Cognitive Labs

Jared Diamond's New Book?

No, a consumer-credit relief bill that just passed in Congress. Credit card companies will not be able to escalate interest rates to exorbitantly usurious levels nor will they able to charge for phone EFT payments, it appears.

However, deadbeat customers - those who pay their bill off in full every month, will face penalties and lose perks. According to profitability algorithms - these types of customers are too responsible. The ideal customer is somewhat irresponsible, but not too much - in the Stoic sense.

In a case of odd horse-trading, to get the bill passed another bill was merged with the credit bill, authorizing the handling and possession of loaded firearms on U.S. National Parks, Monuments, Wildlife Refuges, and other Federal lands, deferring to prevailing state law. On the more remote trails in places like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming - hikers better learn to wear bearbells on their wrists and ankles to ascertain that they are not mistaken for prey.

Labels: diamond, eft, glacier, stoicism

A spasm of eco-tourism is threatening the sustainability of the MOAI statues that occupy the heights on Easter Island.

When sea captains first visited the island - they were shocked by the giant visages and also by the lack of arboral flora - just grass and low bushes.

Celebrity geographer Jared Diamond profiled the island in his book Collapse, as a case study of how cultures can devolve and eventually consume all of the resources around them without realizing it, leading to depopulation in a pointed lesson for modern civilization.

Labels: buzz, collapse, diamond, guns, moai