Domestic life in the past was smelly, cold, dirty and uncomfortable, but we have much to learn from it. I spend much of my time working as a curator in Britain's historic royal palaces. But recently, for a television series, I've visited a lot of normal homes dating from the Norman period to the present day, and I've concluded that the houses of the past have a huge amount to teach us about the future. When the oil runs out, I think our houses will become much more like those of our low-tech, pre-industrial ancestors.

The first point is that the age of specialised rooms is over. Now, legislation governing the design of new houses contains echoes of the past: it insists that once again rooms should multi-task. The living room, for instance, must have space for a bed in case the occupant becomes incapacitated; medieval people, for instance, lived, ate and slept in one room – as I do, in my open-plan flat.

Next, architectural features from the past will start to reappear. The chimney disappeared in the 20th century, but it's coming back, as solid fuel-burning stoves make a return. In terms of fuel conservation the sun is becoming important again too: once upon a time people selected sites with good "air"; now well thought-out houses are situated to minimise solar gain in summer and maximise it in winter. Most future houses will need to face south, a challenge to conventional street layout.

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”

This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?

[I previously posted that video here.]

U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.

The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.

In all, U.S. multinationals employed 21.1 million people at home in 2009 and 10.3 million elsewhere, including increasing numbers of higher-skilled foreign workers.

Grete Waitz, who won nine New York City marathons and the silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, has died of cancer. She was 57.

Helle Aanesen, the manager of the Active Against Cancer Foundation in Norway, said Waitz died early on Tuesday in an Oslo hospital. Waitz had been battling cancer for six years.

Waitz won her first New York City marathon in 1978, setting a world best in two hours, 32 minutes and 30 seconds. She went on to win eight more times, with her last victory coming in 1988.

Waitz also won the gold medal in the marathon at the 1983 world championships in Helsinki, Finland. A year later she took second behind Joan Benoit in the first women's Olympic marathon. She also competed at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics in the 1,500 metres, but missed the 1980 Moscow Games because of the American-led boycott.

Activists and radicals are prone to dismiss mainstream politicians as cynical and self-serving, but this comes from a distorted view of what politics are and can do. We may live in offices and eat processed food, our social behavior is still rooted in our evolutionary history as pack hunters and primates. Archaic human societies were ruled by coalitions, most of the time a strongman and his lieutenants, with a number of social devices designed to make sure he is dependent upon his followers for his continued dominance.

With the Neolithic revolution, our societies have grown far beyond what a single coalition could reasonably manage and have become fractal as a result. Modern societies are a hierarchy of nested coalitions all built upon the same model, from your average nuclear family to the G8. Inside those coalitions, everyone is jockeying for position and fighting for access to scarce resources. This the way all human groups work, even anarchies. In fact, it is far more brutal among anarchists – especially the Randite subtype – because by rejecting institutionalized power, they destroy the various social devices our species evolved to check the pack leader's dominance.

"Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002."

and

"Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

Ah; now wouldn't it be nice if the Transparency-Advocate, President Obama would now release the requested-under-FOIA documents concerning Dick Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force?  Of course, that would be Looking Backward, Not Forward!  And good gracious, it might destabilize the Nation a little bit, and make citizens just a teensy bit cynical about our foreign policy and military adventures...

Surely the White House stenographers press corps will be almost rioting in their zeal to ask Jay Carney about Obama changing his mind and granting the FOIA requests.

Petitions have now been filed for a recall election against State Senator Luther Olsen. Sheila Harsdorf petitions should be filed shortly as well, which will make it four Repubs standing for recall so far, with hopefully more to follow.

Despite efforts to recall many of the Senate 14 (Dem Senators), no signatures have been filed and reports indicate Repubs are having difficulty getting sufficient numbers of signatures in these districts.

We need to get the State Senate back into the hands of the Democrats. It's the ONLY way we can effectively get in the way of Walker and his imperial rule until such time the regular elections in 2012 allow voters to weigh in on his radical agenda that was kept secret during his last election campaign.

Plenty has been cut already, like Women, Infants and Children.  The new fight is to funnel money through state block grants and tie receipt to work or job training.  We know how that Welfare Reform worked out for children.

Link is to "Top Ten Tax Charts", from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  Their homepage: http://www.cbpp.org/   

Two other documents that may also be of interest:

Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258

Where Do Our State Tax Dollars Go? http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2783

I'd be interested in any comments indicating biggest surprises to folks who look at these documents.

Effective regulators are the cops on the beat who are essential to defeating the Gresham’s dynamic that arises when frauds gain a competitive advantage. As regulators, we know and deal regularly with a large number of honest bankers. When we leave criminals in place as CEOs by discouraging even investigations of their fraud we endanger their honest competitors, our economy, and our democratic system. Geithner’s path is the coward’s retreat from imagined fears. If he really believes that the fraudulent bank CEOs are essential to the “success” of our economy then he must believe that our economy is fatally flawed and he should be leading the charge to radically transform it.

By Carl Hulse, New York Times, April 15, 2011

WASHINGTON — House Republicans forced through a partisan budget blueprint on Friday that, if enacted into law, would pare federal spending by an estimated $5.8 trillion over the next decade while reshaping Medicare, a proposal certain to instigate a fierce clash with Democrats.

The bill has no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But it will effectively serve as the House Republican bargaining position in talks with the administration and Senate over how to reduce annual federal deficits and the accumulated national debt.

The action came a day after Congress finally concluded its fight over spending for the current fiscal year.

The vote in the House on the Republican blueprint, drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Budget Committee, was 235 to 193, almost entirely on party lines. Not a single Democrat voted for it; four Republicans voted against it....