May 2012
1 post
November 2011
1 post
Perspective
Only when you stop doing something, and do something else completely different, can you look back and see the thing you were doing for what it was. Most people call this perspective. You can gain small doses of perspective in the strangest of places too. You can talk to the person that gives you your coffee in the morning — I mean really talk to them. You see life, just momentarily, in the...
October 2011
1 post
September 2011
5 posts
Positivity should require substantiation too
In areas where the majority is neutral and unbiased, people making positive assertions are rarely pressured into substantiation, but those making negative comments are frequently scolded for not citing sources and substantiating their claims. It seems a negative POV is initially suspected incorrect, while a positive view is not questioned to the same extent. Note that this only seems to occur in...
I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big... →
August 2011
13 posts
A controversial study conducted in 2001 by tobacco... →
… and concluded that, in 1997, premature deaths saved the Czech Republic $147 dollars through the deaths of smokers who would not live to use healthcare or housing for the elderly.
Charlie Brooker: How to prevent more riots →
If preventing further looting is our aim, then as well as addressing the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, I’d take a long hard look at MTV Cribs and similar TV shows that routinely confuse human achievement with the mindless acquisition of gaudy bling bullshit. The media heaves with propaganda promoting sensation and consumption above all else.
London riots: there were ample signs →
Short video taken two weeks ago. Youth in and around North London describe the situation following the closure of youth centres.
7 tags
Recovery, what recovery? →
The plain fact is that corporate profits are the only area of the US economy to recover since 2009. Any other claim is a lie
If a Married Lesbian Couple Saves 40 Teens from... →
Various condemnations surfacing because their homosexuality isn’t relevant to their heroism, but, and this is key: it may just be relevant to the story going under-reported!
July 2011
10 posts
Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult... →
Islamophobes distance themselves from Breivik →
Particularly striking is the overlap between the US members of this network - all of whom are identified with the neo-conservative movement - with the leaders of last year’s controversial campaign to prevent the construction of a Muslim community centre near the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”.
BP Announces ‘Disappointing’ Profits Of $5.6... →
[video] Bringing light to the poor, one liter at a... →
"Who’s Google’s customer? You? Really? When’s the... →
Google makes billions of dollars in revenue each fiscal quarter. That money comes about by the same process that all companies use: They sell a product to their customers. Their customers pay money for that product.
Who’s Google’s customer? You? Really? When’s the last time you paid Google for anything?
Advertisers are Google’s customer. What do they sell to advertisers? They sell you. Or, at...
June 2011
19 posts
Gender Is Dead! Long Live Gender! →
Categories like heterosexual, professor and cheerleader exhibit what the Canadian philosopher of science Ian Hacking has calledlooping effects. It is only if you have the relevant concepts, that you can come to think of yourself as classified as this way or that. And once you can think of yourself as being a person of a certain kind, you can also, through choices both conscious and unconscious,...
Why Are Text Messages Marked Up 7314%? →
Corn-pone Opinions - Mark Twain →
Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party’s...
Would cousins born of identical twin mothers and... →
TLDR: Yes.
32 Corporations Spent More On Compensation For Top... →
Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.
“When on the tube its customary to introduce yourself to the people sitting next...”
– “Lies to tell tourists” (London)
