BREVITAS

RUIN: PHOTOGRAPHS OF A VANISHING AMERICA

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Physorg - An ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can. The laser process creates a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament-the tiny wire inside a light bulb-and theses structures make the tungsten become far more effective at radiating light. The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

THE MIX

Pink Paper - Stockholm has appointed Eva Brunne as the first Church of Sweden bishop to live in a registered homosexual partnership - and is believed to be the first openly lesbian bishop in the world. . . The newly-elected Lutheran bishop of Stockholm says that being a lesbian means she wants to stand alongside people who feel powerless.

MONEY & WORK

We have yet to see a good argument for closing so many car dealerships. It seems another case, as with the bank bailouts, of the Obama administration favoring those at the top of the economic pyramid. Billions for bankers and hardly anything for those facing foreclosures. In the case of car dealerships, the victims will not only be the businesses themselves, but the communities that depended upon them. An example from the Portland Press Herald: " Sales at Maine dealerships totaled $2.6 billion in 2007, which accounted for 14.8 percent of total retail sales in the state that year."

Dean Baker - The Washington Post . . . ran a column that blamed the United Auto Workers for the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM. So what if Toyota has managed to profitably run a plant in California represented by the UAW for more than two decades? So what if wages of unionized autoworkers in profitable car companies in Europe and Japan are the same or higher than in the United States? So what if the proximate cause of the bankruptcy was incompetent economic management in Washington and an explosion of incompetence and greed on Wall Street?