Apologies for the lack of original posts today. I’ve been exhausted all week and my concentration has been lousy. It seems as if I’m somehow channeling the collective NYC heat fatigue even though I’ve been staying inside as much as possible.
MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File Wired (bob). If you are an MIT alum, please write or call and give the alumni office a very large piece of your mind.
Early society ‘not driven by war’ BBC
Neuroscience: Solving the brain Nature. Lambert: “What could go wrong?”
Wow, Again Clare Daly slams the Irish State. This time over Anglo Max Keiser
Mom Seeks Experienced Girl to Take Harvard-Bound Son’s Virginity Gawker. I can see lots of therapy in this young man’s future.
Record Downgrades Foreshadow First Onshore Default Bloomberg
Most Japanese think Fukushima nuclear accident not settled Asahi Shimbun
Going, Going, Gone: Crisis-Plagued Madrid Sells Out Der Spiegel
The European Central Bank Is a Much Bigger Problem for Italy’s Young Than the Elderly Dean Baker, Firedoglake
Water companies raise shortage fears over shale gas fracking Telegraph. Notice the silence from presumably bought-and-paid for municipalities here.
Convicted ex-CIA chief arrested in Panama Aljazeera (charles serano). Oh, this is gonna be fun!
Big Brother is Watching You Watch:
The NSA’s Massive Data Center Is Coming Online Ahead Of Schedule — And It’s More Powerful Than You Thought BuzzFeed (Deontos)
We don’t owe anyone an apology, says US consul over Edward Snowden affair South China Morning Post (Deontos). Being a superpower means never having to say you are sorry.
Snowden’s Dead Man’s Switch Bruce Schneier (Steve L)
White House stays silent on renewal of NSA data collection order Guardian
Privacy group warns against California plan for digital license plates Modesto Bee
N.J. Supreme Court Restricts Searches of Phone Data New York Times
Who is FBI director-nominee James Comey? A Rorschach Test for the left Gaius Publius, AmericaBlog
A life wasted for cheap self-defence Financial Times
State officials balk at defending laws they deem unconstitutional Washington Post
Detroit, Detroit It’s a Helluva Town… Adam Levitin, Credit Slips
What’s So Scary About Rolling Stone’s Boston Bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev Cover? Alternet. I am mystified by the reaction. Do you want accuracy or cartoons? So Dzokhar’s image might strike some people as cute. Are we so victims of halo effect that showing someone who is presumed guilty of horrid crimes was not bad looking is verboten? Or is the concern that we’ll start looking at all those smiling pretty financial services and drug company sales/spokespeople more warily?
It’s Time for Americans to Admit That We’ve Had a Coup d’etat Paul Craig Roberts, Alternet
New agreement on student loan interest rates reached in Senate Daily Kos
‘Financial hurricane’ hits Chicago’s bond rating Chicago Sun Times (Joe C). Wonder if Rahm, contrary to the practice of most city governments, fed Moody’s grim forecasts to get the big downgrade and strengthen his negotiating position.
Can the world cope with a trigger-happy Fed? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
The Time Bernanke Got It Wrong Floyd Norris, New York Times
Flipping returns to the US housing market MacroBusiness. Keep in mind this data is for the first six month of the year, and hence does not reflect the impact of the recent mortgage rate rise.
What’s behind the slowdown in residential construction? Walter Kurtz
Big Banks, Flooded in Profits, Fear Flurry of New Safeguards New York Times. Dirty secret: this is more kabuki. The Business Roundtable is pushing for higher capital, with the quid pro quo that everything else is left in place.
Nine big insurers face tighter regulation Financial Times
Antidote du jour (Vyacheslav Mishchenko):
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Ames on Snowden:
Snowden Unplugged – Mark Ames, NSFW
I’m afraid Ames is right — the American “left”, such as it is, and our sad-assed journalists and bloggers are mostly a bunch of dunderheads who wouldn’t know how to stand the line if it was the only thing that could save their sorry lives. Its clear that most of those who defend Snowden have had such comfortable status quo lives that they can’t be bothered to actually leave their egos at the door for the few minutes it takes to write a reaction piece.
And Snowden, whose actions I’ve defended vociferously, has set his sights so low in terms of what he wants the reaction to be that (and I include Greenwald in this as well, though I do generally like his work very much) he’s already “won”, read: lost. He wants us to make the decision of whether to live in a police state ourselves instead of having it made for us. But since when are the ethical principles of freedom, equality and privacy we supposedly strive for subject to a vote? Is a 51% pro-police state vote not a vote for tyranny? Democracy, even if he actually had such a thing, is not a mutual suicide pact. It is not ethically permissible to vote away our rights and freedoms.
The west has become so morally bankrupt that “legality” has become a proxy for morality. Our writers and “thinkers” barely even mention ethics or morals anymore. I guess higher principles are so 20th century. We don’t want to appear “unserious” do we?
No higher principles?! In fact, we have two complete systems, each designed to be irreconcilable with the other, burning down the village in an ostensible battle for dominance!
“Just consent of the governed”, and all that. Of course, the vote is worth exactly nothing without binding recourse, and the system is designed to prevent and punish binding recourse from without applied against its own. There must be No Alternative to law-buying.
In a culture where combat is the prime social directive and elevates the tyranny of the majority to the pinnacle of democracy through oversimplification to the deep-throated, triumphant-marinated two-word ethic of “Majority rules,” well, yes.
In the genteel culture of the petit-bourgeois (which, ahem, were just a little over-represented among the Founders), that’s a vote for freedom and get off my estate you ruffian or I’ll release the hounds.
Arthur more or less agrees.
Mark Ames, who obviously knows how to write, succumbs to its temptations. Too many words. Along with Doug Valentine and a raft of other names that don’t immediately come to mind, such gritty mudrakers put to shame operators in the Bulger trial. What drives these people? And separates them from journalists like Hersh or Mayer? Who are faithful to the high standards of their calling. Like over-rewarded athletes, maybe they’ve lost it? That’s sad. Rebecca Solnit calls Snowden a Prometheus. That’s happy. Because Prometheus never appreciated he was a hero.
Here’s a link to Solnit’s admittedly hagiographic piece on Snowden:
http://my.firedoglake.com/tomengelhardt/2013/07/18/rebecca-solnit-emerging-from-darkness-the-edward-snowden-story/
Perhaps a useful antidote to the overwrought cynicism of so much of the left. Not that there is any lack of things to be cynical about, but cynicism can manifest as a failure to see opportunities as they arise.
Solnit is a long-winded schoolmarm version of Peggy Noonan, and her letter to Edward Snowden is merely a verbose demonstration of the brilliance and eloquence of Rebecca Solnit.
Who can forget her insulting appeal to lesser evilism “The Rain on our Parade: a Letter to My Dismal Allies” wherein she imperiously “brushes away the buzzing flies” of the “rancid-left”, those “grumpy” “defeatist” Obama detractors. It’s quite telling that in her latest tedious dissertation Solnit twice indicts the Bush administration (& Clinton, Cheney, etc.) while the reigning villain, the immediate enemy of the Constitution, the clear and present danger to the country, remains conspicuously absent.
Snowden himself spoke about chafing under Bush while waiting and hoping for the promised change and only finally taking drastic action when things became much worse under Obama. Where Snowden showed real courage in risking his life, Solnit is deafeningly silent about the Great Deceiver she championed with such scorn for his critics. Her silence on Obama’s grand betrayals only starkly silhouettes her own cowardice as a fauxgressive veal-pen liberal.
I think Mark Ames is jealous of Snowden.
Who will be remembered in 100 years time, the hardworking jobbing journo who lived thru Wild West Russia to tell the tale, or the computer nerd who got lucky?
Really, the whole approach from Ames is pure nark. In the end, who cares whether Snowden is or isnt a real hero, was or wasn’t marketed as one, whether he has made ‘the right ove’ or not, whether Ames has a beef with Greenwald or if Greenwald’s army was nasty to Mark…
Boil away the personal animusus (animii?) and you still have Snowden and his revelations. The contribution from the German author Hochschild yesterday is far more important that any amount of this pointless chest-beating and finger-pointing.
Play the ball, not the man.
I don’t think your response is fair to Ames. If we don’t have the politics to manage the blowback from Snowden’s release of data, we could end up worse off than before, as a body politic. I think that is Ames’s thesis, and it’s certainly plausible.
Yeah, probably. I’m unfair to Ames but he’s unfair to Snowden – he cringes about Ed’s lack of grandeur, his poor grammar, his uncertain historical knowledge. So he’s not Demosthenes and Howard Zinn all rolled into one, hell he’s not even Mark Ames. Me, I am impressed that someone of Ed’s generation, lifestyle, background etc did what he did and while Ames might make the odd salient point re tactics his diatribes tend on balance to seem more like part of the backlash than opposed to it.
I like Mr Hochshild’s suggestion, quixotically impossible though it may be. The Nazi parallel is provocative but valid. Though it made me realise that we’ve not heard much from the intelligentsia on Snowden. Even Ames’ pal Taibbi seems unusually reticent on the subject. You can’t blame them.
State officials balk at defending laws they deem unconstitutional Washington Post
It costs money to defend your rights. This is true both for the State and the individual. There was an item here the other day regarding Patents; same issue, you gotta pay to play. All the law and having rights ain’t gonna get you anywhere unless you have the caching. So, yes, that cop is volating your civil rights when he beats the hell out of you at 2AM but what you gonna do about it, buddy? First folks to talk to about “rights” are minorities.
So if you are 1% or SPOOX or evil people you develop a strategy of constantly putting Constitutional Rights under attack and then put the victims under the stress and cost of constantly defending them.
One practical and demonstrable example is OPT OUT at the airport. Under the situation, as I now understand it, you have the right to opt out. But, if you do so, they make a big deal out of it, you may be treated more harshly, not allowed to fly or invited into a back room……. So, to see how effective a rights attack strategy is go to your local airport and see how many folks are exercising their right to opt out. OPT OUT sure looks like a template to me for a strategy of constant rights violation.
Another strategy to destroy rights is to just pass more and more unconstitutional laws. Probably takes ten years or so to move an action through the system and, by then, the objective may have been achieved. MERS comes to mind here.
Then, if you do defend, you will be in Courts full of political appointees dependent for their perks, privileges, status, and futures on how they bend to the political winds. Do I hear FISA? Then, the ultimate recourse is the Robbers’ Court.
So, it would seem to some that there is a strategy in place to attack and destroy the Constitution and “rights” across the board. And it is in part financed with tax dollars.
If there is no justice, what are governments, but vast systems of robbery?
Re: Early society not driven by war
Those interested in this issue should consider the classic work of Carneiro, also published in Science. It shows that the State originated in several parts of the world by coercion, that means by war, not by voluntary association.
Carneiro, R. L. (1970). “A Theory of the Origin of the State”. Science 169 (3947): 733–738.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Carneiro
Coercion can be – and very likely was – internal. One fraternal interest group – or happy band of brothers – clobbers all their neighbours, and comes to reign over their village locality. From there, they may go on to wage warfare against neighbouring villages. Have a look at Keith Otterbein’s ‘How War Began’
But not all social groups took the same route: humans existed without states for centuries. Flannery and Marcus, ‘The Creation of Inequality’, outline a history of our species which was mostly that of societies which did their best to prevent the growth of permanent hierarchies of power.
As for those isolated tribes, see Ferguson and Whitehead’s ‘War in the Tribal Zone’ or Ferguson’s fine ‘Yanomamo Warfare.’ Anyone who is interested in the anthropology of warfare should read some of the papers which can be downloaded on Ferguson’s page at Rutger’s – http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/r-brian-ferguson .
“humans existed without states for centuries”
The Art of Not Being Governed
by James C. Scott
is a fascinating look at exactly that.
Graeber’s Debt would make the same point.
Where war came from I can’t say, but it is apparently essential and even beneficial to economic and social function of a complex society. Or so sayeth the great thinkers of Iron Mountain.
For your weekend reading pleasure, if you’ve not read it already:
http://www.teachpeace.com/Report_from_Iron_Mountain.pdf
While I won’t argue with the conclusions of the researchers, it does always bug me when anthropologists assume that present-day “hunter-gatherer” societies are hold-overs from our pre-historic past, as if evolution just kinda stopped for these people.
Assuming they don’t have a time-machine they’re not telling us about, how can they possibly know that? I’m sure they have their reasons for thinking that, but this whole “fossil culture” hypothesis seems highly suspect to me.
Yep.
And the science can change, depending on political exigencies and what the latest scientific fad happens to be.
For a wonderful discussion of this, one probably couldn’t do much better than Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archeology of the Unknown Past.
Which is one of the reasons why Ferguson is interesting. His ‘Yanomamo Warfare’ shows how the patterns of violence reported on by other anthropologists were to a great extent shaped by current events and conditions, rather than determined by primitive impulses or Darwinian pressures. The main argument of ‘War in the Tribal Zone’ is that what we call ‘tribes’ are modern formations, and that their use of collective violence is a reaction to contact with larger, state-centred societies. (Their claim is not that there was no violence in earlier societies, but that present-day warfare is exactly that: present-day, and to be understood politically).
By and large, it can be safely assumed that there have been no ‘isolated tribes’ anywhere for well over a century. Indeed, if Wolf’s ‘Europe and the people without History’ is to be believed, we’ve all been in pretty much the same boat for about 500 years. Or at least, we’ve been sailing on the same waters.
+100. There are physical realities that become genetically wired for little things like survival – like the rejection of false growth trends. Hello Mr. Minsky.
Yes. There’s at least one obvious difference between every hunter gatherer society of the present, and most of those of the past. The ones in the present live exclusively in those environments on the margin of cultivation, on the land so poor that farmers have not been interested, until recently, in establishing farms on them.
Most of the cultures of the past lived on those rich lands, few of them on today’s margins. That has to skew the statistics of hunting and gathering.
What would Pinker make of all this?
I can’t help but detect an element of wishful thinking with that report. War seems to be a constant in human behaviour. There was a study recently on mortal head wounds to skulls of women in stone age Scandinavia which shows a huge number were killed with blows to the head.
http://www.livescience.com/27055-neolithic-skulls-show-violence.html
It’s difficult to account for that without constant warfare.
Constant in the sense of “regular” or “continually recurring,” maybe, but perhaps not absolute or intrinsic.
Regarding Caral (or Norte Chico) civilization, a complex pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in north-central coastal Peru between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC:
[Emphasis added]
Cities by John Reader (2004), p. 12
(See also Mann “Oldest Civilization in the Americas Revealed,” Science 7 January 2005: vol. 307 no. 5706 34-35 [PDF here]: “…the cities of the Norte Chico were not sited strategically and did not have defensive walls; no evidence of warfare, such as burned buildings or mutilated corpses, has been found.”)
You are misunderstanding the point made in the article.
The evidence of women skulls in stone age Scandinavia is consistent or neutral with regards to the point made in the article, since those wounds are consistent with murder.
It’s Time for Americans to Admit That We’ve Had a Coup d’etat Paul Craig Roberts, Alternet
Bookend for Paul Craig Roberts:
“America has no functioning democracy,” Carter told a meeting of The Atlantic Bridge in Atlanta on Tuesday, Der Speigel reports.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/18/carter_warns_america_no_democracy_prism/
Very interesting comments there about the legitimacy of US elections.
Time for a US Government In Exile. Headquarters: Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
Here’s ten governments in exile:
http://listverse.com/2008/10/10/10-governments-currently-in-exile/
Unknown how many are CIA financed.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by the level of ignorance and stupidity in our culture as evidenced by the reaction to the Dzokhar cover of Rolling Stone. For any thinking person, it’s a very interesting story trying to determine how a kid that did not evidence any radical leanings to his American friends and seemed to be fully integrated into American society could perform such a horrible act of terrorism. His profile totally flies in the face of what Americans are sold regarding radical Muslim terrorists.
I have a theory: Total adoring worship of his big brother (which might be encouraged in a very traditional family) including possible early sexual exploitation by said brother.
Hey, it’s a theory at least…..and political theories typically don’t include individual psychology dynamics.
Oh, and let me add, in reply to Yves’ remark that he’s “cute”.
The lad is more than cute, he has the classical male beauty of a Botticelli angel.
Not my type, but yes, even with the peach fuzz on his lip, in that photo he looks like a classic puer aeternus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puer_aeternus
Mouth is too small. Kinda of repulsive. Straight nose, at least from the front. Eyes are nice, I suppose.
Not that I’m into men, mind you, but once I thought it important what the competition looked like.
I’d say you’re way better looking as a woman than he is as a man but of course there’s no accounting for women’s taste (Thank God!).
You’re having impure thoughts Beard! Isn’t there a quote for that? :)
“A man whosoever lusteth in his heart and considereth not to lay and multiply his seed shall in no ways prosper, for where there is one there cannot be two, but where there is two, one upon the other, yeah, they be increased and findeth favor in the sight of the Lord.” -Confabulations XII, v. iv-vii
ROTFLMAO!
Yea if they shave off the stache it could work as Dionysus. No facial hair allowed. Faaach, I bet the dude didn’t know what hit him to get sucked up into that. Nobody ever does. Just like they get sucked up from Haavaahd to the trading desk to ripping the faces off women and children, financially speaking. Just like a fly banging on a screen. ecce homo.
Well, one must keep up with what women find attractive lest one’s day come and go fruitlessly, no?
But hey, until women quit marring their flesh with tattoos, the very prettiest one of them is safe from me.
But truthfully, I’d best do my looking in a church to avoid that “unequally yoked” condition.
Part of what is undoubtedly at work is revulsion to the sort of thing Hannah Arendt theorized about in Eichmann in Jerusalem: “the banality of evil.”
The need to demonstrate the invincibility and omnipotence of the all-powerful security state also seems to be at work. Take a look at these photos released by a sergeant of the Massachusetts State Police, for instance:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/18/us/massachusetts-tsarnaev-photos/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
In one of the photos, Dzhokhar appears with the dot of a laser scope trained on his head. What we have here is more shock and awe.
The Tsarnaev brothers, along with Edward Snowden, have inflicted some serious damage on the image of the hallowed security state and its putative godlikeness, with it coming across more like a confederacy of fools, feckless bumblers and incompetent buffoons.
Some serious perception control is needed to restore the menacing image and the probity and moral capital of the security state.
The asshole Sergeant who took those Tsarnaev photos was relieved of duty…
For an entire DAY!
Surely this sentence is too harsh! I truly feel sorry for him!
Seriously, that is such a pathetic slap on the wrist they should not even bother.
generally agree with you but i don’t think the tsarnaevs, specificially, tarnish the image of the security state. as the story was happening i was impressed in a technical sense with the relative rapidity with which the various security cam shots were gathered together. it brought home in a quite concrete way the fact, intellectually apparent for some time, that avoiding detection by hiding in the crowd has been consigned to the dustbin of history. so while i agree that the reaction is a demonstrative show of force, i think in this case it’s more just because the state apparatus was handed a nice opportunity to do some demonstrating, rather than it being because they were made to look a fool (a diagnosis i agree with re: snowden)
“For any thinking person, it’s a very interesting story trying to determine how a kid that did not evidence any radical leanings to his American friends and seemed to be fully integrated into American society could perform such a horrible act of terrorism.”
Yes, VERY interesting. Doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it?
But this thinking person is still waiting to see the video in which he and/or his brother actually set their backpacks on the sidewalk.
I’m also thinking about the 17-year-old “friend” of theirs who has since been executed by the FBI in his apartment in Orlando with a bullet to the back of the head.
Last but not least, I’m thinking about the Craft operatives definitively photographed WITH backpacks before the incident and WITHOUT backpacks after.
This being a thinking person can be a tough gig.
It’s a good list of questions. I’ve been curious about how a bomb in a pressure cooker resulted in only shrappenel at leg level.
It’s not so much conspiracy theory as it is lack of answers to questions that should have been asked – and are still not being asked.
Dzhokhar Anzorovich “Jahar” Tsarnaev is accused of being a (so called) Boston bomber,or suspected of perpetrating the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombings. I was not aware that he had yet been proven guilty with out doubt in a court of law.
Loved Evansp-Pritchard’s column today, but most for his two side comments: (1) he’s a monitarist, and (2) he admits that Keynesianism works while monitarism has failed.
In other words, one of the most respected financial journalists just admitted he’s irrational, believing in ideas that he admits have failed. No wonder we can’t get out of this economic hole.
AEP was one of the best in 2007 and 2008 in predicting the trajectory of the markets based on his monetarist-influenced readings.
The Rolling Stone Alternet link is broken. Could somone post the fixed one?
Here ya go:
http://www.alternet.org/media/whats-so-scary-about-rolling-stones-boston-bomber-dzokhar-tsarnaev-cover
Fixed in the post, thanks to both.
RE:Mom Seeks Experienced Girl to Take Harvard-Bound Son’s Virginity Gawker. I can see lots of therapy in this young man’s future.
Gawker link about the young man that will need therapy after mom sends him to Harvard is an unhappy clicky-clicky :o(
Here is the proper link:
http://gawker.com/mom-seeks-experienced-girl-to-take-harvard-bound-sons-829489972
A little-known condition known informally as “URL melt,” I believe; sweat dripping onto the keyboard causes the CPU to misfire in mysterious ways. Link fixed.
I think that should be known as “blogger-melt”.
Reminds me of a quote from some selfhelp book a neurotic person quoted to me once:
“Seek and ye shall find..” applies.
Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. [His] mother cleans them. r.rudner
In other news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RKMU0vskC0&list=FLJbTzUssQTnqKru6feT3e2w
Steve the Cat Lands on Mars
Hillarious
The Time Bernanke Got It Wrong Floyd Norris, New York Times
Interesting article but I’m not sure what it is recommending. I like both Keen and Minsky and they understood the debt problem built into the Great Moderation which it seems that Bernanke is admitting to also.
Robert Barbera also agrees with the analysis of Minsky. In addition…
“”I asked Mr. Barbera for his evaluation of Mr. Bernanke’s tenure. “He missed on the way in, big time,” Mr. Barbera said, referring to the debt crisis, “but he appreciated what was happening, and very aggressively responded. It was not in the standard tool kit. But he did it. He did it aggressively, and he did it to good effect.”
If Mr. Bernanke’s successor, whoever he or she is, will take to heart the lesson that Mr. Bernanke missed during the good times — that stability itself eventually becomes destabilizing — the chances of a Great Recession II will be greatly reduced””
I take this to mean that Bernanke missed the debt problem hidden in the Great Moderation but when that bubble burst he responded with QE to provide liquidity and avoid a major credit contraction swing.
Now the QE is becoming a false ‘stabilizer’ similar to the Great Moderation and leading to a similar false build up of asset prices. As the Great Moderation should have been tapered to avoid the crash so QE needs to be tapered.
Also there are fiscal ways to add liquidity to the system which can lead to real economic productivity rather than asset appreciation.
RE:
Neuroscience: Solving the brain Nature. Lambert: “What could go wrong?”
I can’t help but think about the scene in Young Frankenstein where Igore replies to Frankensteins question – Who’s brain did you get?. Response – Abby. Query- Abby who? Response; Abbynormal
Tread Full of Care MyFriend…
I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
~Shelley
ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.
Devils Dic.
Not to fret, AbyNormal.
When Shaw was asked about the feasibility of Social Darwinism, anthropo-sociology and Eugenics, all which were the scientific rage of his day, suggesting he ought to have offspring with Isador Duncan, he replied: “It might have my body and her brains.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/links-71713.html#comment-1315257
Every smile makes you a day younger. ~Chinese Proverb
thanks again FM
Young Frankenstein in Five Minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5AG0Tqh3A
skippy… had too~
HeY SkippY saw a video that made me think of you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXVo2-nkzFQ
“Life is like a wave. you can’t change the way it breaks, but you can change the way you ride it.”
Boooyha[!!!]…. had a quiver of boards in Cali, yet, my fav was a massive old Weebly. Longer than my 67 VW Kombi, three balsa runners and heavy glass [anvil proof (ask other peoples knee caps and body parts)].
Curiously found by a mate having a bang on the beach at night with his girl [early 80s], she complained about something sharp poking in her back. Further excavation revealed a treasure, a time traveler awoken from slumber.
Now three of the funnest features of this mammoth was watching others try and ride her, from the point of waters entry [any deviation to wave is magnified no matter how small (swept inaptly to shore – indignation)], no leaning allowed ;) and the gawkers watching this lumber pulled out of the Kombi in the parking lot.
skippy… Now then there’s the line up… after suffering jibs about old timey ripping tools [although back in the Kombi the latest six channel – quad scag – light glass – one hand air dry splinter board resided]. Myself could drop in early on any deviation in sea level and then carve the mammoth around…. like bowling skittles… roaches and day light… they ran… oh they had no want of…
P[ositive.S[hite. “22 going on 23”
Well, they told me, when I have these bad dreams.
To try and put endings on the dreams like I come out a winner.
But every time I try to do that, I just don’t get anywhere It seems, I keep having the same dream over and over every night.
And that’s why I’m up so late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9tjCfyF64
butthole surfers need seasoning to share your uniqueness; ))
I thought how, with the peeling wave as an ideal of perfection, the surfer’s object of passion becomes the very essence of ephemerality-not a thing to be owned or a goal to be attained but rather a fleeting state to inhabit. So much more of my time, after all, passed in the dreaming and searching than in the actual riding of waves; so much more time spent driving the coast and floating between sets. Of a whole year of devotion, probably no more than a day was spent truly on my feet and surfing, so I couldn’t view such a moment as this without an ardent, frustrated desire, a near-religious craving for wholeness. Unlike so many other passions: while on might, I suppose, wish for a bloom to remain in blossom, for a ripening grape to hang always on the vine-yearnings John Keats made his own, for fleeting beauty and youth, the understandably hopeless hope that we might freeze our world’s better moments-the wave’s plenitude is rather in the peeling of the petal, the very motion of the falling fruit.
Daniel Duane, Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast
Skip To My Lou My Darlin (oulala)
my man Peter Wooley still regrets the fact he didn’t work on that (he production designed for Mel Brooks from Blazing Saddles, but was on another gig at the time)
he has a great quote re. film, but applicable to much in the modern world:
“fast, good, cheap: you can have any 2….”
….guess which 2 are default…
One has to wonder if the Nature article isn’t deeply satiric, presenting side-by-side as contemporary modern neuro-imaging and techniques still in use after a century. After all, what could it possibly mean to “understand the brain”??
We know the brain is adaptive. Most organisms (even possibly some U.S. voters) can change their mind. While some brain research is laudably focused on physical disease, most of the research cited here is obviously ultimately focused on control of thought. What a waste of money! Getting rid of teachers and free speech is time-tested and far more cost-effective.
Yes. This is an issue of reflexivity. To “understand” in this instance can only mean to “fix” — in all the senses you can imagine.
Thorstein says:
It appears people cannot only change their mind, but they may also have some ability to change their brain as well:
Thorstein says:
It appears people cannot only change their mind, but they may also have some ability to change their brain as well:
The young former guerrillas decided to put down their weapons, learned to read, and changed the anatomy of their brains. It is hard to imagine a better case for the ability of the subjective self to change the objectively visible one. The study is one of many warnings to those who may too readily conclude that if something is seen in the brain, it must be causing what is seen in the mind.
Not so. It is only a correlation, another set of data to be meticulously compared with those of thought and behavior, leaving the task of discerning causality as difficult as ever, sometimes more so. Yet it is very, very important data, and it can certainly change our sense of ourselves—especially if we are among those who think of the mind as something separate from the brain.
For some reason I get lost in cyberspace when I try to post the link, but it is
The “New Biology” and “The Self”
from
The Official Website of Melvin Konner, M.D, Ph.D.
Absent supernatural explanations, how else? That said, it would be interesting to know what else learning to read changed — even if bacteria in the gut could be a little far-fetched. The body is, after all, a complete system, even if the powers that be don’t treat that way.
One’s body is not always oneself.
Just as the government is not always the people.
The people is like one’s soul and the government is one’s body.
NSA’s Massive Data Center has so much money and megalomaniac dreams invested in it that it will be difficult to reverse the momentum. Just as well they are putting things together with technology that will be more or less obsolete in a few years. Legal constraints (not that it has proven itself to work as the existence of the facility seems to prove) will probably not be enough to put the brakes on, as the capacity will go to waste if only legal wire taps were allowed. I really do believe they must have a “John Yoo” memo that states that plain storage of un-reconstituted data packets is not surveillance.
This is the equivalent of the massive nuclear arsenal in the military security binge. Easy to create but a bitch to dismantle, with incentive to keep, as it feels so safe and comfortable a security blanket.
>> NSA’s Massive Data Center has so much money and megalomaniac dreams invested in it that it will be difficult to reverse the momentum.
Would you like an F-35 with that?
There was a time when the F-104 was touted to be the last manned fighter plane. In the subsequent 50 years planes got slower and got loaded up with conventional arsenal more in keeping with the primitive battles being waged. Fantasies of aerial combat is the only reason for the
F-35, and the only reason why it’s got a cockpit. Cheaper not to have a pilot.
“Fantasies of aerial combat is the only reason for the
F-35, and the only reason why it’s got a cockpit”
Nah, its because no self respecting Pentagon Col. wants to get tagged with a cost effective program. Human rated aircraft, no less fully wigeted “fighters” are the most expensive things out there, other than of course the floating torpedo magnets they have to set them on.
Build, then bomb. Build, then bomb. Everyone’s a winner.
The NSA’s obsession. Just think what kind of software they have to have. It has to be as complete and complex as all the languages on the planet, and all the known codes; it has to be as complex as all the dictionaries for all the languages on the planet, the their ongoing word derivations; it has to include innuendo and interpretation, beyond the scope of software and ultimately relying on people (god help us) to decide what is goin on… And the error rate? Naturally, the “intelligence” gathered really can’t be very reliable, and certainly not cost effective. Not to mention how easy it will be to sabotage. Let the NSA write a new “bible code’ and pretend like their work here is done.
NSA Quote of the Year!…
“Let the NSA write a new “bible code’ and pretend like their work here is done.”
H/T & Amen Sista STO
+100 – – exactly this!
In my opinion, media criticism of Rolling Stone’s cover photo of Dzokhar Tsarnaev is based purely on envy that the magazine published the photo’s first. Once the trial starts to ramp-up we will see Dzokhar photos and video 24-7. Where will the outrage go then? Once again the corporate media and government apparatchiks demonstrate that they consider the American people to be children.
I would say that the reaction was because of the perception that RS doesn’t DO actual news, just celebrity puff pieces. So putting him on their cover evinces a reaction that it wouldn’t if it was on the cover to Time or Newsweek.
“Time” does actual news. Such a kidder!
The masses must be coddled at all times, which means ugly photos of their criminals. Oh no, he looks cute! I guess they need their terrorists to look like this: http://www.bollyn.com/public/KSM_face.jpg
From my small sample, admittedly anecdotal and based on ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ this latest kerfuffle is more right-wing pseudo-outrage.
>> Early society ‘not driven by war’ BBC
So, then, we’ve advanced. Right?
You find this, for example, in a lot of places about the Neanderthal Man:
“It is now becoming clear that the Neanderthals had cultures and social organizations developed to the point that community members unable to provide for themselves were fed and cared for…”
So, it appears we Sapiens Sapiens (really?) have much to catch up with an extinct species that was ‘evolutionarily unfit.”
Hmmmmm….
But we can war on anything and anyone.
Yup.
And after we have destroyed this planet, we ‘deserve’ another chance at another hospitable planet, according Stephen Hawking (from the film, Surviving Progress).
Thank God people listen to him because he is very smart.
RE: http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/the-nsas-massive-data-center-is-coming-online-ahead-of-sched
Apparently not too relevant as long as it doesn’t affect Boobus Americanus’s Cable Reception and ability to gas up the 300hp Sears Shed on Wheels
wait till they put transponders on the lawnmowers..
Nooooooo[!!!!]
8 signs your cat is actually a dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztGJhiBQTo
I often confuse my cat with a police cruiser – when they make a sound, no one can tell the difference.
my cat is named “phydeaux”. only cat i’ve ever known who comes when you call him..
My success rate is about 50%, or maybe less (I am not too scientific about it).
“Bankruptcy can take care of the debt, but it can’t get the consumer a job.”
Apt. I, too, have been wondering if Detroit can cover it’s operating costs, even if relieved of 100% of it’s debt. The article points out that the footprint of the city is far to large to be supported by tax revenues. The difficulties in reducing that footprint are obvious…….but what about growing the revenues? I’ve never been to Detroit, but I have to assume that there is a reason (besides just the auto industry) that it grew to 1.8 million population in the first place.
The problem with the Rolling Stones cover is NOT that the kid looks cute, the problem is that the kid looks like a regular white kid.
A cute regular white kid.
If he was an a damn ugly white kid it wouldnt be such a problem.
This should go here:
Kids, where have you hidden daddy’s brain washing sham poo? I need it – my brain is not clean!
Personally, I don’t get why it would offend people. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes.
I would *think* this would please the security folks. It plays toward justifying their actions at airports…. taking everyone’s nail clippers away and becoming the makeup police.
I want to thank Rolling Stone for not treating the American people like a complete idiot. Thus shining a light by their reaction upon so many who are idiots. I would have never considered purchasing this issue but now I will go out of my way to do so and certainly go out of my way to spend money anywhere but CVS or Walgreens ever again.
Re: Convicted ex-CIA chief arrested in Panama
Wasn’t there a cargo ship originating out of Cuba & destined for North Korea that was stopped in Panama for carrying missile parts?
How about removing the missile parts & placing the ex-CIA chief in the cargo hold & send the ship on it’s way? The dude could seek political asylum in North Korea!
How do you tell which among a group of young North Korean communists will make good capitalists in the future?
Answer: pick the best and most ardent kids.
Why?
Ego and intelligence.
And their one message after becoming rich North Korean billionaires?
“We are saving the world.”
Ha!
Timely connection. And “Mr. Bob” was so disoriented trying to escape detection he slipped over the border to Costa Rica thinking he would be on friendly territory. The CR authorities, obviously notified, sent him back because they knew they (CR) do indeed have an extradition treaty with Italy (?). And now he has been handed over to Interpol to no avail for the Italians because he is still on Panamanian soil.
On smiling: When I see smiling faces in the media or (very occasionally) on the teebee, I ask “What the hell have they got to smile about?” That’s how bad it’s gotten. And I’m never cynical enough!
“Politicians are often shown smiling as this is considered a sign of hospitality and confidence.”
Showing teeth is a way to remind people of your predatory strength and your masticating power.
Most people, when choosing mates, prefer those with big teeth.
Kids, where have you hidden daddy’s brain washing sham poo? I need it – my brain is not clean!
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.
~Robert Bloch
Re: Who is FBI director-nominee James Comey? A Rorschach Test for the Left.
In all fairness to the left, Obama has a tin ear to what the left wants and it has figured out that he’s a fraud, so I believe the left has pretty much given up on him for hope and change. Also, the puppet master elites have probably given Obama a menu of oligarch apparatchiks that he is required to choose from.
But, hey, put on a smile and cheer up…….gay marriage.
Barry Ritholtz has a post up today that I find disturbing. And I can’t quite figure out why I find it so disturbing. I do have a pessimistic view of the world – but not in regards to investing. Rather, as to American society’s priorities and what I view as a horrific waste of resources. And yes, that waste of resources, I do find unsustainable and ultimately, destructive.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/07/the-narrative-fails/
Anything not about consuming less and sharing what we have, I find disturbing.
do you eat beef?
A little and once in a while.
It’s getting necessary to listen to economists and substitute it with chicken, or with fish, according to my doctor, beside eating more vegetables.
Yes, and with relish. But… “I can change, if I have to, I guess…” (Red Green)
i think kevyn orr is secretly moonlighting:
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/economy/2013/07/17/mcdonalds-worker-budget/index.html?iid=GM
UGGH, from the War on Whistleblowers (and meaningful books):
07/19/13 Appeals Court Rejects Reporter’s Privilege in Leak Case
The NYT article on Bernanke didn’t quite bring home the point, but it was very refreshing to read and I loved the photo of Steve Keen because everytime I see him I feel happy. Strange but true. It didn’t bring home the point because it failed to elaborate on the destructive effect of debt on an innocent society/economy. That deregulation ultimately causes mass deflation; destruction far beyond what is acceptable merely because the panic hits the fan. What Bernanke and all CBs should do is do QE on a permanent basis so the vigilantes wont have any more bones to pick. If Bernanke had done QE in 2007 there would not have been massive foreclosures; 5 million homeowners would still be in their homes. And also, the NYT really, really should have pointed out what an idiot Hensarling is. That was another big sin of omission.
this one is for You STO…
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/01/5538705/the-nsa.html
(im torn between ‘OK’d Obama’ & ‘Oh,HI!’ bahahahaaa)
The official complaints about the “glamourization” of Dzhokhar are hilarious. Why do Americans treat terrorists as supermen? Could it be because of the absurd amounts of airtime and spending they receive? How much did they spend hunting bin Laden? Why were people amazed at the feat, rather than how long it took? How much did that single operation to get Dzhokhar out of a goddman boat cost? Why are people constantly amazed at the basic banality of a terrorist’s daily life? Bin Laden would have had less than half the impact outside of the CNN age.
Of course, this kind of glamourization benefits intelligence agencies, cops, weapons companies etc. But pointing out that Dzhokhar could have been a credibly handsome young bachelor does not.
Stop the Kelly nomination,
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
not nominate NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to be Homeland Security Secretary .
Yves, any chance you could do a post on the bankruptcy of detroit?
Uh-oh:
Look out! Hard-right blogosphere going totally non-linear,
the FoxNews crowd are beside themselves! Here comes all the, “Obama starting a race war”, “Obama divisive when he should be healing…”, “Obama sez ‘open-season on white people”, and the like. Well, bully for the O-man…lays it on the line, and sod his second-term political agenda. This is the sort of stand that really could turn the MSM and millions of white people into all-out pushback mode. How dare the pres’dint of ALL of us take up an advocacy position of a small minority? “Start a dialog.”? Say what? We’ve had a dialog already, move on!
The official cultural and political line since 2008 has been that the US is now “post-racial”, as even Obama obliquely had noted. Not true, people, but it’s much easier to adopt yet another feel-good myth about good ol’ Merka that is grievously at odds with the actual day-to-day experiences of people of colour – particularly black people – than it is to acknowledge that racism is alive and doing quite nicely, thank you very much.
The Supremes even put an exclamation point upon how little the majority even regards the ability of black people to cast a vote without interference or harassment, for God’s sake!
The man certainly didn’t do himself or his second term a favour by his comments, and his normal caution and on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand messaging was completely tossed out, as at long last Obama finally found his passion, and his “blackness”, as it were.
¡Oh, por-r-r favor-r-r-r, mata me ahora mismo, inmediatamente! (Drone me now, Bro’!) Are you really buying the basilisk’s empathy shtick? Again? Seriously?
You really must put down that hopium pipe, dude … like, right now! And no more Kool-Aid; drink only bottled water from now on that you’ve distilled yourself. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me several hundred times … they’ve definitely put something in the water.
I’m sure the whole show, from the greatest flimflam man in the history of the world, was truly captivating and enthralling, but I’ll pass, thanks. I admit I pull the plug whenever I see his lips moving, but I was almost entranced by a snippet of it this morning from the gushing sycophants on MSDNC. Fortunately, I had the remote handy, with Sharknado cued up on the DVR.) Whew, that was a close call.
I believe that manifest hypocrisy is a feature of our current president.
He has got the play all sides against each other and hide the bosses routine perfected in his 2nd term.
A shinny reflection of the manifest hypocrisy of our global plutocratic led class system. All the while trying to drag us off the precipice of existence while claiming its Gods work.