John Nash, Mathematician Portrayed in ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ Killed in Crash Wall Street Journal. Telling that in America, a great mathematician has to be identified via his biopic rather than his achievements. And yes, the WSJ featured a picture of Russell Crowe as John Nash next to a proper picture of Nash.
Famed ‘A Beautiful Mind’ mathematician John Nash, wife, killed in N.J. Turnpike crash NJ.com
Will Computers Redefine the Roots of Math? Quanta Magazine (David L)
This Airplane Seat Can Tell If You’re Nervous Huffington Post. So I can keep my fridge from spying on me, but not seats in public? Plus my father had a resting pulse of 40. A seat like that would diagnose him as being in trouble.
This insane device promises to give you perfect vision for the rest of your life Business Insider (David L)
Our bond with dogs may go back more than 27,000 years ScienceDaily (Chuck L)
Debating a New Right to Bring Dogs to Brunch New York Times
The Viking’s grave and the sunken ship: New photogrammetry method transforms archaeological sites ScienceDaily. Chuck L: “It’s the new methodology that’s of interest here.”
HSBC fears world recession with no lifeboats left Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Did China Just Launch World’s Biggest Spending Plan? Forbes
Japan Slides Back into Trade Deficit Wall Street Journal
European Central Bank Expands Mandate as It Struggles to Keep Zone Intact New York Times
A rebuke in Spain Politico
Spanish elections: Podemos and Ciudadanos make gains BBC. Podemos does worse than expected in elections in March, moves toward the center, and takes ground against the corrupt, austerity-lovin’ Rajoy administration.
Twilight Falls for Spanish Establishment as Podemos Gains Bloomberg
UK’s Labour Party says it won’t try to block EU referendum Associated Press
Grexit?
Greeks threaten default on IMF payment Financial Times
The Impossible “Honorable Compromise” Stathis Kouvelakis, Jacobin
The truth about Riga Yanis Varoufakis. FWIW, Peter Spiegl of the FT defended himself on Twitter, stressing that he’d never said anyone called Varoufakis bad names or that Varoufakis had lost his cool (and see his to. The scurrilous rumor started at Bloomberg, based on a report by an unnamed single source (!). It was amplified in stories that made the alleged name-calling a headline item. Note that other accounts, like Spiegel’s and Reuters, described the meeting as tense and acrimonious.
The fate of Greece lies in Tsipras’s hands Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times. Wow, this is depressing. The normally astute Munchau says that Greece should be willing to accept a primary surplus of up to 2.5%. Huh? In a deeply depressed economy? And no acknowledgment of the political corner that Tsipras is in with pensions, that it is a third rail issue for him to cut them (with good reason, given that extended Greek families have more people supported by the key earner than is the norm in the rest of Europe), while the rest of Europe won’t stand for Greeks keeping their supposedly lavish pensions. But does point out why a Grexit is not all it is cracked up to be.
Default alone will not bring any deliverance for Greece Telegraph. Aiee. This is why Greece is fucked. The only solution he can envisage, like other orthodox economists, is for Greece to have a bigger trade surplus. But Greece’s labor cost reduciton has already shown that Greece did not get the trade lift that the models anticipated. Other studies have shown that Greece, like many of the periphery countries, has a poor export mix. It would need a major economic restructuring, and not just a cheap drachma, to have exports drive growth. What Greece really needs is big fiscal deficits, or a finesse like EIB infrastructure spending (as set forth in Yanis Varoufakis’ A Modest Proposal).
Greeks back government’s red lines, but want to keep euro ekathimerini
The Heat Is on Greece’s Alexis Tsipras, From Inside and Out New York Times. Note the final comments: “….while Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor, indicated that the euro could benefit from a Greek exit.” Code: The US would benefit from a relatively weaker dollar. This is an argument for the US to stand aside.
Syraqistan
Defense Secretary Opens Possibility to Strategy Shift on Iraq Wall Street Journal
Yemen offensive sparks Saudi jingoism Financial Times
Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS Medium (EM, William B)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
From the Very Creation of the Internet, U.S. Spy Agencies Fought to Block Encryption George Washington
7 ideas completely lost on people who are “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” Salon (furzy mouse)
Waiting for the attack on Fort Sumter Corrente
Class Warfare
Our Pampered Wilderness New York Times (David L)
The rise of non-standard work undermines growth and increases inequality Bill Mitchell
Public-Sector Jobs Vanish, Hitting Blacks Hard New York Times
Why It Pays to Be a Jerk Atlantic
Antidote du jour (Lance N):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
Typo: “boipic” should be “biopic”.
A key point that everyone should take away from this accident is that both Nash and his wife were ejected from the vehicle because they were not wearing seat belts. Thus they join a long list of people (most notably Princess Diana) who died from stupidity.
Having been fortunate enough to grow up in California’s car culture, and even more specifically being involved in racing since 14, I always wear my seat belt. Hell, I’ve been known to buckle up before backing the car out into the driveway to wash it. But many folks from the East, including some dear friends, either scoff at seat belts entirely or wear them only when in the front seat. (As if the laws of physics somehow don’t apply in the back seat.) Never been able to understand it, but have no sympathy for anyone who gets injured who did not have their seat belt securely fastened.
Unrestrained and ejected! Is it too soon to make Nash equilibrium jokes?
On “Seven Ideas Completely Lost On People …” … “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers …” @Emerson. Ideologues are in practice, the enslavers of free thought.
It is logically inconsistent, but nevertheless empirical … that there are social conservatives who are fiscally liberal, social liberals who are fiscally conservative, social conservatives who are fiscally conservative, and social liberals who are fiscally liberal.
The author has caught a giant red herring … on behalf of the notion that Left politics is the solution to the poverty problem. This assumes that there is any solution at all, let alone that it can be found in politics. It is impossible to make everyone rich, or even middle class … it is possible to make everyone lower class. So far in history, small business capitalism is the only system which has alleviated poverty at all … the present crony dystopia of the US and the Marxist dystopia of Venezuela being cautionary counter-examples.
A dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as the next great semi-utopia? I think that Dickens already covered that in some length in the 19th century. Unless you meant cooperatives as small business, I think that you are placing way too much trust in the small businessmen. Just look at most any construction contractor.
The ecological sphere for small biz is getting smaller and smaller. I just discovered a local “self serve” dog washing store at my neighborhood strip mall. They seem pretty benign and unlikey to domineer over us too much. But watch out for home improvement/repair contractors. Auto repair/body shops too.
But watch out for home improvement/repair contractors. Auto repair/body shops too.
In what exchange of money for goods/service shouldn’t you be vigilant?? Do you think that the “client-contractor” relationship is benign in a “workers paradise”, or are the failed engagements more likely due to unrealistic and/or poorly defined expectations?
People that have bad contractor experiences typically have a poorly defined scope of work/no contract/engaged a low bidder with the expectation of something for nothing.
Tradespeople are no more systemically dishonest than anyone else, frankly I cant think of when I’ve had a bad outcome attributable to the labor side of the deal, just don’t be an idiot when selecting someone for a job.
I think that craazyboy was envisioning a future of self-serve contractors, the logical continuation of self-checkout lanes and self-serve dog grooming.. For my part, my point was about the type of contractor whose labor pool gets rounded up at Home Depot’s parking lot in the morning…
So, how many housewives will the contractor of the future need to change a light bulb?
Ya, hire yourself a boss.
Actually I solved my home contractor problems by selling my house and now rent where they have a captive maintenance crew that seem far more reasonable than the CA RE boom contractor crowd that I used to deal with on occasion. They all charged law FIRM rates and if you were diligent and very lucky, you might get a acceptable outcome for your legal fee type labor expense. I’ve been to Home Depot so I know materials are expensive, but I would time the labor hours during the work and usually calculate out about $200/hr for a handyman as the actual labor cost. If it was a card carrying plumber or electrician – wow!
Agree about the cost of (above the table) contractors, but it’s not all their fault. They have an increasing load of expenses (insurance is through the roof) that prohibits any sort of reasonable price. Now you have to go to school every three years (briefly) just to keep your contractor’s license – which is more to say you have to spend a lot of time keeping up with building codes (and that kind of time does equal money). I’m just a naif cynic, but I suspect all this cost is not a bug as far as small contractores goes. The world of the handy man has changed drastically over the last 40 years.
Renting is a fair solution for this if you get a good landlord but has it’s limitations as well. Buy hey, you’re a code-head, if I recall; you should be able to fix anything!
Right. So everyone else on planet Earth has just dealt with an outlier when getting screwed by a contractor? No pattern to see there. You sound like all of those people clamoring for Paul Ryan’s Medicare vouchers. Just make 80 year old Grandma go out and research thousands of insurers until she magically finds a great one that won’t cheat her. Because being in control of a captive/assymetric information market (i.e., insurers and contractors) could not possibly lead to corrupt business practices.
So everyone else on planet Earth has just dealt with an outlier when getting screwed by a contractor?
Argument from a false generalization. Of course people get screwed by contractors, as well contractors get screwed by clients.
Albeit maybe a different labor market in the Chicago area than somewhere in Cali, nonetheless, the assumption that finding honest contractor is an outlier is a false meme based on my experience.
And I will expand that by saying a number of people I know that are reasonably affluent 1st gen immigrants of a certain persuasion are always getting “screwed by contractors”. One in particular I know tries to perpetually be the master of the win-loose relationship and EVERY project ends up overly complicated hot mess clstrfk.
As a rule I get a reference from someone I know if looking for a contractor that I cant source myself due to schedule or unique need.. If a personal reference isn’t available, in lieu, to start I will look in trade resources like http://www.bestpickreports.com/ then immediately ditch the absurdly low bidder with new tools and the I’m too busy high bidder. Then treat people fairly and it is reciprocated usually.
As a rule I tell contractors to self negotiate a price and let me know because I don’t do rug auctions. I am not interested in screwing a contractor to the last nickel because I want to reciprocally be treated fairly as the inevitable contingencies arise. Again, I think most people will be honest given the chance.
I’ve never seriously considered picking a contractor hanging out at Home Despot. It sounds like about the worst possible strategy because I think it’s a safe assumption the good ones are working not hanging out at home Despot.
Nothing is free.
craazybay,
They all charged law FIRM rates and if you were diligent and very lucky, you might get a acceptable outcome for your legal fee type labor expense.
what are you saying about the theme that there are no living wage jobs available?? Should competent people be moving to Cali to seek tradework?
Alright, let’s focus here. Mr. Disgruntled Voter insisted that small business capitalism has been the greatest poverty alleviator of them all. I pointed out that many a small businesses exploit their workers, and gave examples of contractors who hire their workers from the Home Depot parking lot. The point being that a) those are mostly illegals, b) that this sort of employment arrangement is defined by exploitation, and c) it only worsens poverty as the well-qualified worker who requires an honest wage losses out to the illegal worker, who in turn losses out to his employer. Hence, Mr. Disturbed Voter is selling wishful thinking.
PS Which is not to say that I argue against small business per se. Quite the contrary. But I argue against small business capitalism envisioned by Mr. Disturbed, what with his blanket dismissal of “Left politics” as the solution of poverty. With that, he dismisses regulation as “leftist”, and I think we have all seen what deregulation does for the wages of the working class, not to mention their health and physical safety.
Well, it’s worth pointing out the EPA and OSHA are both agencies brought into existence by Richard Nixon, a POTUS whom people have diverse opinions of, Being “leftist” is probably not among them. So labeling what is left and what is right sometimes disorients me.
It only demonstrates how far to the right the spectrum has shifted. Nixon, as Ike before him, was a moderate conservative. Today’s right wing “conservatives” are in fact raging extremist radicals who have nothing to do with traditional conservatism.
In theory I don’t disagree with either of you.
1.)The bourgeoisie is what created a middle class, even Marx acknowledged that. The bourgeoisie class is what lifted Europe out of the mud.
2.) In this Country, the fertile entrepreneurial small business was historically a great economic force.. It is more recently been progressively dismembered as B. Bridge adroitly points out, in the favor of firms of larger scale that can support the codified BS overheads and litigious mentality that pervades getting stuff done.
3.)Your three comments regarding the Home Despot parking lot I don’t doubt, although I don’t know how many are presently illegal vs limited skill vs unemployed due to some other issue. Presumably still many are illegal?.
It has GENERALLY been my experience that hiring competent tradeperson might be expensive hourly but they get the job done quicker w/o lingering drama. –i try and take a whole cost vs hourly cost approach to projects.
My personal projects are usually union tradesmen for electric and plumbing.
HVAC I have a very competent honest guy who probably was union at sometime in his past, now is an independent contractor
Carpenters..all eastern European nonunion- excellent craftspeople that hustle w/ precision. I think they are trained to a higher standard generally. I have yet to meet one that wants to be in a union.
Roofing.. cousins husbands company. All nonunion Excellent no drama work.
Landscaping, myself and another friend in town are probably the last two eccentric guys that do it themselves. Otherwise, probably 99.5% Hispanic independent contractors. That used to be the lucrative domain of local kids, not anymore.
Come to think of it I cannot remember the last time I saw a College Craft house painting van? That used to be fantastic summer work in these parts.
“The bourgeoisie class is what lifted Europe out of the mud.” No they didn’t, they lifted themselves by exploiting the newly dispossessed peasants and using the gains from that exploitation to buy themselves certain rights from the aristocracy. Like I said, Dickens wrote at some length about that too. It wasn’t until labor began to organize that workers began to gain a modicum of security and safety. We need return to 19th century bourgeois paternalism like we need a bullet to the brain. The tender mercies of the bourgeoisie and the elites are far too fickle to constitute a path to “poverty reduction” whether formal or informal. If this day and age doesn’t drive this message home I don’t know what will.
The bourgeoisie class, the third estate in France, that was responsible for the revolutionary transition from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional representative monarchy and evolved into the National Assembly, issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Did they get it all correct? of course not, but they jumpstarted representative democracy and the independent judiciary in the 13 provinces of France.
Was the population of France better off before or after the deposing of the Monarchy and the bourgeoisie class organizing a representative form of government ? I’m thinking incrementally better. Put that in the win column for the bourgeoisie class.
Then as now, “freedum” and “democracy” are bandied about instead of that dreadful for the bourgeoisie and the elites phrase, “economic inequality”. It’s the bourgeois version of “Let them eat cake”- let them eat freedum and democracy.
BTW, when was the last time the poor were represented by poor representatives in this representative democracy you talk about???
Every time I shelled out the $200/hr to the handyman, I was rethinking my decision to go to college back when I was an 18 yr old. But then I always told myself there must be something wrong with it Then I went off to work all day, said Hi to all the Indians (Columbus was right!) then went to night school class to keep my programming skills either up to date, or ever expanding into the far reaches of cyberspace. (which is infinite, after all)
If CA ever gets the big one, it will be a bottomless pit for contractors. But bring your own water. It’s always something.
Every time I shelled out the $200/hr to the handyman, I was rethinking my decision to go to college back when I was an 18 yr old.
A very wealthy irish immigrant stone mason I was acquainted with said focus on doing what really rich people want done. His choice of trade was not an easy one but it proves to be uncomplicated, valid advise, maybe more true today than when he told me that.
Another trade that is remarkably lucrative in the geography are are real plasterers. Man, the good ones are amazing.
Opti it would have been fun doing a project with you, alas.
Anywho my son showed me this and though you might like it…. The Slingshot Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/JoergSprave
Skippy…. after some errands I might come back to this thread and clear things up for the 9 to 5’vers or ????? wrt the trades thingy….
Yeah, been there done that…during one college summer. I learned much from a Master: plaster mix; plaster consistency, keeping the pile centered, limiting strokes, imagining the results. And I was just the Hod! These guys are truly special.
Our old house on the Beach was a 1920s Stucco. Dad would do repairs to the exterior walls, a two coat stucco over screen, lath, and studs. I learned a lot about various types of structure those days. Interior white coat plaster walls are truly amazing things. Sheetrock feels like the cheap stuff, which it really is. Try putting your fist through an old fashioned plaster wall. (Kids, don’t try this at home. You’ll probably break your hand!)
Seems like the presupposition is that money came from barter…but did it, verifiably?
Thank you Optimador , I am a sole proprietor building/remodeling contractor and I affirm what you say about flaky clients and their expectations; that street runs both ways. My Grandpa said “Every business transaction is a social transaction” and I live by those words, I treat people well because I want to be treated well.
Yes. A customer of mine once said; “I look any potential contractor in the eye. My first reaction is key. If I feel at all ‘creepy’ about the person, I walk away.”
Thieves in every niche. They are drawn to opportunity, as they define it. And gee, people go to banks to get loans to build houses and pay for all those repairovations (which along with Resorts and Recipes, are the new markers of middleclasslessness.) And it takes a source of Money, and government policies fro lending to zoning to standards, and big corps putting price squeezes on everyone smaller than them. Et cetera. So it takes more than suckers and thieves with toolbelts to make the fraction of the political economy that supposedly proves that rule about small businesses…
Of course, but it only goes to prove the point I was trying to make to Disturbed Voter. In time of universal pressure to join the race to the bottom, most small businesses have a choice: remain true to old-school values and face extinction, or join the unscrupulous and face salvation…and higher profits. There are some exception to the rules, but the rule generally holds, IMO. Think of how the internet has conditioned us (generalization, I know) to seek the lowest cost product or service. That downward pressure on costs in turn imposes downward pressure on wages and quality, and small businesses are particularly vulnerable to this vicious chain. Unfortunately those who are willing to pay a good price for high quality products and services are a dwindling group.
Should that not be a more complete observation if it reads “…those who are willing AND ABLE to pay a good price for high quality products and services are a dwindling group”?
It should, though in my experiences and observations there isn’t much correlation between ability to pay and willingness to pay. Being informed does correlate with willingness to pay, though, regardless of relative wealth level.
Yeah. The highest income subdivision around here has the worst reputation for on time payments. I’ve been stiffed by clients from there.
There needs to be an ‘Angies List’ covering deadbeats.
Think of how the internet has conditioned us (generalization, I know) to seek the lowest cost product or service
sigh, I specifically don’t want the lowest cost product.. I want the highest value product. That is exactly what is broken in the consumer product merchandizing channel.
See my point about being informed. Also too, producing quality products is bad for future groaf…
Let’s roll back the clock and see what kind of Garden of Eden Venezuela was before the “dystopia” (much of it fueled by below the radar USG opposition) of Marxism arrived. You should “free your thought” enough to read a little history.
And yes small businesses exploit their workers just as much, if not more so, than big businesses. Anybody with some life experience knows this.
I wouldn’t look to Argentina nor Venezuela for utopia. Marxism seems to only ensure when change comes, it is more disastrous, since there is only one corporation, the State. Bankruptcy of any entity is inevitable … small business guarantees that each failure fails to take the whole economy down, something that crony corporatism is less able to minimize, hence TBTF. If you want morality, don’t look to human beings or their institutions. Small business, like democracy … is the least bad system. Don’t ask for justice … because honestly, it means the death of all of us self-righteous.
Venezuela suffered from neo-colonialism of the US … I don’t think we can blame small businesses there. Now it suffers from local predatory ideologues. Tyranny either way.
Since the capitalist countries have tipped the scales against every Marxist revolution including the first one I think it’s a little hard to make any sweeping pronouncements about Marxism.
Which is simply my point. You are leaving out a key consideration. We even cooked up a coup against Chavez, then backed down.
Get back to me on how bankruptcy plays out so much better in the US when it inevitably fails.
Willing to put money on the (ex)communists being FAR more resilient, tbh.
“Capitalism with an almost human face”. Prozac sales will be going through the roof…
Venezuela is still far better off than it was before Chavez. It has suffered from ignoring basic common-sense “capitalistic” economics, where it should be applied more often, concerning international trade – multiple exchange rates are a really stupid and destructive idea. But markets and capitalism simply can’t exist even in theory without the kind of state “intervention” that benefited so many Venezuelans under Chavez; the only question is who is state power & spending directed toward, a tiny elite of artificial feudal lords who are then designated “free market capitalists” – or the whole population. The second choice – of rational justice – has proved far more economically productive. This “solution” to “the poverty problem” (an artificial problem) is very simple: Stop magical, wishful thinking- just give everyone the choice of a decent job at a decent wage doing something good for the society. This common sense has always worked spectacularly well, of course, compared to the loony tunes alternatives which have been the usual practice of modern monetary production economies.
yup reporting to the cubans raul has placed in venezuela is certainly the road to freedumb
projection…reporting to the germans angela has placed in Greece is certainly the road to freedumber.
One of my favorite quotes from NC-“It’s not about the debt, it’s about the peonage.”-Calgacus
agreed…but when people allow themselves to be discooperated by others, then it become nothing less than a turkey shoot There is no law that says people can not amongst themselves, trade in their own transactional medium…be it time dollars or scrip or some other form of closed circle capital transfer activity…but it requires understanding that it can be done…and then doing it…again…revolutions are interesting to discuss, but in the morning, somebody has to drive the bus…
Thanks for your honest response.
I recently read about an interesting POV of an iceberg as a metaphor for solidarity of social movements, where “what you see ain’t all there is”…followed by the “titanic” as a metaphor for the delusional arrogance of privilege…as far as ‘trade’ I believe reciprocity is a more honest concept but that’s just me.
As far as “revolutions” I tend towards the other definitions of “revolution”, the ones that imply completing a cycle, e.g. every year the earth completes a full revolution around the sun…every month the moon completes a revolution around the earth…every day the earth completes a revolution around itself…NO ONE has ever nor will ever “WILL-this changed”. Maybe this is what JFK and V. Hugo had in mind when they echoed the ancients in their famous quotes…I don’t subscribe to religiosity but I found very interesting how the ancient Hebrews practiced a 50 year cycle of debt (Lev.25), where the 50th year was decreed a clean slate and celebrated as the year of jubilee…
Raul the Cuban head of state or Raul the US vassal?
Raul the pragmatist. Remember ‘Realpolitik?’
The Dawes Act of 1887 forcibly abolished communism among Native Americans and mandated a system of private property. According to Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, the author of the act:
— Dr. Angie Debo, praised as Oklahoma’s “greatest historian”, And Still The Waters Run, New York: Gordian, 1966 (original 1940), pages 21-23, as quoted in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, Chapter 6, footnote 21
So far in history, small business capitalism is the only system which has alleviated poverty at all
Well, capitalism is the system that defined poverty…didn’t notice it being a problem in tribal societies, where equality is key…Also – please provide evidence that capitalism reduced poverty…Industrial revolution? lots of poverty (not just economically, but also in terms of living conditions…)
Let’s get on track here. Any self-respecting fiscal conservative who thinks poor people should have to do all their banking with money orders needs to understand how WRONG they are. Fiscal conservative stands for exploitation. Few things are as exploitative as the check cashing businesses. Just focusing on one of the points of the Salon article, that poverty is expensive, should be enough to make the article’s point. I don’t see any right wingers proposing a post office bank, in fact most of them want to turn over postal service to FedEx. The best ideas for dealing with poverty come from the left (not democrats, but the left). The left may fail at creating Utopias, but why is that the standard that the left is held to? Either you create Utopia or you are discredited?
I do think it’s a silly article but mostly because the author doesn’t have a clue about who they are addressing. Those aren’t issues fiscally conservative but socially liberal people care about. They care that the middle or above class gays they know can marry pretty much.
“Never let a false dichotomy or a Condé Nast pitch go to waste.” -Rahm Emanuel
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/05/co-author-of-the-faked-study-speaks-out.html
Green co-authored an extremely impressive Science study released in December showing not only that a short conversation with a gay canvasser appeared to significantly nudge California voters in a pro-gay-marriage direction, but that the effects were contagious within those voters’ households and lasted at least nine months — the final point at which the researchers checked in with the study participants via online surveys.
Within the world of psychological and political science research on attitude change, which more commonly involves small-scale interventions that occur in labs rather than in real-life settings, effects of this size and durability are almost unprecedented. As a result of the study’s exciting findings, a wave of publicity followed — the New York Times and countless other outlets, including Science of Us, covered the study, and it garnered an entire “This American Life” segment.
As it turned out, the study’s too-good-to-be-true results were exactly that. While the canvassing did occur, there may not have been any survey data collected from California voters at all. Following an investigation by David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, two graduate students at UC-Berkeley looking to extend the findings, it became clear that Michael LaCour, a graduate student at UCLA and the study’s first author, had simply faked the data — when Broockman and Kalla noticed discrepancies and contacted the survey firm LaCour pointed them to, the firm told them it had never worked with LaCour at all. (Broockman and Kalla have posted their full accounting here.)
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What we want to be true, and what is true, often does not coincide. Here it is obvious, but all data is an observation made and written down by someone – how they see something makes a big difference.
The Circle of Trust gets smaller and smaller.
They, in the Happiness Industry, tell me I am happy.
But I am not so sure. The trust is gone.
I like to believe that the greatest minds the world has produced throughout history were individuals of deep conviction. They had all their illogical beliefs locked up alongside their religion. This enabled them to advance their areas of inquiry on a sound basis in the pursuit of knowledge.
The sentimental idealists cannot make the same claim to actual knowledge. The social science(s) basically amount to confirmation bias with selective data sampling these days. Which makes me wonder if the western world isn’t in the midst of a crisis of faith as much as anything else.
It’s an old story.
good points
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/25/8653381/this-memorial-day-republicans-weigh-going-to-war-in-iraq-again
Simply astounding.
There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.
Archibald MacLeish
Cyni-dan thinks that Vietnam should have made it clear not to go to Iraq, but apparently not only have we failed to learn, the imbecile duplicator is working much faster…
Colonel Pat Lang offers up this Vietnam story for Memorial Day–a kind of modern Custer’s Last Stand.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/05/ap-bu-nho-a-remembrance-on-memorial-day.html
thanks for that.
Too much potential for irony. Will Dick Cheney reprise his “Things in Iraq are going remarkably well” bit? Will Hillary reprise her vote in favor of war in Iraq or will she TPP it and tell us she’ll take a position on it 5 years after the fact?
The neoliberal agenda is to spread chaos to expand/maintain U.S. hegemony. GWB was it’s useful tool but GWB probably didn’t know or understand it’s agenda of world domination for the benefit of the elites. My guess is Hillary does understand this – neoliberalism goal of world hegemony everywhere and it has little to do with helping people.
Better yet, Dick Cheney won the Cold War once…and we can do it again if we put our minds to it!
Of course Hillary understands it. They trained her during her State Dept. gig. That’s like going to Hegemon University and all the profs are neo-cons.
Thanks for the NYT “Pampered Wilderness” article on “glamping” or glamor camping. There is no more appalling example of the Republican “enclose the commons” mentality than their attitude toward parks and the public lands. As the article states, park managers are having to go where the money is because of relentless cutbacks in funding. Some will recall that when Newt Gingrich became Speaker back in the 1990s his lieutenants proposed selling off all the public lands including Corps of Engineer lakes. Fortunately these mad proposals went nowhere because our National Parks are greatly beloved. However he did succeed in instilling a far greater “user fee” mentality toward management of the parks. Bill Clinton, the neoliberal, was totally down with this. His doofey Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt once commented that the just raised entrance fees for Yellowstone were still a lot cheaper than Disneyland. Lost in that bit of sophistry was the notion that we–the collective we–own Yellowstone. Public ownership is the real target here.
Of course users of park amenities should pay reasonable fees and the fees provide funding from those who don’t own these lands–foreign visitors etc. But if “paygo” is going to become the required approach to government then, as Elizabeth Warren points out, the rich and business interests are going to have to pay a whole lot more–perhaps enough, even, to help save our National and state parks.
One person going back to Nature is nice. The experience makes for a best selling book.
When we all go back, glamorous or otherwise, Nature will be killed, make that, destroyed..
Basically, we can’t go home again.
The park system provides a nice herding of those that want a view or limited outdoor experience so I consider it a positive that most of these parks act to protect most other wilderness area’s from modern camping and general human traffic.
The park system provides a nice herding of those that want a view or limited outdoor experience so I consider it a positive that most of these parks act to protect most other wilderness area’s from modern camping and general human traffic.
blaming Republican’s for glamping is funny given the long history of converting American wilderness into auto friendly locations along with intense road building in National Forests to further logging all supported by Democrats.
Regarding glamping which is not new but now more widespread it does bring into
park settings visitors that otherwise would not step foot in a National Park and hopefully raises there level of appreciation for the so called American forest.
Please check my comment as I talk about Clinton, a Democrat. But there’s no question that one of Gingrich’s big goal’s was to push private takeover of public lands. In my own state of SC the full Republican takeover of state government led to many formerly free state parks adding fee kiosks. As to
If you need color tv and air conditioning in order to appreciate the wilderness then you may be in the wrong place. But that’s just my view. The point of the Times article is that states are increasingly using these appeals to a wealthier demographic to keep state parks running. With such high entrance fees and camping fees the result is to reduce access rather than enlarge it. If such a trend continues then many won’t “step foot” in a state park because they can’t afford it.
It’s the same with universities. The money goes to attract “consumers” and so you get gymns and fancy unions. Lab facilities and classrooms pick up the leavings. Because markets.
My old school is now like a luxury resort and the tuition, even allowing for inflation, has been hugely increased. I believe you are right that it’s all part of the same phenomenon.
Superstar architects are where UChicago throws money at. Jeanne Gang, Billie Tsien, etc. Modern universities are veritable “non-profit, tax exempt” real estate development corporations…
Where “education” is incidental at best. A far fall from the original vision of an institution for universal knowledge and understanding.
http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/fees.htm
Through May 31: The current entrance fees through May 31 provide a 7-day entrance permit for Yellowstone National Park and Grant Teton National Park. The prices are: $25 for a private, noncommercial vehicle; $20 for a motorcycle; or $12 for each visitor 16 years and older entering by foot, bicycle, ski, etc.
Personally, I would advocate higher fees based on gross vehicle weight. All in all, a great value IMO
I believe the big three (Yellowstone, GC and Yosemite) are about to go up but I’m not sure about that. The NYT article is really about state parks and their problems. As an avid cross country camper I’ve seen this up close. Some states (NC) have great state parks. Elsewhere they are crumbling from neglect. AZ closed several of theirs for budget reasons.
The entrance fees are fine – it’s what you get once you are in there that is a problem.
I and the American side of the family went to Grand Teton and Yellowstone last year. Grand Teton was great – reasonable accommodation, good restaurants/diners and good stores. Yellowstone was a rip-off – overpriced, run-down accommodation and restaurant/diner/store food that I associate with America 20 years ago – basically greasy, nasty, low quality but at prices that make you weep.
Why? Because one company has been awarded the contract to run everything in Yellowstone, while there is some semblance of competition in GT!
Nothing worse than a national park with bad restaurants/shopping. The Mall of America has trees growing inside. Maybe that is more your style of “national park”?
The Hobbesian view of animals is Randian rubbish.
The “alpha wolf” does not even exist in wolf packs (emphasis added).
One example of an animal with complex social relations, instead of a simplistic “pecking order”, are vampire bats, which engage in reciprocal altruism. And eusociality is observed in mammals, such as mole-rats, and insects including bees.
† Marc Bekoff is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder.
We determine pecking order according to wealth.
We are not animals. We’re ‘wise.’
Dr. Robert Sapolsky even studied a troop of baboons that managed to create a “baboon utopia” without the usual might-makes-right pecking order, after the more violent males died in a TB outbreak. He wrote a great article about it in Harpers a number of years back.
“This Airplane Seat Can Tell If You’re Nervous”
So we’ve been hooking up lie detectors to the wrong part of the human anatomy all these years and that’s why they are inaccurate?! Wow. Hook ’em to your ass and now we can tell who is terrorist fer sure!!!!
The Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov had figured out that there is much to be gleaned about people from the poop they create and wrote a vignette about it. That could be why he met with a poison tipped umbrella. You are threading dangerous ground, citizen craazyboy.
I’ve been wondering if farts give false positives…but I smell a juicy Homeland Security contract nonetheless.
Mandatory colonoscopies and stool samples might be a future feature of Obamacare. Plus penalties if the citizen has not consumed enough Monsanto GMOs. Such refusal to consume indicates dangerous terroristic thinking and ought to be dealt with ruthlessly.
Also too, they hate us for our freedoms.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. It’s what makes America exceptionally doubleplusgood.
Sing along to “America”.
My country, ’tis of ass,
Sweet land where we pass gas,
Of thee I sing;
Land where they watch our ass,
Freedom to pass our gas,
From ev’ry airplane seat
Let freedom ring!
I smell a Toby Keith megahit!
Exflatulations are a ‘tail risk’ of the New World Order. They’re a fundamental byproduct of the consumption of neoliberalism.
Is there an exflatulation/inflatulation cycle, one wonders?
Good catch! I smell a doctoral thesis for a University of Chicago Economics School graduate student. Perhaps something linked to ’emerging’ markets.
China…biggest spending plan:
For the Middle Kingdom: Reform (via monetary loosening) vs. Massive Government (fiscal) Spending.
For some other countries: Reform of the Imperial Government (reallocation from foreign to domestic spending) vs. More Government Spending.
Reform is needed in many countries.
What a sad meaningless word “reform” has become. Just another rod to beat the peasants with.
And it’s not alone.
Many words are like that.
“We are here to help (your country).”
In fact, the entire art of rhetoric was born to serve the elites against the interests of the rest.
misogyny lost today in spain …
two woman are in position to take over the mayorships of spains two largest cities
Ada is a housing activist who has now convinced the citizens of CATALONIA and Barcelona to laugh at
the clowns of Kyffhauser and Frankfort…and Catalonia is one of the more affluent parts of Spain…
this is not just some “poor foke rizynup…”
In madrid, a former judge, 71 yr old Manuela Carmena is in a position to push aside the old hacks…
all germany has is 140 tanks and some old guy in a wheelchair…
shorting german companies sounds like a really good idea this memorial day…
Good for them.
In Germany, they have a Yang soul/energy, (from Wiki: Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive), housed in a Yin body (self-evident).
well, yang is expressive, rather than yielding…but it is immaterial, as opposed to material; time as opposed to space…energy rather than matter… yin and yang are not absolutes – they can only be referenced in terms of relativity to each other. Pure yang and pure yin do not exist.
If I remember correctly, for ancient Chinese, heaven is pure yang and round while earth is pure yin and has 4 corners.
I would think being round, it’s yin, whereas being square (or rectangular), it’s yang, but heaven, through rain, impregnates the field.
four corners / directions – because material (field is the basic spatial reference, usually), round / all encompassing because immaterial…
But pure is not a correct concept with regards to yin and yang – think of it as a flux, always in motion…at a peak you’re are only heading down… at a trough you are heading up. Yin/Yang is really a single polar unit (like N-S magnetic poles – can only have one in reference to the other) It is the separation into a yin/yang polarity from wuji that defines the root of the universe in Chinese cosmology.
The Taichi symbol – the pure yin and the pure yang intertwine in a dynamic dance, as each ascends toward the pure North and descends the pure South.
not pure – each contains the birth of its opposite – that is the dot / eye
I don’t think misogyny is the message: two of the worse majors in Spain, the incumbents in Madrid and Valencia, Ana Botella and Rita Barberá, are women, so men have no monopoly of bad (or good) managers and corrupts.
It is more about transparency, dignity and the breakup of a corrupt regime.
stepford wives don’t count…ana botella wasn’t elected…and is sorta kinda is the wife of azner…former PM…the guy who insisted the 2004 madrid bombings HAD to be eta…the guy whose family were falangists mouthpieces…
First, private sector jobs had long ago vanished. Now, public sector jobs too.
The same with private and public pensions.
A few solutions.
First in, first out – private sector jobs disappeared first. Work on that first.
Last in, first out – Work on lost public sector jobs first.
Simultaneous – We’re one. It’s not ‘this.’ It’s not ‘that.’ It’s ‘not both.’ It’s not ‘either.’ Some sort of BIG, GDP sharing, or People’s Fiat Money.
World recession with no lifeboats left.
In the view of critics?
That’s like a Roman patrician blaming his problems on a lack of demand from his slaves. “You are saving too much!”
Only if Greek and Spanish workers, especially young workers, could spend more…
I think the writer of the “7 ideas” Salon piece didn’t even touch on the key point of a fiscal conservative worldview: the confusion of household budgets and spending with government budgets and spending.
That’s not just a fiscal conservative confusion though.
When you see obvious points being missed out like that, think of what own goals they might be setting up to avoid by doing so.
Typos:
a) Regional elections have been yesterday, there were no regional elections in April
b) nowhere in the BBC news is said that Podemos does worse. Quite the opposite: the heading is Podemos and Ciudadanos make gains and a small quote says:
c) The second news piece is from three weeks ago, and is more related with electoral strategy of Podemos thnan with any “move to the center”. From the field, I was yesterday night listening to Pablo Iglesias at the party in Plaza del Reina Sofía, just two blocks from my home.
Podemos is trying to keep a low profile PPRR that will lead them to winning or being decisive for any majority in the elections. A desperate Rajoy would advance them, but it is rather difficult to bring them before the summer, so I guess they will happen in november…
Today is a very healthy day for Madrid and for Spain as a whole, let’s keep working…
I forgot a couple of things:
a) the campaign of Ahora Madrid (the “indignados” related platform that is getting Manuela Carmena close to being our major) is 10 times less expensive than the one by PP, as “new” parties don’t rely on banking financing to avoid turning into debt serfdom. Instead, it was raised as crowd sourced lending that is returned when the official subsidy per vote arrives. Still, AhoraMadrid is second, went from 0 to 20 seats, only one less than the incumbent, who lost 10 seats, and needs support unlikely to come from three groups that don’t want to get “tainted” with corruption.
b) Arsenio Escolar wrote a good analysis (Google Translate, which translates literally “Podemos” as “We can”) in his blog. He is editor of 20 minutos, from group Schibsted.
It was the March Parliamentary election in Andulcia in which Podemos did worse than expected, getting only 15% of the vote. That led them to rethink their strategy as poll results were still flagging in April:
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/188100/spains-podemos-founder-resigns-amid-party-strategy-rift
and
https://www.thespainreport.com/16219/new-poll-shows-four-way-dead-heat-for-spanish-general-election-as-pp-voters-abandon-rajoy/
One of the party’s founders resigned at the end of April because he thought it was becoming too centrist, see:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/30/us-spain-podemos-idUSKBN0NL2KH20150430
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/no-we-cant-spains-podemos-party-comes-to-terms-with-stagnant-polls
And Jacobin also expressed doubts about the move to the center:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/podemos-iglesias-spain-elections-populist/
The Jacobin article mentions how the militant left was neutralized in Podemos.
The citizens’ circles were too militant and autonomous for the leaders of Podemos: Pablo Iglesias and Juan Carlos Monedero. The circles were stripped of power “for the sake of a supposedly unmediated communion with the agitated ‘normal people.’”
From an article in eldiario.es, it appears an influx of bourgeois voters pushed anti-capitalists to the margins: “certain circles and important members (especially those from Anti-Capitalist Left) feel dispossessed from a party that they also created”.
Moving power from citizens’ circles to mass voting also transformed Podemos into a cult of personality around Pablo Iglesias.
“Moving power from citizens’ circles to mass voting also transformed Podemos into a cult of personality around Pablo Iglesias.”
Making him the face of the struggle does seem like a marketing construct, similar to Yannis, Tsipras and dare I say very similar to 2008 Obama campaign…polls are snapshots but also serve as feedback for the “mindfukmeisters” (aka propagandists) to modify and/or redirect their efforts. It has always seemed to me that reacting to “polls” reveals a lack of conviction, which is really a sign of weakness. It seems to me that strength of conviction that comes from fundamental tenets, e.g.,” injustice can never be tolerable, EVER” and “a better world IS possible-as affirmation not just aspiration” can overwhelm any strategy that the mindfukmeisters can conjure…the inimitable facial expressions that come from visceral knowledge of the conditions of austerity seem like far stronger symbols than a pony-tail and a raised fist…
RE: Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS
The author misses the fact that the US didn’t bomb Assad and the entire relevance of the statement [the US must maintain] “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government”. As soon as ISI left the reservation, which I’m guessing was when they broke relations with Al Qaeda in Syria, was the exact moment when they stopped being an asset and officially became an enemy. In terms of hostilities the American intervention against IS didn’t happen until the state of Iraq was on the verge of collapse.
I stand by my original assessment comparing the Islamic State to the Saxon mercenaries the Romano-British imported to wage their petty fights for domination. Assad warned the world that the situation would spread and affect other neighboring countries but what ole’ Basher didn’t say is how Syrian intelligence assisted in the infiltration of jihadis into Iraq during the American occupation. So even the Syrians wrongly thought they could steer the international jihad movement to their own benefit.
Our civilian leadership is filled with fools who think they create their own reality. They’ve proven how out of touch with the world they are from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to Libya, Ukraine, and the alleged campaign for Mosul. They repeatedly and easily forget one very important thing. The other side, in this case the Islamic State, gets a vote. Why would the leadership of IS settle for hundreds of millions or a few billion when they could have the oil rich Sunni populated areas of the Gulf? The pursuit of wealth has been a common justification for waging war throughout history.
…And war never changes.
From the “Oath Keepers” link within the Corrente article,
So free speech rights include immunity from criticism by others. Who knew? And this from the president of the Arizona Senate.
Advice for those considering joining the military, from a Veteran
Three big things in Europe: 1. Italian media attention on Greece has grown to fever pitch after the “we can’t pay in June statement”….is this the beginning of contagion? Do they sense they are next? 2. Spanish elections still saw wins for the left…even after the center right made Syriza look like bumbling fools. Does everyone see through the charade? 3. Draghi reiterated calls for European leaders to get their sh*t together and start fiscal Union…emphasizing the opportunity that QE wrought is being wasted. A true disaster ( I read this to mean Italy ) must be stopped before it starts.
The link is broken for: “Parents up in arms over facial recognition software”.
Preparing the tykes for the workplace.
Everyone – and every kid – is now a suspected criminal.