Republicans and Debt
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2011/09/27/republicans-and-debt/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---SPSmith
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Article: Republicans and Debt
Republicans and Debt
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2011/09/27/republicans-and-debt/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---SPSmith
Monday, September 26, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Article: Debunking the Myth that Regulations on Big Business are "Job-Killers" | | AlterNet
Debunking the Myth that Regulations on Big Business are "Job-Killers" | | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/152503/debunking_the_myth_that_regulations_on_big_business_are_%22job-killers%22_/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The truth about 'class war' in America | Richard Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The truth about 'class war' in America
Republicans claim, in Orwellian fashion, that Obama's millionaire tax is 'class war'. The reality is that the super-rich won the war
---Sent from Steve's iPad...Republican class warfare
Right. Let's go back to the Eisenhower Republican highlife years.
Oh, by the way the top margin tax rate was 90% of the fat cats income then, not the current paltry 35%: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html#_edn5
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Article: The 10 Best Amazon Reviews. Ever.
The 10 Best Amazon Reviews. Ever.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1779632/the-10-best-amazon-reviews-ever
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Meet the mystery man behind "Drive"
James Sallis
Meet the mystery man behind "Drive"
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/18/living/james-sallis-author-interview/index.html
Meet the mystery man behind "Drive"
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/18/living/james-sallis-author-interview/index.html
Phoenix: It's the nation's fifth largest city, a triumph of will and
engineering over common sense, surrounded by miles of what looks at
first to be almost nothing. Sprawling, various, indefinable,
ungraspable. If ever there was a melting pot, this is one. Kinda
south, kinda west, kinda old, kinda ageless, kinda middle America,
kinda Hispanic
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Contrary Brin: Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property
libertarians and conservatives seem bent on ignoring market manipulation by 5,000 or so aristocratic golf buddies, who appoint each other to company boards in order to vote each other titanic "compensation packages" while trading insider information and conspiring together to eliminate competition. Lords who are not subject to inherent limits, like each bureaucrat must face, or rules of disclosure or accountability. Lords who (whether it is legal or not) collude and share the same delusions
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Contrary Brin: Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property
So where's the problem? The problem is that it's all lip service on the right! Those who most-loudly proclaim Faith In Blind Markets (FIBM) are generally also those proclaiming idolatry of private property as a pure, platonic essence, a tenet to be clutched with religious tenacity, as it was in feudal societies. Obdurate, they refuse to see that they are conflating two very different things.
Private property - as Adam Smith made clear - is a means for encouraging the thing he really wanted: fair and open competition. Indeed, the propertarian reforms that Peru instituted under the guidance of Hernando de Soto, vesting the poor in the land they had always farmed, resulted in a boom that delighted both libertarians and socialists. Safe and secure property rights are a boon... up to a point.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Friday, September 16, 2011
Article: Bill Gross - Google+ - World's Funniest Analogies. I practically cried laughing…
Bill Gross - Google+ - World's Funniest Analogies. I practically cried laughing…
https://plus.google.com/100612175927429294541/posts/c6MWreA6TB6
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Article: On Rejecting Faith in Morality
On Rejecting Faith in Morality
http://freethoughtblogs.com/camelswithhammers/2011/09/16/on-rejecting-faith-in-morality/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Check out: 'I Watched Every Steven Soderbergh Movie' on Slate
I thought you might find this Slate article interesting:
I Watched Every Steven Soderbergh Movie
By Dan Kois
http://www.slate.com/id/2303680?wpisrc=sl_ipad
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Article: The Bachmann Files: Don’t Let the Facts Stand in the Way of Incendiary Politics
The Bachmann Files: Don't Let the Facts Stand in the Way of Incendiary Politics
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/09/14/the-bachmann-files-dont-let-the-facts-stand-in-the-way-of-incendiary-politics/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Article: Intel goes virtual to root out rootkits
Intel goes virtual to root out rootkits
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/14/intel_mcafee_deepsafe/
Deepsafe
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Article: Morning Tech Wrap: Microsoft, Intel, Facebook
Morning Tech Wrap: Microsoft, Intel, Facebook
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/09/14/morning-tech-wrap-microsoft-intel-facebook/
(Sent from Flipboard)
Article: Google and Intel working on Android phones for early 2012 release | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Google and Intel working on Android phones for early 2012 release | Technology | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/14/google-intel-working-on-android-phones
Notice how is always "next year". And gee, where is Meegone?
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Innovation Excellence | Intel to Universities: No Patents, Please, Just Open Source
In Intel's own words:
"The IP policies and practices within the ISTCs will typically be designed to level the playing field for all of the participants, thereby enhancing cooperation and open collaboration. The preferred IP policy is to conduct open research wherein ISTC researchers, whether from academia or Intel, agree to not file patents and to publish all patentable inventions. All significant software developed in the course of conducting research will be released under an open source license."
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Christopher Hitchens - Religion, Morality & Atheism
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewc_v1tGv5E&feature=youtube_gdata_player
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Faith-based morality gets Hitchslapped. (Christopher Hitchens)
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcGXBo8HP8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Hitchens "There is no Creationism debate, it's over!"
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7cI_naNnEY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Shift dropped on author after typo in her romantic novel | Books | guardian.co.uk
I apologise to anyone who bought my on-sale ebook of Baby, I'm Yours and read on pg 293: 'He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground'," says Andersen. "Shifted - he SHIFTED!
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
400 Free Online Courses from Top Universities | Open Culture
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will : Nature News
As humans, we like to think that our decisions are under our conscious control — that we have free will. Philosophers have debated that concept for centuries, and now Haynes and other experimental neuroscientists are raising a new challenge. They argue that consciousness of a decision may be a mere biochemical afterthought, with no influence whatsoever on a person's actions. According to this logic, they say, free will is an illusion. "We feel we choose, but we don't," says Patrick Haggard, a neuroscientist at University College London.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Monday, September 12, 2011
Huffington Post: Krugman Draws Fury With Scathing 9/11 Post
That day was the impetus for us to attack and invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks and posed no threat to us," she wrote. "To date, we've lost 4,752 allied service members in Iraq and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. How is this not a black mark of shame on the legacy of 9/11?"
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Variations on a theme of anti-vaccine nonsense : Respectful Insolence
I'd propose to Aufderheide that he ought to think about an example that illustrates exactly what he is doing. Consider the dreaded dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO). For example, it's a major component of acid rain, and in gaseous form can cause severe burns. It's also a major component of most strong acids, such as hydrochloric acid and or sulfuric acid. It's also a major component of many bases, such as sodium hydroxide, not to mention a byproduct of internal combustion engins. It's also an industrial solvent and coolant, a fire retardant, and--horror of horrors!--it's used in the manufacture of chemical weapons, the manufacture of recombinant DNA, and, yes, in the manufacture of pesticides, including DDT. The facts are clear!
And DHMO is in vaccines! In fact, it's the major component of most vaccines!
---Sent from Steve's iPad...Memo To Rick Perry: Social Security Is Not Facing ‘Dire Financial Challenges’ | ThinkProgress
Perry is simply incorrect to say that Social Security's financial situation is "dire." After all, if nothing is done to Social Security, it will still pay full benefits until the year 2037. After that, the program is projected to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which is close to full benefits once inflation is accounted for. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said, "Social Security has not added a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has. And for the next 30 years, it won't do that
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Article: Leon Wieseltier’s Remarks At ‘9/11: An Evening Of Remembrance And Reflection’ | The New Republic
Leon Wieseltier's Remarks At '9/11: An Evening Of Remembrance And Reflection' | The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/94774/leons-remarks-911-event
that the multiplicity of cultures and traditions that we contain peaceably in our society is one of our highest accomplishments, because we are not afraid of difference, and because we do not confuse openness with emptiness, or unity with conformity;
that a country as vast and as various as ours may still be experienced as a community;
that none of our worldviews, with God or without God, should ever become the worldview of the state, and that no sanctity ever attaches to violence;
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Coming to terms with the female orgasm : Greg Laden's Blog
Coming to terms with the female orgasm : Greg Laden's Blog: "The point is this: Human ancestors, just under 2 million years ago, underwent an ecological change that required that they live in multi-male multi-female groups, like chimps do, but that also resulted in selection for a mostly monogamous (or at least, less poygynandrous) mating system, kinda like gibbons have today, but really, not very different from typical modern human marriage."
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
John Dewey - Wikiquote
- As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.
- Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440; cited in Understanding Power (2002) by Noam Chomsky, ch. 9, footnote 16
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Robert Shiller on Human Traits Essential to Capitalism | FiveBooks | The Browser
There have been political changes in the US that allow the extreme high end to garner more wealth. Ultimately, it represents a failure of our society to take account of the fact that the extreme high end can lobby and can organise for its own interests, and we've let it happen.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Perry's Death Penalty Defense - NYTimes.com
That whole "perfectly applied" thing — the goal of which requires the person being put to death to actually be guilty — also troubled others. Marie Diamond at Think Progress Justice undertakes a thorough debunking of the idea that everyone executed in Texas in the past decade or so was guilty:
---Sent from Steve's iPad...[D]uring Perry's tenure as governor, DNA evidence hasexonerated at least 41 people convicted in Texas, Scott Horton writes in Harper's. According to the Innocence Project, "more people have been freed through DNA testing in Texas than in any other state in the country, and these exonerations have revealed deep flaws in the state's criminal justice system." Some 85 percent of wrongful convictions in Texas, or 35 of the 41 cases, are due to mistaken eyewitness identifications.
Those exonerations include Cornelius Dupree, who had already spent 30 years in prison for rape, robbery, and abduction when DNA evidence proved unequivocally that he was not the man who had committed those crime. Tim Cole, the brother of Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis (D), was posthumously pardoned a decade after he died in prison when DNA evidence proved his innocence. The total failure of the Texas courts to protect these innocent individuals reveal a system plagued by racial injustices, procedural flaws, and a clemency review process that's nothing but a rubber stamp on executions.
Friday, September 09, 2011
The Blog : September 11, 2011 : Sam Harris
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/september-11-2011/
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Perry criticizes government while Texas job growth benefits from it - The Washington Post
The disparity has grown sharper since the national recession hit. Between December 2007 and last June, private-sector employment in Texas declined by 0.6 percent while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workforce in Texas.
Check out: '1,667 Times Square-Style Attacks Every Year' on Slate
I thought you might find this Slate article interesting:
1,667 Times Square-Style Attacks Every Year
By John Mueller, Mark G. Stewart
http://www.slate.com/id/2303169?wpisrc=sl_ipad
1,667 Times Square-Style Attacks Every Year
By John Mueller, Mark G. Stewart
http://www.slate.com/id/2303169?wpisrc=sl_ipad
Putting this all together, we find that, in order for the $75 billion in enhanced expenditures on homeland security to be deemed cost-effective under our approach—which substantially biases the consideration toward finding them effective—they would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect each year against 1,667 otherwise successful attacks of something like the one attempted in Times Square in 2010. In other words, we'd have to foil more than four major attacks every day to justify the spending.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Debate Reax, Ctd - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast
---Sent from Steve's iPad...Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don't have a clue what it's actually about.
Fact checking the GOP debate at the Reagan library - The Fact Checker - The Washington Post
"It is a monstrous lie. It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there."
— Gov. Perry
Perhaps the governor does not know the dictionary definition of a Ponzi scheme. Here's what Merriam-Webster says: "An investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks."
This is a frequent mistake politicians make when talking about Social Security. It is not an investment vehicle; it is intended to provide income security as well disability and life insurance. Just more than 60 percent of the 54 million beneficiaries are retired workers; the rest are disabled workers, dependents or survivors.
Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities. The value of those bonds is now about $2.6 trillion. (We have written about this at length.)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Why Is Average IQ Higher in Some Places?: Scientific American
The states with the five lowest average IQ all have higher levels of infectious disease than the states with the five highest average IQ, and the relationship was good across all of the states in between.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Texas cut wildfire-battling agency budget this year - Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com
Perry and the Texas congressional delegation had asked President Obama to "grant a disaster declaration" that would have brought federal funds to cover much of the fire-fighting.
Sorry Rick, it's your "states eight" to burn.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Amazon.com: Free Book Collections: Kindle Store
http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Monday, September 05, 2011
The Empire at Dusk - By Stephen Glain | Foreign Policy
the Pentagon still has more lawyers than the State Department does diplomats
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Richard Garner – Beyond Morality » Introduction
http://beyondmorality.com/introduction/
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Article: Not so odd - Jerry Coyne on Joel Marks
Not so odd - Jerry Coyne on Joel Marks
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2011/09/not-so-odd-jerry-coyne-on-joel-marks.html
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West, Hogan
I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn't magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing."—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Music in Review: Dropkick Murphys’ Going Out in Style
The Dropkick Murphys dig into the issue of meaningful relationships with tracks like "Sunday Hardcore Matinee" and "1953." The chorus "Whoa, we have each other. Whoa, things are different today. Whoa, we still got each other and the glory never fades away. The glory never fades away!" from "Sunday Hardcore Matinee" reminds you how irreplaceable quality friends are
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Friday, September 02, 2011
A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is An Embarrassment To The Creed | The New Republic
Yet it irks me that, as far as most Americans are concerned, Ron Paul is the alpha and omega of the libertarian creed. If you were an evil genius determined to promote the idea that libertarianism is a morally dubious ideology of privilege poorly disguised as a doctrine of liberation, you'd be hard pressed to improve on Ron Paul.
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Intel reportedly plans to back off MeeGo OS
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110901PD217.html
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Article: The Greatest Cover Songs of All Time
The Greatest Cover Songs of All Time
http://popdose.com/the-popdose-100-the-greatest-cover-songs-of-all-time/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
Article: Nothing fails like prayer
Nothing fails like prayer
http://freethoughtblogs.com/zingularity/2011/09/01/nothing-fails-like-prayer/
(Sent from Flipboard)
---Sent from Steve's iPad...
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