeated warnings from scientists in France and abroad, the Mediator drug was prescribed to 5,000,000 French people, originally to fight diabetes and later as an appetite-suppressing, slimming pill.

Can’t Afford A Home?



Here’s An Usual Alternative  

For 27-year-old Dong Ying, Beijing is a city of dreams. Two years ago, the sports teacher relocated from a small city in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang to the Chinese metropolis. Here, she hoped, her wishes for a more interesting life would be fulfilled.

Since then she goes from fitness club to fitness club every day, working as a trainer. She pedals, she bends and straightens and basically ensures that the affluent city residents stay in shape. To reach her students, she spends four hours each day travelling on the city’s subway.

This Hit List Was Not Created By The Mafia



The Police Helped It Along    

AUSTRALIAN police in Afghanistan have helped compile secret intelligence files on insurgent leaders later targeted in capture-or-kill missions by special forces soldiers.

The Pentagon has confirmed that Australian Federal Police officers are ”assigned to work with” a joint police task force in Kabul that produces files used by military commanders to “shape the battlefield” – a term often used to describe the capture-or-kill raids mounted by elite troops in Afghanistan.

The Black Helicopters Are Coming  

 

It’s A Melt Down  

GULFPORT, Miss. – The planned overthrow of the United States government ended rather prosaically this fall, with a giant pile of mashed-up trucks in a muddy scrap yard a mile or so off the Interstate.

The crew at Alter Metal Recycling has been piling up the old trucks since the summer and sending them to Alabama, for melting down and reincarnation as everything from cars to washers and dryers.

The process is pretty standard, said Troy Brooks, the yard supervisor. But these trucks were a little different.

“There were a lot of rumors flying around about them,” he said.

Don’t Cry For Me India?



Maybe It’s A Walla Walla Sweet

Reporting from New Delhi – There is much that divides India and its traditional rival Pakistan: families long separated by partition, divided Kashmir, fear of a fourth war between the nuclear adversaries. But when it comes to the Great Onion Crisis of 2010, grateful India has found a friend across the border.

Onion prices across India have more than doubled to as much as 90 cents a pound this month, sending shock waves through vegetable market and kitchen alike in a country where many subsist on $1 a day. Some have taken to the streets in protest bedecked in onion garlands.

“Ever Had Biriyani Without Onions?” screamed a headline in the Mid Day tabloid.

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Dr. Nouriel Roubini, the chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics and professor of Economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, joined Rachel Maddow for a two part interview on the economic state of the US economy. What he had to say was not encouraging. The transcripts to both segments are below the fold.

The 3rd segment was on-line only. It was diaried here: Dr. Doom: Nothing Has Changed

Transcript for the first segment:

MADDOW:  I know you have been through something really, really brutally bad when the guy who accurately predicted how bad it was going to be has the nickname Dr. Doom.

When the history of the Obama presidency is written, and not the gossipy, anonymous he said/she said invented dialogue chat books that pass as journalistic history now, but when the actual history, when the long-term history of this presidency is written, the defining issue, the defining context will be how he started, the massive financial crisis that was still exploding when this new president took over.

The Dr. Doom who predicted the housing collapse and the financial crisis and the us-almost-having-a-second-great-depression, all before it happened, is Nouriel Roubini.

After being coronated as the guy who got it right because of that foresight, Professor Roubini gave an interview in the summer of last year that, honestly, when I read it, improved my mood for months.

Despite the whole Dr. Doom thing, he was generally positive about the way we were coming out of the crisis and, in particular, about the way that Tim Geithner and the rest of the president’s economic team were understanding and responding to the problem.

That was last summer.  Now, a little bit more than a year later, he’s back to doom.  Professor Roubini telling the “New York Times” this month that we are staring down the barrel right now of another housing collapse, another $1 trillion in housing losses.

He said, quote, “The real estate market, for sure, is double dipping.”  Remember what happened to the rest of the economy after the first dip, after the first housing dip?  Now we are having a second one?  Are things about to go south again?  Hard and fast?  And if so, does anything else in politics matter?

Why even bother tracking legislation and polls and candidates up and down if all of that will be rendered moot in the next presidential election?  Because I don’t care for Tom Brady and the vote is for who should be patriots quarterback.

I don’t care if you are cauliflower and the vote is for palest cruciferous vegetable.  I don’t care if you are snow and the election is for what’s cold.  If the economy goes south again, it does not matter what else happens in politics.  No one gets reelected to anything if unemployment is at 15 percent.  

Joining us now is Nouriel Roubini, chairman and cofounder of Roubini Global Economics and professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business.  Dr. Roubini, thank you so much.

(APPLAUSE)

NOURIEL ROUBINI, CHAIRMAN AND CO-FOUNDER, ROUBINI GLOBAL ECONOMICS:

Thank you.  Glad to be here.

MADDOW:  Are you bummed out by people with the Dr. Doom thing?  Do you feel like you have to put on a sunny visage to counteract that?

ROUBINI:  No, I’m just myself.

MADDOW:  It’s very scary to see you, the way I think about that.

(LAUGHTER)

MADDOW:  How sick are we still?  Can you diagnose the state of the recovery, sort of post-financial crisis?

ROUBINI:  Well, I would say there are some good news and there are some bad news.  The good news is the recession is over.  There’s an economic recovery.  And next year, growth might be around three percent.  So it’s sustaining a recovery.

But there are several downside risks.  The first one is that in spite of growth, firms are not hiring.  Unemployment rates are still at 10 percent, almost, including, of course, workers who are partially employed at 17 percent.  

So firms find ways of producing more by having less workers, so this growth is not leading to reduction of the unemployment rate.  This is a becoming a real issue.

The second issue is that the housing market is double dipping.  Quantities are falling.  Home prices are falling again.  We artificially stimulated the demand for a few months through this tax credit.  As soon as it expired, home sales collapsed again.

The third problem is that state and local governments are semi bankrupt.  You know, Europe is Greece and Ireland, the U.S. – Arizona, Nevada, Florida, California, Illinois, even New York is in trouble.  So there’s a risk of the state governments to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) fiscal problems.

And at the federal level, we’re kicking the can down the road.  You know, we have just passed this tax stimulus.  This is going to add another $900 billion to the deficit over the next two(ph) years.  So things are improving, but there are also a number of downside risks.

MADDOW:  On the issue of how best to respond, one thing that I don’t understand about the way a number of countries are responding, and I think some states are sort of moving in this direction too, is the idea that the way out of this mess is through austerity, by dialing back quite sharply on spending.

I understand why that helps with debt and why that’s, therefore, important.  But doesn’t that also completely choke off the possibility of any economic growth?

ROUBINI:  It the does.  The difficult trade-off that most countries are facing is that there are huge budget deficits.  The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of public debt is rising, but the recovery is still anemic.

So in the short-term, you need a stimulus, because the government has not recovered.  But if you run in large deficits forever, you might eventually end up with a train wreck like in Ireland, like in Greece.

To me the way to square the circle is by having a short-term stimulus, because the economy is still recovering in a weak way.  Demand is not strong.  But then, commit today to raising taxes, not today, but over in the future, gradually, and committing today about cutting some forms of spending over time.

But you backload all those spending cuts and increases in the revenues, and you maintain a stimulus in the short-term.  So if you can credibly commit to have some light at the end of the tunnel with discipline over the next five, 10 years, then you need a stimulus in the short run.

The bond market vigilantes aren’t going to wake up and punish you.  But right now, in the U.S., I think we’re doing the short-term stimulus, but this means a lot of it is going to people who don’t need it, like the very rich.  And we’re not doing anything about the medium-term fiscal so it’s a bit of a mess.

MADDOW:  And we have to take a quick break.  When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about the political realities, about what you think might be the best thing to do, and whether those things are going to be more or less politically possible with the new Congress.

Transcript for second segment:

MADDOW:  The funding for the federal government expires at 11:59 p.m.  tomorrow.  So if you’re staying up late to see the lunar eclipse tonight and looking for an excuse tomorrow, there you go.

Congress will try to put together another stopgap spending bill to avert a big government shutdown.  And if you look down the road, where the funding of the government has been kicked, you may be able to see the debt ceiling down there that’s also looming down that road.  Congress votes every year to raise the debt ceiling so the U.S. does not break its promise to pay back its loans.

Republicans this year are suggesting that the government should just break its promise to pay back its loans.  They are threatening to vote no on the debt ceiling rise.

And if you were counting on the fed, the Federal Reserve, to be able to jigger the money supply to respond to another economic calamity it if happens next year, I have two words for you, Ron Paul, who will head up oversight of the Fed in the new Congress, and whose attitude toward the Fed is that he would like to please not exist.

Back with us now is Nouriel Roubini, chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics and professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business.  He is famous for calling the last financial crisis before it happened.

Dr. Roubini, are you worried about political constraints ahead in the next Congress, that they will be even worse than the current political constraints?

ROUBINI:  Yes, I do very much worry about it, because we have total gridlock right now in Washington.  The two parties are completely divided.  The Republicans think that they won during the last election, takes the House.  

They believe that Obama could be a one-term president, so they won’t have a strong incentive to collaborate on anything.  They’re following this Leninist approach, the worse, the better is right for them.

If the economy gets worse, if there’s no achievement of any sort, Obama might be a one-term president.  So I suggest gridlock, the two parties divided as much as they’ve ever been.

MADDOW:  Do you think if the Republicans recognize a political incentive to actually do economic harm to the country, because it politically benefits them?

ROUBINI:  Effectively, yes.  The elections are based on the economy.  If the economy does well, then usually the incumbent party and the president gets re-elected.  If not, it’s the economy, stupid.  We know it, right?  So, so far, if there’s any economic recovery, it could do many things.  It can go off track because of the deficit, because of state and local government, because of the unemployment rate and many other things.

And the two parties are completely divided right now.  I think the parties have moved sharply to the right.  I think the Democrats are not realizing fully that they’ll have to make sacrifices, cut some entitled spending.

You know, we have to cut spending in order to raise revenues.  About 10 percent of GDP budget deficit eventually is unsustainable.  We could end up like in Europe, but we’re not doing anything about it.

MADDOW:  Looking ahead to an impending skirmish, if not fight over the debt ceiling, if the U.S. ends up not voting to raise its debt ceiling, in laymen’s terms, what does that do to our economic position in the world?

ROUBINI:  Well, there could be nervousness in the markets.  You know, the markets wonder the investors around the world what’s going on in the United States?  The two parties are so divided they cannot even agree on raising this debt limit.  So I think the risk is there’s going to be financial turmoil, and that’s playing with fire, I would say.

MADDOW:  If you could wave a magic wand and be economic dictator for a day, if you could – if you wanted to target unemployment, for example, specifically, if you thought that was something that needed more attention than anything else, all political constraints were off the table, you could do anything, what would you do?

ROUBINI:  Several things.  You know, I proposed a few months ago that we should have a temporary cut of the payroll tax, not just for employees, like was decided, but also for employers, for two years, maybe shouldn’t be paying their tax.  That’s going to reduce their labor costs by six percent and induce them to hire more workers.

That’s the first thing that will have a boost in terms of job hiring because they’re flush with cash, trillions of dollars.  They’re not spending.  They’re not hiring workers.  That’s really a problem.  

And it’s a vicious circle.  They’re not hiring workers because they say there’s no demand, but there’s not going to be demand if people don’t have jobs and income and they cannot spend.  So we’re in this vicious circle.

So that’s the first thing.  The second thing is that, you know, many of these people are unemployed.  At this point, they’re going to lose their skills, their human capital and the stigma of not having a job for a year or two.

So anything we can do to increase skills, education, retain them, make them employable, together with a tax cut that induces firms to hire them is going to jump-start job creation.  And it’s critical.  If we’re going to do it, we’ll have an army of unemployed people forever.

MADDOW:  And it’s worth the spending to do that?

ROUBINI:  Yes.

MADDOW:  Nouriel Roubini is chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics.  He’s professor of Economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business and somebody who’s both worrying and comforting at the same time.  Thank you, sir.  Appreciate your time.  

Two writers with close ties to U.S. intelligence agencies published a shocking article Dec. 22nd in The Miami Herald asserting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “a narcissistic nut” with “blood on his hands” and President Obama should do “whatever it takes to shut down WikiLeaks.” Without giving a single example of how Assange’s disclosures caused blood to flow, co-authors Thomas Spencer and F. W. Rustmann warn, “No nation can operate without secrets. Unless we adopt an aggressive plan, adopt new tough laws and take immediate action—overt and covert—we face disaster.” The authors go on to state the president should be joined in this suppression of the press by “Congress and our entire intelligence, military and law-enforcement communities” because “(our) lives are depending” on it.

While the above is vaguely worded it does appear that Spencer and Rustmann are calling for “immediate” and “covert” action—to put a stop to Assange’s activities. In short, they appear to be saying Obama & Co. has the right to terminate Assange covertly, that is to say, secretly, and, as the word has come to mean in CIA parlance, “violently” as well. It is no surprise that two writers closely tied to U.S. spy agencies appear to be advocating covert action against Assange, but it is a bit of a shock that the Miami Herald would publish this seeming call for blood.

Pardon me for suspecting this hysterical screech for Assange’s scalp was published with the blessing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Rustmann spent 24 years as a CIA payroller and was an instructor in its covert training center, so he would know, if anybody, how to stick Assange’s feet into a block of cement and dump him in the Everglades. (Hollywood might even make a movie about it, with Rustmann’s intoning, “He sleeps with the alligators.”) As for Herald co-author Spencer, he is a lawyer who represents intelligence officers and is a Life Member in the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Read the rest here:

http://www.antemedius.com/content/ex-cia-spook-calls-covert-action-vs-assange

This time we have decided to get back to geeky science and technology.  I had thought about writing about Winter Solstice celebrations through the eons, but that has passed now.  Next year for sure.

The Rare Earth Metals are a group of elements that are extremely closely related in atomic number (henceforth called Z), mass, and chemical properties.  I would wager that most folks who are not technical have never heard of them, except maybe on Mythbusters (the neodymium magnets are the strong ones that they use now and then), let alone touched one to their knowledge.

But almost everyone uses them on a daily basis, and most have indeed touched at least one.  Please come with us and let us explore these interesting and essential elements.

First, we have to get Geeky.  I have maintained many times that if one truly understands the Periodic Table that one understands about half of chemistry, lots of physics, and much of quantum mechanics.  This is no different.  Here is one periodic table (although I prefer the old convention for column labeling) that is representative.  As I have explained before, the periodic table shows relationships betwixt the various elements because of their electronic structures.

If you look closely at this table, you will see that on the sixth row a white space that says “57 - 71”.  If you look even further down, you will see those elements in a row of their own.  There is a reason for this, and it is fundamental for quantum mechanics and for the properties of those elements.

In the elements above them, all electrons are able to fit into s (2 electrons each), p (six electrons each), and d (14 electrons each) orbitals.  However, once we get to Z of 57, the energetics require that new orbitals be used, the f ones.  Because of the subtle interactions of electron physics, these orbitals are inside of the outmost orbitals.  Here is the critical thing:  the outmost orbitals, aka the valance orbitals, of electrons control the major part of the chemistry of the elements.  Thus, with more inner f orbitals changing electronic filling, all of the rare earth elements have similar chemistries.

It is important to list the electronic structures of each of these, so here they are.  I am only listing the outermost orbitals, since all of them have in common the Xenon core electronic structure, so it is of no matter.

Z = 57, Lanthanum (La), [Xe]5d¹6s²

Z = 58, Cerium (Ce,) [Xe]4f¹5d¹6s²

Z = 59, Praseodymium (Pr), [Xe]4f³6s²

Z = 60, Neodymium (Nd), [Xe]4f⁴6s²

Z = 61, Promethium (Pm), [Xe]4f⁵6s²

Z = 62, Samarium (Sm), [Xe]6s²4f⁶

Z = 63, Europium (Eu), [Xe]4f⁷6s²

Z = 64, Gadolinium (Gd), [Xe]4f⁷5d¹6s²

Z = 65, Terbium (Tb), [Xe]4f⁹6s²

Z = 66, Dysprosium (Dy), [Xe]4f¹⁰6s²

Z = 67, Holmium (Ho), [Xe]4f¹¹6s²

Z = 68, Erbium (Er), [Xe]4f¹²6s²

Z = 69, Thulium (Tm), [Xe]4f¹³6s²

Z = 70, Ytterbium (Yb), [Xe]4f¹⁴6s²

Z = 71, Lutetium (Lu), [Xe]6s²4f¹⁴5d¹

The reason for going into so much detail is to point out that every element has a filled 6s orbital, and for most of them, it is the most energetic one.  These orbitals are listed in order of increasing energy, and you can see that only Samarium and Lutetium have orbitals of greater energy than the 6s ones, and that is because of an extremely complex interaction of quantum mechanics and relativity.  Since the outermost orbital defines chemistry to a large degree, these elements behave almost identically, and until only a few decades ago made it nearly impossible to separate them and study their properties.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s new tools were introduced to separate such similar elements as their salts, mostly involving ion exchange chromatography.  By using suitable substrates and solvents, it became possible to isolate each element in a pure form from an extremely complex mixture of those elements.  That was important, because all of these elements are almost always found in association with each other, and separation is essential.  With the Geeky stuff behind, we shall examine the uses of these materials.

Why are rare earth metals important?  They are used in hundreds of applications, from exotic industrial uses to something that practically everyone who smokes (and many who do not) use multiple times per day.  We shall address the last one first.  In all cigarette lighters, except for the ones that use a piezoelectric ceramic for the spark, sparks are produced by a so-called “flint”, which is a mixture of rare earth metals (the entire spectrum, since it is too expensive to separate the components for this use) with some hardening agents (rare earth metals are soft like lead).  When the steel rake on the wheel passes over the misch metal, some particles are filed off, and the friction heats them enough to burn.

For a bit of trivia, when actual flint and steel are used to start fires, the very hard flint knocks off bits of steel which ignites.  This is the opposite in a lighter, where the steel wheel erodes the “flint”.  In disposable lighters the “flint” is usually fairly long so it will last until the butane supply is exhausted, whilst in refillable ones new “flints” have to be inserted from time to time.

If lighters were the only use for rare earth metals, we could do without them, since as just mentioned a piezoelectric material can be used in place of the “flint”.  However, the uses of rare earths are so varied and ingrained in modern life that we would find it difficult to function without them.

The most common rare earth metal is cerium, and if you have a self-cleaning oven then there is cerium(III) oxide in the coating, acting as a catalyst to assist the high temperatures of the oven to reduce baked on splashes to wipeable ashes.  It also is used in catalytic converters in automobiles to oxidize carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide.  Cerium(IV) oxide is perhaps the best polishing agent for precision optics, as it is very hard but available in such a fine state of division that glass can be polished to within a wavelength of light, aka optically flat.  Back in the graduate school days I would often use it to polish potassium bromide windows for infrared spectrometry.

Cerium has preservative properties for glass and clear plastics, in large part due to its extremely large ultraviolet absorption properties.  Clear plastics that will be used in sunlight often contain cerium to prevent darkening, and the glass in TeeVee screens (for the old cathode ray types) has cerium in it to keep it from being damaged from the hard UV and soft X-rays that are produced when the electron beam hits it.  Another widespread use for cerium is in phosphors for lighting and TeeVee applications.  Cerium is also one of the few substances other than water that is more dense in the molten state than in the solid state.

The first rare earth element, lanthanum, is becoming quite a strategic metal.  (Some authorities count scandium (Z = 21) and yttrium (Z = 39) as rare earth metals, because of similar chemistries to the rare earths, but they do not have any f orbitals).  One of the biggest and newest uses in in nickel metal hydride batteries, and with the growing popularity of electric and hybrid automobiles, the use of the metal is increasing.  Too bad that China accounts for over 90% of the production of rare earth metals these days.  Glass doped with lanthanum is very transparent in the infrared range, so long distance fibre optics depend on it.  Like cerium, it is also used in phosphors for lighting.  However, the most important lighting application is the extremely high intensity carbon arc lighting, commonly used for motion picture industry both to light the set and to project the image at the cinema.  The lanthanum added to the carbon electrodes increases the emission of light and also smooths the arc, so flickering does not occur.  It is also used in optical glasses to increase the index of refraction of the glass, allowing for thinner lenses to do the same job as thicker ones without it.

Praseodymium, along with lanthanum, is used in carbon arc lighting for the same reasons.  However, lanthanum is cheaper and more abundant.  A very important use is in the old fashioned welder’s lenses where it absorbs UV.  Modern, electronic lenses use liquid crystals for that now.  It is used in some solid state lasers and some rare earth magnets as well.  A critical use for the metal is to make extremely strong alloys with magnesium for aircraft engine applications where light weight is important.

The next rare earth metal, neodymium, is used along with praseodymium in welder’s lenses.  As a matter of fact, it was only fairly recently that praseodymium and neodymium were separated, and the mixture of the two elements was though to be a single element, didymium, and it was that which was added to the glass.  Neodymium is critically important.  When you hear the term rare earth magnet, the ones containing neodymium are almost always the ones meant.  Neodymium magnets are the most powerful permanent magnets known, so strong that it is possible to hurt yourself rather badly when fooling around with them if they are very large due to crushing or impact.  These magnets are getting cheap now.  I saw a TeeVee advert for a vacuum cleaner that uses neodymium magnets in its motor the other day.  Another critical application for this element is in solid state lasers, where it is probably the most important laser source, from tiny to huge applications.  Neodymium magnets are used in electric automobile motors, so this is a third rare earth metal used in the automobile industry.

Promethium, the next rare earth, is intensely radioactive.  Its half life is so short that only around a pound exists naturally, mostly due to spontaneous fission of uranium.  It is usually recovered from reprocessing spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.  Its uses all depend on its intense radioactivity for the longest lived isotope, Pm-145, half life of almost 18 years, and a pure beta emitter.  The betas are not particularly energetic, but there are lots of them.  Commercial uses include thickness gauges based on beta absorption and nuclear batteries.

The next rare earth metal is samarium, and one of its largest uses is also in magnets, although those are not quite as strong as the neodymium ones.  They also are more resistant to higher temperatures and are also more resistant to demagnetization.  One of the most important uses for samarium is in nuclear reactor control rods, because it absorbs neutrons very well, and is transformed in large part to other samarium isotopes which also are good absorbers.  Thus, samarium control rods have a longer useful life than those made of other materials.

Europium is next, and until LCD and LED TeeVee screens was (and is) used for the red phosphor.  Phosphors continue to be a large application for it, as it is important in compact fluorescent lamps for its red contribution.  Another form of europium gives a blue light, so when used with a green phosphor (more on that later), a light that approaches the appearance of white is obtained.  Interestingly, it is used in Euro notes as an anticounterfeiting agent because of its fluorescence.  I suspect that it is used in US notes as well, but Treasury is pretty tight lipped about security measures.

Gadolinium is sort of oddball amongst rare earth metals in that it is quite toxic, whilst most others are not very toxic.  Interestingly, it is used as a contrast agent in magnetic resonance imagining scans, but in a form that lessens its toxicity to a large degree.  Still, I see those adverts on the TeeVee for trial attorneys (is it not a hoot that the Fox “News” Channel seems to carry a disproportionate number of those, whilst they rail against trial lawyers) to contact if you suspect or imagine that you were harmed by them.  It is also used as a phosphor in some fluoroscopes because it emits in a range sensitive to the human eye and is efficient as well.  It also is used in some applications to control nuclear fission reactions since it absorbs neutrons better than any other stable element, but it is expensive compared to some others.  It is also used in MASERS (the microwave analogue of a Laser).

Terbium is the element to which I alluded a while ago about compact fluorescent lamps.  Since it has a green fluorescence, adding it to the red and blue europium phosphors gives a good approximation of white light.  It is also the green phosphor in CRT TeeVee tubes.  A very interesting use of an alloy of terbium is to turn any rigid, flat surface into a loudspeaker.  It turns out that this alloy actually changes size when exposed to a magnetic field (and when exposed to a changing magnetic field, changes size rapidly).  When attached to a flat surface, the signal from an amplifier is converted to a changing magnetic field, making the allow change size as does the field.  This change in size is expressed as audible sound if the magnetic field fluctuates at frequencies detectable by the human ear.

Wow, it is almost time to post and we still have six elements to go.  We shall finish this discussion next week, and I shall include some more background information as well.  Well, you have done it again!  You have wasted many einsteins of perfectly good photons reading this earthy piece.  And even though Lindsey Graham quits whining about having to do his job when he reads me say it, I always learn much more than I could possibly hope to teach by writing this series.  Therefore, please keep the comments, questions, corrections, and other feedback coming.  Remember, no scientific or technical issue is off topic here.  I shall stick around as long as comments merit it tonight, and shall return tomorrow after Keith’s show for Review Time.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Crossposted at Docudharma.com and at Dailykos.com

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Gbagbo warns Ivory Coast intervention would provoke chaos

by Dave Clark, AFP

39 mins ago

2 Ukraine arrests former interior minister

by Oksana Grytsenko, AFP

1 hr 49 mins ago

3 Attacks on Christians mar Christmas celebrations

by Catherine Jouault, AFP

Sat Dec 25, 11:22 pm ET

4 More than 80 dead in Pakistan suicide bombing and raids

by Nasrullah Khan, AFP

Sat Dec 25, 5:08 pm ET

5 England move on Ashes after humiliating Australia

by Robert Smith, AFP

Sun Dec 26, 3:16 am ET

6 Italian mafia spreads in Switzerland

by Agnes Pedrero, AFP

Sun Dec 26, 4:51 am ET

7 US shark fin restrictions carry little weight in HK

by Joyce Woo, AFP

Sat Dec 25, 10:26 pm ET

8 Ivory Coast’s Ouattara calls for general strike

By Ange Aboa, Reuters

37 mins ago

9 Scenarios: Possible outcomes in Ivory Coast’s crisis

By Richard Valdmanis, Reuters

22 mins ago

10 China’s Wen: confident on inflation after rate rise

By Langi Chiang and Chen Aizhu, Reuters

Sun Dec 26, 4:00 am ET

11 Pope’s Christmas message admonishes China

By Philip Pullella, Reuters

Sat Dec 25, 5:01 pm ET

12 Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo faces threat from neighbors

By MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

3 mins ago

13 Christmas weekend violence kills 38 in Nigeria

By NJADVARA MUSA, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 1:30 pm ET

14 Thousands fear hunger after Pakistan bombing

By ANWARULLAH KHAN, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 1:18 pm ET

15 Petraeus commends Pakistan’s counterinsurgency

By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 12:50 pm ET

16 In Congress, a harder line on illegal immigrants

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 11:05 am ET

17 Cheap concert seats due after cruel summer of 2010

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer

1 hr 51 mins ago

18 Deadly Afghan year takes toll on 101st Airborne

By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 12:51 pm ET

19 Citing police abuse, Hispanics leaving Conn. town

By MICHAEL MELIA, Associated Press

2 hrs 10 mins ago

20 Bighorn sheep start new year in new Texas home

By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press

2 hrs 59 mins ago

21 Dead Chicagoans don’t vote, but living have tricks

By DON BABWIN, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 2:32 pm ET

22 NY, other states scrimp on Civil War anniversary

By CHRIS CAROLA, Associated Press

Sun Dec 26, 1:35 pm ET

23 Pope urges courage for Catholics in China, Iraq

By FRANCES D’EMILIO, Associated Press

Sat Dec 25, 9:25 pm ET

Green Clad Waffle Tossing Hockey Fans

Huh?