Don't forget to watch George Carlin #7.....
1/ This is a conflicted story for me, as I am a satisfied member of Amazon Prime and love the service....but Amazon appears to treat their employees like robots and worse......not good.......
Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers
You might find your Prime membership morally indefensible after reading these stories about worker mistreatment
SIMON HEAD
Jeff Bezos (Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)
Excerpted from "Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans"
When I first did research on Walmart’s workplace practices in the early 2000s, I came away convinced that Walmart was the most egregiously ruthless corporation in America. However, ten years later, there is a strong challenger for this dubious distinction—Amazon Corporation. Within the corporate world, Amazon now ranks with Apple as among the United States’ most esteemed businesses. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, came in second in the Harvard Business Review’s 2012 world rankings of admired CEOs, and Amazon was third in CNN’s 2012 list of the world’s most admired companies. Amazon is now a leading global seller not only of books but also of music and movie DVDs, video games, gift cards, cell phones, and magazine subscriptions. Like Walmart itself, Amazon combines state-of-the-art CBSs with human resource practices reminiscent of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Amazon equals Walmart in the use of monitoring technologies to track the minute-by-minute movements and performance of employees and in settings that go beyond the assembly line to include their movement between loading and unloading docks, between packing and unpacking stations, and to and from the miles of shelving at what Amazon calls its “fulfillment centers”—gigantic warehouses where goods ordered by Amazon’s online customers are sent by manufacturers and wholesalers, there to be shelved, packaged, and sent out again to the Amazon customer.
2/ Wondering if the Comcast-Time Warner merger is going to give you better service? Watch this two minute commercial from Comcast.....ignore the salty language, this is what they really think!
Cable giant Comcast is on the verge of acquiringother cable giant Time Warner Cable and many people, including Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), are concerned about one company controlling such a large percentage of the TV and internet market. This new video from Funny or Die pretty much sums why the lack of competition in this space could be so problematic.
As the fake spokesperson for Comcast says in the video below, “No matter what happens, we don’t give a fuck about you.” He goes on explain that abandoning cable TV for Netflix or Hulu won’t work either because Comcast owns Hulu and makes Netflix pay them extra for streaming content. Basically, you will never be able to escape Comcast’s grasp.
“So thank you for choosing Comcast,” he says with a laugh. “You don’t have a choice. Hey America, go fuck yourselves.
3/ Sometimes good journalism is personal, and this article is really interesting, because we all know someone like this guy's father......old, angry and unpersuaded by logic or reason.....
This is an excellent piece, and after I read it I was listening to the radio and Stephanie Miller [radio show host] read the whole story on air.....she is the daughter of William Miller, who ran for VP in 1964 in Barry Goldwater's campaign, so I guess this got to her.....
Highly recommended.....
I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria
Old white people are drowning in despair and rage. Here's how my father lost his mind -- thanks to his cable diet
EDWIN LYNGAR
Old, white, wrinkled and angry, they are slipping from polite society in alarming numbers. We’re losing much of a generation. They often sport hats or other clothing, some marking their status as veterans, Tea Partyers or “patriots” of some kind or another. They have yellow flags, bumper stickers and an unquenchable rage. They used to be the brave men and women who took on America’s challenges, tackling the ’60s, the Cold War and the Reagan years — but now many are terrified by the idea of slightly more affordable healthcare and a very moderate Democrat in the White House.
We’re losing people like my father to the despair of Fox News, and it’s all by design.
My dad is 67 years old, a full year younger than the average Fox viewer, who is 68, according to an analysis in New York magazine by columnist Frank Rich. I’ve read accounts of people my age — 40 or so — losing parents to cancer or Alzheimer’s, but just as big a tragedy are the crops of grandmothers and grandfathers debilitated by Fox News-induced hysteria.
I enjoyed Fox News for many years, as a libertarian and frequent Republican voter. I used to share many, though not all, of my father’s values, but something happened over the past few years. As I drifted left, the white, Republican right veered into incalculable levels of conservative rage, arriving at their inevitable destination with the creation of the Tea Party movement.
4/ A wonderful four minute British video of a "murmuration" of starlings, where hundreds of thousands of birds swoop and fly together in sync......beautiful......
This astonishing sequence was filmed by wild life cameraman and travel journalist Dylan Winter who is currently sailing around the UK in an 18 foot boat.
5/ Are you, dear reader, a liberal? If so, sorry to hear you have surrendered your principles......or so argues Adolph Reed, talking to Bill Moyers.....eighteen minutes of intelligent conversation, and fascinating if you are interested in politics....
In a Web-exclusive interview, political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. talks with Bill Moyers about his new article in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine – a challenge to America’s progressives provocatively titled, “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.”
In the piece, Reed writes that Democrats and liberals have become too fixated on election results rather than aiming for long term goals that address the issues of economic inequality, and that the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama too often acquiesced to the demands of Wall Street and the right.
As a result, Reed tells Moyers, the left is no longer a significant force in American politics. “If we understand the left to be anchored to our convictions that society can be made better than it actually is, and a commitment to combating economic inequality as a primary one, the left is just gone.”
6/ A very different Colbert, where Stephen defies the corporate suits and runs a cartoon called "Laser Klan" during Black History Month.....the toon is satire, funny and features President Obama and some Klan rednecks in robes.....
Some good zingers from our Stephen!
It may not be on the same scale as Stephen Colbert lashing out against his corporate overlords over Daft Punk, but on Thursday's "Colbert Report," he once again defied Viacom's wishes about the content of his show.
This time, Colbert aired a cartoon called "Laser Klan," taking on one of his favorite subjects, the Ku Klux Klan, and their alleged plan to build a death-ray to take out their enemies.
A few months ago, word leaked that the KKK attempted to sell their laser to Jewish groups to kill Muslims. That gave Colbert an idea: If this racist group could overcome their hatred of Jews to destroy a common enemy, could they ever band together with their most reviled adversaries if the stakes were high enough?
Hence the cartoon "Laser Klan," in which the KKK teams up with President Obama to kill alien invaders. Yes, you read that right. And perhaps rightfully so, Viacom felt that there could be some sensitivity issues here. They sent Colbert a letter that read in part: "We're a little concerned because it is airing during Black History Month."
"That's right, the Man is trying to keep me down!" Colbert fumed sarcastically. "Were they polite about it? Yes! Were they making a reasonable point? Absolutely! Do I have a problem where I overreact at being told what to do? You bet your ass I do!"
7/ George Carlin with "The American Dream".......it's time to watch this again and see how right he was......remember he said all this in 2007......
This is an extended version of 4 1/2 minutes with some new material, and even if you have seen this before, watch it again and while you listen to this great man, think about the news stories you remember since the last time you saw this and how spot on he is, seven years later.
Here's a quote from his rant - "nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care"....and this applies to the next two stories.....
8/ Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care - Part 1.....
Parts of China, including Beijing, are becoming uninhabitable because of the air pollution from their dirty energy use, but the really bad news is that unless they fix this their dirty air could affect weather around the world.....it's that bad.
The news: In the ongoing inquiry into how much smog actually blankets China, recent information has revealed a new answer: "Enough to create a nuclear winter." 
According to He Dongxian, an associate professor at China Agricultural University's College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, Chinese agriculture will suffer conditions "somewhat similar to a nuclear winter" if the smog persists and continues to grow. By comparing the growth of one set of chili and tomato plants inside a controlled lab — using artificial light — with another inside a suburban Beijing greenhouse, he found that the greenhouse plants took almost three times as long to grow, and were "lucky to live at all."
He further demonstrated that the smog's air pollutants adhere to greenhouse surfaces and block as much as 50% of the light, desperately impeding photosynthesis, the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy. If the smog doesn't let up, almost every farm in the affected areas could be in serious danger of losing their ability to grow crops. This would also affect farmers' ability to grow the livestock that depend on these crops for sustenance.
But we could live without food, right? Let's assume you've taken that crazy position. Even if that were the case, a study released by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences found that Beijing's pollution has made the city almost "uninhabitable for human beings."
The smog's density hit frightening highs this week, with Beijing's concentration of PM 2.5 particles — those small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream — reaching 505 micrograms per cubic meter on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, the U.S. embassy in China warned American nationals they'd measured the air-quality index at 512. By 11 a.m., that number had reached 537. The World Health Organization recommends a safe level of 25.
And can or will they do something? Have a look at the DDD Climate Change Special from two weeks ago [link below], and read the #3 story on the Keystone pipeline and dirty coal....one of the residues from the filthy tar sands oil is an extremely dirty coal byproduct called petcoke, and a Koch Brothers company is selling this to the Chinese for a third of the price of "clean" coal.....
Converting tar-sands oil into usable fuels requires a huge amount of energy, and much of the black gunk that's refined out of the crude in this process ends up as petroleum coke. Petcoke is like concentrated coal – denser and dirtier than anything that comes out of a mine. It can be burned just like coal to produce power, but petcoke emits up to 15 percent more climate pollution. (It also contains up to 12 times as much sulfur, not to mention a slew of heavy metals.) In Canada, the stuff is largely treated like a waste product; the country has stockpiled nearly 80 million tons of it. Here in the U.S., petcoke is sometimes burned in coal plants, but it's so filthy that the EPA has stopped issuing any new licenses for its use as fuel. "Literally, in terms of climate change," says Stockman, "it's the dirtiest fuel on the planet."
With domestic petcoke consumption plummeting – by nearly half since Obama took office – American energy companies have seized on the substance as a coal alternative for export. The market price for petcoke is about one-third that of coal. According to a State Department analysis, that makes American-produced petcoke "less expensive, including the shipping, than China's coal." Petcoke exports have surged by one-third since 2008, to 33.4 million metric tons; China is now the top consumer, and demand is exploding. Through the first nine months of 2013, Chinese imports were running 50 percent higher than in 2012.
No surprise: The Koch brothers are in the middle of this market.
9/ Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care - Part 2.....
The oceans are becoming more acidic as the sea water absorbs more CO2, and this is starting to have a drastic effect on ocean life.....enjoy your seafood folks, because we are rapidly running out of it.....
A worker harvests oysters for Taylor Shellfish in Washington, another company grappling with the effects of ocean acidification.
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/TED S. WARREN, FILE
A mass die-off of scallops near Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island is being linked to the increasingly acidic waters that are threatening marine life and aquatic industries along the West Coast.
Rob Saunders, CEO of Island Scallops, estimates his company has lost three years worth of scallops and $10 million dollars — forcing him to lay off approximately one-third of his staff.
“I’m not sure we are going to stay alive and I’m not sure the oyster industry is going to stay alive,” Saunders told The Parksville Qualicum Beach NEWS. “It’s that dramatic.”
Ocean acidification, often referred to as global warming’s “evil twin,” threatens to upend the delicate balance of marine life across the globe. As we pump increasing amounts of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, it’s not just wreaking havoc on air quality. The oceans are the world’s largest carbon sinks, absorbing one-quarterof the carbon dioxide emitted every year. The more carbon dioxide absorbed, the more acidic the water becomes and as a result, organisms like shellfish no longer have the calcium carbonate they need to build their shells.
The Pacific Northwest is a hot spot for ocean acidification and the declining levels of pH hits baby scallops particularly hard — as they struggle to build a protective shell, they’re forced to expend more energy and are vulnerable to predators and infection.
The rising rate of carbon dioxide emissions “may have pushed local waters through a ‘tipping point’ of acidity beyond which shellfish cannot survive,” Chris Harley, marine ecologist at the University of B.C, told the Vancouver Sun.
Saunders guesses that he lost 95 percent of his scallop crop as of July. And Island Scallops isn’t alone. “Cape Mudge lost 2.5 million animals and some other small growers lost 300,000,” Saunders said.
And the oceans aren’t just taking in carbon dioxide. The ocean absorbs more than 90 percent of global warming — the energy equivalent of about 12 Hiroshima bombs per second in 2013 alone. As climate change steadily drives up both the temperature and acidity of the oceans, shellfish won’t be the only victims. Researchers believe coral reefs are being driven to the brink of extinction and several species of fish are already disappearing at an alarming rate.
10/ A collection of fails from TwisterNederland, and the usual collection of painful stunts, drunks, bad driving and probably hospital visits.......10 minutes of mayhem for the lads.....
11/ T-Mobile is changing the phone industry by offering fair plans to it's customers.......so read this and ask yourself if it's worth sticking with your carrier....AT&T anyone?
Note - if you have a two year contract with your carrier, remember at the 23rd month if you do nothing after the 24th month you will be screwed, monthly, for as long as you keep the phone.
T-Mobile Turns an Industry on Its Ear
FEB. 26, 2014
A rash of consumer-friendliness has broken out across the mobile data industry. Over the last year, the four major carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile — have cut prices and offered greater flexibility in how they sell their voice, text and broadband services. The industry could be on the verge of an all-out price war.
Who is responsible for this blessed state of affairs?
Credit must go to the United States government.
In 2011, officials at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department moved to block AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. That kept the struggling, fourth-place carrier alive as an independent firm. And it led John J. Legere, T-Mobile’s flamboyant, foul-mouthed chief executive, to brand his company the “uncarrier,” and inaugurate a string of measures that have turned every accepted practice in the mobile business on its head.
T-Mobile’s resurgence, and the effect it has had on the larger market for cellular service, may hold important lessons for regulators who will soon sit in judgment over the latest enormous broadband proposal, Comcast’s deal to gobble up Time Warner Cable.
While T-Mobile executives are reluctant to credit the failed merger with AT&T as the source of the firm’s aggressive new pricing strategy, they admit that they see themselves as disrupters in the market. “We want to identify every pain point for consumers in this industry and eliminate them all,” said Michael Katz, T-Mobile’s vice president for marketing.
In the last year, T-Mobile has dropped the traditional two-year contract from its lineup; now its plans come without customer lock-in. It has also dropped early termination fees, overage charges and other extra strings that carriers apply to keep you in line. The carrier now allows customers to text and use the Web while traveling in 100 countries at no extra charge. T-Mobile has also offered to pay off the early-termination fees its new customers might incur with their old carriers when switching. Most important, it has unbundled the price of a phone from the price of wireless service. Now, you can pay a separate amount for each piece. This means that if you decide against immediately upgrading when you finish paying off your phone, your monthly bill might — astonishingly — go down.
12/ Al Madrigal from the "Daily Show" goes to South Carolina to see how their refusal to take Medicaid money is affecting the working poor.....an amusing/serious five minutes, and look at the beast the Republicans trot out to explain the horrors of Obamacare.....
And remember, Floriduh and our disgusting, corrupt Governor Skeletor is doing the same....
Currently, 19 states have rejected the Medicaid expansion that is offered through the Affordable Care Act due to concerns that costs could skyrocket (despite the program's federal government subsidies for the first few years). Al Madrigal of "The Daily Show" traveled to one of those states, South Carolina, in an effort to explore why those states rejected the expansion.
After talking to the policymakers pushing against the ACA, as well and citizens considered to be the working poor who are suffering medical conditions without the ability to pay for it, Madrigal realized that denying the expansion is easy with one simple trick: Just pretend that those without proper health care aren't real people.
13/ Subway rightly took a load of grief for their admission their bread had a chemical filler banned everywhere else in the world in it, but Subway isn't the only company using it. Here is a list of 500 more food products with ADA [azodicarbonamide].......
And Mary had a thought - there seem to be a lot of people having gluten issues, but could it be this horrible chemical they are sensitive to?
Here are 500 more foods containing the yoga mat chemical
Subway was only the beginning
(Credit: yienkeat/Shutterstock
Subway’s announcement, earlier this month, that its bread would no longer be made with a chemical foaming agent also found in yoga mats and shoe rubber, made a splash for two reasons: first, because it marked the success of a consumer-driven campaign to get the company to reform its practices; and second, because most of us were surprised to find out that the chemical was being used in the first place.
The chemical, azodicarbonamide (also known as ADA), has been banned in Europe and Australia, but is FDA-approved so long as its presence is limited to fewer than 2.05 grams per 100 pounds of flour or 45 parts per million. The World Health Organization links it to respiratory illnesses, allergies and asthma in workers handling large volumes of it. ”When you look at the ingredients, if you can’t spell it or pronounce it, you probably shouldn’t eat it,” Vani Hari, the activist blogger who started the Subway campaign, said.
But it isn’t just Subway — as the company pointed out, it can still be found in products at Starbuck’s, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Burger King and Dunkin Donuts. And according to a new report released by the Environmental Working Group, it can still be found in nearly 500 food products on grocery store shelves.
14/ Seth Meyers has the newest late night comedy show, replacing Jimmy Fallon, and he came up with this amusing take on a game show, "Fake Or Floriduh".....it's amusing, and LOVE the ditzy hostess!
On his third episode of Late Night Wednesday night, Seth Meyers took yet another step outside of his comfort zone and presented a brand new game show called “Fake or Florida.”
The general premise was that since so many crazy news stories happen in the Sunshine State, Meyers would challenge members of his audience (including one actual Floridian, who was given a blindfold as a handicap) to determine whether a headline he read aloud was fake or really did happen in Florida.
The results were just as hilarious as you would expect them to be.
15/ This is a bluegrass/rock song from Jason Isbell, very good, sung live on Conan.......I've never heard of him but when musicians say someone is great, they usually are....
16/ Good TV
If you haven't been watching "The Americans", you are in for a treat. It's just started it's second season, but go back to Season 1 and stream it this summer......it's excellent!
Keidrich Sellati and Keri Russell in the season premiere of “The Americans.”
“The Americans,” which returns Wednesday on FX, has a sly title that suggests how deeply deceptive this thriller is at its core.
The series isn’t about C.I.A. spies; it’s about two Soviet agents posing as an ordinary American couple during the Reagan era Cold War.
But their identities are more splintered than that. Their loyalty to Mother Russia is sincere, but it wavers, frayed by Moscow’s abuses and by their own attachments to the country their children consider home. Their marriage is both arranged and real: Their feelings for each other are intense, but also often in flux.
That’s also true of their neighbor: He’s a counterintelligence F.B.I. agent having a secret affair with a Soviet source who may return his feelings but is also reporting on him to her bosses.
Everyone in this layered show has cover stories, divided loyalties, mixed emotions and hidden motives. The complexity of the characters drives the narrative as much as the car chases and ultrasecret missions.
The Season 1 Trailer.....
Todays video - A little known movie from the 70's was "Runaway Train" with Jon Voigt, and it was the closest we get in this country to a film noir......
Voigt plays an escaped convict in Alaska, but it's atmospheric, gritty, but occasionally hauntingly beautiful......great late night viewing! Enjoy this clip, and it won't spoil the film if you watch it..........
Todays philosophical jokes
"Right is right even when no one is doing it, and wrong is wrong even when everyone is doing it" (St. Augustine)
· * I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.
· * Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are
removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
· * The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
· * There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.
· * Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
· * Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
· * Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
· * In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
· * How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
· * If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?
· * If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
· * Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
· * Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?
· * Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are
removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
· * The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
· * There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.
· * Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
· * Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
· * Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
· * In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
· * How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
· * If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?
· * If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
· * Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
· * Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
Todays golfers joke
I found a stray parrot on my deck this morning.
All he can say is, "Good morning, you old fart. You suck at golf."
Is he yours?
Todays romantic joke
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