Daydreaming Idly

"In Spenglerian fashion, Berman seeks the source of our civilization’s decline in its innermost..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 10:36:04 -0700

“In Spenglerian fashion, Berman seeks the source of our civilization’s decline in its innermost principle, its animating Geist. What he finds at the bottom of our culture’s soul is … hustling; or, to use its respectable academic sobriquet, possessive individualism. Expansion, accumulation, economic growth: this is the ground bass of American history, like the hum of a dynamo in the basement beneath the polite twitterings on the upper stories about “liberty” and “a light unto the nations.” Berman scarcely mentions Marx or historical materialism; instead he offers a nonspecialist and accessible but deeply informed and amply documented review of American history, period by period, war by war, arguing persuasively that whatever the ideological superstructure, the driving energy behind policy and popular aspiration has been a ceaseless, soulless acquisitiveness.”

- How Bad Is It? – The New Inquiry

"Still, even if American education is spotty and the social fabric is fraying, the fact that the U.S...."

Sat, 26 May 2012 10:33:49 -0700

“

Still, even if American education is spotty and the social fabric is fraying, the fact that the U.S. is the world’s richest nation must surely make a great difference to our quality of life? Alas, no. As every literate person knows, economic inequality in the United States is off the charts – at third-world levels. The results were recently summarized by James Speth in Orion magazine. Of the 20 advanced democracies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. has the highest poverty rate, for both adults and children; the lowest rate of social mobility; the lowest score on UN indexes of child welfare and gender inequality; the highest ratio of health care expenditure to GDP, combined with the lowest life expectancy and the highest rates of infant mortality, mental illness, obesity, inability to afford health care, and personal bankruptcy resulting from medical expenses; the highest homicide rate; and the highest incarceration rate. Nor are the baneful effects of America’s social and economic order confined within our borders; among OECD nations the U.S. also has the highest carbon dioxide emissions, the highest per capita water consumption, the next-to-largest ecological footprint, the next-to-lowest score on the Yale Environmental Performance Index, the highest (by a colossal margin) per capita rate of military spending and arms sales, and the next-to-lowest rate of per capita spending on international development and humanitarian assistance.

Contemplating these dreary statistics, one might well conclude that the United States is — to a distressing extent — a nation of violent, intolerant, ignorant, superstitious, passive, shallow, boorish, selfish, unhealthy, unhappy people, addicted to flickering screens, incurious about other societies and cultures, unwilling or unable to assert or even comprehend their nominal political sovereignty. Or, more simply, that America is a failure.

”

- How Bad Is It? – The New Inquiry

This makes me proud. Joanna is someone we at Idea Wild have...

Sat, 26 May 2012 08:03:08 -0700

This makes me proud. Joanna is someone we at Idea Wild have supported over the years for her work on promoting sustainable fishing practices in Peru. She really is one of the heroes of biodiversity conservation, and totally deserves this award.

"The choice in November may not be, in the immortal words of the Rev Jesse Jackson, a choice between..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:34:46 -0700

“The choice in November may not be, in the immortal words of the Rev Jesse Jackson, a choice between “Republican” and “Republican lite”. That would be to ignore the sheer extremism of the modern Republican party on a whole host of issues, from healthcare reform to the Israeli occupation. However, it will be a choice between a pair of frontmen for financial interests, two nominees of the 1%. The inconvenient truth is that, whichever candidate is elected in November, Wall Street wins.”

- Sadly Barack Obama, like Mitt Romney, is an apologist for the 1% (via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)

"The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:30:29 -0700

“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education. Marriage is under attack by clergy who proclaim monogamy yet think nothing of stepping outside the bonds of marriage to have multiple affairs with “preaching groupies.””

- Rev. Otis Moss III, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ (via touchoftea)

"In the 1960s, backpackers left as much as they could behind in order to release themselves from the..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:29:21 -0700

“In the 1960s, backpackers left as much as they could behind in order to release themselves from the burden of self. Now backpackers take as much as they can take in order to be self-sufficient. In the ’60s, the backpacker’s quest was to remove everything — often one’s self-understanding, one’s identity — to access something pure. Today, backpackers want to assert their identity across national boundaries with the help of the things they own. Maybe the two lives of Siddhartha are the two sides of backpackers. The 1960s generation, it seems, was replaying the first part of Siddhartha’s tale. They followed the young Siddhartha at the beginning of his journey of self-discovery, leaving everything behind in order to find their true selves. Contemporary backpackers are like the Siddhartha who goes back to the city in order to acquire as much as possible to fill the emptiness left by his ascetic life. Interestingly, Siddhartha only finds what he’s looking for after he has possessed everything he can, becomes completely self-contained, creates for himself a fortress of belongings, and then lets it all go.”

- The Smart Set: You Can Take It with You - May 23, 2012

"There is an unavoidable truth about traveling: To travel is to make oneself a figure of potential..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:27:39 -0700

“There is an unavoidable truth about traveling: To travel is to make oneself a figure of potential ridicule. Travel makes us vulnerable. Most experienced travelers know their basic needs can be met wherever they may be. You just have to ask for what you want and accept what you get. This is not as easy as it might sound. It takes confidence. It takes faith. It is usually easier to bring your own stuff.”

- The Smart Set: You Can Take It with You - May 23, 2012

"Backpackers are not about to travel unprepared. It is this thorough preparation that makes..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:25:09 -0700

“Backpackers are not about to travel unprepared. It is this thorough preparation that makes backpackers look absurd — and unexpectedly hostile. For, when we pack too well, we are telling the world that it isn’t good enough on its own, that it makes us uncomfortable and scared. We don’t know if we can depend on anything or anyone, and we’ve decided it’s better not to take the chance. We will take our own umbrellas, our own bananas.”

- The Smart Set: You Can Take It with You - May 23, 2012

"The backpack of today is like a mobile home. Backpackers move through foreign lands with the..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:19:36 -0700

“The backpack of today is like a mobile home. Backpackers move through foreign lands with the hunched-over gait of mad scientists’ assistants. The backpack was once meant to suggest the romance of an itinerant’s carpetbag, or the sack on a stick carried by a hobo hopping onto a freight train. But carpetbags and hobo sacks held everything a person owned. The backpacks of today hold everything a person can take.”

- The Smart Set: You Can Take It with You - May 23, 2012

"All of these stories suggest that Wall Street is increasingly turning into a giant..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:24:15 -0700

“All of these stories suggest that Wall Street is increasingly turning into a giant favor-and-front-running factory, where the big banks and broker-dealers that channel vast streams of crucial non-public information (about the markets generally and their clients specifically) are also trading for their own accounts, and sharing information with a select group of “preferred investors,” who in turn help the TBTF banks move markets in this or that desired direction by jumping on or off various pigpiles at the right times.”

- The Facebook IPO: Shareholders Weren’t Invited to the Real Party | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

"A suit has been filed by Facebook shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Morgan Stanley and..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:20:36 -0700

“A suit has been filed by Facebook shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Morgan Stanley and others. It’s based on a very simple concept: when internal analysts learned that Facebook’s numbers were going to be worse than expected, the company and its bankers didn’t tell everyone, but just “selectively disclosed” information to a small group of “preferred investors.” Henry Blodget, who unfortunately should know about these things, gave a good summary of it all on CBS This Morning: I was on the phone last night with a former hedge fund CEO who was talking about this. “Facebook,” he said, “is a colossal example of a complete clusterfuck where everybody wins except the ordinary investor.””

- The Facebook IPO: Shareholders Weren’t Invited to the Real Party | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

"When we are confident, and booming, and full of trust in our own splendour, The Great Gatsby seems..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:08:55 -0700

“When we are confident, and booming, and full of trust in our own splendour, The Great Gatsby seems like a curiosity, an anecdote as it did to its first readers. But when things are going wrong all round, and we are trying to remember what it was like to live within a magnificent dream – to be deceived by what we want – then it speaks to us. It buttonholes us, saying, not quite attractively or in a way that we can trust, “Old sport”.”

- Great Gatsby: a story for the modern age - Telegraph

"It’s just the novel for us. Its world reflects on bubbles and gaudy display, and people whose..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:07:59 -0700

“It’s just the novel for us. Its world reflects on bubbles and gaudy display, and people whose magnificent social position conceals an obscure history. You don’t have to look far to find Gatsby-like figures in London today. Would a modern-day Gatsby be a property developer, selling glass-walled penthouses for tens of millions? Or would a modern-day Gatsby be a Russian oligarch, with origins lost in some Siberian village and sinister staff patrolling the outer rim of the vast Home Counties estate? What the real modern-day equivalent of a Gatsby would be hardly matters.”

- Great Gatsby: a story for the modern age - Telegraph

"The Great Gatsby, strange to say, was not a huge success in the era it so embodies – the first two..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:05:34 -0700

“The Great Gatsby, strange to say, was not a huge success in the era it so embodies – the first two printings were not exhausted at Fitzgerald’s death 15 years later. Perhaps it saw too clearly: it is a novel about meretriciousness and a vast, backless façade published at a time when America was at its height of confidence. America, like Gatsby, believed in its power to get the money and get the girl, and didn’t quite like the delusion exposed.”

- Great Gatsby: a story for the modern age - Telegraph

Corporate Lobbying Group Asks Supreme Court Not To Use "Empirical Evidence" Of Corruption When Reconsidering Citizens United

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:58:22 -0700

Corporate Lobbying Group Asks Supreme Court Not To Use "Empirical Evidence" Of Corruption When Reconsidering Citizens United:

At the heart of the issue is whether the Citizens United decision has increased corruption. Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a statement about the Montana decision, said the court must make clear if “Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.’”

Interest groups and politicians are lining up to offer briefs to the Supreme Court. Some, like Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and John McCain (R-AZ), have submitted a brief urging the court to overturn Citizens United.

But on the other side of the issue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has submitted a brief arguing that unlimited corporate spending in elections should be maintained. The argument? The Chamber says there is “no evidence” that corporate electioneering has given rise to corruption anywhere. Moreover, the Chamber says that if there is “empirical evidence” that states have been corrupted by corporate involvement in campaigns, the court “should not” consider it. Here’s a quote from the Chamber’s brief (which was filed with help from the law firm Wiley Rein):

But even if the Court were inclined to reconsider Citizens United based on empirical data, which it should not, there is no evidence in the record of this case detailing the level of spending on political speech since Citizens United was decided. Pet. 27-28. The Montana Supreme Court only considered evidence of corruption in Montana “during the early twentieth century,” Pet. App. 17a, and, even then, the evidence had nothing to do with independent expenditures, see supra p.11. Moreover, this Montanaspeciﬁ c evidence offers no insight into the effect or scope of corporate speech in the rest of the country. As this Court is aware, a majority of states permitted corporations to speak freely long before Citizens United, yet there was no evidence then (and there is no evidence now) that elections in those states have been corrupted by immense corporate wealth. Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. at 909 (citing Supp. Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America as Amicus Curiae at 8 -9). In short, this case is not a suitable vehicle for addressing the question that Justice Ginsburg posed in the Stay Order.

"Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:57:43 -0700

“Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing with the future.”

- Carl Sagan on mastering the vital balance between skepticism and open-mindedness (via explore-blog)

Former J.P. Morgan Lobbyist Manages The Banking Committee Expected To Investigate J.P. Morgan’s Trading Loss

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:56:25 -0700

Former J.P. Morgan Lobbyist Manages The Banking Committee Expected To Investigate J.P. Morgan’s Trading Loss:

govtoversight:

This is why we care about the revolving door.

wildcat2030: Unlike the contents of your inbox, bank statement,...

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:26:10 -0700

wildcat2030:

Unlike the contents of your inbox, bank statement, or Facebook timeline, your DNA quite literally defines you. It’s strange, then, that in an age where sequencing the genome is becoming trivial, we don’t give a second thought about the privacy issues surrounding the chemicals that make us who we are. In fact, most states in the US have absolutely no laws whatsoever to govern surreptitious genetic testing. If that surprises you, it gets worse. Back in 2006, the particularly forward-thinking state of Minnesota passed a law demanding that written consent had to be obtained for collection, storage, use, and sharing of genetic information. In 2011, however, the Minnesota Supreme Court judged that the state’s own department of health was in violation of that very law. So, quite literally millions of US citizen have their DNA records stored on databases, and there are few laws governing what’s done with the data. Something has to be done about that—but it’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds. Clamp down on DNA privacy… (via How Private Is Your DNA? | Impact Lab)

Social jetlag and its consequences (by cellvideoabstracts) That...

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:20:41 -0700

Social jetlag and its consequences (by cellvideoabstracts)

That does it. I’m going back to bed!

shortformblog: thedailywhat: Thoughtful Rant of the Day: The...

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:24:58 -0700

shortformblog:

thedailywhat:

Thoughtful Rant of the Day: The great libertarian Penn Jillette derides President Obama’s medical marijuana policies, his appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and his drug use — all without taking a breath.

(Not Safe For Work — explicit raving.)

[vvv]

For those of you who like well-spoken rants.