Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Make the Most of the Dark Moon
Amplify’d from cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com
Make the most of the dark moon
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1jod6
Friday, December 2, 2011
Labor Force's Share Of Income Plunges To Lowest Recorded Level
Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
Overall, the U.S. median income has fallen more during the recovery than during the recession, according to an October study from two former Census Bureau officials.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1j8zb
Thursday, December 1, 2011
How to Dispel Your Illusions
A book review of "Thinking, Fast and Slow, author -Daniel Kahneman " written by Freeman Dyson
Cognitive illusions are the main theme of his book. A cognitive illusion is a false belief that we intuitively accept as true. The illusion of validity is a false belief in the reliability of our own judgment.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1j859
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
LA Review of Books: The Educational Lottery by Steven Brint
On the four kinds of heretics attacking the gospel of education. "In short, we will need to turn our backs on assumptions of our most fervent boosters of universal higher education: that access alone is the primary purpose, and that when students and teachers are co-present, education occurs. The challenge will be to reweave the uneven and tattered undergraduate experience in more durable and vivid patterns."
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ike8
LA Review of Books: The Educational Lottery by Steven Brint
On the four kinds of heretics attacking the gospel of education. "In short, we will need to turn our backs on assumptions of our most fervent boosters of universal higher education: that access alone is the primary purpose, and that when students and teachers are co-present, education occurs. The challenge will be to reweave the uneven and tattered undergraduate experience in more durable and vivid patterns."
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ike8
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Artificial War On Christmas Campaign Launches Fake Obama "Christmas Tree Tax"
A New Angle on Targeted Drug Design
Even if you have cancer and are brain-dead, your body may make a contribution to medical science.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1hg2n
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Christmas Ornaments, Packed Like Sardines
A physicist was playing with steel ball bearings, trying to pack them into a little cylindrical tube in the most efficient way possible...
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1har8
Monday, November 7, 2011
White House Denies Any Contact with Alien Life
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Politics, Pizzas and Pessimism
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
The disconnect between the seriousness of our angst and the silliness of our politics — between how big our problems are and how hopeless or just plain stuck the people who are supposed to address them seem — defies belief. Right now the system isn’t working, and a recognition of that is one of the ties that bind Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. They don’t identify the same villains or promote the same solutions. But they’re flowers of a shared frustration.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fzgb
Victories and Questions Pile Up for Paterno
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Joe Paterno, 84, has coached Penn State to a 7-1 record. His contract expires at season's end.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fzfj
Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle
The Path Not Taken
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fze7
Global Warming May Push Seaweeds Over the Edge
Amplify’d from www.livescience.com
Continued warming in the oceans around Australia could have dramatic effects on the seaweed that live in these waters, pushing their ranges south, and eventually, off the continental shelf. Changes in seaweed communities could have dramatic effects on other living things, since seaweeds provide habitat and food. Above, the Australian seaweed Pterocladia retangularis.
CREDIT: Thomas Wernberg
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fyx3
What should Wall Street do?
The finance industry needs a better response to the protest movement attacking it
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fywp
Connecting neurons to fix the brain
New technology helps scientists discover drugs to strengthen synapses.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fyvw
Friday, October 28, 2011
Economy in U.S. Surpasses Pre-Recession Level
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Fed Refuses to Share Internal View Traders See Underlying Significant Risk
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Is ‘complexity’ the key to economic growth?
Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com
Is ‘complexity’ the key to economic growth?
Meanwhile, if Hausmann and Hidalgo’s theory is actually right, then the future looks relatively limp for the United States. The authors note that the best way to predict a country’s future growth is to look at the gap between economic complexity and current earnings. On this score, China, India and Thailand have the highest expected growth in the years ahead. The United States, by contrast, ranks 91st. Economies that have already taken full advantage of their existing complexity, like the United States, have few remaining opportunities to move up further. This sounds unduly pessimistic, though it jibes pretty well with Tyler Cowen’s “great stagnation” thesis.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1frpb
Why Workers Are Losing the War Against Machines
Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007
Amplify’d from www.cbo.gov
CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:
- 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
- 65 percent for the next 19 percent,
- Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
- 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.
The share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.
- The top fifth of the population saw a 10-percentage-point increase in their share of after-tax income.
- Most of that growth went to the top 1 percent of the population.
- All other groups saw their shares decline by 2 to 3 percentage points.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fozs
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Actually Tax Cuts Don't Seem to Have Much Impact on Economic Growth...
Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
My point, and I do have one -- is that ideology is a poor substitute for pragmatic approaches to complicated problems. In fact the evidence that tax rates influence economic growth in any way is equivocal at best. A myriad of other factors are involved. Simply reducing tax rates, and primarily for the wealthy, may hinder -- rather than enhance our economic recovery.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1foi7
A Generation of CEOs Who Don't Know How to Raise Wages
Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
This inability to raise wages is also reflected in the data. There is no major occupation group that has seen substantial increases in real wages over the last decade. Even college graduates as a group (excluding those with a post-graduate degree) have not seen an increase in real wages over the last decade. This indicates either there is no problem of skills shortages or that companies are increasingly being run by CEOs who do not know how to increase wages.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fohh
Zombies Worth Over $5 Billion to Economy
Monday, October 24, 2011
Seven Billion
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
The first billion people accumulated over a leisurely interval, from the origins of humans hundreds of thousands of years ago to the early 1800s. Adding the second took another 120 or so years. Then, in the last 50 years, humanity more than doubled, surging from three billion in 1959 to four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987 and six billion in 1998. This rate of population increase has no historical precedent.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1fkwf
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Syria using American software to censor Internet, experts say
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Fraud At The Heart Of Student Lending Exposed - The One Sentence Everyone Should Read
Amplify’d from www.zerohedge.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1f1bl
Monday, October 17, 2011
Safety Regulators Don’t Add Costs. They Decide Who Pays Them.
...many of those who insist on cost-benefit analysis have no interest whatsoever in making regulation more focused and rational. In their world, costs to business are the only measure; benefits to consumers somehow never make it to the table. Unfortunately, that’s misleading and unfair. Someone always pays.
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Anyone who insists that regulations necessarily impose new costs on society shouldn’t be taken seriously. The costs are already there, in the form of deaths and injuries — and are often as much of a drag on our economy as any safety rule. So the real issue is who should bear the costs.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1exc9
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Waterboarding
Is "simulated drowning" - drowning someone "not enough to kill them"? How is the art of this skill acquired? If the subject is "not dead" then what effects are expected? [] "...causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating the sensation that the captive is drowning. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage and, if uninterrupted, death. Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves months after the event, while psychological effects can last for years." []
Amplify’d from secure.wikimedia.org
Waterboarding in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Painting by former prison inmate Vann Nath at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1euki
Chinese water torture
The term Spanish water torture is also used in Europe and UK, although this term often refers to a variation of waterboarding used during the Spanish Inquisition:
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1euiv
Friday, October 14, 2011
Rabbit-Hole Economics
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
The Great Recession should have been a huge wake-up call. Nothing like this was supposed to be possible in the modern world. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be engaged in serious soul-searching, asking how much of what he or she thought was true actually isn’t.
But the G.O.P. has responded to the crisis not by rethinking its dogma but by adopting an even cruder version of that dogma, becoming a caricature of itself. During the debate, the hosts played a clip of Ronald Reagan calling for increased revenue; today, no politician hoping to get anywhere in Reagan’s party would dare say such a thing.
It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes — and which may soon control the whole government.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1erb1
Lake Erie's Toxic Algae Bloom Seen From Space: Green Scum Rampant In The Great Lakes (PHOTOS)
While the algae doesn't directly kill fish, it's still not good. As the algae dies, it's broken down by bacteria which uses oxygen from the water. This oxygen removal creates areas where fish can't survive. In addition, if consumed, it can also create flu-like symptoms in people or even kill pets.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1er8s
Thursday, October 13, 2011
What Parkinson’s Teaches Us About the Brain
Amplify’d from well.blogs.nytimes.com
Why forced exercise would have a greater effect on brain functioning than gentler regimens isn’t clear. Scientists have speculated that in animal experiments, being forced to work out may cause the release of stress-linked hormones in rodents’ brains, which then prompt various reactions in the cells and tissues. But Dr. Alberts suspects that in Parkinson’s patients, the answer may be simple mathematics. More pedal strokes per minute cause more muscle contractions than fewer pedal strokes, which, in consequence, generate more nervous-system messages to the brain. There, he thinks, biochemical reactions occur in response to the messages, and the more messages, the greater the response.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ekty
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Inside the Secrets of Illusions & Memory
Friday, October 7, 2011
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