Friday, December 3, 2010

Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!

I often wonder what reactions would occur if MSNBC spent more time discussing the issues that Senator Sanders raises rather than covering stories of "Is Sarah Palin Running for President?" or what she is 'tweeting' or what Beck or Limbaugh are saying. [] Or, even more bizarrely, if FOX actually spent time broadcasting 'alternative' views such as Senator Sanders, unabridged, unedited, and not commentated on, say, for a week...Would it be the end of civilization?


Ireland Must Now Hit the Reset Button -- A View From the Diaspora


Wednesday, November 24, 2010

An Outcry Over Wall Street's Swagger - NYTimes.com


Another Thanksgiving Feast for Wall Street...Taxpayer Supported


Tips for Fighting Family Gathering Anxiety


Fail and Grow Rich on Wall Street


Economic History Shows Clearly That Tax Cuts for Rich Hurt the Economy


Poverty and Thanksgiving: A Call to Close the Rich-Poor Gap


Tuesday, November 23, 2010

GOP Lawmakers: Elizabeth Warren's Job 'Undermines' Constitution

...and another prime example of how the system actually works...


on the NYT front-page story "Growing Up Digital"


Young in Mind: Saying No to Caricatures of Aging


Seasonal Affective Disorder: How to Beat 'Winter Depression'


Facebook's Prediction of Email's Demise Greatly Exaggerated


Life Goals: What Do You Really Want?


Friday, November 19, 2010

Michael W. Hudson: Alan Greenspan, Animal House and the Scandal That Never Ends

Michael W. Hudson: Alan Greenspan, Animal House and the Scandal That Never Ends

Older but Not Wiser? The Psychology Behind Seniors' Susceptibility to Scams: Scientific American

But it's not just memory and reasoning that matter. "We use our gut feelings and our emotions to guide us to make decisions," says Mara Mather, a psychologist who studies aging, emotion and memory at the University of Southern California School of Gerontology. Contrary to stereotype, older people generally feel more optimistic than young people do, and are more likely to focus on the potential upsides of a situation. As people age and begin to feel that their time is limited, some researchers suggest, they seek out emotional fulfillment. This tendency to focus on the positive changes the decisions older people make.


Protect Your Memory by Adding to Your "brain bank," from Harvard’s Improving Memory Special Health Report


Saturday, November 13, 2010

Cosmic Log - Can science prove we're psychic?


Billion-Pixel Image Tool Probes Science Mysteries

--- I read about this technology years ago, and it is developing much faster than many had anticipated. This is going to have a huge impact. It seems that some 'Blade Runner' tech is here.


Hey, We're Gonna Balance the Budget! But Seriously, Folks ...

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
But collaboration and bipartisanship are means, not ends. They're ways of getting things done, not the things themselves. When a culture prizes the method more it does the results, it's gone astray.Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com
 

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Who's Counting: Crooked Coins, Fair Probabilities and Strange Sequences - ABC News


At Milky Way’s Center, Scientists Find Big Bubbles of Energy - NYTimes.com


Epigenetics Seeks Clues to Mental Illness in Genes’ Life Story - Science in 2011 - NYTimes.com

epigenetics, the study of how people’s experience and environment affect the function of their genes.


Why I Will Stay Far Away From Cliffs From Now on


The Christian Right in Context, Part 1: The Long View


Quantitative Easing Round II: The Fed's Second Shot


Google Ocean: Google's Digital Activism


Sunday, November 7, 2010

Will Our New Leaders Encourage Consumers to Save?


Obama's Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks


Sugar Health Risks: Are You Letting Real Sugar Off the Hook?


Fueling Positive Emotions in a World Gone Mad


QE2 Geneates Instant Wealth Creation


Is Death the End? Experiments Suggest You Create Time

outline - promotion of "Biocentrism" (co-authored with astronomer Bob Berman) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.



Experiment after experiment continues to suggest that we create time, not the other way around.


Monday, November 1, 2010

The Making of a Mind-Blowing DIY Sun Photo


Mugged by the Debt Moralizers - NYTimes.com


Midterm elections: Most voters will skip elections - latimes.com


Tea Party Members vs Tea Party Wall Street Funders


The Republican Undead


The Real Center of American Politics: A Reflection on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert


Saturday, October 30, 2010

James T. Kloppenberg Discusses His ‘Reading Obama’ - NYTimes.com

To Mr. Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided President Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence.



Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Mr. Kloppenberg said.


Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol | Psychology Today

That such behavior is detrimental to health and has few, if any, positive consequences, is irrelevant for the Hypothesis. It does not predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in healthy and beneficial behavior. Instead, it predicts that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in evolutionarily novel behavior.


Friday, October 29, 2010

Balsamic Vinegar: Magnificence and Deception


Obama vs. Stewart: The Pace of Change

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
, revise
Both men were showing us the other night how practiced communicators insert their views, stand their ground, revise the course of conversation, and substitute a positive term or perspective for a negative one.Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com
 

The Republican War on Reality


Capitalism Uber Alles: How the American Working Class Got Brainwashed


So You Want to Privatize


Thursday, October 28, 2010

Only $4.2 Billion to Buy This Election?


Want to Increase Your Willpower? Here's How


Dope, Dopes and Dopamine: The Problem With Money


The Psychology of Manipulation in Political Ads


The Question That Answers Everything About the Election (and America, too)


Our Open Internet Under Siege


A Response To Michael Steele: What Do Republicans Really Stand For? | Democrats.org


Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Allais Paradox

This minor change in notation soon revealed one of the most important discoveries of their careers. When Kahneman and Tversky framed questions in terms of gains and losses, they immediately realized that people hated losses. In fact, our dislike of losses was largely responsible for our dislike of risk in general. Because we felt the disadvantages of risky decisions (losses) more acutely than the advantages (gains), most risks struck us as bad ideas. This also made options that could be forecast with certainty seem especially alluring, since they were risk-free. As Kahneman and Tversky put it, “In human decision making, losses loom larger than gains.” They called this phenomenon “loss aversion”



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/the-allais-paradox/#ixzz13KDHHFm8


Grasping Reality with Both Hands


Why Are We Expected to Be Brave in the Face of Illness?


It's the Occupation, Stupid - By Robert A. Pape | Foreign Policy

Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn't to blame -- the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.


The Flaw: Examining the Roots of Economic Malaise


Tea Party Hypocrisy: The New Taxation Without Representation


Chess Champion's Class Act

...about a chess game...


Juan Williams Is Right: Political Correctness About Terrorists Must End!

Sadly for you (and this is also why you shouldn't be working for a real news organization like NPR), Shahzad never said that. If you were a real journalist, you would have quoted him accurately. What he actually said was that he was the "first droplet of the flood," not blood. But I know how easy it is to mishear things when scary Muslims are talking. And I guess it's not a huge difference anyway.


America's Income Defense Industry


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Consumers Win an Important Battle Against Insurers, Thanks to State Insurance Commissioners


How Much Are You (Really) Worth?


Right-Wing Voter Guide Revolution: What Can Progressives Learn?


5 Ways To Keep Your Brain Active As You Age


Aging


Shadow Elite: Truthiness in the Twitter Era


Facebook's Latest Privacy Flap Is Due to Web Plumbing, Not Policy


Barry Sussman: A Watergate Lesson: Secret Money Means Payoffs, Bribes and Extortion

Barry Sussman: A Watergate Lesson: Secret Money Means Payoffs, Bribes and Extortion

The U.S. Lags in Mobile Connectivity Speeds


No Time For Downtime? 8 Tips for Improving Cognitive Function


To choose austerity is to bet it all on the confidence fairy | Joseph Stiglitz | Comment is free | The Guardian


Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Fox Steps Over the Internet Line; But There's Nothing To Be Done


Why it's Radical to Fight Corporate Control of Government (And Why Net Neutrality Is a Remedy)

Hate Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry


Is Wall Street Zapping America Again?


The Dying Art of Political Explanation


Does Stress Make You Ugly?


Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of Americans Are Fat?


How to Earn $900,000 an Hour While Unemployment Soars


Monday, October 18, 2010

Free Will and Responsibility

Whether we have free will or not, we certainly aren’t completely free, autonomous individuals. We influence and are influenced by our physical and social environments, often without our awareness. Collectively, we create circumstances that shape the behavior of individuals. And as individuals we can influence collective decision making and alter social conditions.


BBC News - How Mandelbrot's fractals changed the world


On Language - Truthiness - NYTimes.com


Thursday, September 9, 2010

Burning the Quran Is Like Burning the Gospels

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Nearly two centuries ago, the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote, "Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people."

Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com
 

Our Letter To Eric Schmidt: Google Shouldn't Care More About Its Own Privacy Than Ours


Dr. Michael J. Breus: Your Performance And The Freshman 8

Dr. Michael J. Breus: Your Performance And The Freshman 8

Joe Robinson: The Invisible Epidemic of Life Deficit Disorder

Joe Robinson: The Invisible Epidemic of Life Deficit Disorder

David Katz, M.D.: The Limit to What Doctors Understand

David Katz, M.D.: The L
Publish Post
imit to What Doctors Understand

Jeffrey Evans: If Only Irony Had a Privacy Setting

Jeffrey Evans: If Only Irony Had a Privacy Setting

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

When Outside the Box Isn't Outside Enough: Pseudo-Creativity and the Brain's Love of Washington DC Politics

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

That is, the brain's reality of information processing, especially when we are hard pressed for creative solutions to perplexing problems, like the urgency for economic revival. And believe it or not, being an Independent does not make any difference either. We are all susceptible to illusions around our decision making, no matter the party designation. So what follows is an exploration of the limitations of creative brainstorming that lies outside party politics and has the brain laughing that it has effectively diverted the attention off to the warring parties.

Beware. What is about to follow has nothing to do with being a Republican or a Democrat and yet has everything to do with the reality of Washington D.C. and the world as we know it.

Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com