The effort in this shot !
Light balance. The depth of field. The triumph, Jimmy’s brow. Seconds, anyone?
electing the wrong
Sweepstakes here.
Which politician seeking the Presidency said this?
“…the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States….Men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”
glass of tort
A California resident filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against Apple Inc. alleging the iPhone 4 has a manufacturing defect that causes its glass housing to break after ‘reasonable use’.
compulsion loop
Adrian Hon:
Someone is making a lot of money out of this.
A new breed of computer games is creating compulsive behavior.
Isn’t the entire point of games that they are more engaging and fun than poor, passive TV? Yes, TV shows are driven by commercial motives and try to be just as manipulative as games with their incessant cliffhangers, but a show with cliffhanger every 30 minutes pales in comparison to games containing ‘mini-cliffhangers’ every 30 seconds.
Nota bene: “Developers aren’t doing this on purpose.”
gut level wrap up
Succinct is always nice. Succinct that says it all is dynamite.
I can’t say I was surprised by a single Wikileak … they all seemed so deja vu and utterly timeless, as if they could have been intercepted letters, hand-written by Napoleon-in-exile to his cohorts on the mainland.
Humorzo noticed this great line by Sylvia Paull.
safe tiny cars?
Who woulda thunk it?
So it ::: is ::: possible to design safe itty bitty cars.
no arguing here
Oh, if we had goals and targets too.
[link]
See, that’s the problem that so many of us make, and definitely one that the legislators and zealots make A LOT. There is no single right way, no single best solution. Each of us has different goals, different skills, different resources, and different motivations; and that doesn’t even take into account different cash flow and different climates and different environments. Given all the unique factors that an individual must take into account, how can we expect to have a single right answer? We simply can’t, it’s just not realistic. We each need to figure out what we need to do for our desired situation and then determine how to best achieve it based on our individual parameters.
money is speech
Corporate power expanded.
Driven by the religion of market fundamentalism, capitalists championed the deregulation of industry and markets.
Money triumphed over people.
With deregulation the disparity between rich and poor reached historic proportions. Corporations ostensibly created to serve the public interest mutated into a malignancy eroding liberties and killing the planet.
The duplicitous meanings of democracy are used interchangeably by the plutocracy, leaving the American people ambivalent and confused. This was an engineered bait and switch that went virtually unnoticed by a naïve and somnolent public.
And thus capitalism, the very antithesis of democracy, became synonymous with representative government in the public mind. Few people have bothered to question, much less challenge, the secular matrimony of capitalism with democracy.
recitation isn’t thinking
Democrat Congressman Frank Pallone read the natural born Citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, Section 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution.
A woman seated in the front row of the public gallery shouted out, “Except Obama! Except Obama! Help us, Jesus!”
Unlawful conduct, disruption of Congress; processed and released by the Sergeant at Yarns.
our lousy assistance to ourselves
We’ve used our very best minds in politics, economics, business and science to create a self made disaster that threatens to destroy much of human life on earth. —John Veitch
The world that is.
“The planet Earth has it’s own system.
“People have never understood it. Once upon a time it was so mysterious that people used all sorts of superstitions and ritual….”
The world as we see it.
“Your world view dictates what you think is important, what questions you can ask, and what you imagine is reliable evidence.”
To quote the Club of Rome:
“The classical models and strategies of development are destroying the environment, overusing resources, generation widening disparities and leaving billions excluded from the benefits of progress. … We are facing a social transformation and level of upheaval that is historic in it’s proportions and uncertain in it’s outcomes.”
a long process quickly
Jeepers. This copy from the Washington Post’s Q&A with China’s Hu Jintao struck me as a laundry list of central government action, although merely a list, perhaps insufficient, perhaps better than nothing, yet definitely more assertive than the perpetual arguing in our politics. I threw in a numbered count while wondering if any US political party could manage the complexity on our plate.
Question #3;
What lessons do you think can be drawn from the 2008 international financial crisis? What effective measures did China adopt to counter the impact of the crisis?
Hu Jintao answers #3:
This international financial crisis has reflected the absence of regulation in financial innovation. Its root cause lies in the serious defects of the existing financial system. . . . The international financial crisis has inflicted on China unprecedented difficulties and challenges.
To address its impact and maintain the steady and relatively fast growth of the economy, China quickly 1. adjusted its macroeconomic policies, 2. resolutely adopted the proactive fiscal policy and 3. moderately easy monetary policy, 4. put in place a package plan to boost domestic demand and stimulate economic growth, 5. significantly increased government investment, 6. implemented industrial readjustment and 7. reinvigoration plans on a large scale, 8. energetically promoted scientific innovation and 9. technological upgrading, 10. raised social welfare benefits by a substantial margin and 11. introduced a more active employment policy. As a result, our economy in 2009 and 2010 maintained steady and relatively fast growth and contributed to the economic recovery of the region and the world.
Looking ahead, China will take 12. scientific development as the main theme and focus on 13. transforming the economic development pattern at a faster pace. We will implement a 14. proactive fiscal policy and a 15. prudent monetary policy, 16. speed up economic restructuring, 17. vigorously strengthen indigenous innovation, make good progress in 18. energy conservation and 19. pollution reduction, continue to 20. deepen reform and 21. opening-up, work hard to ensure and 22. improve people’s livelihood, build on the achievements in 23. addressing the international financial crisis, 24. maintain steady and relatively fast economic growth and 25. promote social stability and harmony.
China will pursue the win-win 26. strategy of opening-up and stands ready to work with the United States and the international community as a whole to 27. intensify practical cooperation, properly handle various risks and challenges, and 28. make greater contribution to the overall recovery of the world economy.
totems of tea
“Which makes one wonder: if it were transported back to 1787, would the Tea Party have rejected the Constitution that today it professes to love and defend? Most likely, yes.”
Well being correlates most strongly with health, wealth, and basic education, yet some feel that managing economic pilfering will destroy American achievements.
He who hopes to grow in spirit will have to transcend obedience and respect. He will hold to some laws but he will mostly violate both law and custom, and go beyond the established, inadequate norm. Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him. He will not be afraid of the destructive act: half the house will have to come down. This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom. —C.P. Cavafy
chronic trauma
Life on a road of edges.
It has become clear that there is a population in this country living in trauma — repeated, chronic and in many cases, very complicated and overlapping forms of trauma.
— rethinking trauma, a post by Scott Johnson, Violence Reporting Fellow.
The APA’s newest descriptors of what Complex PTSD looks like:
♥ Alterations in emotional regulation, which may include symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger.
♥ Alterations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one’s mental processes or body.
♥ Alterations in self-perception, which may include a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different than other human beings.
♥ Alterations in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge.
♥ Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.
♥ Alterations in one’s system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.
rivalry imposed
…a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions
…humanity hanging from a cross of iron
In less than 10 years, our military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent.
Even after subtracting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has grown by 68 percent since 2001.
50 years later, we’re still ignoring Ike’s warning, by Susan Eisenhower:
I’ve always found it rather haunting to watch old footage of my grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, giving his televised farewell address to the nation on Jan. 17, 1961.
“There is a reoccurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties,” he warned.
Plundering our own ease ! So thus reports Economic Undertow:
Our grandchildren will harvest what, exactly?
Both Eisenhower and King grasped the same insolvency metaphors, acknowledging the possibility of a bankrupt notion of progress; that the human race and its embrace of the American-style ‘dream’ would soon enough harvest the bitter crop of its strip-mining, the use of which is vacant of any real possibility.
Thermodynamics is relentless and cannot be negotiated with.
And as Umair Haque says. “If there’s one phrase I might use to describe the global economy’s malaise, it’s ‘values of little worth‘, a criticism that might be applied to nearly every moribund industry under the sun.”
incentive of our woe
“Man is the animal that believes something is wrong,” offers the theosophist Richard Smoley.
As online snippets seek to explain all things…
decide and do
“I had her heart in my hand,” Dr. Friese said.
collecting pain
People in Haiti are always telling me their earthquake stories.
I’m 31 years old, an American, a journalist. Even if I did have an answer, which I don’t, it would obviously be circumspect, philosophical, wrong.
Still, people beseech me with their stories, and I have to think it’s because they know I’m a journalist.
I’m a trained listener. I know when to ask questions and when to nod. I’ve taught my face to behave like a doctor’s or a judge’s. I don’t grin or interject. I know the funny bits are actually the saddest. Every story is important — a thousand little blocks built like a wall against the pain.
I told the truth. Imagine all the truth I didn’t tell.
to fit quick
Mental illness isn’t enough to explain assassination or mass murder. And in many cases, it appears, it isn’t part of the explanation at all. We should remind ourselves that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the others killed or wounded in the Tucson attack were shot by a person–not by a diagnosis. – Paul Raeburn
causes of death
How do we die?
A snippet from the comments:
“Who was the one very unlucky bloke killed by lightning?”
“Rod.”
I wonder about similarities to the USA…
to solve the cube
To solve the Rubik’s Cube, just follow each step.
The Rubik’s Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the “Magic Cube”, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world’s top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world’s best-selling toy.
brigands and pirates
Nicholas Shaxson’s flagship, Treasure Islands and the Men who Stole the World. The Guardian newspaper is running a serialization of the book, The Truth about Tax Havens.
How money is drained by a network of bankers, accountants, and lawyers into secret, off-shore bank accounts, undermining the lives of millions of people. How does this happen? Why is no one paying attention?
bitching about billions
On the matter of civility:
A) Feed and educate every child on Earth for five years, $465 billion.
B) Invade Iraq, $3 trillion.
Words matter. Billions matter. [link]
incendiary aggrandizement
Near the site of the Tuscon shooting, Rush Limbaugh’s billboard.
go here to adhere
Brit electoral advice:
Would you like a cliché with that ?
do deny the gattling spree
Secret Service Alert: 2008
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: “Why would they try to make people hate us?”
She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. She said:
“I consider it cowardly. It’s not true. That’s cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that’s not fair and not right.”