RoboBees: Robotic insects make first controlled flight (w/ video) Phys.org. Principal Investigator: Theodorus Nitz.
A Pilot’s Guide to an Enormous Continent-Crossing Solar Plane Wired
Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence National Geographic (Valissa)
Transcript: Yves Smith Interview Harry Shearer (KL)
Jobs data link fest
Jobs Data Ease Fears of Economic Slowdown in U.S. Times
Job market resilience eases growth concerns Reuters
US jobs report eases economy fears FT
Economy Adds 165,000 Jobs in April, Unemployment Drops to 7.5 Percent Dean Baker, CEPR
The Employment Situation Angry Bear
Jobs Atrios
Understanding the painfully slow jobs recovery Felix Salmon, Reuters
Today’s numbers Warren Mosler
Dark side to jobs report: Big drop in hours worked MarketWatch (SW)
April Caps Off Continuing Weak Rail Trends Pragmatic Capitalist
Chicken to Buy Foreclosed Homes? REIT Does It Ycharts
The capture of tax haven Ireland: “the bankers, hedge funds got virtually everything they wanted” Treasure Island
Billionaire Kaiser Exploiting Charity Loophole With Boats Bloomberg
Mortgage processor executive gets up to 20 years Detroit News. Docx’s Lorraine Brown.
Tech Bro’s Agency Implodes After Sharing Dick Pics of a Client Gawker
Obama goes wobbly Eugene Robinson, WaPo. The Washington Generals aren’t “wobbly.”
Is Obama Already a Lame Duck? Nooners, WSJ
In the Chicago Public Schools, promises are made to be broken Chicago Reader
North Carolina: A banana republic for dirty energy interests? Facing South
Nullification campaign advances in multiple states MaddowBlog. Guns.
South Carolina bill criminalizes Obamacare RT. More nullification. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
A few remarks on the Oregon Medicaid study Marginal Revolution
How the Chamber of Commerce conquered the Supreme Court MSNBC
The Cold Truth About Emotional Investing Online WSJ
China arrests 900 in fake meat scandal Guardian
Lucid Dream Mask Turns Bedtime into ‘Inception’ ABC. Interesting if true.
Who Nailed the Principles of Great User Interface Design? Microsoft, That’s Who InfoWorld
Disemployment
Long-Term Unemployment Is Turning Jobless Into Pariahs Bloomberg
Better jobs reports don’t help this lost generation of unemployed young adults Guardian
The Court of Public Opinion: Reflections on a trip to West Virginia PNHP
The cost of hand-to-mouth living Gillian Tett, FT
Drawing Blood: Being a Poor Person in America Post-Swag Poetics (MR)
Antidote du jour (MR):
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From Microsoft’s UI design treatise:
This ‘what NOT to do’ list is a near-perfect description of MS Word, probably the most widely-used and widely-hated app in the history of computing.
If one could construct a mental model of the Word kludgeware, it would resemble an Addams family haunted house populated by mentally disturbed vampires and witches, barricaded behind ceiling-high stacks of old newspapers, discarded pizza cartons and rat droppings, and patrolled by starving feral animals waiting to attack and dismember the casual visitor.
Using Word for business documents is like trying to build a mini-mansion using Fisher Price plastic tools (ages 3-6). Get yourself some serious tools for the job, not an overpriced toy.
It may be widely hated, but that’s only becuase its main competitor at the time (WordPerfect) failed to succesfully transition to the evolving WIMP interface during the rise in the mid 90s, and the competitors to Microsoft at the time (IBM with OS/2, and Apple with the Mac) had their own issues and couldn’t dedicate the resources to go 1-on-1 with Redmond.
Now notice what you’re seeing in the UI design language across the various Windows 8 family-simplicity.
Funny and true. Early incarnations of Word actually worked though, if you recall. Then MS ‘improved’ it. Pfft. No matter. OpenOffice is free.
After Oracle bought Sun, they showed little interest in improving OpenOffice.org. A lot of free software developers (who had also been frustrated by Sun’s leadership and its unwillingness to accept patches and improvements) used the OpenOffice.org code base to launch LibreOffice. I installed it on all of our office machines (to replace an aging Microsoft Office 2003) and had much better luck with it than OpenOffice.org: more responsive, no crashes, fewer quirky bugs. The developers of LibreOffice are also slowly reducing its dependency on Java, which Sun had pushed into the OpenOffice.org code base.
Thanks for the link. OpenOffice works but it’s crashy. I’ve been putting up w/it due to its freeness aspect.
Please mention Microsoft Access.
Please mention Microsoft Access.
Please mention Microsoft Access.
Please mention Microsoft Access.
Anytime you want your legs kicked out from under you while you’re working on a big, big project, please mention Microsoft Access.
Still angry since 2003,
just me
The defacto word processor is your email program.
Word was a great Mac program before Microsoft got ahold of it. I didn’t mind the traditional WordPerfect, but too many people couldn’t wrap their minds around the HTML/XML-like coding.
Re: How the Chamber of Commerce conquered the Supreme Court
The story of how the Supreme Court (and the overwhelming majority of federal and state courts) became a captive of business lobbyists is vitally important, especially in the context of the fight against personhood for corporations.
Essentially, the Supreme Court invented a “corporate veto” that has undercut US regulatory legislation since its extra-constitutional introduction by Justice Powell.
While the big news is about the close votes, the fact of the matter is that most of Congress’s and the President’s proposals that reflect the interests of the 99% are killed by 9-0 votes. In other words, not one supreme court member has the slightest interest in preventing corporate predation on the body politic.
The supreme court gives corporate executives another “bite at the apple” when they lose in Congress and the White House.
That MSNBC is reporting this fact to a broad audience is to its credit. One can only hope that more American voters learn about corporate nullification of their democratic prerogative and figure out how to take action (personallly, I think there should be a permanent Joint Committee on Impeachment and every one of the justices removed and forced into hiding for the shame of it all).
To see justice powell’s name come out again…Talk about someone instrumental to our current problems.The 1971 Powell memo, which has since been taken to heart by people like the kochs,and coors,and the rest of the creators of weapons like the heritage foundation and the cato institute,and mercatus,and who wield the business roundtables and the chamber of commerce directives and lawyers to screw america and the rest of the world.
Everyone should see the movie”Who stole the american dream”.In it,they use the powell memo as a script for the assault on regulation,labor,and the americaan dream.When seeing the timeline into today,in context of the outline of that memo,it is hard not to see a correlation.
and I agree, all these justices today are just rubber stamps to the corporatist plague.They should be dragged out and tarred and feathered.For their edifice is that of an educated,thoughtful,cautious person doing their best within the framework of established law,but really that is bullshit.They are a bunch of scheming blowhards who probably don’t even realize the damage they are doing to this country by their ignorance of reality.
N’uh uh. They know. They don’t give a damn. Sometimes impeachment isn’t enough.
There is a whole other level of oligarchy at work beyond the Supreme Court’s habit of nullifying the democratic impulses of the citizenry in favor of corporate profits.
That is the negotiation of secret “free trade” agreements which over-write and override national, state, local and all other laws.
An Antidote:
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2013/05/asian-golden-cat-twins-arrive-after-successful-artificial-insemination.html
Bonus Vid: http://www.sat1nrw.de/Archiv/Haariges-Retortenbaby/441d8738/
It is appalling that the Smithsonian signed a contract with the Wright brothers’ heirs allowing them to display the Wright Flyer only if the museum refuses to “recognize anyone else as being first—or having built a flying machine before the brothers did”.
According to this press release from Susan O’Dwyer Brinchman, this is a copy of the agreement. According to the website, the contract “refers to ‘aircraft’ (a word encompassing balloons and airships, many of which were motorized and flew before December 1903)”. From page 3 of the contract:
For anyone living in Connecticut, a replica of the Whitehead No. 21 is at the Connecticut Air & Space Museum in Stratford. It looks like Whitehead is not the only aggrieved party.
According to the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) had five members: Alexander Graham Bell, Glenn Curtiss, John McCurdy, Frederick “Casey” Baldwin, and Lt. Thomas Selfridge (US Army).
In contrast, from the National Geographic article in the links, the famous photo of the Wright brothers’ first flight “is still held in question in some circles, in part because it wasn’t released until five years after the fact.” I’m not sure if the Wright photo was released before or after the AEA’s public flights of Red Wing and June Bug. I would guess that a lot of money was at stake: “Curtiss was also involved in a heated patent dispute with the Wrights, one that was not resolved until World War I broke out, and the Army and Navy were desperate for aircraft.”
Deja vu! Our reality determined offscreen by private contract — see Lambert’s recent story on Corrente about a Maine hearing for a municipal solid waste dumping permit —
Gobsmacked. Can they DO that? Looks like they can.
>> RoboBees…
>> …Enormous Continent-Crossing Solar Plane Wired
Skynet comes in big and small packages.
>> Nullification .. Guns.
>> South Carolina … Obamacare RT. More nullification.
Could we please legislate an orderly secession procedure? It’ll let more people live the way they want, be it through different drug laws, different gun laws, or funding health care/medical science vs. the MIC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map
If only! (sigh)
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan uses this as one piece of the background. Jesusland had abolished mass education and was quite third world.
Thirteen is a wonderful book.
The capture of tax haven Ireland: “the bankers, hedge funds got virtually everything they wanted” Treasure Island
An important article on how tax havens are an integral part of how financial institutions subvert democracies. This is what I would call the opposite of David Graeber’s consensus building.. (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/interview-with-david-graeber-on-democracy-in-america.html)
“”They met under the auspices of the “Clearing House”, a secretive group of financial industry executives, accountants and public servants formed in 1987 to promote Dublin as a financial hub””
Obama was willing to make travel more convenient for “jet-set constituents”, but he would not fight for Head Start funds for preschoolers or Section 8 housing subsidies for poor people. Eugene Robinson “cannot fathom” why Obama did this.
Eugene Robinson refuses to admit that Obama is on the side of the wealthy. When Democrats take a dive, and people start to wonder if the game is fixed, liberals like Robinson create cover stories about the Democrats being weak and Obama being “wobbly” or “the one reasonable man on a ship of fools”. Liberal pundits don’t call Obama and Clinton corrupt and duplicitous because, like the announcers for professional wrestling, the pundits are paid by the same people that are rigging the game. Pundits are paid to pretend that the matches (Democrats v. Republicans) are real.
“take the ball, Obama”…
The Washington Generals were better actors than Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GaeolAkPWU
Great video! A good response whenever someone wonders why the Democrats are so feeble. I was reading through the Wikipedia article on kayfabe. Some of the unintentional lapses, which are “apparent but not acknowledged”, are reminiscent of politics.
The evisceration of the Republican Party in 2008 was the Democrats, like Owen Hart, botching the kayfabe and resulting in a real life serious injury for the Republicans. From Time Magazine, May 7, 2009:
The Democrats are like Owen Hart: taunting the Republicans, pleasing the partisans, then intentionally letting themselves get pinned by a severely wounded party.
I just started reading the novel The Wrestler’s Cruel Study by Stephen Dobyns. Only a few chapters in so far, but it already gets my recommendation, and may end up providing some insights into the psychology of ‘the politician’s cruel study.’
Narratives of Democratic weakness are part of the kayfabe of the political class (yes, a exactly like professional wrestling).
Professional wrestling gave us a gift by making it easy to explain how politics works. Jane Hamsher used to talk about kabuki theater, but kayfabe turned out to be a much better analogy. Pretend conflict, pretend announcers, pretend analysis. Passionate fans believe in the spectacle and are hostile to skeptics, which continues to be true for politics and was true for professional wrestling in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Back before the Internet became popular, professional wrestling went to great lengths to pretend it was real. “It was commonplace for wrestlers to adhere to kayfabe in public, even when outside the ring and off-camera, in order to preserve the illusion that the competition in pro wrestling was not staged. This was due in no small part to feuds between wrestlers sometimes lasting for years, and which could be utterly destroyed in seconds if they were shown associating as friends in public, and thus potentially affect ticket revenue.”
In contrast, “rival” politicians, the “adversarial” press, and partisan pundits frequently play, recreate, socialize, and marry. Instead of working hard to keep up the appearance of conflict, they actually boast about their joint social activities. Partisans who are not benefiting from the kayfabe but continue to believe in its reality – even with all the players commingling as friends out in the open – are much more credulous than the professional wrestling fans of yesteryear.
I can’t speak for Eugene Robinson, but I know plenty of people who will echo similar sentiments over another Obama “betrayal” with nothing to gain by supporting Obama. They are avoiding moral responsibility for their own ignorance or inaction. Its easier to feign ignorance or confusion than to demand action.
The most dominant narrative would be through the lens of the Clinton/Obama primary fight which became quite heated as two sets of delusional maniacs argued, but if an Obot(real ones, not the anti-Clinton ones) accepts Obama is incompetent/cruel/hopelessly out of his depth/(insert your choice here),, then they might have to accept responsibility for their smug attitudes about 11th dimension chess, their complaints about liberals, and the effects of policy outcomes from not forcing the President’s hand. Lobbying forced the President’s hand on DADT and gay marriage which demonstrates the dunce can be reached, but the decision of the Obots to blindly support Obama has led to poor policy outcomes when Obama has been shown to respond to pressure (even the delay of Keystone is about this). In the end people like Eugene Robinson (he at least has a financial gain to make) are morally responsible for this suffering, and I don’t think they can handle that.
Maybe. I tend to think the Obots are truly delusional/brainwashed and they’ve always voted Dem. and always will. The Cult of the Dems. Must…..be…..deprogrammed…..
Front an center we have Wide World of ultra-Squirrel…with his forward roll , backwards roll, cartwheel, roundoff, handstand, backwards walk over, forwards walk over, front handspring, back handspring, aerial, back tuck, front tuck, piking back tuck, layout!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiQh571B5M0
on Drawing Blood, poor people have credit card bills mainly because credit cards ARE their form of “savings for emergencies”.
car crashed? get out the Visa. pops got fired again for xyz reason? MasterCard for groceries.
I know, because my family lived it. the problem with being poor is that you never make enough money to ‘save for a rainy day’, so lecturing a poor person about debt collectors is like saying “you should have just starved when your son had to have that emergency appendix operation and couldn’t work for a month!”
I’ve lived in houses with 9 people, 6 of whom were adults and only half of those working, and only one of those working adults at a job that was both full time and above minimum wage. the credit cards really tend to come out then.
my own debts I can’t explain, except to say that he is right–when someone hands you money (even not theoretically “yours”, with all of the sin/debt baggage that it should bring to a working-class person) it’s very difficult to not go splurging around with it and splashing out like you don’t have to worry about that next rainy day. having some form of “extra” is out of all experience for someone like him/me. foolishly, some of us don’t reason well when we’re confronted by it, and act as though we’ve hit the lottery instead of being conscious of the fact that we’ve signed our lives away in blood.
it is an unfortunate learning experience, but just another one of those “(s)he just HAD to figure it out for themselves–no one could tell them anything!” moments.
I only hope my student loans won’t be the same…
car crashing = dying. us poor folk can barely afford car + gas + insurance as it is. driving haphazardly is a luxury for the business class harried soccer mom/dad.
Don’t beat yourself up too much over the credit card thing. The card issuers have all sorts of psychological ploys they use to get you to sign up. Our advertising culture convinces everyone that happiness = stuff and success = spending lots of money, so it’s no surprise that you and (millions just like you) were led into making some bad decisions.
An anecdote: when I was in college, I was a member of the student government for a few terms. My major action was trying to hold the director of the UM Alumni Assoc. accountable for sending mailers to every student encouraging them to take a vacation down to Cabo for spring break, and to charge it on their MBNA Alumni Card. The mailer contained a message that said something like “Wanna go on that Spring Break trip with your buddies but don’t have the cash? No problem, just use your MBNA Alumni credit card!”
Bill, the director, refused to answer my questions and claimed to not see what the problem was. So I waited until lunch time a few days later and then went to the Alumni Assoc. office where, with Bill out dining, I easily got the unwitting secretary to make me a copy of the MBNA contract, despite it’s being clearly stamped “Confidential” on the front.
Their deal was this: the Alumni Assoc. got $20,000 and MBNA got the student directory in electronic format (for ease of mailing; a hard-copy of the directory was available free to anyone) and the right to slap Bill’s name on their advertising to UM students. I’m sure his bonus got a bump for lining up that deal.
So don’t feel bad if you made some bad credit decisions in the past; the PTB are positively pushing people into debt, and even middle-class young adults aren’t prepared to make good decisions in the face of all that social pressure.
In the 1980’s, most students worked summer jobs plus a handful of work-study hours since tuition was a lot cheaper. Few college students had credit cards. By the mid-1990’s, it seemed every college student had a credit card and was using it to buy groceries and other necessities so they could use their cash (plus student loans) to pay for tuition. In the 1980’s, you needed a full-time job (or pay commensurate with a full-time job) to get a credit card. By the mid-1990’s, college students were getting swamped with credit card offers.
I am not sure what changed or why, but within a few years in the early 1990’s, credit cards went from being rare on campus to being ubiquitous.
I started at the university in 1997, by which time there were commonly three different credit card companies soliciting students in the University Center. MontPIRG and the student government successfully got all of them banned from campus…except MBNA, since they had the Alumni Assoc. contract. So the result of a successful student initiative campaign to ban credit card hucksters just ended up giving one of them a monopoly in on-campus advertising.
The standard ploy is to give away a frisbee or coffee mug to any student who fills out an application. I also heard multiple stories of CC reps changing information on student’s applications (DOB, income), quite blatantly.
KPBS radio just had a program about the 50th anniversary of JFK coming to SDSU (then San Diego State college) in June 1963 to give its commencement speech. It was actually political campaigning of a wonderful sort, not kayfabe or kabuki. He was promoting education and America’s need to make it commonly available, and California was a state he wanted to win (had not in 1960).
What a difference between then and now. Then California led the nation, now we’re 49th.
And I know how Lambert likes to dissect speeches. Maybe JFK’s would be one he would have fun with. Kennedy did:
The doc “Maxed Out” shows just how much harm – sometimes lethal harm – the card companies have wrought with their ‘free’ and easy credit.
Why can’t classes be offered for high school seniors about basic financial matters like: buying a car (and how long you’ll be in debt if you buy a new one), renting an apt., taking out a college loan, using (and not being abused by) a credit card, compound interest, regularly setting aside a bit of $ in a savings acct., price comparison, quality comparison, etc.
because that’s termed “social capital”, or Life Skills or even remedial studies.
because the neoliberal paradigm would have it that ALL education only benefits the private individual in their personal quest for income, therefore even kindergarteners parents should buck up and pay for what only adds to their kids future bank accounts.
why aren’t we teaching EVERY American student the basics of first aid? because when you bring this, or any “why don’t we…?” argument out, they’ll remind you that students aren’t learning what the schools are teaching already, therefore it is irrational to give even the meager education that they are getting. there is no bang being returned for the buck in that model.
you know this. we all do. some of us here don’t agree with it. there was another model: that schooling was there to create a functional citizen. I don’t think the Owners want us to know.
why do you think they don’t allow philosophy to be talked about in high schools? why is the main and only function of a high school now to either turn out cannon fodder for the restaurant industry, or send you off to college? we used to have full vocational high schools in this country. we also used to have industry to employ these kids.
we all should’ve known what was coming when high schools could no longer afford to teach auto shop. now they don’t teach driving. eventually, it will all be “pay to play” just like college is. the government will give vouchers, but those will magically fall $49 short of tuition, not counting books. poor people will be relegated to the school whose students graduate to become button-pushers of automated cashier podiums (which prompt you when to say “thank you” and “have a nice day”), and probably still have loans to pay for primary school when they get there.
the whole world seems to have become “how can we make people pay for stuff they used to give each other for free (or organize their governments in order to get it for them at close-to-cost)? that IS what this website’s about, right?
One of the scariest parts of that story is that the writer just assumes that he will be employed as a professor.
This is not at all guaranteed today, even with great grades and being a very good teacher.
It’s a lottery.
Honestly, not trying to troll, but he speaks as thought he’s at the end of poverty or of being poor. Where’s the evidence for that?
I forgot to post this last week when the chicks were born. If you east coasters tune in around 9 am (or so) you can easily catch the eagles’ dawn breakfast. The sun was just coming up, and she uncovered some food that she’d tucked into the nest the night before and began dividing it (unequally) between the chicks. Dad was already off hunting. I need to get an HDMI cable and plug this into the hubby’s bigscreen TV. maybe I can replace all other programming with the 24 hour eaglecam.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/humboldt-bay-eagle-cam
THANK YOU
That is so wonderful! Did not know it existed.
Did know there’s a Monterey Bay webcam:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/efc_lotb/webcam.aspx
ou’re welcome! It’s nice to feel we can share some happiness on this blog amidst the muckraking. Eaglecam has been my antidote as of late.
The Housing Market Recovery Is ‘A Complete Hoax’
Homeownership is at its lowest level in 18 years, but housing prices are rising. Why? Because banks are creating real estate scarcity by buying up homes and selectively stalling foreclosures.
CounterPunch contributor Mike Whitney reminds us that in recent years the Federal Reserve has kept lending rates low. This has allowed Private Equity firms to buy up lots of homes with money they have to pay very little to borrow. The result is the appearance that Americans are buying again. But as the homeownership rate shows, they’re not. Investors are, and this is keeping prices artificially high.
Five Star Institute economist Mark Lieberman has shown that banks are keeping more than 7 million homes off the market in this manner in order to “reduce listings, create the illusion of ‘scarcity,’ and push up prices,” Whitney reports. The housing market recovery, then, is “a complete hoax.”
This deception is made more malicious by the fact that high prices are keeping some Americans out of homes they would buy if they could afford them. Those people are renting instead, some from the banks that are snatching up homes.
But the banks don’t seem to be getting as much money out of their new tenants as they’d like. Analysts at Goldman Sachs recently said that “Rental yields on single-family homes … are compressed. Even among the 10 metro areas where our estimated 2013 rental yields are the highest, the average rental yield is only 5%.”
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_housing_shell_game_20130503/
I’d be curious to know if that 5% is before or after maintenance.
American frame houses are quite fragile, without the structure that eases into a stable, long living configuration. Balloon houses tends toward bending and twisting of support members, opening gaps in seams, and otherwise settling into out of plumb when they’re built to hold together at right angles.
That’s before the crap materials of the last, say, thirty years is taken into account. Lumber yard salesman aggressively defend composite substitutes for production lumber, but that’s just cant. Anything held together with glue will fall apart over a predictable time window, which can only be shortened by moisture, use, poor installation, etc.
And it’s no good expecting the tenants to do the work and buy the materials. That’s not part of being a tenant, and even the square heads figure that out after a while.
Frame houses are a classic wasting asset, and the only way renting them out could be profitable is inflated rents or leaving maintenance out of the TCO. Luckily, it’s pretty much all hot money involved and soon the price will once again drift down toward the ungoosed supply/demand nexus.
Reuters confirms your housing hoax in Las Vegas, a conspicuously lousy place to gamble on housing — a sure loss. Where 8% of SFR houses are now longterm vacant and half again as many in irreparable deliquency, and where REO-to-rentals aren’t panning out, guess what: building permits are now up 50%. Right. Wouldn’t have guessed such insanity in a million years. This is what the genuises of capital allocation deliver, the very worst misallocation of resources conceivable in the hisotry of all manias — exactly the same disaster replayed within five years. As John Cleese would exclaim: “BRILLIANT!!!”
WTF? Why do we smash our heads against the same wall repeatedly? Well, there’s always a greater fool bag-holder for Lloyd’s “shitty deals” (the GSEs now that DeMarco’s gone) and what else are you going to do anyway with that $85 billion a month in free money Benny is air-dropping into bank vaults? Spend it in the most stupid way imaginable and lobby for a bailout when the SHTF.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/us-vegas-housing-specialreport-idUSBRE9410IL20130502
The elite are pathological bubble addicts, and there is no longer an exit this time. They will never ever stop until forced to by a higher power. The next time the SHTF, there will be tears and blood.
Yes and no…. Anyway, Drawing Blood was a good article in a way, personal and heartfelt.
I found it curious though that the author takes on without questioning the idea that the ‘poor’ are also disadvantaged by a lack of education (familial, schooling, cultural, I suppose, though no distinctions are made) concerning how to manage one’s finances, as if he and his family and co-‘poor’ sorta missed out on something class-related, such as how to behave at table at dinner with a Queen (which might be a good ex. of class-gap education, but is of course easy to learn.)
He thus by-passes the fact that the poor have no choice and behave as they do because they are completely constrained. Blood is drawn from them, and it is done on purpose. Secondly, it is most likely the case that as far as student loans and CC debt and whatever, rich college students are just as clueless or knowledgeable as their poor counterparts; if anything the relationship is probably the inverse. But to the ‘rich’, it doesn’t matter, they will not be hit with consequences and *appear* to navigate smoothly. (They get taken as well but don’t talk about it: or their status protects them from the worst scams.)
Had the author taken on board these points, he would not feel the shame he mentions. I find it sad that he has integrated, adopted, the idea that the poor are somehow lacking in financial savvy, skills, good practice (even if it is not specifically an individual’s fault but due to a lack of education, or example, or something or other related to class and/or economic level ..)
Oooo, I might have to get one of those lucid-dream masks. I’ve had four spontaneous lucid dreams in my life and they’ve all been a trip. Very cool feeling, for sure.
But I think people may have the wrong idea about lucid dreaming. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice, but my experiences have not been nearly as controllable as I would have hoped. The setting of the dream, for instance, did not seem to be something I could alter, nor the behavior of others in my dream. I could act without fear of consequences, but I couldn’t really ever “mold” my dream reality.
I’m blushing as I type this, but I’ll share a tidbit of my lucid-dream-life to explain what I mean:
I found myself walking through a post-apocalyptic cityscape. As I passed a rough looking man with a shotgun sticking out of his filthy trench-coat, it hit me: holy shit, I’m dreaming!
So immediately I was no longer scared by the scene around me, just curious. I rounded a smoldering pile of rubble and was confronted by two women who looked like Mad Max extras. One of them was blonde, the other brunette. Being a brunette guy myself (nothing personal ladies), and wanting to try out this lucid dreaming thing a little more (this was my third one), I either thought or said “let’s make the blonde into a brunette.”
Immediately the blonde turned to her companion, laughing.
“He thinks it works like that.” They both laughed at me and I woke up a few moments later, belittled and slightly embarrassed.
You might be able to choose to fly in a lucid dream, but that doesn’t make you God of your dreamscape, at least from my experience (alas).
i love my flying dreams. i never fly high altitudes…my last few flights i notice im doing a nap of the earth. the lower i can get the more exhilarating if feels. this is going to sound real strange but ive come to notice how to control my flight by merging thought and feeling…something like that.
When I was a kid, I could tell whether or not I was dreaming via a simple test. If I could break my bedroom window, I was dreaming. Doesn’t sound particularly objective, I know — but it worked, because I would NEVER do anything like that when awake.
Once the window was broken, I’d climb out on the sill and fly away. If my system was flawed you wouldn’t be reading this, so looks like it worked. :-)
Then I’d have the most beautiful dream, just flying around everywhere. Unfortunately I never have dreams like that anymore. Guess it had something to do with puberty, but who knows?
I definitely want to try the lucid dreaming mask, though. Sounds promising.
ou la la Doc…me thinks steve miller had the similar thang goin on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx3NJ5nRKPk
there is nothin greater than Love
I haven’t heard that song in forever! Love it! Did not know that was its name. Thanks
It was convenient with nightmares I had when I was a kid. I could just fly away. But, for me, emotion instead of thought guided my lucid dreams. If I felt an impulse to fly away, I would suddenly be flying. If I felt trapped or overwhelmed with fear, I’d be stuck on or a few feet above the ground, straining to get higher.
Also, my dreams felt like being immersed in Alice and Wonderland, as recounted by someone telling the story from memory and mixing it up with other stories that had completely different plots. I would suddenly be somewhere else doing something completely different and end up completely confused by my own dream. I would also somtimes think I had woken up, only for it to turn out I was still asleep. I once counted myself mistakenly waking up three times before I finally woke up for real. (Or so I think…)
false awakenings…maybe
McCreery suggests this phenomenological similarity is not coincidental, and results from the idea that both phenomena, the Type 2 false awakening and the primary delusionary experience, are phenomena of sleep.[8] He suggests that the primary delusionary experience, like other phenomena of psychosis such as hallucinations and secondary or specific delusions, represents an intrusion into waking consciousness of processes associated with stage 1 sleep. It is suggested that the reason for these intrusions is that the psychotic subject is in a state of hyper-arousal, a state that can lead to what Ian Oswald called “micro-sleeps”[9] in waking life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening#Symptoms_of_a_false_awakening
you also seem to dream within dreams…wicked
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12723128
if you ever try that lucid dream mask id use caution hehehee
I also experienced sleep paralysis as a kid, as did my father. That is scary as f—. For me, it would usually happen on a hot summer afternoon, with the radio or television playing in the background. I would drift off on the couch in the living room and then partially reawaken and realize I could hear my parents cooking dinner in the kitchen, with the TV or radio on, but I could not move. I would then start to lose consciousness and try violently to fully wake up and regain mobility. Going back to sleep while being paralyzed feels like you are dieing and your consciousness is being snuffed out.
seriously Ned that would be a horrific feeling…especially to a young person, id be paranoid to sleep. as an adult, i hope you experience them less if at all!
I never fly really high, either. And flying is never completely effortless…always requires work. But breathing underwater is pretty easy.
For years, my PTSD treatment has included a single Xanax pill before bed. One of the most reliable effects of this medicine is extremely vivid dreams, both while asleep and — even more fun — during the day, while simply daydreaming for a few minutes, or sitting still to meditate.
In this outermost world, my legs are useless due to wounds from decades ago, so my wheelchair and I have long since bonded. But in the dream world, I spend time every day running, climbing, biking, walking, dancing, and living with no restrictions or pain. Very refreshing.
Most people go exploring, and meet people in lucid dreams, and I do as well. A more profound experience is to stop all your activity while dreaming, and sit still. Realize at that moment that you are watching yourself while knowing that you are watching yourself.
Then close your eyes and go looking for the watcher.
I’ve never had a lucid dream, but once in a dream I was jogging on this trail next to a stream and passed this girl. Seemingly wanting me to stop and talk, she raked her fingernails across my back to get my attention, but jerk that I am I kept running. I’m convinced that she was exterior to my psyche. We are all connected at the quantum level.
“… And I wonder, just into whose dream did who walk?” – Blue Rodeo, Dark Angel
Where’s MLTPB today, anyway?
In my experience, the degree of control varies from one lucid dream to another, even within the dream. Sometimes, I am lucid and get to chose the dream that will happen, but once I do, I am then lost into that dream.
I often have semi-lucid dreams in which I start to suspect I am in a dream, but I do not become certain of it. One time, I was wandering through an airport and couldn’t remember how I had gotten there (a common trigger for lucidity for me), so I pinched myself. It actually hurt and I didn’t wake up, so I decided that I was not in a dream.
When I tried to explain lucid dreaming to my daughter when she was about 8 or 9, we had the greatest difficulty understanding each other until I finally realized that she did not understand what a “lucid dream” was because that was the only kind she had.
I’m astonished to witness a discussion of lucid dreaming in the NC commentariat. Perhaps I should get one of this masks. I hardly remember dreams, let alone dream lucidly.
When facing class discrimination during the hiring process, I don’t think there is anything morally or ethically wrong with lying on applications. Why participate in your own oppression? The notion that you must be absolutely honest with employers, who in turn would think nothing of lying to you, is a sort of slave mentality. If I hadn’t lied on job applications I would never have worked in a decent job in my life. That’s the world we live in.
actually had a Business 101 class instructor who told us that we should just edit out any age or other year indicators that would place us in the “do not hire category”–his solution to being out of the labor force was to remove the years of occupation or anything else that could indicate that you were a) older b) had been out of work for ANY period of time for ANY reason (childrearing, caregiving, lack of prospects, getting trained/schooling).
all I could do was sit in back & grind my teeth. what HR manager is going to do anything to a resume like that than put it straight in the recycling bin?
For you Naked Capitalists out there who prefer reading hard copy to reading online: here’s a tip on how to save both ink and paper.
Example: if you print preview the transcript of Yves’s interview, you’ll see it’s 14 (actually 13) pages long. Too many pages, too much ink. So here’s what I do in situations like this:
1. Copy and paste into MS Word.
2. Go to the rightmost part of the “Home” menu page and click on Select. Then choose Select All.
3. With the entire text selected, reduce the font size to 9
4. Go to where it says “Paragraph” on the same menu page, and click the tiny little arrow on the right. Then on the bottom, where it says “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style,” put a check and click OK.
5. Select the Page Layout menu.
6. Click on where it says Margins and select Narrow.
The document is now a manageable 6 pages long. Don’t thank me, thank Bill Gates.
Thanks, Bill.
id rather thank you…thanks docG. i also select Draft/Economy under Print Preferences.
“print 2 on 1 page” in the printing options.
get out’cher reading glasses, boys & girls.
One more tip for economy-
Laser printers. They are not nearly as expnsive per printed page as inkjets. They also produce better quality.
You can get one of the “all in ones” that also includes a scanner, fax and most useful, copier.
They also make “injet” all in ones now. You want a laser.
If you print even a few pages a week it’s well worth looking at. The “ink” is instead toner, and lasts for many, many more pages per refill.
For photo prints, use a real print shop. Inkjet picures stink, and don’t last more than a few years. I did some rough math and with injets you are paying on the order of 4x as much for a worse product. “mpix” is a professional quality internet printer. Email them the pix and they send the pictures back via regular mail. Most drug stores and even some big box stores will let you email the pictrues and pick them up while shopping.
I can’t think of a situation where injet priters are worth the money.
http://www.officemax.com/technology/printers/laser-all-in-one-printers/product-prod3320220?R=22513718&ssp=true
Not sure it that link will work. It’s for a “Brother” model number “DCP-7065DN”
Similar to the one I have. $179 now. I’ve seen them under $100, watch the local ads.
Most manufatures are similar, but what you want is LASER, and it’s also very nice to have a flat bed “scanner” part. If you are in the store looking, you want to see flat glass surface. If you want to make a copy of anything odd sized, this is key. License, bills, etc…
Having a copier at home is one of the most useful things in the world. Much more useful than being able to print in color.
NEWSFLASH!
South Carolina Outlaws North Carolina
Lawmakers in Raleigh said to be mulling retaliatory legislation..
I thought South Carolina was already against the law.
What do they have down there except drunk and stoned NASCAR fans and confederate flags? Oh, firecrackers, I forgot. Basically paper and gunpowder. So reefer, alcohol, gunpowder, a fat dude drunk and high watching cars go in circles to nowhere before they crash, having fantasies about the confederate flag during beer commercials if he’s not already passed out backwards on the couch with has mouth half open.
So it was quite surprising to find myself smiling at their rebuke of Obama care. Any time I agree with South Carolina about anything it’s a cause for worry. North Carolina, on the other hand, is a cultured oasis full of many highly intelligent individuals interested in the arts and humanities who generally stay sober in order to contemplate the aesthetic pleasures of nature and the works of the mind of man.
Where did you say you were from again?
speaking from my teeny eeny weeny speck on the planet earth, here in Sly Con Valley …
Honestly, if they™ just want people to disappear …and die – which has become quite clear by now – they should make it far, far easier AND FAR LESS HIDEOUS AND PAINFUL ……………
But no, they would rather make it a hidesously slow and tormenting death ………. because they are inhuman, they delight in others suffering …… curruptior optimi pessimi (close enough) ……
Or, perhaps, they™ need to be banished from imposing their death onto others.
Billionaire Kaiser Exploiting Charity Loophole With Boats
Non-profits are very profitable for the people who control them, those who manage them and those who work for them. Lots of $$$$ flow.
These non-profits are abused big time. Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labeled a “dream cause,” has been hijacked by a shiny, pink story of success. Here’s the trailer for a documentary exposing how the breast cancer cause has been corrupted:
http://www.nfb.ca/film/pink_ribbons_inc/trailer/pink_ribbons_inc_trailer
The Elite Sociopaths, of course, love these touchy-feely causes because people fail to look behind the scenes for cui bono.
(We have such a non-profit operating locally. Daddy is a big exec with a Multinational and he funnels $$$$ from the Multinational’s Foundations to his daughter who is the Executive Director of the non-profit. Hubby is also very gainfully employed and travels the World. All on your tax dime!)
Thank you so much for that, ‘Skeptic’ – and, speaking of Non-ProfitSSSSSS (are you listening/reading Mr. Moyers?), The Board of Director$ of the Major ™ $$$$$Non Profit$$$$$$$$ Housing/Shelter Organ, in Ob$scenely wealthy for a teeny eeny handful, $ly Con Valley:
IVSN Board of Directors
$ly Con Valley, where thousands, with no criminal records, are now homeless.
This is one of my absolute favorites, on that Board of Director$™:
as one has to be $tunningly wealthy to re$ide in Hill$borough California.
Oh, and dear Billy Boy Moyers ..if that gut vomit gave you a headache …so sorry I am dying with absolutely no relief in site, …and I am far younger than you, despite my age.
Oh, but let me attempt to put the proper City of London Corp.[$e]™ punctuation, and spelling, on that one, in my blur of fear: of wishing I could just go to sleep, forever, nightmare:
kindness and truly felt comfort,when a person truly attempts to do the kind, merciful thing,. ….. is the only thing worth living to spread among the masses, …and we all know that much.
In ‘other words’:
Hmmmm, Cheryl Westmont, love your resume:
Gee Cheryl, where soes one get that “Community College” ‘position’ of ‘saving the homeless’ (while living admist stunning wealth)..homeless who are dying, despite your efforts™?
I have a Bachelor’s Degree ™ (not that that means diddly …and despite actually being female, and not a “Bachelor”), with “high honors” (and I have a ton of books also) …… and I no longer have enough money to eat,…… despite having no criminal record.
Must be nice, but no, “THANK YOU.”
(apologies, a correction: “Gee Cheryl, where does one get…” …. not: “Gee Cheryl, where soes one get…” )
Nexus?… begins at about the 6:50 mark: http://boingboing.net/2013/04/29/bruce-sterling-on-startups-r.html
This may have been canvassed here before, but I didn’t see it:
http://news.yahoo.com/states-fear-losing-aid-uninsurables-144535417.html
Yet another “bug” in Obamacare: the feds have stopped accepting new applications for the “uninsurables” stop-gap program, and are now telling the states they will cap the amount available to fund the state programs, throwing them into disarray.
Harvard Professor Trashes Keynes For Homosexuality:
http://gawker.com/harvard-prof-slams-keynesian-economics-because-keynes-w-490512512
So with R&R now fodder for late night comedians, we’ve turned to calling pro-growth economists mean names. No word on whether Pete Peterson is holding his breath until he gets his social security cuts.
Is there a more excerable human on the planet than the pop historian Ferguson?
What kind of person do you think Kissinger would authorize to write his biography? Niall appears to be another member of the Axis of Assholes.
Childless too. Gay or childless, not intelligent enough to be an economist. And, not the first time he’s said this. Ferguson even wrote about Keynes sexuality in print back in 1999.
This is acceptable from a Harvard professor?
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/05/niall-fergusons-history-john-maynard-keynes-gayness/64885/
Larry Summer was the President of Harvard, and besides his close association with Ken Lay, he despises females who try to do something outside of the kitchen. Its par for the course.
The WaPo is usually worthless, but this was interesting:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
Surprising that they printed it.