“In my day, we walked 10 miles barefoot to go to school. uphill. Both Ways!”
bonus head-exploding fun: a jewish writer, quoting other jewish and christian writers is talking about the ‘values’ of ‘hindus’ and ‘confucians’ being ‘protestant’. surely, his world is flat!
in the spirit of thanksgiving, i would like to thank the gems of R&D at Kodak in Rochester for developing the Endura Pro Metallic Paper. I just had a couple of prints made at 8×12″ size to test it out(as it costs twice what a regular print does) but I am FLOORED! the two images (from the still life series) were very beautifully rendered and have a distinctly 3D feel to them that was lacking in previous glossy and matte-finish prints on either Fuji or Kodak paper. I was considering custom – i.e, digital inkjet – printing my final collection, but Endura has lured me back into the optical fold.
if you dont get what this is about, run out and get your favourite photo printed at a minimum of 11×14″ size and ask for a ‘metallic’ print. gorgeosity should emanate from the print.
The CIA didn’t just offer guidance to film-makers, however. It even offered money. In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated, and the tale of the CIA’s role told in Daniel Leab’s book Orwell Subverted.
at the London Review of Books
That the criticism of the bailout plan came from conservative Republicans as well as the left should make us think. What left and right share in this case is their contempt for big speculators and corporate managers who profit from risky decisions but are protected from failures by ‘golden parachutes’. In this respect, the Enron scandal of January 2002 can be interpreted as an ironic commentary on the notion of a risk society. Thousands of employees who lost their jobs and savings were certainly exposed to risk, and had little choice in the matter. However, the top managers, who knew about the risk and also had the opportunity to intervene in the situation, minimised their exposure by cashing in their stocks and options before the bankruptcy. So while it is true that we live in a society that demands risky choices, it is one in which the powerful do the choosing, while others do the risking.
it’s really well-written and well thought out, typically. worth your time to read it.
Pre-Post Update: PRof. Roubini’s economonitor sent me an alert today:
The US and advanced economies’ financial system is now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown as day after day stock markets are in free fall, money markets have shut down while their spreads are skyrocketing, and credit spreads are surging through the roof. There is now the beginning of a generalized run on the banking system of these economies; a collapse of the shadow banking system, i.e. those non-banks (broker dealers, non-bank mortgage lenders, SIV and conduits, hedge funds, money market funds, private equity firms) that, like banks, borrow short and liquid, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and illiquid and are thus at risk of a run on their short-term liabilities; and now a roll-off of the short term liabilities of the corporate sectors that may lead to widespread bankruptcies of solvent but illiquid financial and non-financial firms.
On the real economic side all the advanced economies representing 55% of global GDP (US, Eurozone, UK, other smaller European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) entered a recession even before the massive financial shocks that started in the late summer made the liquidity and credit crunch even more virulent and will thus cause an even more severe recession than the one that started in the spring. So we have a severe recession, a severe financial crisis and a severe banking crisis in advanced economies.
There was no decoupling among advanced economies and there is no decoupling but rather recoupling of the emerging market economies with the severe crisis of the advanced economies. By the third quarter of this year global economic growth will be in negative territory signaling a global recession. The recoupling of emerging markets was initially limited to stock markets that fell even more than those of advanced economies as foreign investors pulled out of these markets; but then it spread to credit markets and money markets and currency markets bringing to the surface the vulnerabilities of many financial systems and corporate sectors that had experienced credit booms and that had borrowed short and in foreign currencies. Countries with large current account deficit and/or large fiscal deficits and with large short term foreign currency liabilities and borrowings have been the most fragile. But even the better performing ones – like the BRICs club of Brazil, Russia, India and China – are now at risk of a hard landing. Trade and financial and currency and confidence channels are now leading to a massive slowdown of growth in emerging markets with many of them now at risk not only of a recession but also of a severe financial crisis.
now if that’s not a rosy picture i dont know what is
talking to friends about this dream i had
where i was walking along a dirt road.
on the road were two buckets.
one was thick, blackened, and metallic
the other was a thinner one made of clay
“what the fuck were you smoking?”
“just the city air, actually”
i felt the urge to kick them
to see if the old phrase was true
“quit boring us!”
“what was in them?”
the black one seemed empty
i cant say because it was really black
“the other one?”
well it had sand
“sand? how much?”
about half
“half full or half empty?” (with a wink and a smile)
depends on what you’re comparing it to
compared to the black thing
it’s definitely half full
but compared to itself
half empty
“very profound, einstein”
i was going for aristotle actually
“so did you kick them?”
no, better to be half full
than completely empty
i think aristotle would agree
there’s this guy called Norwegian Recycling and he makes mashups. let me restate that, he makes AWESOME mashups.
this is a masterpiece, both the video and the audio. it’s A-HA+ Chantal Kreviazuk, with a bit of Lennon and Robbie Williams thrown in and then some Dido to close it out.
time well spent!
oh and another bonus for those nerds among the crowd who dig chemical brothers as well as star wars: Galvanize the Empire by yet another mashup fiend, PartyBen:
oh and an old school mashups, one that got me into mashups at that
Chris Floyd says it best:
Sometimes after I write critically of Obama and the Democrats, people ask me: “Well, what are we supposed to do? He’s not perfect, they’re not perfect, but don’t you think McCain would be worse?”
As it happens, I do think McCain would be “worse” — but only marginally so, for reasons I’ve laid out before. But what does that matter? These are the wrong questions for a nation swimming, sinking, drowning in the innocent blood shed by its bipartisan war machine. These are the wrong questions for a nation whose politics have become — literally, with no metaphor or exaggeration — insane, mired in violence, delusion and self-destruction. Whatever happens, whoever wins, there will be more war, more needless death, more mass murder in the name of America. Whoever wins, there will be more state-assisted assaults on working people and the poor. There will be more coddling of the rich, more servicing of the powerful, more injustice, more inequality.
The country is broke — the bipartisan elite have looted it. The infrastructure is rotting; communities are dying; the quality of life is deteriorating for millions of people; the socioeconomic system, based on cheap gas and the consumption of a vastly disproportionate amount of the world’s resources, is unsustainable — but the bipartisan elite won’t fix these problems. They won’t even address them. They are too busy expanding the frontiers of empire, pushing for new adventures in Pakistan, in Georgia, in Iran, pushing for more war, more bases, more missile sites, more troops. Yes, McCain might push a little bit harder and a little bit faster, or in different directions — but the self-destructive, mass-murdering push will go on. Listen to what Obama is actually saying, listen to what Biden is actually saying, look at their records, look at their coterie of advisors. There is nothing but blood and suffering as far as the eye can see.
excellent inspiring song, if you understand it
now the power cuts last 3 hours a day. what;s more troubling is that the whole power grid in the state is 1-2Hz away from total disaster thanks to cityfolk like me and neighbours being greedy pigs.
Notwithstanding the existing demand of 4000 MW, the CPDCL is given a schedule to transmit only 2700 MW. Of this, about 1400 MW is consumed by the Greater Hyderabad region alone despite load shedding. This has forced us to take demand-side management measures,” says U.Vidyasagar, the Divisional Engineer at the Load Monitoring and Restriction Centre at the corporate office.
Rural areas are slapped with total blackouts, except for the 7-hour supply to agriculture. The city, with its needs grown multi-fold over the years, gobbles up much of the power that should go to districts. While the scheduled allocation for the city stands at 15 million units per day, the actual consumption even after load shedding hovers around 17 MU.
Any overdraft from the grid will result in plummeting frequency levels– a continuous threat for the CPDCL officials.
A minimum frequency of 48.5 hertz should be maintained to save the grid from collapse.
for the year. still no new computer in sight. the cost of repairing the old computer would probably buy a new one instead, and that’s a lovely thought in itself. the heat is sweltering, at about 40 degrees C, too bushed to convert to fahrenheit.
some words of wisdom to console you while i am gone:
PS: i love you all too, even those who did not comment :)
doop HQ 