remarkable

2012-01-28T22:55:00.000-05:00

Our capacity to retain memories and develop foresight allows us to plan for the future, says Edelman, by using a mental "personal space-time machine" that jumps between past, present and future.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/28/the_neuroscience_of_happiness/singleton/?mobile.html

2012-01-26T20:37:00.001-05:00

I came to see it as a social experiment, because what I learned, surprisingly, is that until about the 1950s,there was no society in the history of our species that supported large numbers of people living alone. Since then, living alone has become incredibly common, throughout the developed world. Wherever there is affluence, and a welfare state, people use their resources to get places of their own.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Eric-Klinenberg-on-Going-Solo.html?device=android

2012-01-24T11:55:00.001-05:00

"There are two things people say about the streetcar" in Portland, Ore., says Michael Andersen, creator of the publication Portland Afoot. "One is, 'The streetcar is soooo sloooow.' And the other is, 'I loooove the streetcar.'"

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/in_the_future_urban_bikers_go_faster_than_cars/singleton/?mobile.html

2012-01-24T10:52:00.000-05:00

Each night, an Obama aide hands the President a binder of documents to review. After his wife goes to bed, at around ten, Obama works in his study, the Treaty Room, on the second floor of the White House residence. President Bush preferred oral briefings; Obama likes his advice in writing.

2012-01-23T08:49:00.001-05:00

Those entrepreneurs with more "entropic" and "diverse" social networks scored three times higher on a metric of innovation, suggesting that the ability to access "non-redundant information from peers" is a crucial source of new ideas.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/opposites-dont-attract-and-thats-bad-news/

2012-01-18T07:55:00.001-05:00

Old or new, Jacksonianism has always combined the pretense of egalitarian rebellion against privilege with the reality of domination by upper-class rentiers and crony capitalists.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/17/why_do_the_republicans_nominate_blue_bloods/singleton/?mobile.html

2012-01-13T21:14:00.001-05:00

"You say, man, this is what it feels like once it's over period," Gates said. "Everybody's time will come to an end. I think it makes you appreciate it more and really try to grasp the game more while you're still able to play."

http://m.cincinnati.com/collegesports/article?a=2012301120181&f=1660

2012-01-10T08:32:00.001-05:00

''I'm Eli's oldest friend,'' James Montgomery says, ''and I don't think I've ever had a serious conversation with him. The last time he called we spent 15 minutes trying to figure out the last song in 'Teen Wolf.' ''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/magazine/19MANNING.html?pagewanted=all&%23038;position=

2012-01-09T21:15:00.001-05:00

The average NFL career is about three years long. Your average football player is 28 years old when he's forced into retirement. He has no marketable skills, his knees are shot, and his brain is probably damaged, and the thing he's been doing his whole life, the thing that gives his life meaning and value, the thing he's been told he can do better than anyone else—well, he can't do that thing anymore. That part of his life is over; what is he going to do now? Within two years of retirement 78 percent of NFL players are in bankruptcy or close to it.

http://www.themorningnews.org/post/wild-card-weekend

2012-01-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

2012-01-09T18:57:00.000-05:00

From a system point of view, when an understanding of information theory is combined with genetics, then life is an accumulation of information with a measurable per-generation information gain. The concept of "I" is just a consequence of our subject/object language structure and it's looking more likely that language syntax is innate. It's always better to ask "what is the purpose?" of rather than "what is the meaning of?". If you ask what's the purpose of the concept of "I" then the answer seems quite clear to me.. to enable communication. This can also be viewed in an evolutionary context.

2012-01-04T21:21:00.001-05:00

Do you realize—that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes—let them know You realize that life goes fast It's hard to make the good things last You realize the sun doesn't go down It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/do-you-realize-by-the-flaming-lips

2012-01-02T12:42:00.000-05:00

Congress is endlessly complex, because complexity can be a useful tool in wielding power without scrutiny.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/matt-stoller-why-ron-paul-challenges-liberals.html

2011-12-23T17:54:00.000-05:00

The market price of coconuts is low, but the utility I would derive from a gift of coconuts is actually negative.

2011-12-20T11:01:00.000-05:00

The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it’s right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority.

2011-12-16T17:52:00.001-05:00

myelination seems to increase with practice, suggesting that the insulation and repetitive use of our neurons play an important role in the development of expertise. (This is what's known as muscle memory.)

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/athletes/Some-Reassembly-Required.html?page=all

2011-12-07T17:10:00.001-05:00

The past and future are equally real. This isn't completely accepted,
but it should be. Intuitively we think that the "now" is real, while
the past is fixed and in the books, and the future hasn't yet
occurred. But physics teaches us something remarkable: every event in
the past and future is implicit in the current moment. This is hard to
see in our everyday lives, since we're nowhere close to knowing
everything about the universe at any moment, nor will we ever be — but
the equations don't lie. As Einstein put it, "It appears therefore
more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional
existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three
dimensional existence."

http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/09/01/ten-things-everyone-should-know-about-time/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-12-06T21:09:00.001-05:00

The University of California-Berkeley, which is forbidden by state law
to consider race in admissions, is more than 40 percent Asian — up
from about 20 percent before the law was passed.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-03/asian-students-college-applications/51620236/1

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-11-16T19:35:00.001-05:00

If we all had balanced budgets, we would not have capitalism.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/acomm;jsessionid=CED4E5281A30679C94A0DCA3BB0048F0.w5?a=868275

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-11-03T08:10:00.001-04:00

We learn how to be mad, the same way we learn how to be male or
female, or how we learn how to participate in society. We look to
others we respect and imitate their behaviors. We follow the
instructions of teachers and parents, and we are subtly punished or
rewarded for various quirks until we learn to mold ourselves in a
certain way to avoid responses we don't like and attain the responses
we do.

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article10281101.aspx

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-11-01T03:34:00.001-04:00

Mind-reading, then, has become a reality. It is crude. The results
would not stand up in court—yet. But, as the Franck report said of
America's first atom bomb, the thing does work.

http://www.economist.com/node/21534748

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-27T21:29:00.001-04:00

Which is not to say that musicians should reflexively adhere to the
static desires of their fan base, because that's bad, too; on a
personal level, I'm glad Metallica and Reed⁠2⁠ tried this, if only
because I'm always a fan of bad ideas.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7146312/lou-reed-metallica-album

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-27T09:43:00.001-04:00

The Hunter from 1959 and 1960 was this long, lean, athletic, handsome man, who used to type The Great Gatsby over and over to see what it felt like to write a masterpiece.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/23/johnny-depp-on-hunter-s-thompson.html

2011-10-24T08:49:00.001-04:00

"You know, the Clovis-first model has been dying for some time," he
finished. "But there's nothing harder to change than a paradigm, than
long-standing thinking. When Clovis-First was first proposed, it was a
very elegant model but it's time to move on, and most of the
archaeological community is doing just that."

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15391388&wsi=68a4ecb312c046ce&ei=tVulTtj7NZPwwwXg7uS-BA&wsc=yq

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-22T00:21:00.001-04:00

In biology, we got stuck with a particular coding system that
precluded anything else from moving in. It's the same in the world of
code: It is constrained by the original protocols but beyond that it
is very open. And the evolution of computer code is now moving much
faster than the evolution of biological code.

http://theeuropean-magazine.com/352-dyson-george/353-evolution-and-innovation

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-19T18:45:00.001-04:00

Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping
because consumers are losing their jobs and wages, and don't have the
dough. And businesses aren't hiring because they don't have enough
customers.

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/19/austerity_isnt_the_answer/singleton/?mobile.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-12T18:15:00.001-04:00

We'd just returned from China, where everything about Internet use in
general and Google services in particular is insecure and fraught.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/?single_page=true

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-11T22:22:00.001-04:00

Years ago, when I was a graduate student in physics, I was introduced
to the concept of the "well-posed problem": a question that can be
stated with enough clarity and precision that it is guaranteed an
answer. Scientists are always working on well-posed problems.

http://life.salon.com/2011/10/02/how_science_and_faith_coexist/singleton/?mobile.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-08T22:48:00.001-04:00

No matter who we are, how alternative or preppy we seem, we're all
drawing from something bigger than ourselves. No one, it seems, is
quite unique.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/10/06/exactitudes_a_photographic_argument_against_uniqueness.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-05T22:30:00.001-04:00

They've created a debt machine that charges interest to lend Americans
the cash they haven't gotten in raises since wages stagnated in the
1970s, after the Democrats abandoned economic populism.

http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/05/unions_democrats_occupy_wall_street/singleton/?mobile.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-05T17:39:00.001-04:00

The Tea Party, too, started in incoherence and blind rage,
disconnected from other conservative activism, and featuring an
unappealing, self-indulgent cast of characters who, like the young
activists on Wall Street, represented only a tiny faction of the
people they claimed to speak for.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/95753/occupy-wall-street-left-tea-party-dionne

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-10-03T21:58:00.001-04:00

I've always found it interesting how much the right and left sides of
people's faces can differ.

http://www.rightreading.com/leftface-rightface/leftface-rightface1.htm

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-30T18:13:00.001-04:00

If it turns out that the CERN experiment is correct, then our
scientific understanding is flawed. All sorts of strange things could
happen if the speed of light can be exceeded. Causality - the relation
between cause and effect - would be affected. Anyone traveling faster
than the speed of light would be able to see fragments of a broken
vase coming together. Faster-than-light travelers could go back in
time - say, leave New York for Paris one evening and return the
previous day.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=847884&single=1&f=28

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-27T17:38:00.001-04:00

you are the sole example of whoever you say you are.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n18/jenny-diski/diary

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-26T16:41:00.001-04:00

We tend to estimate the probability of an event from the ease with
which we can recall examples

http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/article.php?CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html?

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-26T08:46:00.001-04:00

"My identity, once wrapped up in the righteousness of American
militarism and exceptionalism, was destroyed. Iraq, of course, was a
shit show from the start, but Afghanistan, through a number of factors
not worth recounting here, became one several years in. It became
obvious that the people entrusted to run our country were either
ignorant or liars."

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/the-illusion-of-american-exceptionalism-was-shattered.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-17T11:00:00.001-04:00

If you have an idea for an app, do it now. Throw it up online. Find an
audience. Worry about quality later.

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/silicon-valley-2011-9/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-16T01:56:00.001-04:00

At least at the Kentucky Derby you are supposed to get drunk.

http://www.observer.com/2011/09/celebrities-are-miserable-at-us-open-pics/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-13T21:10:00.001-04:00

These soldiers are the first of a new kind of creature - "autocidal"
maniacs genetically modified to wipe out their own kind without
harming other creatures.

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/mg21128291.700-swarm-troopers-mutant-armies-waging-war-in-the-wild.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-12T11:39:00.001-04:00

For several decades, psychiatrists who work with the dying have been
trying to come up with new psychotherapies that can help people cope
with the reality of their death. One of these therapies asks the dying
to tell the story of their life.

http://m.npr.org/story/140336146?url=/2011/09/09/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-08T08:20:00.001-04:00

There are currently more than 40,000 troops in Iraq, who in August
enjoyed their first month without a man or woman killed in action
since 2003.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0907/Yes-the-Iraq-drawdown-is-really-happening

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-07T08:47:00.001-04:00

Shock Doctrine suggests that in the aftermath of a calamity, there is
always corporate method in the smoldering madness - a method based in
Disaster Capitalism.

http://mobile.salon.com/politics/feature/2011/09/06/shockreform/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-06T17:38:00.001-04:00

What percentage of people who have ever lived are alive today?

http://1000memories.com/blog/75-number-of-people-who-have-ever-lived

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-06T17:31:00.001-04:00

How will you or I be remembered by our friends and family? For a
select number of famous people, they might be commemorated in a Time
article or a Wikipedia entry. But the majority of people will not have
that recognition.

http://greylockvc.com/2011/02/16/memorials-in-the-digital-age/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-04T22:41:00.001-04:00

There was a time long ago when women in particular had no choice but
to marry and have children. We're beyond that point now. The
overwhelming majority of people do want to have children because they
do want to nurture a young person and project themselves into the next
generation. I think an even larger number of people want to have a
partner. Maybe they don't when they're in college or just after
college, but as they get older, most people tend to want to have an
ongoing, intimate relationship with someone. In every civilization we
know of, there has been a relationship that was something like
marriage, so I get a bit impatient when people talk about marriage as
though this is a social construction that is oppressing people and we
should just cast it off -- because the issue is not formal marriage,
the issue is that people want a partner.

http://mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2011/09/04/marriage_and_race_interview/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-09-01T08:53:00.001-04:00

So when a woman I'll call Gwen, a mom acquaintance at our preschool,
invited my children and me to go to the aquarium with her and her 3-
and 5-year-old, I politely declined. After all, a children's aquarium
sounded like a destination swarming with, well, children. Children who
operated outside our preschool's regime of enforced kindness and would
likely be modeling behaviors that would take years for me to
extinguish once my children were exposed to them, behaviors like
chewing tobacco and throwing Ninja stars.
http://mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2011/08/31/hell_is_other_peoples_children/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-25T08:20:00.001-04:00

"Bubbles are usually associated with greed. This run-up is more
associated with fear," Clark says. "This is more of a fear mania.
There's more upside."

http://m.usatoday.com/article/money/50126554?articlePage=1

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-15T00:33:00.003-04:00

In most cases, he says, the middle class suffered depressed income for
a long time after the crisis, while the top 1 percent were able to
protect themselves—using their cash reserves to buy up assets very
cheaply once the market crashed, and emerging from crisis with a
significantly higher share of assets and income than they'd had
before.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/8600/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-15T00:33:00.001-04:00

for the 50 years after World War II, to be a president, mayor,
governor or university president meant, more often than not, giving
things away to people. Today, it means taking things away from people.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Friedman-a-theory-of-everyting-sort-of.xml

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-12T08:44:00.001-04:00

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego
sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and
identifying what one's strengths and weaknesses are.

http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/25/110725fa_fact_cassidy

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-12T08:20:00.001-04:00

Nothing brings down the deficit more quickly than getting the
unemployed back to work.

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/08/why-standard-poors-got-the-downgrade-right.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-10T23:32:00.001-04:00

The purpose of shrinking government was to reduce debt. But the effect
has been to kill the economy.

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/anarchy-and-austerity-why-london-wont-be-the-last-city-to-burn/243435/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-10T20:28:00.000-04:00

The big question, 10 years later, is whether things have improved or
worsened for those in the bottom third of the income distribution, the
people who clean hotel rooms, work in warehouses, wash dishes in
restaurants, care for the very young and very old, and keep the
shelves stocked in our stores. The short answer is that things have
gotten much worse, especially since the economic downturn that began
in 2008.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175428/tomgram%3A_barbara_ehrenreich%2C_on_americans_%28not%29_getting_by_%28again%29/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-09T22:13:00.001-04:00

It's almost as if he is trying to be the exact opposite of Bush --
all brains, no guts.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/obamas-tipping-point_1_b_921805.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-05T17:21:00.001-04:00

Before the coming of the railways, and the buses, and the motor car,
when it was not uncommon for isolated farms to be a day's walk from
the nearest shops, the closest many people got to a department store
was when a wandering peddler came to call.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2011/08/04/the-last-of-the-cornish-packmen-2/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-04T20:11:00.001-04:00

Is man the rational animal? More and more what he thinks about—if he
is middle class; if he has been to college; if he has read the right
books—is how to go on living. He concocts strategies ostensibly for
the prolongation of a healthy life.

http://chronicle.com/article/Health-Now-A-Provocation/128398/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-08-04T08:03:00.001-04:00

At a certain point, when only the relatively rich can afford to not
ingest bovine growth hormone on a regular basis, appreciating food and
where it comes from becomes a bourgeois endeavor akin to collecting
Fabergé eggs.

http://m.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/08/the-folly-of-bourgeois-sustainable-food/243019/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-07-30T01:31:00.001-04:00

One is all you need.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/j3fgv/iama_half_of_tenacious_d_kyle_gass_ama/.compact

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-07-28T08:47:00.001-04:00

Why, in 2011, do we still drag little paper icons onto little folder
icons? The speed and ease of indexing the full contents of files in
modern operating systems should obviate the need for filing.
Similarly, treating files, folders, programs and other items as the
same kind of thing—showing them all as icons within folders or on a
desktop—confuses both new and long-time basic users no end.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/07/operating-systems?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/lionyamns

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-07-23T10:35:00.001-04:00

China's spectacular real estate bubble is about to go pop

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100011023/chinas-spectacular-real-estate-bubble-is-about-to-go-pop/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-07-21T21:41:00.001-04:00

Studs Terkel talks about the spontaneity of going to a day game in Episode 5.

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-07-11T17:40:00.001-04:00

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance,
unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited
memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to
create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even
implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated.
Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are,
after all, anonymous.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/warren-buffett-i-could-end-the-deficit-in-5-minutes/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-06-24T09:19:00.001-04:00

it would take some fancy math to show this, but until capital can do
everything labor can do – that is until the singularity – some types
of jobs must be complements to capital

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/technology-and-unemployment&wsi=8c96bed9c6d2a742&ei=ZwMETp6gG5PgxQWG2-WJBA&wsc=yq

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-06-08T23:10:00.001-04:00

An intelligent person is open-minded, an outside-the-box thinker, an
effective communicator, is prudent, self-critical, consistent, and so
on. These are not qualities readily subject to measurement.

http://m.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110606crat_atlarge_menand

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-06-07T18:20:00.001-04:00

Estimates suggest that if China, India and other developing countries
reach Western levels of car ownership, there could be 3 billion cars
in the world, four times the current total, within four decades. Where
will the fuel come from for these vehicles, and what about their
environmental impact?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/opinion/07iht-ednair07.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-05-27T18:51:00.001-04:00

discerning diners with a penchant for spending a premium to know where
food comes from are pushing DNA-traceable meat onto restaurant menus

http://m.lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2011-05-25/virginia-based-food-distributor-using-dna-track-beef-restaurants

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-05-27T18:28:00.001-04:00

A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers.

http://xkcd.com/904/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-05-25T08:55:00.001-04:00

The only books I remember reading are the ones I read in the twentieth century

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/bob-dylan-birthday.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-05-21T21:35:00.001-04:00

"Two or three years ago, there was no way we could have afforded to do
that," Mark Krywko says. But robots have become markedly more skilled
and less expensive.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/in-early-2010-somewhere-high.ars/2

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-05-02T00:04:00.001-04:00

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst-ever
terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama
announced tonight.

http://m.espn.go.com/wireless/story?storyId=6463257&top

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-25T10:58:00.001-04:00

what should I download when there are five billion files to choose
from? Whom should I bless with my attention? Do I have any attention
to spare?

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/everything-popular-is-wrong-making-it-in-electronic-music-despite-democratization/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-22T00:02:00.001-04:00

"The reality is opposition never built anything. Only optimism builds.
I am sure there is opposition in the other 80 cities that are pursuing
streetcars. I will tell you what happens after a city builds a
streetcar, there is not any opposition. It goes away, because people
start fighting to get the streetcar in their neighborhoods," said
Mallory.

"And that will happen here in Cincinnati. Just like we built the
banks, we will build the streetcar," said Mallory.

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-20T17:37:00.001-04:00

So okay, we've already established that the story has a ludicrous
premise, but have the film's creators managed to make this ludicrous
premise into a compelling and entertaining narrative?

In three words: "Oh, hell no."

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-19T23:20:00.001-04:00

If they want to ostracize me as a person, that's their right, I
respect that. But the government should not be in this. For the
government to come after me with all their force and all their money
is outrageous. Offending people should be a constitutional right.

http://mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2011/04/19/obscenity/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-13T08:48:00.001-04:00

Treatment by physicians outside of hospitals was not included -- in
part because the costs of such care simply weren't very large compared
to hospitalization, and in part because of the staunch opposition from
the AMA. But hospital care ended up being Medicare Part A. A
"voluntary" program in which participants would pay a premium to the
government in return for coverage of physician care -- the Republican
proposal -- became Medicare Part B. Doctors were bought off by the
support, and away we went.

http://mobile.salon.com/tech/htww/2011/04/13/medicare_lyndon_johnson_and_obama/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-12T23:59:00.001-04:00

The price of oil is not responding to the basic laws of supply and
demand. There is a surplus of oil. It is based on individual
investors, many who have no direct business in oil, SPECULATING that
there MIGHT be a shortage. These people, in a never ending quest to
make a buck, bid oil up and up and up until our economy crashes. Then
these same individuals swoop in to by all the depressed
assets(stocks,real estate) at bargain basement prices, and it starts
all over again. The real crime is our government allows it.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/acomm?a=774069

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-12T02:16:00.001-04:00

When you're a smart person like he is, sometimes you think too much.
Sometimes in this game, it's better to have the ability to not think
at all.

http://wap.mlb.com/cin/news/article/2011041117654696/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-04-11T17:39:00.001-04:00

This is a dangerous period. Global liquidity is way too plentiful,
while speculation has become too all-embracing and rewarding.
Indications of monetary excess are everywhere. Indeed, we're in the
midst of the biggest financial bubble in history (the "global
government finance bubble") - yet everyone seems comfortably
oblivious.

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MD12Dj02.html&wsi=e712c4dffb2be3fa&ei=yHKjTfShLofawgWo9a2LDw&wsc=yq

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-30T08:38:00.001-04:00

Citizenship in a consumer society is consumership.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/02/round-midnight.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-24T23:10:00.001-04:00

After all, a home bought in 1890 would be worth about 35 times as much
in 2010 (if maintenance is done to keep it in good condition,
presumably). That's an annual return of 3%.

But that doesn't take inflation into account. To do that, look at the
thick black line. Once home prices fully fall from the bubble's pop,
they will return back to the zero trend. In other words, home prices
merely kept up with inflation over the past 120 years.

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/chart-of-the-day-home-prices-since-1890/72980/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-24T22:59:00.001-04:00

This is the paradox of pragmatism: the flexibility most likely to
produce success is often least likely to consolidate political
support.

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/the-political-perils-of-pragmatism/72978/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-24T22:52:00.001-04:00

It's one thing to blindly trust the experts. It's quite another to
doublecheck them with a distributed network of 215 Geiger counters --
forcing them to earn that trust.

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/when-crowdsourced-data-meets-nuclear-power/73005/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-24T22:38:00.001-04:00

In the Pew Research Center's most recent survey, the organization
reported yesterday that at this time four years ago, TV coverage and
national interest in politics dwarfed the levels being seen today

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/political-coverage-interest-tank-since-07/72994/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-24T14:08:00.001-04:00

Today's energy supplies provide the equivalent of the work of 22 billion slaves, according to former oil industry man Colin Campbell. But now the wave of oil looks set to leave us high and dry. At well over $100 per barrel, prices are climbing again to the level last reached in 2008. Since then, however, the tone of commentary has changed.

Awareness is increasing of a fundamental problem looming, in which rising demand departs from flattening supply, leading to a shortage in the supply of the global economy's life blood. Until now, false reassurance that we can carry on as we are has come from two factors. First, that there is still oil and second, that new oil fields are still being discovered.

And, of course, there is still oil and small, new amounts are being found. But the situation is like knowing there are 10 mouths to feed tomorrow, yet only food stores enough for eight. Worse, each day, less food is replaced than the amount eaten, while the number of mouths to feed increases.

2011-03-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

Instead of falling in love with his own image in a pond, today’s narcissist apparently gazes adoringly at his own Facebook profile.

2011-03-23T09:02:00.001-04:00

The year 2006 may be remembered for civil strife in Iraq, the nuclear
weapon testing threat by North Korea, and the genocide in Darfur, but
now it appears that another world event was occurring at the same
time—without headlines, but with far-reaching consequence for all
nations.

That's the year that the world's conventional oil production likely
reached its peak, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Vienna,
Austria, said Tuesday.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2010/11/101109-peak-oil-iea-world-energy-outlook/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-19T09:01:00.001-04:00

On Facebook and Twitter, on blogs and author websites and work
profiles, individuals lay out their agonizingly detailed goals for the
future with reckless abandon, taking pains to document every ego
reward along the way.

http://m.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/03/limitless-oprah-and-charlie-sheen-the-scary-side-of-super-sized-ambition/72531/2/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-19T00:20:00.001-04:00

Now that blind ambition no longer carries the slightest taint and the
term "sell-out" holds no meaning, now that earnest young men sing not
of love but of "want(ing) to be a billionaire so frickin' bad," now
that narcissistic outbursts and trips to rehab are tantamount to
self-promotion, now that, on blogs and Facebook and Twitter, millions
of self-branding voices cry out and are never silenced, now that
reaching for the stars is encountered less, by young people, as
euphemism than high-priority action item, it may be time to question,
at long last, the reigning ethos of super-sized individualism.

http://m.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/03/limitless-oprah-and-charlie-sheen-the-scary-side-of-super-sized-ambition/72531/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-18T08:26:00.001-04:00

"One of the bigwigs in our company explained why we're losing our
co-workers and using robots instead. And admittedly it makes a lot of
sense – a lot of business sense. But in my opinion, it doesn't make
people sense.

"Because you see, robots don't make me laugh. They don't calm me down
when I get nutty about something silly. They don't congratulate me on
the births of my kids or tell me I've got the remnants of a donut on
my mouth. They don't fill my coffee cup, talk about the Reds, shoot
paper wads into a giant garbage can during commercials, and they don't
remind me that what we do on television isn't brain surgery.

"Robots don't do any of those things. And those are the things that
make Good Morning Tri-State what it is."

http://m.cincinnati.com/entertainment/article?a=9567&f=882

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-18T00:11:00.001-04:00

Stephen Hawking, once known primarily for showing that black holes
emit radiation, had lit the path with his 1988 book A Brief History of
Time. The next year, eminent mathematician Roger Penrose mused on
quantum theory, computation, and consciousness in The Emperor's New
Mind. The success of these books was something of a surprise.

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_05/7029

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-17T00:18:00.001-04:00

In this rarefied world, high prices are a feature, not a bug; they're
status symbols that alert others to the fact that the patrons can pay
$26 for something as basic as a spinach salad. They also serve to keep
out the riff-raff. If L'Ami Louis cut its prices so that they were
commensurate with the quality of the food and service, no one would go
there anymore.

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2011/03/gastronomics.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-13T16:17:00.001-04:00

An athletic director may be present when other schools from his or her
conference are discussed, but he or she may only speak if asked.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_basketball_tournament_selection_process

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-11T22:09:00.001-05:00

it's an unwelcome reminder (how can we keep forgetting this?) that
the world really doesn't lie before us like a land of dreams. At
best—at the very best—it can only offer us choices between two good
things, and as we grasp at one, we lose the other forever.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/the-ivy-delusion/8397/4/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-11T20:33:00.001-05:00

kids are inherently strong, not weak; self-esteem derives from
accomplishing difficult and worthwhile pursuits; adults are better
than children at judging what does and does not constitute a valuable
or enriching experience; the better you get at something, the more you
will enjoy doing it; and a great deal of what is on offer to American
teenagers these days is not only coarsening but downright dangerous.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/the-ivy-delusion/8397/2/

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-08T08:38:00.001-05:00

As he ends the call, he looks agitated and upset. Page Six, the
gossip column of the tabloid New York Post, has a story that he
undertipped a nightclub doorman by giving him only five dollars. "This
is insane," he mutters, "If I did it, it was an accident."

http://m.ft.com/cms/s/2/8383ab06-45e3-11e0-acd8-00144feab49a.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-07T22:09:00.001-05:00

What do you think about the world?

I think it's pretty good, but not if you're alone or scared or dead or
something like that.

⁠
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fxhsu/im_4_years_old_amaa

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-03T21:33:00.001-05:00

In the year that Patrick and I have been divorced, I have taken to
throwing a lot of mementos away -- notes I'd hung onto, photos of him
as a child, photos of us together, mix CDs he'd made me, our wedding
invitations, wedding cards, backstage passes from shows, anything with
the words "The Black Keys" on it.

http://mobile.salon.com/life/feature/2011/03/03/grollmus_divorce_from_black_keys

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-01T22:27:00.001-05:00

There is no problem with flipping a coin or some similar method to
select something or determine a winner as long as we understand that
the outcome is left to chance and nothing else.

http://www.biblestudy.org/question/what-is-casting-lots.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-03-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I,
and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known
survivor. "I knew there'd be only one some day," he said a few years
back. "I didn't think it would be me."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022807013.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

2011-02-25T09:52:00.001-05:00

Because the United States looks a lot more like Ohio than like
Colorado. ...it is the closest state we have to a microcosm of the
nation

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/84102/few-quibbles-galston

--
Sent from my mobile device