Prepare for Change

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/archeologists-find-more-evidence-that-drought-brought-down-the-mayan-empire/ "During the era when the Mayan empire declined, Droxler said, the region underwent significantly fewer major tropical typhoons — only one or two every 20 years instead of the usual five or six. While typhoons can bring devastating winds and flooding, they also bring much-needed water inland in the form of heavy rains. These heavy rains were an integral part of growing enough food to sustain the sprawling empire. The first great blow to the civilization came in the form of a 100-year drought between 800 A.D. and 900. When the rains stopped, food because scarce and a period of violent unrest ensued." Climate change can bring an end to civilizations.  If it's changing, for whatever reason, we need to know how so we can plan ahead.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/injustice-intersection-suburbs-traffic-engineering-poverty "The pretext Darren Wilson used to stop Michael Brown was jaywalking, the same offense for which Raquel Nelson nearly went to jail. Jaywalking, as Peter Norton shows in his landmark history  Fighting Traffic , is an invented crime. It was the product of a massive publicity campaign orchestrated by automobile companies and allied motoring interests in the 1920s. Ostensibly aimed to promote safety, the real purpose of this effort was to push pedestrians off the street so that cars would move faster and be easier to sell. Along with their invention of jaywalking, the automakers exerted a controlling influence over the nascent discipline of traffic engineering. Industry-funded experts denied that speed was to blame for an epidemic of pedestrian crashes. They designed new roadways with the overriding objective of moving cars faster. As the years went by, engineerin...

http://www.newsweek.com/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583 "In switching over to a universal basic income, the books will not only stay balanced—they might even move into the black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 115,227,000 households in the U.S. Split $1.88 trillion among all these households and each one gets $16,315.62. In other words, if you turned the welfare system into a $15,000 basic income payment, you’d end up saving over $150 billion (or $1,315.62 per American household). The basic proposal can be tweaked, of course, so that the system makes a bit more sense. Households making over $100,000 per year probably get by just fine on their own. Cut them out of the equation, and you would end up with a $20,000 basic income check for the remaining households, while still netting the government some nice savings. Despite the pleasingly round back-of-the-napkin math, replacing food stamps and other artifacts of America...