The less junk in your food the more it costs. I never understood that.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fpWZ28
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Internet Data Retention law will help catch criminals, Justice Dept. tells U.S. Congress
Beyond all: Our right to free speech is our greatest right even when we don't like someone else's version.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/ihbVEY
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
If Only We Had Kept The Gold(en) Rule
There are those among us who remember when dollars were backed by gold. Gold is still going strong. Dollars? Not so much.
Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com
As far as we know, only one American vice president ever made a contribution to public life worth remembering. That was Charles Dawes, vice president under Calvin Coolidge.
Mr. Dawes was a Chicago banker who was also a songwriter. He wrote the tune for what became a popular song – “It’s All In the Game.”
Oh… And he also won the Nobel Prize for coming up with a plan – the Dawes Plan – for ending the reparations arguments following WWI. As with so many Nobel Prizes, the committee probably acted too hastily. The Dawes Plan never worked.
Dawes operated in a different world. The US dollar was still as good as gold. And any money that wasn’t backed by gold was suspect. Said Dawes after composing his song:
Now it’s not so simple. Banks no longer issue their own notes. Now, we all use dollars. But what are the dollars worth? Are they going to be the cause of tears and suffering?
Houses are Americans’ most important asset. And the average house is down about 25% since 2006. But that’s in terms of dollars. In terms of gold, the loss is over 60%.
Hey, it’s a Great Correction. After such a big run-up in housing prices in the bubble years, what would you expect? Housing prices are bound to run down.
But look what has happened in terms of real money. The average US household has lost about 70% of its purchasing power.
You’re probably thinking: “Who cares what happens in terms of gold? Gold is in a bull market…it’s fickle…it could go up…it could go down. So what?”
The point is, gold is real money. It is not a fiction. It is worth as much today as it was when Charles Dawes was humming tunes. And gold is telling us that the average US family is getting poorer.
The average lumpenconsumer might not be able to tell the difference. But gold knows. And gold tells.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hFZG6b
Monday, January 24, 2011
Facebook Demographics: A Comprehensive Guide (Amazingly Squeezed Into One Page)
Friday, January 21, 2011
Automation and the Fourth Amendment-Can Machines Be Considered Humans?
I send an email to my attorney. Technically it goes through a third party: My email provider. Third party communications are not given privacy protection under the 4th Amendment.
Ruh-roh.
A powerful example of how the values espoused in the Constitution are running smack dab into the quantum leaps in technology.
Amplify’d from www.pogowasright.org
The Supreme Court has held that an individual relinquishes any Fourth Amendment interest in information that he or she voluntarily discloses to a third party. Known as the “Third Party Doctrine,” this controversial rule is increasingly problematic in an age where a large proportion of personal communications and transactions are carried out over the Internet. Internet users expose virtually all of the information they generate online—e-mails, web-surfing histories, search terms, and more—to online service providers. As such, many scholars have assumed that Internet information will be unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.
Yet the information disclosed to these online third parties is generally not exposed to human beings at all; rather, it is processed entirely by automated equipment. Neither courts nor scholars have squarely addressed whether disclosure to these automated third parties is sufficient to eliminate Fourth Amendment protection. However, courts have, without discussing the issue, already begun to treat automated Internet systems as the equivalent of human beings.
This Article explores these implications, challenging existing privacy market theories and conceptions of user behavior, and proposing a new model of Fourth Amendment privacy on the Internet.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hUw82L
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Horoscoped Most Common Words In Star Sign Predictions
Great Infographic! Wonder if this will change when we move to 13 signs...
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dMKA2r
What Makes Them Click — People See Cues About How To Use An Object - Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate
Short but very interesting thoughts about form over function on websites.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/eXHan5
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Growth of Linked Data - ReadWriteCloud
Monday, January 17, 2011
Apple CEO Steve Jobs Announces Medical Leave of Absence
No mail, no banking, no school. The best thing to do then is make sure we take the urgent items of a normal Monday and focus on the truly important ones. http://bit.ly/gzfFCW
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Large Black Hole Could Swallow Our Solar System
Six trillion times the mass of the sun - unbelievable!
Amplify’d from gizmodo.com
The black hole in the nearby galaxy M87 weighs in at 6.6 billion suns, making it the local universe's heavyweight champ. It's big enough to swallow our solar system in one gulp.
"In terms of the largest galaxies, it really is in our backyard," Gebhardt said. "Being so close to such a massive black hole allows us a remarkable chance to study what happens around a black hole."
At nearly 6 trillion times the mass of the sun, M87 is the most massive galaxy in the Milky Way's cosmic neighborhood. Astronomers expected it to host a correspondingly huge black hole, but the most commonly accepted estimates - based on measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope - found the black hole weighed just 3 billion solar masses, give or take a billion.
Most of that mass probably came from gas and stars the black hole has devoured over the millennia. But the trajectories of the stars orbiting the black hole suggest that the solo monster that exists today is the product of two smaller black holes merging into one.
It probably took a few hundred such mergers to build the beast in M87, said Caltech astronomer George Djorgovski, who was not involved in the new work. In the same press conference, Djorgovski announced 16 new black hole pairs that will probably merge in the next few million years.
Big black holes also have big event horizons, the point at which a black hole's gravity is so great even light can't escape. The black hole in M87's event horizon is about 12 billion miles across, three times the size of Pluto's orbit.
"This black hole could swallow our solar system whole," Gebhardt said.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fP0TY1
Introduction to the Revolutions Exhibit
One Of The Most Injured In Tucson Wasn't Even Mentioned
I know it's not politically correct right now to feel something different than rage and derision toward anyone named Loughner. I wanted to offer a different perspective as a parent.
President Obama You Forgot To Mention Amy Loughner
President Obama You Forgot To Mention Amy Loughner
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dF7aL1
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Stop Trying To Look For Hints In Jared Loughner's Home
What has struck me the most in all the coverage of the Loughners is the failure of most to admit that YES our children can live in the same house and be involved with things we can’t imagine. If that weren’t true we wouldn’t have our children on drugs, pregnant, truant or planning to run away or a million other things.
How many of us have prayed at night that our kids survive the loser boyfriend, the too mature circle of acquaintances, the peer pressure of drugs? I cannot imagine the horror in praying that my son’s mental illness didn’t result in disaster.
Here’s the thing – parents become isolated because a) they love their children and hunker down to protect them b)they are judged so harshly that they can’t imagine reaching out.
So much tragedy to go around...
How many of us have prayed at night that our kids survive the loser boyfriend, the too mature circle of acquaintances, the peer pressure of drugs? I cannot imagine the horror in praying that my son’s mental illness didn’t result in disaster.
Here’s the thing – parents become isolated because a) they love their children and hunker down to protect them b)they are judged so harshly that they can’t imagine reaching out.
So much tragedy to go around...
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fk9aHF
Monday, January 10, 2011
Gunmen, Metaphors and Public Education
What a terrible story out of Tucson. At least Gabby Giffords' family and friends know why she was shot. The other families have to deal with the randomness and the nearly impossible to stop mental reruns of the shooting and what they could have done to prevent their loved ones from being there.
Jared Loughner, the gunman, seemed to be unraveling mentally at least on YouTube. He was not unknown to the police. He was suspended from his community college. I didn't even know that was possible. Seems a little sophomoric but I digress.
Sarah Palin is no more responsible for the shooting of Gabby Giffords than Jodie Foster was for John Hinckley's attempt on Ronald Reagan. Loughner and Hinckley are unfortunately whackjobs.
Still it has created so much discussion about the level of vitriol in our national conversation since Saturday. It is sickening and I have to admit I have a lot of difficulty looking for the "good" in people who inflame the vulnerable. That's wrong - I am now become part of the problem and not the solution. Oops. Not really the plan. The only way to civilized conversation is to be, oh say, civil.
Having said that here's the thing I don't get. When did we stop understanding metaphors?
When Pat Buchanan ended his rallies in the 1990s with "Lock and Load" it never crossed my mind his supporters were going to do that with guns.
If a member of my sales staff comes in and says "I'm on fire!" I do not immediately search for an extinguisher.
Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was not meant to be taken literally (although at the time it sounded like a good idea!) and ascribed to all women all the time.
Ladies and gentlemen, I used an 80s, a 90s and and an everyday example. Why? Because I would tell you every day of the week that I had a great public education back in the 60s and 70s. That I learned what a metaphor is and implicitly agreed to know it for the rest of my life.
Most of the hyperbole in our national debates are being spouted by people around my age, many of whom with private school educations that probably whipped the bejabbers out of mine, who claim to be in leadership positions in government, churches and organizations.
The steep decline in the education part of public education isn't the problem. It's the failure of those people who had a great to superb one to use it appropriately or to take responsibility when they don't.
If we now have people in their forties, fifties and older who have forgotten how to interpret a metaphor and younger people who may have never learned them in school then it is incumbent upon leaders of every stripe to STOP USING THEM!
Otherwise we'll get to the point that not only the unhinged will take every message literally.
Please Note: This is a not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. There's plenty of blame to go around!
NOTE: This is not a discussion of Republicans and Democrats. There's plenty of blame to go around.
Jared Loughner, the gunman, seemed to be unraveling mentally at least on YouTube. He was not unknown to the police. He was suspended from his community college. I didn't even know that was possible. Seems a little sophomoric but I digress.
Sarah Palin is no more responsible for the shooting of Gabby Giffords than Jodie Foster was for John Hinckley's attempt on Ronald Reagan. Loughner and Hinckley are unfortunately whackjobs.
Still it has created so much discussion about the level of vitriol in our national conversation since Saturday. It is sickening and I have to admit I have a lot of difficulty looking for the "good" in people who inflame the vulnerable. That's wrong - I am now become part of the problem and not the solution. Oops. Not really the plan. The only way to civilized conversation is to be, oh say, civil.
Having said that here's the thing I don't get. When did we stop understanding metaphors?
When Pat Buchanan ended his rallies in the 1990s with "Lock and Load" it never crossed my mind his supporters were going to do that with guns.
If a member of my sales staff comes in and says "I'm on fire!" I do not immediately search for an extinguisher.
Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was not meant to be taken literally (although at the time it sounded like a good idea!) and ascribed to all women all the time.
Ladies and gentlemen, I used an 80s, a 90s and and an everyday example. Why? Because I would tell you every day of the week that I had a great public education back in the 60s and 70s. That I learned what a metaphor is and implicitly agreed to know it for the rest of my life.
Most of the hyperbole in our national debates are being spouted by people around my age, many of whom with private school educations that probably whipped the bejabbers out of mine, who claim to be in leadership positions in government, churches and organizations.
The steep decline in the education part of public education isn't the problem. It's the failure of those people who had a great to superb one to use it appropriately or to take responsibility when they don't.
If we now have people in their forties, fifties and older who have forgotten how to interpret a metaphor and younger people who may have never learned them in school then it is incumbent upon leaders of every stripe to STOP USING THEM!
Otherwise we'll get to the point that not only the unhinged will take every message literally.
Please Note: This is a not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. There's plenty of blame to go around!
NOTE: This is not a discussion of Republicans and Democrats. There's plenty of blame to go around.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/eShOr7
Save Your Life By Eating At Home
It took our microwave blowing up to get me back to chili from scratch and home made pasta sauce. The brownies from a recipe came next along with scalloped potatoes and ham. I fought getting a new one after three months but it does have its place - not for cooking dinner though.
Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com
The slow insidious displacement of home cooked and communally shared family meals by the industrial food system has fattened our nation and weakened our family ties. In 1900, 2 percent of meals were eaten outside the home. In 2010, 50 percent were eaten away from home and one in five breakfasts is from McDonald's. Most family meals happen about three times a week, last less than 20 minutes and are spent watching television or texting while each family member eats a different microwaved "food." More meals are eaten in the minivan than the kitchen.
We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network than actually preparing their own meals. In his series, "Food Revolution," Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can't recognize a single vegetable or fruit, and don't know how to cook.
That we need nutritionists and doctors to teach us how to eat is a sad reflection of the state of society. These are things our grandparents knew without thinking twice about them. What foods to eat, how to prepare them, and an understanding of why you should share them in family and community have been embedded in cultural traditions since the dawn of human society.
The sustainability of our planet, our health, and our food supply are inextricably linked. The ecology of eating -- the importance of what you put on your fork -- has never been more critical to our survival as a nation or as a species. The earth will survive our self-destruction. But we may not.
The extraordinary thing is that we have the ability to move large corporations and create social change by our collective choices. We can reclaim the family dinner, reviving and renewing it. Doing so will help us learn how to find and prepare real food quickly and simply, teach our children by example how to connect, build security, safety and social skills, meal after meal, day after day, year after year.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/echbvz
Saturday, January 8, 2011
100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education
Nothing is going to change education like the Web. Thank heaven!
See this Amp at http://on.mash.to/hLwggm
Friday, January 7, 2011
iPad Killer: Truly, Really, I mean It
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Social Media & Public Relations - 5 Reports - Online Marketing Blog
Interesting variety of perspectives. Social media needs to be a mash up of what works for you or your company. If it were cookie cutter everyone would be doing it right!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hQjsz5
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Facebook Growth Stats Tell Some Stories
Be sure and check out Marketing Pilgrim at the link below.
Amplify’d from www.marketingpilgrim.com
Who doesn’t love a good infographic? The folks at All Facebook brought this istrategylabs data to our attention so we are passing it along. The data is said to be collected “directly from Facebook’s Social Ads system.” Use the usual caution when absorbing.
What questions would you like to see answered in greater detail regarding the Facebook experience? Maybe the folks at iStrategyLabs can dig a little deeper for us?
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hlt5dh
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
More Money, Less Empathy
It makes perfect sense. You or someone very close to you must experience something before you can feel empathy.
How can that be changed? I don't think it can. What's your perspective?
Amplify’d from healthland.time.com
Looking for empathy and support? You're more likely to get it from a poor person than you are from a rich one, according to new research published in Psychological Science.
Why might that be? "Lower-class environments are much different from upper-class environments," explains Kraus. "Lower-class individuals have to respond chronically to a number of vulnerabilities and social threats. You really need to depend on others so they will tell you if a social threat or opportunity is coming and that makes you more perceptive of emotions."
An earlier study by the same researchers found that those of lower socioeconomic status were also more helpful and generous, suggesting that it's not just empathic accuracy but empathy itself that may be enhanced by circumstance. "Coming from an environment where you're more vulnerable, you solve problems by turning to others," says Kraus. That increases empathy and strengthens social bonds.
This measure of empathic accuracy — "a person's ability to accurately read emotions that other people are feeling," says Kraus — is important because it is a key part of empathy itself: if you can't recognize what someone else is going through, it's hard to respond with kindness to their needs.
The influence of power could also be the reason that some studies find a gender difference in empathetic accuracy favoring women: they frequently have less power than men. "There are likely to be many determinants" of the gender difference, says Keltner. "One is that having lower power status makes women more attuned. Another may be that they more systematically take on caregiving roles. A third may be basic biology. If women do indeed have higher levels of the [bonding chemical] oxytocin and we know that oxytocin promotes empathy, that may be involved."
In an economy that puts more and more people at risk of falling out of the middle or upper classes, the reduction in empathy seen in the upper classes is troubling. (More on Time.com: House M.D. Watch: Is Faith a Mental Illness?)
The good news for those stuck on the bottom, however, is that the people around them may be nicer.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gRRDKC
Full Catastrophe Banking in 2011
Forewarned is forearmed. Of course if most had been forewarned there wouldn't have been so many foreclosed.
In other words WTH?
See this Amp at http://huff.to/dIVYcB
Monday, January 3, 2011
30 Reasons Why 2011 Will Be Bad For Middle Class
Honestly the first thing that popped into my head was "Was I reincarnated into the second Gilded Age?" The politics of it are interesting as well...why do less affluent people keep voting against their own interests? The wealthy do not.
Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com
Rather, there are some very serious long-term economic trends that are absolutely ripping apart the U.S. middle class. For example, did you know that even though our population has been growing at a brisk pace we have lost about ten percent of our middle class jobs over the past decade? The vast majority of jobs that have been created have been low paying service jobs.
Every time a factory gets closed down in America and gets set up in some other country instead, it means that the U.S. middle class is shrinking just a little bit more. The new "global economy" has been good for the bottom line of the largest U.S. corporations, it has been great for countries like China and India, but it is absolutely wiping out the U.S. middle class.
Meanwhile, the price of everything is going up. Have you been to the supermarket lately? The price of food is going up substantially. Many analysts are already talking about $5 a gallon gasoline in 2010. Utility bills are going through the roof. Health care premiums are soaring. Many state and local governments are seriously hiking up taxes and fees.
Unfortunately, 2011 isn't going to be any easier for those families. As a nation we continue to pursue the exact same economic policies that have allowed these horrible long-term economic trends to develop. Things are not going to change until our country starts moving in a fundamentally different direction.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/efUkW4
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