You may have read the Jonathan Haidt story yesterday [or watched the interview] about the differences between liberals and conservatives, and after reading the comments under the Moyers interview it certainly pissed off most liberals.......
But I can't get my head around two things - 45% of Americans believe this world was created 10,000 years ago and about the same percentage do not believe in global warming, and if they do acknowledge it they say it's not caused by manmade activities. And creationism is tolerated in our media, and climate change skepticism is pushed by Fox and all right wing commentators.
So......a huge majority of the people that believe in creationism and do not believe in global warming are conservatives, and given this, how can any reasonably aware person have faith in conservative remedies for social programs, economics and governance if they are so obstinately blind to the facts in these basic beliefs?
Most vexing........
Anyway enjoy this DDD, and I don't know where they all come from but the videos keep getting more amazing.......make sure you watch #7 and #9......
1/ Robert Borosage with a very good summary of how to get our economy up and running again, and he takes Republicans and Democrats to task.....everyone with a brain knows what needs to be done, but there is noone has the guts to do it......
Everyone is talking jobs and saying nothing. The inadequate recovery is sputtering and no one is doing anything. In the war on unemployment, no one has picked up a gun. We’re going through the motions, waiting for the misery to ratchet up, the cities to blow, corporate profits to tank before anything is done.
Bill Maher captured the reality when he mused that it wasn’t surprising Republicans thought Democrats had a secret plan if Obama were re-elected, because they hadn’t told anyone about what they planned to do. The Democratic appeal, he suggested, is “vote for us, we’re lame, but the other guys are nuts.” And so they are.
Romney’s campaign, of course, is all about jobs, twenty-four seven. Actually, it is all about the absence of jobs. Romney offers no coherent plan to produce jobs, beyond a generic, “Trust me, I’m the man from Bain.” Good luck with that. House Speaker John Boehner is “on message,” as they say, repeating relentlessly his question: “Where are the jobs?” But Boehner and his Tea Party compatriots have no plan for jobs either. Instead they have a plan for austerity—deep cuts in spending in every government service except the military.
Last weekend, Russ Douthat, one of the few pundits for whom the label “thoughtful conservative” isn’t an oxymoron, tried to imagine a Romney recovery. He used the book by Edward Conard, Romney’s former partner at Bain, to suggest the Bain vision: Greed is good. The Bush economy was humming. More inequality, more financialization, more speculation will renew America. So embrace the current Republican agenda—deregulate Wall Street, cut top-end taxes, slash government spending, and let her rip.
2/ The Wisconsin election was this week, and needless to say Jon Stewart had some funny words to say on the media coverage of Walker's victory......a pretty good 5 minutes......
Wisconsin recall coverage was at the top of Jon Stewart‘s agenda today, from the hilarity he found in Governor Scott Walker soundly winning his election again to the coverage on respective cable news networks. On Fox News, he found what was essentially a touchdown dance; on “MSNBSad,” the many, many stages of grief– from denial, to more denial, and even more denial.
3/ Paul Krugman telling it like it is - we have an economic Republican in the White House already, with policies most conservatives would approve of, but it doesn't stop the attack machine painting the President as a socialist, and worse....
What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams.
So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.
For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.
4/ There have been some disturbing news lately about zombie-like behaviour, like the Miami guy munching on the face of a homeless guy, but Stephen Colbert reassures us this is not true.......or is it? Even the CDC is involved.....
Very funny indeed.......4 minutes........
5/ Now this an interesting New York story - a man in jeans and T-shirt walks by a police arrest of a suspect and sees a cop using unnecessary roughness - he calls for backup to help the cops, and tries to calm the aggressive cop down, but receives a karate chop in the throat for his trouble.....he complains to the sergeant on the scene, but is blown off like you, I or every other citizen would be as cops definitely protect each other..
However......the man in the t-shirt is a judge on the NY Supreme Court, and called NYPD Internal Affairs.....think the cop has a problem?
Thomas D. Raffaele, a 69-year-old justice of the New York State Supreme Court, encountered a chaotic scene while walking down a Queens street with a friend: Two uniformed police officers stood over a shirtless man lying facedown on the pavement. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back and he was screaming. A crowd jeered at the officers.
The judge, concerned the crowd was becoming unruly, called 911 and reported that the officers needed help.
But within minutes, he said, one of the two officers became enraged — and the judge became his target. The officer screamed and cursed at the onlookers, some of whom were complaining about what they said was his violent treatment of the suspect, and then he focused on Justice Raffaele, who was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The judge said the officer rushed forward and, using the upper edge of his hand, delivered a sharp blow to the judge’s throat that was like what he learned when he was trained in hand-to-hand combat in the Army.
The episode, Friday morning just after midnight — in which the judge says his initial complaint about the officer was dismissed by a sergeant, the ranking supervisor at the scene — is now the focus of investigations by the police Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
The judge said he believed the officer also hit one or two other people during the encounter on 74th Street near 37th Road, a busy commercial strip in Jackson Heights. But he said he could not be sure, because the blow to his throat sent him reeling back and he then doubled over in pain.
6/ Where has Quentin Tarantino been for the last few years? Fans of "Pulp Fiction" [almost certainly the best guy movie ever made], "Reservoir Dogs" and the underrated "Jackie Brown" - your wait is over - here is a trailer of Tarantino's new movie "Django Unchained" coming in a few months, a racially charged western.....looks amazing......
7/ A beautiful, wonderful, magical 4 minute video from NASA of the atmosphere filmed from one of the orbiting satellites.......you see the earth, continents lit up and even lightening storms against a backdrop of billions of stars.......fabulous music track from Moby......
After seeing this amazing video it's hard to believe all of this is only 10,000 years old......this comment is for 45% of you....
8/ It's a given you should have a regular physical, but as usual if the medical system says you need something there are hidden pitfalls and problems.....bottom line - you need to be much more aware of your health and use medicine when you have a problem.....
FOR decades, scientific research has shown that annual physical exams — and many of the screening tests that routinely accompany them — are in many ways pointless or (worse) dangerous, because they can lead to unneeded procedures. The last few years have produced a steady stream of new evidence against the utility of popular tests:
Prostate specific antigen blood tests to detect prostate cancer? No longer recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force.
Routine EKGs? No use.
Yearly Pap smears? Nope. (Every three years.)
So why do Americans, nearly alone on the planet, remain so devoted to the ritual physical exam and to all of these tests, and why do so many doctors continue to provide them? Indeed, the last decade has seen a boom in what hospitals and health care companies call “executive physicals” — batteries of screening exams for apparently healthy people, purporting to ferret out hidden disease with the zeal of Homeland Security officers searching for terrorists.
In 1979, a Canadian government task force officially recommended giving up the standard head-to-toe annual physical based on studies showing it to be “nonspecific,” “inefficient” and “potentially harmful,” replacing it instead with a small number of periodic screening tests, which depend in part on a patient’s risk factors for illness. Faced with such evidence, I have not gotten an annual physical since around the time I finished my medical training in 1989. I respect my doctors, but I see them only when I’m sick. I religiously follow schedules for the limited number of screening tests recommended for women my age — like mammograms every two years and blood pressure checks — but most of those do not require a special office visit.
“There’s a lot of inertia and unwillingness to let things go — it’s hard for doctors and patients,” said Allan S. Brett, professor of clinical internal medicine at the University of South Carolina, who tells well patients there is no need to see him annually. “I’ve rolled back the frequency and intensity of screening over the years, absolutely. I’m not doing lots of things now, because there’s no evidence that they help.”
There is, of course, economic impetus for American medicine’s “more is better” mode — at least when patients have insurance. In the United States, most doctors and hospitals profit more by doing more, and prices are particularly high for tests and scans. Also, we are one of the few countries where drug makers and hospitals advertise products and treatments directly to patients, creating demand from consumers who don’t actually pay their full costs.
But there are sociological reasons for America’s enthusiasm as well: an abundance of specialists, who are more likely to deploy tests and procedures, as well as malpractice fears, which leave hurried doctors inclined to order a test rather than explain why it is not necessary. And then there’s habit, said Dr. Brett, who writes extensively on the scientific basis of medical practice, adding: “If you ask gynecologists why they still do yearly Pap smears they’ll say things like: Patients expect it; It keeps patients coming back; It’s what we do in an OB-GYN visit.”
9/ I've never seen dubstep before so this video floored me - how can the human body make dance moves like this with such grace and fluidity? Incredible video.....5 minutes.....
10/ An excellent article for older people [yes us] - tech 101......how to use and have fun with the new formats for music, TV, movies and computers....
ONE day, when my children are a little older, I will gather them close and I will tell them about how I lived through the Great Format Wars.
I will recount to them a seemingly endless cycle of battles. From LP to cassette to minidisk (oh wait — not to minidisk) to CD. From Betamax to VHS to DVD to HD-DVD to Blu-ray. From punchcards to magnetic tape to floppy disks to zip drives to DVD-ROMs.
Some were dirty little skirmishes, like the Eight-Track Incursion of the late 1960s. But, oh, there are epic tales to be told as well: How my children’s hearts will leap and dive (assuming they are not the kind to be bored to distraction by what Dad is droning on about) as they hear about VHS and Betamax, each bringing the other ever closer to oblivion, and how only one of them left the battlefield — only to fall victim to a far nimbler opponent, DVD, which was waiting in the wings.
And my children will hear of this and be amazed (see assumption above), for they know nothing of this kind of conflict. They will grow up in a world where physical storage of information is as outdated as rotary-dial telephones and mimeograph machines are now.
Indeed, they already live in that world, even if vestiges of the old remain (turntables, for example). We older people can enjoy this new world as well, what with streaming music and video services, cloud-based storage options and social networks that easily absorb our photos and ephemera. We may be hardened by battles past, but our future is digital, wireless, ubiquitous and, we hope, pacific. Here’s what it looks like.
11/ Remember Mr. Rogers? This is a charming 3 minute autotune of his schtick.....fun and nostalgic......from PBS......
Get ready to feast your eyes and ears on something truly amazing and uplifting. Thanks to PBS Digital Studios, we now have the masterpiece, "Garden Of Your Mind" featuring the late, beloved Mister Rogers in our lives.
12/ Floriduh schools - good story from Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel about the FCAT test all third graders take.....an important test for all students that was created by politicians, not educators. You may remember a story a couple of weeks ago from a guy who worked for Pearson, a company that grades student papers. Pearson got caught fudging the results, so this year the FCAT scores were corrected and made tougher resulting in a substantial drop in scores.......as Lauren points out - it's not the students fault.....
Supposedly, third-graders across Florida this year read so poorly that their scores on a standardized test dropped from 72 percent passing in recent years to only 56 percent passing.
Lake County hit that average percentage on the nose for reading and was two points below average on math. Now, lots more kids will have to take remedial classes, and more third-graders will flunk.
What happened? Did every 9-year-old in Lake County open a can of stupid before picking up a pencil?
Of course not. This is just an example of that ever-changing target known as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, better known as FCAT.
So much depends on this single test — whether a student can move on to the next grade in some cases, which letter grade the compilation of scores earns for a school and how much a teacher is paid.
The test came about to "prove" that Florida students were just as well educated as those anywhere else in the nation. In other words, the creation of the test was political. It is supposed to show that Florida holds its students to high standards.
13/ Nicki Minaj featuring Chris Brown with "Walk By My Side"........she has an unreal plastic look, but is incredibly popular with 'the young", so this song is interesting in that it shows these black rock stars being rich, smoking a cigar, riding in a Bentley, wearing very expensive clothes while singing a reasonably good song.....we report, you decide if you like it.......note Ms. Minaj is a fine Reubenish figure of a woman......
14/ Little known factoid - Jeb Bush, our former Governor and present promoter of online education for profit, pushed the FCAT heavily and brought it in to Florida schools.....but did you know the CEO of the company that owned the test was Neil Bush, brother of Jeb and "W"? And Bush is still profiting today from the FCAT used in Floriduh schools?
Surprised? Naaaaa.....just business as usual in corruptland Florida......this connection has been known for years, but completely ignored by our media, I assume because of fear of retribution from the Jebster.
A software company run by Neil Bush, a younger brother of Gov. Jeb Bush, hopes to sell a program to Florida schools that students would use to prepare for the test that is key to the governor's education policy.
Texas-based Ignite Inc. makes software being used in a pilot program at an Orlando-area middle school to help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which the governor has championed as a yardstick for school performance.
Ocoee Middle School, which has received millions of dollars in state grants to study ways of lowering costs, is using the software for free.
But a company spokeswoman said Saturday that Ignite soon hopes to sell its early American history course to other Florida schools, at a cost of $30 a year per student.
Ignite spokeswoman Louise Thacker denied the company had an unfair advantage because its founder and CEO, Neil Bush, is a brother of Florida's governo
15/ "Prometheus", directed by Ridley Scott is out now in 3D and this review is enthusiastic, with some reservations about the trajectory of the ending being geared to a sequel....oh well, it still sounds amazing......
If you grew up in the 1970s, you may have a dim memory of“Chariots of the Gods,” an international best seller by Erich von Däniken full of dubious speculation about extraterrestrial influences on ancient earthling civilizations. The book, a kind of space age “Da Vinci Code,” inspired a goofy German documentary and, if memory serves, some earnest, anxious debates among sixth-grade protogeeks who shall remain nameless.
Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” which arrived at the decade’s end, had a far more durable impact. If you saw it in a theater at an impressionable age you may still be seized by irrational, mortal fear every time you experience a touch of indigestion. A powerful, perfect blend of the space-travel and horror genres, “Alien” tapped into a deep, claustrophobic anxiety and an equally primal sense of adventure, the simultaneous thrill and terror of the unknown. The sinewy resilience of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and the designs of the Swiss graphic artist H. R. Giger — including various horrible manifestations of the alien itself — have been etched into the pop-cultural DNA ever since.
In his new film, “Prometheus,” Mr. Scott, returning to science fiction after a 30-year post-“Blade Runner” absence, entwines the visceral, creatural dread of “Alien” with some of the quasi-mythic grandiosity of “Chariots.” Once again a vessel lumbers through the galactic void, and a diverse crew must contend with menacing weirdness outside the ship and growing paranoia within it. The Giger alien may still be out there. Something wicked lurks in subterranean tunnels, their walls etched in freaky runes. And hovering over all the scary stuff are some big, metaphysical questions about the origin and ultimate fate of humanity.
A lot of the pleasure of “Prometheus” is in that hovering. Once the themes touch down and the arc of the story becomes clear, some disappointment sets in. But Mr. Scott’s sense of visual scale, which has often produced hectic, hectoring grandiosity (are you not entertained?), achieves, especially in the first hour, something like genuine grandeur.
Here is the International trailer, with more plot details and Charlize Theron as the evil corporate person.....
16/ Lost in the hoopla over 'Prometheus" will be a smaller movie "Dark Horse", directed by Todd Solondz, which also sounds incredibly good..... a tad depressing, but as this review stresses it's great cinema with an excellent cast.....
Abe (Jordan Gelber) is a tubby underachiever in his 30s who lives with his parents, sleeping in a bedroom full of action figures, movie posters and other emblems of interminable childhood. In other words he is, in the context of recent American cinema, not unusual. But “Dark Horse” is a Todd Solondz movie, which means, among other things, that Abe is neither a sweet Apatovian schlub nor a stoner saint like the title character in Mark and Jay Duplass’s “Jeff, Who Lives at Home.” He is, instead, an emblem of loneliness and failure, whose cocoon of self-delusion and misplaced vanity is carefully dismantled by the sharp, remorseless tweezers of Mr. Solondz’s sensibility.
Abe is not pleasant company. At home with his parents — a stiff, humorless dad played by Christopher Walken and a simpering, smothering mom played by Mia Farrow — he whines and rages his way through daily storms of entitled petulance. Abe works for his father, a real estate developer, or at least spends time at the office, seething and daydreaming behind his computer screen while Marie, the office manager (Donna Murphy), covers for him and his eager cousin curries favor with the boss. The bright yellow Hummer Abe drives is an obvious symbol of his wounded, bloated ego. His courtship of Miranda (Selma Blair), a mopey young woman who also lives at home in a state of arrested, medicated quasi-adolescence, is frequently excruciating to watch because it exposes just how misplaced and bizarre his self-confidence is. What a jerk, you can’t help but conclude. What a loser. Why doesn’t he know it?
But Mr. Solondz brilliantly — triumphantly — turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion.
Strange little trailer.....
Todays guy video - a British motorcycle rider invents an automatic garage door opener.....amazing......
Todays Paraprosdokians jokes......love #17 and #25
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Todays "simple truths" joke for guys
SIMPLE TRUTH 1Partners help each other undress before sex.However after sex, they always dress on their own.Moral of the story: In life, no one helps you once you're screwed.
Todays medical joke
A surgeon went to check on his patient after an operation.
She was awake, so he examined her.
"You'll be fine," he said.
She asked, "How long will it be before I am able to have a normal sex life again doctor?"
The surgeon seemed to pause, which alarmed the girl.
"What's the matter Doctor? I will be all right, won't I?"
He replied, "Yes, you'll be fine. It's just that no one has ever asked me that after having their tonsils out."
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