|
Author
|
Message
|
|
davesearles
|
|
 Posted:
29 May 2005 08:53 pm Post subject: IN THE NEWS
|
|
New topic to post links to news articles of interest
________________________________________________
Posts from May 2005 to November 2005 have
been moved to the archive:
http://www.deleonism.org/archive/topic054.shtml
128,000 bytes
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
06 Mar 2006 04:03 am Post subject:
|
|
I saw on CBS "Sixty Minutes" about the U.S.
trying to extradite a guy who lives in British Columbia for selling
marijuana seeds internationally on the internet, because some of his
customers were in the U.S. They said he could get a $200 fine in Canada.
The FBI wants him extradited, so the U.S. can give him life in prison
!!!!!!!!!!!!
"... with liberty and justice for all" --
from the Prayer to the Flag
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
questing
|
|
Posted:
29 Mar 2007 01:23 am Post subject:
|
|
The link does click.
Typical anarchist bs. It reminds me of what I've
read about how Bolshevists courted Hitler because Stalin wasn't
"pure" enough for them. Of course, they spawned the likes of
Sidney Hook and Norman Podhoretz.
Like Stalin, Chavez has to be understood. He is not
a socialist, he is actually a leader of an economic block that is arising
out of necessity. Since there is no socialism in the world, new trade
blocks are arising in order to deal with the American Imperium.
China, N. Korea, and India are another example.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
29 Mar 2007 11:45 am Post subject:
|
|
Questing, specifically what in the article did you
think was b.s .??
dave
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
08 Apr 2007 11:20 am Post subject:
|
|
intro to NYT article on "stateless" people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/weekinreview/08mydans.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
HIDDEN in the back corners of the world is a
scattered population of millions of nobodies, citizens of nowhere,
forgotten or neglected by governments, ignored by census takers.
Many of these stateless people are among the world’s poorest; all are the most
disenfranchised. Without citizenship, they often have no right
to schooling, health care or property ownership. Nor may they vote or
travel outside their countries — even, in some cases, outside the
towns where they live.
They are stateless for many reasons — migration, refugee flight, racial or
ethnic exclusion, the quirks of history — but taken together, these
noncitizens, according to one report, “are among the most vulnerable
segments of humanity.”
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
28 Aug 2007 08:57 pm Post subject:
|
|
Here is my nomination for self-contradictory new
report of the year:
August 28, 2007
Poverty Rate Falls, but More Are Uninsured
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
The nation’s poverty rate fell in 2006 for the
first time this decade, the Census Bureau reported today, even as the
percentage of Americans without health insurance coverage hit
a record high.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/us/28cnd-census.html
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
05 Jan 2008 09:23 am Post subject:
|
|
What's new in economics....
______________________________________
Study: Monkeys 'pay' for sex by grooming
By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer
SINGAPORE - Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by
grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates
may treat sex as a commodity.
"In primate societies, grooming is the
underlying fabric of it all," Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at
the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone
interview Saturday.
"It's a sign of friendship and family, and
it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services,"
Gumert said.
Gumert's findings, reported in New Scientist last
week, resulted from a 20-month observation of about 50 long-tailed
macaques in a reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the
likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was
about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.
And as with other commodities, the value of sex is
affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time
grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity.
"And when the female supply is higher, the
male spends less time on grooming ... The mating actually becomes cheaper
depending on the market," Gumert said.
Other experts not involved in the study welcomed
Gumert's research, saying it was a major effort in systematically
studying the interaction of organisms in ways in which an exchange of
commodities or services can be observed — a theory known as
biological markets.
Dr. Peter Hammerstein, a professor at the Institute
for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University in Berlin and Dr. Ronald
Noe, a primatologist at the University of Louis-Pasteur in Strasbourg,
France, first proposed the concept of biological markets in 1994.
"It is not a rare phenomenon in nature that
males have to make some 'mating effort' in order to get a female's
'permission' to mate," Hammerstein said in an interview, likening
the effort to a "fee" that the male pays.
"The interesting result of Dr. Gumert's
research on macaque mating is that the mating market seems to have an
influence on the amount of this fee," Hammerstein said.
Hammserstein said Gumert's findings indicate the
monkeys are capable of adjusting their behavior to "different market
conditions."
Gumert completed his fieldwork in February 2005 and
first published his findings in the November issue of "Animal
Behaviour," a scientific monthly journal.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_sc/singapore_monkey_sex
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
05 Jan 2008 12:13 pm Post subject:
|
|
Monkies pay for sex?
"after a male grooms a female, the likelihood
that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three
times more than if the grooming had not occurred."
The logic escapes me especially when grooming seems
so far more prevelant than sex.
Do men pay for sex by saying hello to a woman?
|
|
|
The Greenman
|
|
Posted:
05 Jan 2008 03:30 pm Post subject:
|
|
Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females,
according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a
commodity.
So now we have monkey Capitalism. :lol:
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
05 Jan 2008 05:57 pm Post subject:
|
|
All that money we wasted when we were bachelors by
buying women drinks, and using all those corny opening lines. All a guy
really has to do is approach a woman and pick some fleas off of her head.
|
|
|
The Greenman
|
|
Posted:
06 Jan 2008 03:31 pm Post subject:
|
|
Darn! All I had to do was groom the head of a female.
I could of been laid a whole lot of times before I met the wife. :shock:
Here is an appropriate video from the New York
Dolls:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8_XEiV-l97o
John
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
16 Jun 2008 10:24 am Post subject:
|
|
I posted the above because of Erik Erikson's idea that
human individuals have the ability to constantly adapt throughout the
successive stages of their lifetimes through adulthood. This was in
distinction to the various psychologists of the day who said that a
person's development is pretty much over by the time the person is 5
years old.
Relevant to prospective educators of the masses
that individuals even late into their lifetimes are capable of even
radical transformations to adapt to their surroundings. Kind of shoots
down arguments for the need for a metaphorical bridge to the socialist
program of the revolution, istm.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
16 Jun 2008 04:40 pm Post subject:
|
|
I'm not sure what it tells us about a social
transition period. Though people can adapt to our surroundings, but we
don't know how many of us would adapt quickly versus how many would
follow old habits for the rest of our lives. We also don't know the range
of adaptation. If a million competitive and greedy people were suddenly
plopped into a society where the formal institutions were cooperative,
would it take them five years to adapt? No one knows because a psychologist's
experiments don't involve having an entire human society to observe under
variable test conditions. The real laboratory has to be a whole society.
The social revolution has to be the experiment.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
16 Jun 2008 06:11 pm Post subject:
|
|
ML:
I'm not sure what it tells us about a social
transition period. Though people can adapt to our surroundings, but we
don't know how many of us would adapt quickly versus how many would
follow old habits for the rest of our lives. We also don't know the range
of adaptation. If a million competitive and greedy people were suddenly
plopped into a society where the formal institutions were cooperative,
would it take them five years to adapt?
DS:
"we don't know how many of us would adapt
quickly versus how many would follow old habits for the rest of our
lives."
Of course not - these are individual struggles -
but people in their later years are CAPABLE. What each indivual does in
the face of various crises depends mostly on their own discreet decsions
in the moment and very little to do (if they will let it go) with how
their mommies potty trained them, or their birth order or whatever may
have happened to them or what courses were supposedly set in early youth.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
17 Jun 2008 05:42 am Post subject:
|
|
I'd guess that older people are _more_ capable of
adapting to a new environment. The 20 year old says, "I want this,
and I want it now!" The 50 year old says, "Just tell me what
you want me to do. You want to go stand over there now? Okay, I
will."
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
17 Jun 2008 09:17 am Post subject:
|
|
I think a difference is perhaps an older person may
have learned not to be so constrained by "now".
Sometimes waiting is an indication of and even the
effecting of a greater strength.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
27 Jun 2008 11:08 pm Post subject:
|
|
Op-Ed Contributor - How Lies Live and Grow in the
Brain - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
June 27, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Your Brain Lies to You
By SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODT
FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of
Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.
Thus it
seems slightly less egregious that, according to
another poll, io percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a
Christian, is
instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a
Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult
than
it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our
brains store memories - and mislead us along the way.
The brain does not simply gather and stockpile
information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in
the
hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about
the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the
information does
not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain
writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed.
In time, the
fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral
cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally
learned. For example,
you know that the capital of California is
Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.
This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also
lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is
presented with a disclaimer, people often later
remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A
false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed
can gain
credibility during the months it takes to reprocess
memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical
storage.
As the source is forgotten, the message and its
implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004
presidential
campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect
on his
standing in the polls.
Even if they do not understand the neuroscience
behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread
misinformation. They know that if their message is
initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is
debunked. In
repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with
an opening line like "I think I read somewhere" or even with a
reference to a
specific source.
In one study, a group of Stanford students was
exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that
Coca-
Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who
read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than
those who read
it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports
(rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a
gloss of
credibility.
Adding to this innate tendency to mold information
we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental
frameworks. We
tend to remember news that accords with our
worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.
In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of
whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they
opposed it,
were presented with two pieces of evidence, one
supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters
crime.
Both groups were more convinced by the evidence
that supported their initial position.
Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate
by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by
emotional selection, rather than by their factual
merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke - or about a
presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are
acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But
by
repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently
make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears,"
the Obama campaign
may want to keep this in mind. Rather than
emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more
effective to
stress that he embraced Christianity as a young
man.
Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to
selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they
already hold.
In a replication of the study of students'
impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that
even when subjects
were given a specific instruction to be objective,
they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their
beliefs.
In the same study, however, when subjects were
asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the
opposite
conclusion, they were more open-minded to
information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for
consumers of
controversial news to take a moment and consider
that the opposite interpretation may be true.
In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the
Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the
thought to get
itself accepted in the competition of the
market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to
spread if they are
honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this
admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory
perhaps
we can move closer to Holmes's ideal.
Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular
biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor
in
chief of Nature Neuroscience, are the authors of
"Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget
How to
Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Ljfe."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
30 Jun 2008 08:43 am Post subject:
|
|
Today in History - June 30
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 30, 2008
Today's Highlight in History:
One hundred years ago, on June 30, 1908, the
Tunguska Event took place in Russia as an asteroid exploded above
Siberia, leaving 800 square miles of scorched or blown-down trees.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
30 Jun 2008 05:05 pm Post subject:
|
|
Carl Sagan always argued that Tunguska had to be a
collision from a comet and not a meteor because there was no crater and
no debris on the ground, just the blast itself, energy but no materials.
Today most astronomers seem to believe it was a meteor collision. I
assume that means they believe the meteor vaporized completely in the
atmosphere. How strange to have such huge destruction on the ground
caused by something that never reaches the ground. A good part of Siberia
flattened, and not a speck of material evidence to pick up. But it makes
sense, however counterintuitive it may be. The kinetic energy has to go
somewhere
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
30 Jun 2008 09:16 pm Post subject:
|
|
Surprising fact: Half of gun deaths are suicides
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 30, 2008
Filed at 4:51 p.m. ET
ATLANTA (AP) -- The Supreme Court's landmark ruling
on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend
themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that
surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.
Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's
nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which
statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gun-Deaths-Suicide.html
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
01 Jul 2008 08:58 pm Post subject:
|
|
Starbucks to Cut as Many as 12, 000 Positions
By REUTERS
Published: July 1, 2008
Filed at 4:33 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp said on
Tuesday it plans to close another 500 underperforming stores and
eliminate as many as 12,000 full and part-time positions.
The company, which now plans to close a total of 600
underperforming stores, will take related charges totaling more than $325
million.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-starbucks.html
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
02 Jul 2008 05:24 am Post subject:
|
|
Today in History - July 2
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 2, 2008
Filed at 12:01 a.m. ET
In 1908, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
was born in Baltimore.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
02 Jul 2008 08:47 am Post subject:
|
|
People born under the sun sign of Cancer are said to
be intuitive and passionate!
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
05 Jul 2008 12:57 pm Post subject:
|
|
Man Rips Head From Hitler Wax Figure In Berlin
By REUTERS
Published: July 5, 2008
Filed at 7:33 a.m. ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - A man tore the head from a
controversial waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler on the opening day of
Berlin's Madame Tussauds museum on Saturday, police said.
Just minutes after the museum opened, the 41-year-old
German man (whose sun sign more than likely is that of Cancer :-) pushed
aside two security men guarding the figure before ripping off the head in
protest at the exhibit, a police spokesman said. The police were alerted
and arrested the man.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-germany-hitler-head.html?ex=1215921600&en=a3293762aec791d8&ei=5070&emc=eta1
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
16 Jul 2008 07:08 pm Post subject:
|
|
90 years ago today
NYT London, July 20 (1918) -- Nicholas Romanoff,
ex-Czar of Russia, was shot July 16, according to a Russian announcement
by wireless today.
The former Empress and Alexis Romanoff, the young
heir, have been sent to a place of security.
The message announces that a counter-revolutionary
conspiracy was discovered, with the object of wrestling the ex-Emperor
from the authority of the Soviet Council. In view of this fact the
approach of Czechoclovak bands, the President of the Ural Regional
Council decided to execute the former ruler, and the decision was carried
out on July 16.
The central executive body of the Bolshevist
Government announces that it has important documents concerning the
former Emperor's affairs, including his own diaries ad letters from the
monk Rasputin, who was killed shortly before the revolution. These will
be published in the near future, the message declares.
The text of the Russian wireless message reads:
"At the first session of the Central Executive
Committee, elected by the fifth Congress of the Councils, a message was
made public that had been received by direct wire from the Ural Regional
Council concerning the shooting of the ex-Czar Nicholas Romanoff.
"Recently Yekaterinburg, the capital of the
Red Urals, was seriously threatened by the approach of Czechoslovak hands
and a counter-revolutionary conspiracy was discovered which had as its
object the wresting of the ex-Czar from the hands of the council's
authority. In view of this fact, the President of the Ural Regional
Council decided to shoot the ex-Czar, and the decision was carried out on
July 16.
"The wife and the son of Nicholas Romanoff
have been sent to a place of security.
"Documents concerning the conspiracy which was
discovered have been forwarded to Moscow by a special messenger. It had
been recently decided to bring the ex-Czar before a tribunal to be tried
for his crimes against the people, and only later occurrences led to
delay in adopting this course.
"The Presidency of the Central Executive
Committee, having discussed the circumstances which compelled the Ural
Regional Council to take its decision to shoot Nicholas Romanoff, decided
as follows:
"The Russian Central Executive Committee, in
the person of its President, accepts the decision of the Ural Regional
Council as being regular.
"The Central Executive Committee has now at
its disposal extremely important documents concerning the affairs of
Nicholas Romanoff -- his diaries, which he kept almost up to his last
days, the diaries of his wife and his children, and his correspondence,
among which are the letters of Gregory Rasputin to the Romanoff family.
These materials will be examined and published in the near future."
Execution Foreshadowed
There have been rumors since June 24 that ex-Czar
Nicholas of Russia had been assassinated. The first of these stated that
he had been killed at Yekaterinburg by Red Guards. This report was denied
later, but this denial was closely followed by a Geneva dispatch saying
that Nicholas had been executed by the Bolsheviki after a trial at
Yekaterinburg. This report seemed to be confirmed by advices to
Washington from Stockholm.
The next report was what purported to be an
intercepted wireless message from M. Tchicherin, the Bolshevist Foreign
Minister, in which it was stated that Nicholas was dead. Still another
report was to the effect that he had been bayonetted by a guard while
being taken from Yekaterinburg to Perm. Of all these reports there was no
direct confirmation.
There seemingly is no question that yesterday's
dispatch is authentic. It comes in the form of a Russian wireless
dispatch, and as the wireless plants of Russia are under the control of
the Bolsheviki, it appears that it is an official version of the death of
the former Emperor.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0716.html#article
DAS: It was learned later that the whole family had
been shot.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
29 Jul 2008 07:42 pm Post subject:
|
|
Interesting... at the end of that article there's a
link to "the email" -- and the document is "404 not
found". It was probably taken down already, within a day after the
N.Y. Times printed the article.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
29 Jul 2008 07:50 pm Post subject:
|
|
but the link that I provided opened the article? I
click on it and it's there, unless it's coming out of my cache memory.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
29 Jul 2008 08:04 pm Post subject:
|
|
yes, the addiitonal link at the end of that article
doesn't work.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
29 Jul 2008 11:56 pm Post subject:
|
|
If the article that I provided the link for opened but
the link atthe end of that article did not work - I think that the
explanation is this - When I open the article originally to read it is
while I am signed onto my free account at the NYT. I think for some
reason that the address at the top of the page when I open it like that
is only applicable to my account. To get arounf that they have a link to
utilize to email the article. If I were to email the article to you
though that system what you would get would be an email from the NYT with
a link to the article. What I do is to have the email directed to me and
then I copy the link that comes in that email and paste it into my post
in the forum. The link at the end of the article may be a link back to
the email that you never received in the first place. A complicated
world.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
31 Jul 2008 05:06 am Post subject:
|
|
News item. My teenage daughter Kimberly's pet rabbit
Snowball died. We buried her in back of the chicken coop. Snowball is
survived by her twin sister and lesbian lover, Frenchy.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
02 Aug 2008 12:49 pm Post subject:
|
|
I like this guy
from the latest David Brooks column in the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01brooks.html?em
(let me know if the above link doesn't work)
"This week, for the first time since World War
II, an effort to liberalize global trade failed. The Doha round
collapsed, despite broad international support, because India’s Congress
Party did not want to offend small farmers in the run up to the next
elections. Chinese leaders dug in on behalf of cotton and rice producers.
"In a de-centered world, all it takes is a few
well-placed parochial interests to bring a vast global process tumbling
down.
"And the Doha failure comes amid a decade of
globosclerosis. The world has failed to effectively end genocide in
Darfur. Chinese and Russian vetoes foiled efforts to impose sanctions on
Zimbabwe. The world has failed to implement effective measures to deter
Iran’s
nuclear ambitions. The world has failed to embrace a collective approach
to global warming. Europe’s drive toward political union has
stalled.
"In each case, the logic is the same. Groups
with a strong narrow interest are able to block larger groups with a
diffuse but generalized interest. The narrow Chinese interest in Sudanese
oil blocks the world’s
general interest in preventing genocide. Iran’s narrow interest in
nuclear weapons trumps the world’s general interest in preventing
a Middle East arms race. Diplomacy goes asymmetric and the small defeat
the large.
"Moreover, in a multipolar world, there is no
way to referee disagreements among competing factions. In a democratic
nation, the majority rules and members of the minority understand that
they must accede to the wishes of those who win elections.
"But globally, people have no sense of shared
citizenship. Everybody feels they have the right to say no, and in a
multipolar world, many people have the power to do so. There is no
mechanism to wield authority. There are few shared values on which to
base a mechanism. The autocrats of the world don’t even want a mechanism because they
are afraid that it would be used to interfere with their autocracy."
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
03 Aug 2008 08:34 am Post subject:
|
|
I read David Brooks' book "Bobos in
Paradise" (2001). It was about some strange cultural practice of
capitalists. One of the discussions was the way some of them think
they're offbeat, bohemians, by owning certain expensive material objects,
such as weird clothing, unusual antiques, etc., and thinking "I'm
the coolest", "I'm such a rebel."
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
08 Aug 2008 02:20 am Post subject:
|
|
Bin Laden's driver got 5 1/2 years. In NYC a driver
could sit in traffic that long and think it a brisk commute.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
10 Aug 2008 07:11 am Post subject:
|
|
How did you know it was August 7, 1964 ? I don't see a
date anywhere on the page.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
10 Aug 2008 07:23 am Post subject:
|
|
What would be the correct viewpoint about a war like
the Vietnam war if the government's claims were true? What if the world
were really divided into clearly "free countries" and
"imprisoned countries", and what if the domino theory were
true, with countries "falling" one by one, unless the "menace"
is "contained", and bombing villages of poor people's huts
prevented the "menace" from "establishing
strongholds" there, etc., etc.? Would such a war be justified? Was
the war unjustified because the government's rationalization was based on
falsehoods, or would it have been unjustified anyway?
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
10 Aug 2008 10:03 am Post subject:
|
|
ML:
How did you know it was August 7, 1964 ? I don't
see a date anywhere on the page.
DAS:
The picture of the front page of the NYT 8/8/64
didn't appear at the top of the web page?
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
10 Aug 2008 10:08 am Post subject:
|
|
ML:
What would be the correct viewpoint about a war
like the Vietnam war if the government's claims were true? What if the
world were really divided into clearly "free countries" and
"imprisoned countries", and what if the domino theory were
true, with countries "falling" one by one, unless the "menace"
is "contained", and bombing villages of poor people's huts
prevented the "menace" from "establishing
strongholds" there, etc., etc.? Would such a war be justified? Was
the war unjustified because the government's rationalization was based on
falsehoods, or would it have been unjustified anyway?
das:
If any of these excuses were even plausible, why
the lie?
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
11 Aug 2008 08:17 am Post subject:
|
|
Some people believed those stereotypes and
exaggerations. If someone believed them, the concept "stop the
spread of communism" would probably make sense to them. I can see
how Johnson's and Nixon's ideas would appear reasonable with certain
assumptions already accepted.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
11 Aug 2008 09:31 am Post subject:
|
|
Tonkin wasn't a stereotype or exaggeration but a
totally made up incident the United States Congress stampdeded itself to
pass.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
12 Aug 2008 06:16 am Post subject:
|
|
Tonkin was fake, but it was true that the Russia
invaded Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and other countries, and
constructed the Berlin Wall, and installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. I
understand the fears among those who thought there was a "monolithic
communism" coming to get us.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
12 Aug 2008 11:10 am Post subject:
|
|
So Vietnam, where none of this was occuring, is where
"we" decided to make our stand.
From the Ho Chi Minh bio at Wikipedia:
On 5 June 1911, Hồ Chí Minh left Vietnam on a
French steamer, Amiral Latouche-Tréville, working as a kitchen helper.
Arriving in Marseille, France, he applied for the French Colonial
Administrative School but his application was rejected.[2] During his
stay, he worked as a cleaner, waiter, and film retoucher. Hồ spent
most of his free time in public libraries reading history books and
newspapers to familiarize himself with Western society and politics.
On 5 June 1911, Hồ Chí Minh left Vietnam on a
French steamer, Amiral Latouche-Tréville, working as a kitchen helper.
Arriving in Marseille, France, he applied for the French Colonial
Administrative School but his application was rejected.[2] During his stay,
he worked as a cleaner, waiter, and film retoucher. Hồ spent most
of his free time in public libraries reading history books and newspapers
to familiarize himself with Western society and politics.
In the USA
In 1912, again working as the cook's helper on a
ship, Hồ Chí Minh traveled to the United States. From 1912 to 1913,
he lived in New York (Harlem) and Boston, where he worked as a baker at
the Parker House Hotel. He worked in menial jobs and later claimed to
have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917 and 1918, and
during this time he may have heard Marcus Garvey speak in Harlem. It is
believed that while in the United States he made contact with Korean
nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.[3]
Following World War I, under the name of Nguyễn
Ái Quốc (Nguyen the Patriot), he petitioned for recognition of the
civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western
powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the
language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Ho
petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for help to remove the French
from Vietnam and replace it with a new, nationalist government. His
request was ignored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
18 Sep 2008 12:13 am Post subject:
|
|
Today in History - Library of Congress
On September 17, 1787, members of the
Constitutional Convention signed the final draft of the Constitution.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
19 Sep 2008 05:10 am Post subject:
|
|
from the it can never happen department:
The 225th aniversery of flight
On this date in 1783, Jacques Etienne Montgolfier
launched a duck, a sheep and a rooster aboard a hot-air balloon at
Versailles in France.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
01 Oct 2008 05:38 am Post subject:
|
|
Collective worker control of the industrial mop 100
years overdue!
One hundred years ago, on Oct. 1, 1908, Henry Ford
introduced his Model T automobile to the market.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
21 Oct 2008 06:44 pm Post subject:
|
|
Question: Does the capitalist class really want the
industrial mop?
DETROIT — The billionaire investor Kirk
Kerkorian has sold part of his stake
in the Ford Motor Company and may divest himself of his remaining shares
in another sign of slumping investor confidence in the ailing American
auto industry.
The Tracinda Corporation, Mr. Kerkorian’s investment company, said on Tuesday
that it sold 7.3 million shares of Ford on
Monday at a huge loss and intended to further reduce its remaining 6.09
percent stake.
Mr. Kerkorian began buying Ford stock in April, and
had spent about $1 billion to accumulate a initial 6.49 percent stake in
the automaker. With his remaining 133.5 million shares valued at $311
million, Mr. Kerkorian has lost two-thirds of his investment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/business/22auto.html?hp
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
23 Oct 2008 04:51 am Post subject:
|
|
In 1915, tens of thousands of women marched in New
York City, demanding the right to vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html
I wonder if the daily people had anything on this.
Is there an archive? Perhaps at the NYC Public
Library.
Just did a search nypl.org. they have it on
microfilm 1900-1914 but not available online.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
24 Oct 2008 05:52 pm Post subject:
|
|
Trvia question:
On this date how many years ago did the (nominal)
40 hour work week go into effect???
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
24 Oct 2008 08:00 pm Post subject:
|
|
The only official recognition I know of is the law
about time-and-a-half after 8/40, which was the 1939 Fair Labor Standards
Act. They can still force someone to work continuously for an unlimited
duration until he or she loses consciousness and collapses; they just
have to pay time-and-a-half for it. (And throughout my years of corporate
service, I was even exempted from getting the time-and-a-half!)
|
|
|
allhailtuna
|
|
Posted:
25 Oct 2008 05:46 am Post subject:
|
|
Checked BBC yesterday to see if anything near me had
been blown up. It seems that McCain's fanclub is calling Obama a
socialist, and claiming that his wealth redistribution policies come
'straight out of Marx'. Of course, McCain was doing his best to encourage
this kind of shit, while never actually using the term 'socialism'.
Hopefully some members of Obama's fanclub will read
Capital just to check. :)
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
25 Oct 2008 06:10 am Post subject:
|
|
Dear Sen. McCain: I wanted to see if you were right
abut Sen. Obama being a socialist, so I read Marx. But now that I have
read Marx, I learned all sort of interesting things, actually changing my
thinking all around and upside down. Thanks for the great tip. Your pal,
Joe the plumber.
|
|
|
Jacob Richter
|
|
Posted:
26 Oct 2008 05:46 am Post subject:
|
|
Read up on "Bloody Sunday." The czar had
blood on his hands besides WWI.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
26 Oct 2008 11:30 am Post subject:
|
|
And of course that to you would have justified taking
a prisoner out and summarily executed along with his family? And how far
does the Acolyte of the Cult of Ulyanov apply this? That we should hunt
up any remaining faimily and kill them as well?
He was first cousin to the King of England.
Presumably that wing of the family would now be in succession - so the
current queen a direct decendant of the king of England at the time, as
well as her family should also be summarily executed?
Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between when you
are wearing your Acolyte of the Cult of Ulyanov hat and when you are
wearing your police agent hat.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
29 Oct 2008 03:21 am Post subject:
|
|
Roughly speaking, there are four steps to every
decision. First, you perceive a situation. Then you think of possible
courses of action. Then you calculate which course is in your best
interest. Then you take the action.
Over the past few centuries, public policy analysts
have assumed that step three is the most important. Economic models and
entire social science disciplines are premised on the assumption that
people are mostly engaged in rationally calculating and maximizing their
self-interest.
But during this financial crisis, that way of
thinking has failed spectacularly. As Alan Greenspan noted in his
Congressional testimony last week, he was “shocked” that markets did not
work as anticipated. “I made a mistake in presuming that
the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were
such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders
and their equity in the firms.”
So perhaps this will be the moment when we alter
our view of decision-making. Perhaps this will be the moment when we
shift our focus from step three, rational calculation, to step one,
perception.
from David Brooks column NYT 10/28/08
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/opinion/28brooks.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
01 Nov 2008 12:05 pm Post subject:
|
|
I must have missed these last year - one year ago
today:
A defiant Democratic-controlled Congress voted to
provide health insurance to an additional 4 million lower-income
children; President Bush vowed swiftly to cast his second straight veto
on the issue.
Less than a week after workers ratified a new
contract, Chrysler announced 12,000 job cuts.
NYT 11/01/08
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
06 Nov 2008 07:20 am Post subject:
|
|
election results for all candidates as of 2:14 EST Nov
6,
copied from http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/allcandidates/
Candidate, Vote, Vote %
Obama 63,991,209 53%
McCain 56,478,563 46%
Nader 660,169 1%
Barr 490,392 0%
Baldwin 175,627 0%
McKinney 143,523 0%
Keyes 35,108 0%
Paul 19,852 0%
La Riva 7,578 0%
Calero 7,184 0%
Moore 6,393 0%
None of these candidates 6,251 0%
Duncan 3,677 0%
Harris 2,426 0%
Jay 2,311 0%
Polachek 1,223 0%
Wamboldt 770 0%
McEnulty 745 0%
Stevens 685 0%
Amondson 631 0%
Boss 603 0%
Phillies 470 0%
Weill 470 0%
Allen 279 0%
Lyttle 98 0%
98% of precincts reporting
|
|
|
allhailtuna
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 02:43 pm Post subject:
|
|
Capitalism wins at the polls
Anachy Brewing in the steets.
Link
That was awesome.
(Also, I remember somebody posting here to the
effect that anarchists don't believe in rules. That's not true, 'no
ruler' does not necessarily mean 'no rules', most anarchists believe in
rules determined democratically)
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 02:52 pm Post subject:
|
|
Then we'd have to get into a debate as to what it
means to be an anarchist - just like so many unproductive conversations
as to what it means to be a socialst. Peole should advocate what they
think regardless of the label, imho.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 03:01 pm Post subject:
|
|
161 years ago today
On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was
killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending the site of his anti-slavery
newspaper The Saint Louis Observer. His death both deeply affected many
individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of
abolition.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 06:07 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
allhailtuna wrote:
|
|
(Also, I
remember somebody posting here to the effect that anarchists don't
believe in rules. That's not true, 'no ruler' does not necessarily mean
'no rules', most anarchists believe in rules determined democratically)
|
True, but the anarchists seem to have a fit every
time I write something online about how I imagine the most perfected
society of the future, how I believe it will be classless, etc. --- and
then I go on to say something about how I believe a classless society
should administer its police, courts and prisons. The anarchists don't
like to hear the last half of my sentence. It's as if they believe
adherence to society's rules will occur by some noncoercive process. In
fact, anarchists cite "coercion" as the thing they want to eliminate.
That's what I think the real argument is about.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 06:10 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
davesearles wrote:
|
|
91 years ago
today:
|
How do you know how many years ago? I can't find a
date anywhere in that article. It only says "on this day."
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 06:16 pm Post subject:
|
|
Doesn't the photocopy of the newspaper say November 7,
1917? wasn't my math right 1917 + 91?
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
Posted:
07 Nov 2008 08:21 pm Post subject:
|
|
The image is too small for me to read anything on it.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
|
allhailtuna
|
|
Posted:
08 Nov 2008 03:51 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
mikelepore wrote:
|
|
allhailtuna wrote:
|
|
(Also, I
remember somebody posting here to the effect that anarchists don't
believe in rules. That's not true, 'no ruler' does not necessarily
mean 'no rules', most anarchists believe in rules determined
democratically)
|
True, but the anarchists seem to have a fit every
time I write something online about how I imagine the most perfected
society of the future, how I believe it will be classless, etc. --- and
then I go on to say something about how I believe a classless society
should administer its police, courts and prisons. The anarchists don't
like to hear the last half of my sentence. It's as if they believe
adherence to society's rules will occur by some noncoercive process. In
fact, anarchists cite "coercion" as the thing they want to
eliminate. That's what I think the real argument is about.
|
As far as I know, that's not inherent to anarchism,
just part of a belief many anarchists have. For example, Benjamin Tucker
didn't mind them.
Also, as far as I know, the 'anarchists' who would
cite something vague like 'coercion' as what they wish to eliminate are
'anarcho'-capitalists. Anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron.
|
|
|
mikelepore
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
11 Nov 2008 02:38 am Post subject:
|
|
nyt on this date in 1951:
1951 Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service
began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, N.J., called his
counterpart in Alameda, Calif.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html
Amazing how slow technology was to develop back in
the "olden days". Eleven years after the first direct dial coast
to coast phone hook-up I lived just 63 miles north of the one of the
largest cities on Earth (then) I think only London was larger at the time
- and in a county with one of the higest per capita incomes in the entire
country and I couldn't direct dial my grandmother's house just 5 miles
away in the same town. I had to connect using an operator.
|
|
|
davesearles
|
|
Posted:
12 Nov 2008 03:28 am Post subject:
|
|
388
years ago today
Mayflower Compact signed
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html
All 41 of the adult male members on the Mayflower
signed the Compact. Being the first written laws for the new land, the
Compact determined authority within the settlement and was the observed
as such until 1691. This established that the colony (mostly persecuted
Separatists), was to be free of English law. It was devised to set up a
government from within themselves and was written by those to be
governed.
http://www.allabouthistory.org/mayflower-compact.htm
|
|
|
