So I see you corrected the headline -- congratulations! -- but I'm thinking that a better one might be: "Not too small to bail out after all".... It might be worth pointing out how the TARP funds (etc.) have been geared toward shoring up the very largest corporations. Too small? No bailout for you!

You ask, "Who are the morons who like the current system?"

Let's start with the entire Congress (Representatives and Senators alike). They all enjoy swanky full-coverage health insurance, at no cost to themselves.

Then add every single talking head you see on TV. Do you think any of them are going to the emergency room for treatment? Ditto for the CEOs who fund electoral campaigns, the lobbyists, etc.

Bottom line: for the people who set the agenda, the operative question is, "Why fix what ain't broken?" The current system works just fine for them. And to judge by the way most of them talk, they find it hard to imagine that anyone has a problem with that.

Interesting. Your last two posts leave me thinking about the relative cost of things, and what sort of items we (as a society, or I guess two societies in the case of US/Canada) find it easy to fund.

Obama's "stimulus" support for the renewable energy industry, you tell us, comes to $32.7 billion. In a country with over 300 million people, that averages out to about $105 per person. I'm sure that there are plenty of "conservatives" out there screaming bloody murder, Socialism, Marxism, and everything else over this "handout" -- a handout that may just end up saving us all. I'm also sure that this pittance is several orders of magnitude more than was spent on renewables over the past eight years.

Meanwhile, the ticket for two nuclear reactors for Toronto was going to come to $23.3 billion. In a city with a metro area population of 5.5 million, that comes to $4236 per person, or forty times our investment in renewables for an entire country. I know which money I would consider better spent.

Can't believe you had to look up the date of Brown.

I'm sure that before long my students will have to look up the date of 9/11.

And then I'll feel really old.

It is worth remembering that China (however you want to define that) has comprised roughly 20% of humanity since just about as far back as we can reconstruct history. And that for most of the past several thousand years the economy of China has been at least average, probably above average, in comparison with the rest of the world. In other words, the relative poverty of China for much of the past 150 years (more or less) was an anomaly. Whether or not the current statistics cited by Andrew pan out, in the long run it would be foolish to bet against China resuming its normal place in the world community.

"In the future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-fueled petro-state with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites..."

And then, after the inevitable day when the last barrel is pumped and the last well runs dry: "In the slightly more distant future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-drained former petro-state, in a world heated by 10 degrees F. from the intemperate burning of its and others' fossil fuel resources, with no remaining function whatsoever."

And to think that we ("Bush" is a synecdoche for "all of us") had a choice: spend a trillion bucks on destroying and rebuilding a petro-state, or spend the time and money and human resources it takes to rebuild our own economy in a way that frees us from fossil fuel dependency and global climate disaster.

Oops.

Patrick, you answer your own question: seating is crowded (to put it charitably; I'd say, the new business model for airlines means spacing seats so tightly that any passenger over about 5 foot 7 barely has room to breathe, much less pick up trash), and there is no system whatsoever for collecting garbage other than the occasional saunter of a flight attendant down the aisle with a plastic bag.

Add to this miserable picture the attitude of too many flight attendants, at least at the merging Northwest-Delta airline that we're stuck with here in the Detroit area, which can best be described as undisguised contempt for all passengers on the wrong side of the First Class/Coach line. (Admittedly, most are still very pleasant people, but one rotten apple etc.) And finally, there are the lengthy delays (13 hours recently for a Detroit-NY flight, I kid you not; driving would have gotten me there three hours sooner), plus the elimination of airline food (jokes aside, at least it used to exist), forcing passengers to pack their own lunches.

On the other hand: Good grief, passengers, if you bring a Chinese takeout meal on board, or even a bag of chips, you must realize that you'll have to throw away the debris. So BRING YOUR OWN PLASTIC BAG to throw it out in! Jeez!

I'd love to hear from a biochemist on this one. Methane (according to Wikipedia -- any article of which exceeds the sum total of my knowledge of chemistry) consists of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms. If I'm not greatly mistaken, all of these derive directly from the atmosphere, not the ground. Removing them from the "onion waste" might -- I'm simply guessing here -- only serve to concentrate the soil nutrients in whatever gook or ash is left over after extracting the methane -- and this process, perhaps, perhaps, leads to better compost, not worse. Or not. Maybe we'll hear from someone who knows.