Recommend #2 - non-political good article......
1/ How's the economy doing? "Much better", we constantly hear in the news.....big media constantly shills for corporate America, which is protected from downturns in the US because of their subsidiaries in China and India, but for the middle class it still sucks.....and as Paul Krugman points out with the new Republican majority in the House realistically the best we can hope for is that Congress doesn't sabotage any recovery.....forget helping the middle class.....
If there’s one piece of economic wisdom I hope people will grasp this year, it’s this: Even though we may finally have stopped digging, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole.
We’re not talking Morning in America here. Construction shows no sign of returning to bubble-era levels, nor are there any indications that debt-burdened families are going back to their old habits of spending all they earned. But all we needed for a modest economic rebound was for construction to stop falling and saving to stop rising — and that seems to be happening. Forecasters have been marking up their predictions; growth as high as 4 percent this year now looks possible.
Hooray! But then again, not so much. Jobs, not G.D.P. numbers, are what matter to American families. And when you start from an unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, the arithmetic of job creation — the amount of growth you need to get back to a tolerable jobs picture — is daunting.
First of all, we have to grow around 2.5 percent a year just to keep up with rising productivity and population, and hence keep unemployment from rising. That’s why the past year and a half was technically a recovery but felt like a recession: G.D.P. was growing, but not fast enough to bring unemployment down.
2/ Food - one of the most important things in our lives is also the one most abused by lots of people....in the name of "no time" and "I'm busy" too many Americans eat junk.....chemical ridden garbage.
So here's an article that says if you can master three simple things in the kitchen you can eat better, feel better and have a healthier life.....read this - make it a New Years resolution to eat healthier......go on.....
The problem is, real food is cooked by real people — you! — and real people are cooking less than ever before.We know why people don’t cook, or at least we think we do: they’re busy; they find “convenience” and restaurant foods more accessible than foods they cook themselves; they (incorrectly) believe that ready-to-eat foods are less expensive than those they cook themselves; they live in so-called food deserts and lack access to real food; and they were never taught to cook by their parents, making the trend self-perpetuating.
Yet Americans watch 35 hours of television a week, according to a Nielsen survey. (Increasing amounts of that time are spent watching other people cook). And although there certainly are urban and rural pockets where people have little access to fresh food, about 90 percent of American households own cars, and anyone who can drive to McDonald’s can drive to a supermarket.
But perhaps most important, a cooking repertoire of three basic recipes can get anyone into the kitchen and beyond the realm of takeout food, microwaved popcorn and bologna sandwiches in a few days.
3/ Boomers
Challenging article about how the millions of boomers retiring in the coming years will mean cuts to.....someone. This article argues there will be pain.....will it be the boomers retirement benefits that get cut, or will we continue to pass on huge debt on to future generations.....
Yet, neither political party seems interested in reducing benefits for baby boomers. Doing so, it's argued, would be "unfair" to people who had planned retirements based on existing programs. Well, yes, it would be unfair. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a worse time for cuts. Unemployment is horrendous; eroding home values and retirement accounts have depleted the elderly's wealth. Only 19 percent of present retirees are "very confident" of having enough money to live "comfortably," down from 41 percent in 2007, reports the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
But not making cuts would also be unfair to younger generations and the nation's future. We have a fairness dilemma: Having avoided these problems for decades, we now must be unfair to someone. To admit this is to demolish the moral case for leaving baby boomers alone. Baby boomers - I'm on the leading edge - and their promised benefits are the problem. If they're off-limits, the problem is being evaded. Together, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid represent two-fifths of federal spending, double defense's share.
But not making cuts would also be unfair to younger generations and the nation's future. We have a fairness dilemma: Having avoided these problems for decades, we now must be unfair to someone. To admit this is to demolish the moral case for leaving baby boomers alone. Baby boomers - I'm on the leading edge - and their promised benefits are the problem. If they're off-limits, the problem is being evaded. Together, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid represent two-fifths of federal spending, double defense's share.
Fascinating article about how the brain works, with examples of how blind people use the capacity of the brain to develop other senses.....but the main point is that we need to keep our brains active at all ages....yet another argument for not watching Fox News.......
While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage — even from something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time.
4/ DDD favourite
ShoeDini - the most obnoxious commercial ever made, with the penetrating voice of Gilbert Gottfried. Yes, it's a real ad.....almost hypnotic in it's awfulness......
5/ Taxes
Great column from the Sun-Sentinel basically telling us to stop whining about our taxes, because someone has to pay for our basic services and to keep society functioning.....
Unless you are an anarchist and believe that we can live without a government for which we need to pay, like some recent kooks on street corners, surely we should expect, and be willing, to contribute our fair share. You pay for condo maintenance fees and assessments, football tickets, cruises and country club memberships. So, why begrudge paying taxes? They are the price we pay for not having to live in a country like Afghanistan. Surely, there's a way to determine the legitimate cost of "membership" in the United States of America and the state of Florida — and put the matter to rest.
We scream about high taxes, not because we have the facts, but because self-serving politicians know that they can get votes by promising lower taxes — or none. Florida voters elected Rick Scottgovernor partly because he said he would reduce property taxes and let corporations pay nothing. But according to the latest data from the Tax Foundation, Florida is a low-tax state: Our state-local tax burden is the 47th lowest in the nation and we have the 5th best tax climate for businesses. Our governor-elect seems like a loose cannon, targeting solutions for problems that don't exist.
The truth is, too many Americans are free-lunchers: They stuff their faces at buffets, fill doggy bags with extra helpings, and steal the sugar packets, but they don't want to pay for anything. But it's time for all of us to stop salivating, to teach Pavlovians a lesson — and to leave the howling to the dogs.
A good argument which I might have agreed with in theory until you became aware of the wholesale corruption in government, where middle class taxes are subsidising the wealthy and giving massive tax breaks to corporations, not to mention our adventures in the Middle East and out bloated military sucking up trillions of our dollars.....so given that the check I write every year is being stolen by the oligarchs and our politicians, how do I feel now?
Disgusted......
6/ Alan Grayson
He came in swinging, and is leaving with the same gusto. Lake County's Congressman for two years, and now a national figure......but he's disappointed in the Democrats.....excellent "exit" interview with the Times......and I'm sure he'll be back.
I really like the guy....about the only politician in recent memory who calls it like he sees it, and you may not like his take on issues but you have to admire his BS-free rhetoric. The problem was, I think, that he got to like the TV fame a little too much and made a really bad judgement when he ran that "Taliban Dan" ad, which turned off a lot of women.....
ORLANDO, Fla. — He has zero faith in the incoming speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, whom he calls a “tool of special interest.”
He derides the Tea Party’s successes as “bought and paid for by the enormously rich and the selfish.”
And he can barely contain distaste for his Republican successor, whose views he sums up as “bizarre fundamentalist.”
Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida’s Eighth Congressional District, is leaving office on Wednesday much as he entered it two years ago — as the pugnaciously partisan, verbal-bomb-tossing, liberal folk hero of the 111th Congress.
But in a wide-ranging interview as his term drew to a close, he repeatedly aimed his artillery in an unexpected direction: toward his own party.
7/ December fails....8 minute video of people doing stupid stuff, accidents and things that go wrong......guys - one for you......
8/ Afghanistan - a planted story in a conservative paper [Washington Post] which implies technology, in this case surveillance cameras in drones, will solve our problems in this rathole and let us "win", whatever this might mean. But the bottom line is we will never, ever win in Afghanistan. Never. They are corrupt, vicious, primitive, tribal madmen and they will never give up trying to get us out of their country.....we would have to kill them all to "win".....hmmm......
The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two.
With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything."
Questions persist, however, about whether the military has the capability to sift through huge quantities of imagery quickly enough to convey useful data to troops in the field.
Officials also acknowledge that Gorgon Stare is of limited value unless they can match it with improved human intelligence - eyewitness reports of who is doing what on the ground.
With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything."
Questions persist, however, about whether the military has the capability to sift through huge quantities of imagery quickly enough to convey useful data to troops in the field.
Officials also acknowledge that Gorgon Stare is of limited value unless they can match it with improved human intelligence - eyewitness reports of who is doing what on the ground.
9/ Music - "Afrojack and Eva" with "Take over Control."
If you watch this video you could have a number of reactions.....
1/ Our civilization is doomed, just like the Roman Empire...look at this debauchery......
2/ Cool video, hot babes, great song.....
3/ A very few will go "what was that car?"
10/ Fracking......no not the oath used as a substitute for "effing" on Battlestar Galactica [great show], but the process of drilling for gas deposits in shale, which generates a lot of nasty waste. Apparently in Pennsylvania they have been dumping all of this chemical residue in the rivers and drinking water.....
This is a massive failure of State regulators who I guess didn't notice this travesty until people started getting sick....or maybe they were just paid off....baaaaad regulators.
But how about the corporations behaving this way? Knowingly dumping poisons into rivers? How do these bastards sleep at night?
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.
There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state allowing waterways to serve as the primary disposal place for the huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
11/ Interesting article on the media and how it's evolving and changing....think about it ....do you watch TV on your computer? On your smartphone? Do you still buy CD's? Do you have a Kindle or an I-Pad? How do you get your news?
All media questions....and this article attempts to delve into where we are going.....
Click through a few years and suddenly the media landscape looks profoundly altered and punished, like a place where a serious earthquake was followed by a tsunami. News about the news business, once a rare commodity, now comes out of a fire hose, with many days bringing yet another shift in old paradigms.
Two-year-old Web sites are worth more than 50-year-old magazines, storied newspapers are now owned by their lenders, cable news has been upended by partisan shouters, social media now preoccupies attention that used to be owned by mainstream producers, and that television screen in the family den is just one of the numerous screens people are staring at.
So let’s stipulate that the sky is falling and will continue to do so. Rather than look back at the creative destruction that has taken place, I thought it would be worthwhile to click on the future.
12/ Doonesbury
Books - A great review of a retrospective on Doonesbury, the wonderful political cartoon......Mary...it's my birthday coming up....
I was wrong about “Doonesbury,” but it took me years to figure that out. When I dipped into the strips again on occasion — they’re now available on The Times’s Web site and Slate, in addition to being syndicated in some 1,400 newspapers worldwide — their aim was still true, but it was like entering a Trollope novel in midstream. There were too many characters and too many implausible, crisscrossing plotlines.
Mr. Trudeau hadn’t jumped the shark, exactly. He’d lashed two sharks together and was riding them like a Jet Ski.
The new anthology of his work, “40: A Doonesbury Retrospective,” is a big book and a canny one. It reboots the readers who’ve strayed, like me, and brings us back up to code. It introduces the dewy things who were born in the ’80s and ’90s to the strip’s earlier, shaggier glories. And it looks to capture some of the sales magic of steroidal volumes like “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Complete Far Side.” This is a genre that Al Capp never foresaw: cuboid comic books so heavy that preteenagers can’t pry them off the ground.
Todays video - Robin Williams and how golf was invented.....note - salty language
Todays over 40 jokes
If you are 40, or older, you might think this is amusing!
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were.
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were.
When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning....Uphill... Barefoot...BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!
There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friend also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!
There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car.. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?
We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD!!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!
There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friend also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!
There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car.. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?
We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD!!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!
You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! Wehad the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!
And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! Wehad the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!
And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
And our parents told us to stay outside and play... ALL day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!
And no helmets for bikes … if you fell off, get up and ride home to get a band aid. You chewed on lead paint from the crib and lived. Driven to school??? Think again! Got a car for your 16th birthday??…. no way, you worked and bought your own! And you damn well better call when you got to where you were going as well as home when street lights came on.
And car seats - oh, please! Mum threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!
See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!
Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd
Todays God joke
And God Created Pennsylvania ...God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found him, resting on the seventh day.He inquired, "Where have you been?"God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds,"Look, Michael. Look what I've made."Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?""It's a planet," replied God, and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a place to test Balance.""Balance?" inquired Michael, "I'm still confused."God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. "For example,northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while southern Europe is going to be poor. Over here I've placed a continent of white people, and over there is a continent of black people. Balance in all things."God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."The Archangel , impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?""That's Pennsylvania , the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from Pennsylvania are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of good things."Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, "But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance."God smiled, "Not very far from Pennsylvania isWashington, DC. Wait till you see the idiots I put there."
Todays blonde joke
An older blonde woman heard through a friend that taking a milkbath is good for the skin, will cure stretch marks and make her beautiful again. So she left a note for her milkman to leave 15 gallons of milk instead of the usual amount.
When the milkman arrived, and read the note, he felt there must be a mistake. He thought she probably meant 1.5 gallons so he knocked on her door to clarify the point. The woman came to the door, and the milkman said, "Yes ma'am, I found your note to leave 15 gallons of milk. Did you mean 1.5 gallons?"
The blonde said, "I want 15 gallons. I'm going to fill my bathtub up with milk and take a milk bath."
The milkman asked, "Do you want it Pasteurized?"
The blonde replied, "Nope, just up to my boobs, I can splash it in my eyes."
When the milkman arrived, and read the note, he felt there must be a mistake. He thought she probably meant 1.5 gallons so he knocked on her door to clarify the point. The woman came to the door, and the milkman said, "Yes ma'am, I found your note to leave 15 gallons of milk. Did you mean 1.5 gallons?"
The blonde said, "I want 15 gallons. I'm going to fill my bathtub up with milk and take a milk bath."
The milkman asked, "Do you want it Pasteurized?"
The blonde replied, "Nope, just up to my boobs, I can splash it in my eyes."
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