maybe there will be a coal fired version of the classic
maybe there will be a coal fired version of the classic
16:05 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
From Sukie:
In my 58 years I have never before seen a situation in which the media, in this case especially television news, pays as much attention to an ex vice president as to the sitting president.
Could this indicate that despite words to the contrary, some of the media is having real trouble truly listening to a leader who is not a White Male?
Would the same lack of respect have occurred if the elected individual were female, Oriental, Native American, Polynesian, gay, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Animist, or even as close to being an atheist as a number of the Founding Fathers were? I fear that it may also have occurred then, even though it definitely should not be happening at any time to anyone.
In private people are so appalled by this situation that it comes up often in conversation. Why is too much of the media perpetuating this behavior instead of paying attention to the real story: why some parts of the Fourth Estate are not having their actions match their words?
16:36 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
noted by Greg - a rather amazing persistent illusion.
19:23 in Current Affairs, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
14:23 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Sukie notes that HR 669 survived a committee hearing - it deeply impacts many non-indigenous animals including companion animals who have been here for many decades.
When has draconian legislation that should have been based uponHR 669 SURVIVED THE COMMITTEE HEARING according to the blog below! Bad news.The text of HR 669:Love your critters? Contact your representative in the House:and her letter:
18:08 in Current Affairs, ferrets | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Most of the climate models suggest the American Southwest is heading towards a much drier and warmer climate and some are wondering if Australia is providing a taste.
13:33 in Current Affairs, environment, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A well funded right wing hate group who are buying a lot of ad time and trying to promote their message through the time honored method of trying to instill fear. Last night Rachel Maddow commented on one of their new projects:
08:38 in Current Affairs, General Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Sometimes there is great news!
19:59 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair piece on the Icelandic collapse.
Back in 2001, as the Internet boom turned into a bust, M.I.T.’s Quarterly Journal of Economics published an intriguing paper called “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment.” The authors, Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, gained access to the trading activity in over 35,000 households, and used it to compare the habits of men and women. What they found, in a nutshell, is that men not only trade more often than women but do so from a false faith in their own financial judgment. Single men traded less sensibly than married men, and married men traded less sensibly than single women: the less the female presence, the less rational the approach to trading in the markets.
One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.”
Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”
It was with that in mind that I walked, on my last afternoon in Iceland, into the Saga Museum. Its goal is to glorify the Sagas, the great 12th- and 13th-century Icelandic prose epics, but the effect of its life-size dioramas is more like modern reality TV. Not statues carved from silicon but actual ancient Icelanders, or actors posing as ancient Icelanders, as shrieks and bloodcurdling screams issue from the P.A. system: a Catholic bishop named Jon Arason having his head chopped off; a heretic named Sister Katrin being burned at the stake; a battle scene in which a blood-drenched Viking plunges his sword toward the heart of a prone enemy. The goal was verisimilitude, and to achieve it no expense was spared. Passing one tableau of blood and guts and moving on to the next, I caught myself glancing over my shoulder to make sure some Viking wasn’t following me with a battle-ax. The effect was so disorienting that when I reached the end and found a Japanese woman immobile and reading on a bench, I had to poke her on the shoulder to make sure she was real. This is the past Icelanders supposedly cherish: a history of conflict and heroism. Of seeing who is willing to bump into whom with the most force. There are plenty of women, but this is a men’s history.
When you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity, you import the future into the present. It isn’t the actual future so much as some grotesque silicon version of it. Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned. The striking thing about the future the Icelandic male briefly imported was how much it resembled the past that he celebrates. I’m betting now they’ve seen their false future the Icelandic female will have a great deal more to say about the actual one.
06:47 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
dumber than mud
It is amazing how illiterate some congress critters are...
12:10 in Current Affairs, General Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)