"2016: a choice between Trump and Goldman Sachs."--the evil Snowden
Surveys indicate no increase in Chinese happiness since 1999, or perhaps even 1990, despite rapid growth in real per capita income. America also shows no rise in average happiness since the 1950s. At this point people on the left will bring up the equality issue. It's not about boosting GDP, it's about boosting equality, because people compare themselves to their neighbors. I think there's a bit of truth to that, but the happiness surveys don't support that claim either. The US scores higher than Europe, even though Europe is more equal. Latin America scores higher than East Asia, even though Latin America is far less equal than places like South Korea and Japan.
If happiness surveys are correct, and basically nothing matters short of horrific war, then its bad news for all ideologues. For leftists claiming equality will make us happier. For right-wingers talking about economic growth.
In the end, I think we need to be very careful here. Surveys show that the Chinese people feel very strongly that China as a whole is much better off than in 1980.
All this makes Obama's strange utilitarian idea he voiced in Cuba that you should do what works--and what is a better indicator than what makes you happy--difficult.
Surveys indicate no increase in Chinese happiness since 1999, or perhaps even 1990, despite rapid growth in real per capita income. America also shows no rise in average happiness since the 1950s. At this point people on the left will bring up the equality issue. It's not about boosting GDP, it's about boosting equality, because people compare themselves to their neighbors. I think there's a bit of truth to that, but the happiness surveys don't support that claim either. The US scores higher than Europe, even though Europe is more equal. Latin America scores higher than East Asia, even though Latin America is far less equal than places like South Korea and Japan.
If happiness surveys are correct, and basically nothing matters short of horrific war, then its bad news for all ideologues. For leftists claiming equality will make us happier. For right-wingers talking about economic growth.
In the end, I think we need to be very careful here. Surveys show that the Chinese people feel very strongly that China as a whole is much better off than in 1980.
All this makes Obama's strange utilitarian idea he voiced in Cuba that you should do what works--and what is a better indicator than what makes you happy--difficult.
An interesting reply the feared Paglia wrote at the end of an article to a reader's question on an earlier article about Clinton's Nancy Reagan remark:
I think you are quite right to suggest that Hillary was triangulating at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Thinking she had the nomination locked up, she was pivoting toward Republicans and trying to show she was their gal too. But I also suspect she was having a random senior moment, not unlike her fantasy of running for cover under sniper fire in Bosnia.
The woman Hillary was praising for her pioneering courage in talking publicly about AIDS was actually Elizabeth Taylor, not Nancy Reagan. It’s very telling: Hillary thinks stereotypically of people as faceless members of groups, fodder for polling data and pandering outreach—which automatically triggers, for example, her cringe-making Southern Fried dialect for black audiences. Nancy Reagan (a former actress married to a former actor) had melted into Clan Hollywood. In Hillary’s mind, all actresses are clones, just as all of her skirt-chasing husband’s targets are floozies, bimbos, and nut jobs.
I think you are quite right to suggest that Hillary was triangulating at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Thinking she had the nomination locked up, she was pivoting toward Republicans and trying to show she was their gal too. But I also suspect she was having a random senior moment, not unlike her fantasy of running for cover under sniper fire in Bosnia.
The woman Hillary was praising for her pioneering courage in talking publicly about AIDS was actually Elizabeth Taylor, not Nancy Reagan. It’s very telling: Hillary thinks stereotypically of people as faceless members of groups, fodder for polling data and pandering outreach—which automatically triggers, for example, her cringe-making Southern Fried dialect for black audiences. Nancy Reagan (a former actress married to a former actor) had melted into Clan Hollywood. In Hillary’s mind, all actresses are clones, just as all of her skirt-chasing husband’s targets are floozies, bimbos, and nut jobs.
Golden oldie:
82% of jobs "created" in February were minimum wage teachers, retail trade, and waiters, bartenders and chambermaids. What about well-paying jobs like finance, trucking, manufacturing or mining? +6K, -5K, -16K, and -18K, for a net loss of 33k jobs.
Who was ...Nathen Bedford Forrest?
Who was ...Nathen Bedford Forrest?
From the Chronicle of Higher Education profile of Deirdre McCloskey: " just because something can be statistically tracked doesn’t mean it matters,"
...[s]he ridicules “the idea that you can make an economy expand by just spending more. If that were true, the Industrial Revolution would have happened in Mesopotamia four millennia ago,” ...She also dismisses the pessimism of Robert Gordon, the Northwestern University economist who, in his recent, much-discussed book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, sees technological growth as having slowed, leaving a precarious or wannabe middle class in danger of spiraling down the drain of a service economy of poorly paid Walmart greeters and Starbucks baristas. McCloskey, in contrast, bets that the 37 percent of the world population in China and India whose incomes are rapidly growing will lead to “a gigantic increase in the number of scientists, designers, writers, musicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, and ordinary businesspeople devising betterments that spill over to the now rich countries allegedly lacking in dynamism.” Similarly, she banks on innovation to overcome current environmental and health problems.
The significant problem in this election seems to me that despite the deep and broad disaffection the public has towards the political system, none of the candidates, if elected, can improve it, practically or philosophically.
The bulk of consumption of cannabis lies in the number of people who use marijuana on a daily or near daily basis. “A little over half of cannabis use in the U.S. is consumed by people who spend more than half of their [total] waking hours under the influence,” says Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2013, more than 35% of those Americans aged 12 and older who reported using marijuana in the past month also said they consumed it on 21 or more days. Spain, Italy and France had the highest percentage of their populations using cannabis on a daily or near daily basis. Spain actually tied with the U.S. at 2.6%, and Italy and France saw 1.7% and 1.5%, respectively. While the U.S. reports 35% of past-month cannabis users also consume on a daily or near-daily basis, those rates were 34% in Spain, 24% in Italy and 33% in France. In the Netherlands, where cannabis use in venues known as coffee shops is tolerated by the government, 3.3% of citizens reported past-month use and 23% of those past-month users (0.8% of total population) reported daily or near daily use. Apparently the use has stabilized in Europe over the last years.
The main problem in this election will be the overwhelming support for Hillary by the 'objective' press. It doesn't really matter who the opponent will be but Trump, with his unguarded history and life, will probably be a goldmine of quotes and actions. Recently there was a great example. Someone challenged Trump about an endorsement from some KKK guy. Trump said it wasn't solicited and wasn't welcome. More questions were fired until one answer was vague enough to trumpet and dissect. Now this is par for the course with a biased media but it fearlessly raises the unanswered question: why would a Rube-publican be responsible for the Klan? The KKK was a paramilitary group set up in the South at the end of the Civil War to intimidate newly freed black American citizens from voting for Rube-publicans and Blacks during Reconstruction. Its first president was the redoubtable Nathan Bedford Forrest, a ferocious and talented Confederate cavalry leader. The only admitted KKK member I know of was the Southern Democrat Senator Robert Byrd. So what's this got to do with Rube-publicans?
Saw several "Sherlock" episodes. Very surprising. Good but disturbing. Reminiscent of the old Altman film, "Marlow."
Ruth Pitter was an accomplished British poet, quite popular in her time, who was said, as she grew older, to be close to a romance with C.S. Lewis. (They knew each other seven years before being on a first name basis.) This is from a letter she wrote: "Old Bertrand Russell is doing a series of radio pep-talks, trying to sell us the hoary fallacy of being radiantly happy on an ethical basis! I wonder who let the darned old fool loose. I am going to Oxford tomorrow to see C. S. Lewis, who puts the blame where it belongs, on our fallen nature."
Redoubtable: adj: 1 : causing fear or alarm : formidable 2. illustrious, eminent; broadly : worthy of respect. ety: from the 15th century through Middle English from the Anglo-French verb reduter, meaning "to dread," and ultimately derives from duter, meaning "to doubt." Things or people that are formidable and alarming can also inspire awe and even admiration, however, and it wasn't long before the meaning of redoubtable was extended from "formidable" to "illustrious" and "worthy of respect."
From a Rolling Stone article they claim is inside info from a recent Rube-publican insider meeting, FWIW: “$75 million to stop Trump and $25 million to Marco Rubio, but they gave Rubio a condition: he’s got to win the Florida primary or he’s out and Mitt Romney’s in. That’s the plan.”
To believe in government as we know it is to accept that an enormous range of problems and issues can be resolved only by overwhelming violence and the threat of violence; to reject truth, beauty, love, and peace and to embrace instead lies, ugliness, hatred, and war; to presume that mature human beings can do no better than a group of ill-behaved, nasty little toddlers brawling in a sandbox.--Higgs
A University of Southern California study in 2009 revealed that African American girls are 50% more likely to be bulimic than white girls. Additionally, girls from families in the lowest income bracket studied are 153% more likely to be bulimic than girls from the highest income bracket.
Harper's has an article by Dan Baum on drugs in the U.S. and he wrote this amazing thing from an interview he had with old Nixon hand, John Erlichman: The Nixon campaign in '68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: black people and the anti-war left. He said, and we knew that if we could associate heroin with black people and marijuana with the hippies, we could project the police into those communities, arrest their leaders, break up their meetings and most of all, demonize them night after night on the evening news. And he looked me in the eyes and said, "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Redoubtable: adj: 1 : causing fear or alarm : formidable 2. illustrious, eminent; broadly : worthy of respect. ety: from the 15th century through Middle English from the Anglo-French verb reduter, meaning "to dread," and ultimately derives from duter, meaning "to doubt." Things or people that are formidable and alarming can also inspire awe and even admiration, however, and it wasn't long before the meaning of redoubtable was extended from "formidable" to "illustrious" and "worthy of respect."
From a Rolling Stone article they claim is inside info from a recent Rube-publican insider meeting, FWIW: “$75 million to stop Trump and $25 million to Marco Rubio, but they gave Rubio a condition: he’s got to win the Florida primary or he’s out and Mitt Romney’s in. That’s the plan.”
To believe in government as we know it is to accept that an enormous range of problems and issues can be resolved only by overwhelming violence and the threat of violence; to reject truth, beauty, love, and peace and to embrace instead lies, ugliness, hatred, and war; to presume that mature human beings can do no better than a group of ill-behaved, nasty little toddlers brawling in a sandbox.--Higgs
A University of Southern California study in 2009 revealed that African American girls are 50% more likely to be bulimic than white girls. Additionally, girls from families in the lowest income bracket studied are 153% more likely to be bulimic than girls from the highest income bracket.
Harper's has an article by Dan Baum on drugs in the U.S. and he wrote this amazing thing from an interview he had with old Nixon hand, John Erlichman: The Nixon campaign in '68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: black people and the anti-war left. He said, and we knew that if we could associate heroin with black people and marijuana with the hippies, we could project the police into those communities, arrest their leaders, break up their meetings and most of all, demonize them night after night on the evening news. And he looked me in the eyes and said, "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Edmund Burke’s vitriol against the French Revolution ultimately sparked a painful division among the Whigs. Did the Revolutionaries truly mean what they said in promising the dawn of freedom, or was their crusade an incoherent and desperate push for power? Whig statesman Charles James Fox believed that the disasters that accompanied rebellion in France were “accidental” products of an essentially benign process. Burke, by contrast, believed the calamities were the inevitable result of a campaign to ruin religion and sabotage property. The Whigs were divided not over competing values but over opposing assessments of whether their principles could coexist with the Revolution.
It is commonly believed that his antagonism was driven by the desire to secure custom against liberty and thus to champion “tradition” against the rights of man. In fact Burke saw his position as one of resistance against an illegitimate force that sought to undermine universal principles of justice. As he put it in a letter to Captain John Mercer on February 26, 1790, his aim was to lend support to “the first principles of law and natural justice”.
AAAAAaaaaaannnnnnnddddddd....the math presentation of two common sayings:
- "A penny saved is a penny earned." - Benjamin Franklin
- "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it." - ----Albert Einstein
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