Clipmarks | Socratoad's Comments

Why the Bailout isn't Working

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:45:53 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

Thank goodness Congress approved that bailout. Otherwise, the economy might be tanking.

After the bailout was signed into law on Friday, Oct. 3, investors had all weekend to contemplate its tonic properties but found none.

On Monday, the stock market looked like it had been pushed out of an airplane.

The sheer size and unprecedented nature of the intervention generates a different kind of uncertainty—about how extensively the federal government will immerse itself in the economy from now on. The spectacle of Washington nationalizing private assets is bound to dishearten millions of investors who think that generally, the most helpful economic role for government is staying out of the way.

The rescue surrenders an important principle: that private sector mistakes should be borne by the people who make them. If the bailout means we may all get the bill anytime a company implodes, it will undermine the critical incentives of the market. In the long run, that will not strengthen the economy but weaken it.

Tags: economics, government, economy

'Tis the Season of Election Dirty Tricks: Scaring Student Voters

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:53:37 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Other underhanded tactics seek to confuse voters about their voter registration. In 2006, voters in Virginia reportedly received fake voicemail messages from the state elections commission claiming that the voters were registered in another state and could be criminally charged if they cast their vote in Virginia.

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Election officials and watchdog groups are bracing for the wave of sneaky or suspicious phone calls, leaflets and emails that typically hit battleground states in the final 30 days of the presidential campaign.

Young voters at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Penn. have already been targeted, with students reporting that flyers have been posted around campus warning that undercover police will be at the polls on Election Day looking to make arrests.

Political experts say the Drexel flyer is a classic example of voter suppression – a practice that involves scaring, angering, or confusing voters so that they stay at home on Election Day.

Tags: ditry, politics, elections, democracy, scummy, gop

Fight the Right-Wing Smears

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:49:56 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Sad to say, I know and receive email from people (including relatives) who have no problem forwarding right-wing lies and racist propaganda about Obama. I went to this site to have a good source of information to refute the hate emails and replied to all who received, and sent, the smear emails I have received. I encourage you to do the same if you have the misfortune to be sent trashy lies about Barack Obama. To say nothing is to condone the sending and receiving of such emails.

Clip Source: fightthesmears.com

Barack Obama doesn’t take advice from Fannie Mae executives, despite claims made by shadowy emails and John McCain’s attack ads.

Get the Facts and Take Action Now

Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell falsely claimed Barack was an organizer for ACORN.

Radical anti-abortion ideologues are running ads that make wild 'Born Alive' accusations against Barack Obama

Barack Obama was honored to visit our troops overseas. But that didn’t stop email smears from claiming otherwise.

The American flag on the Obama campaign plane is easy to see.

Distorted and fabricated quotes from Barack’s books on race and religion are being used to manipulate the public.

Sign up for the Obama Action Wire

Tags: email smears, obama, ethics

Europe's Far-Right Revival

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:39:24 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria's Future, managed to win 29% of the vote in Sunday's general elections in Austria. This is double what they got in the elections of 2006.

Both parties share the same attitudes toward immigrants, especially Muslims, and the European Union: a mixture of fear and loathing.

In Denmark, the hard-right Danish People's Party is the third-largest party in the country, with 25 parliamentary seats. Dutch populists such as Rita Verdonk, or Geert Wilders, who is driven by a paranoid fear of "Islamization," are putting the traditional political elites -- a combination of liberals, social democrats and Christian democrats -- under severe pressure.

All this is linked to resentment about immigrants.

The phrase most often heard in Austria among those who support the right-wing parties is "fresh air."

Ehrenreich: The Communist Manifesto Hits 160

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:39:37 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Marx's solution was wrong, but his diagnosis sounds like recent news. Excellent writing!

Clip Source: ehrenreich.blogs.com

This year marks the 160th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto and capitalism, aka “free enterprise,” seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead. On Monday night, some pundits were warning that the ATMs might run dry and hinting that the only safe investment left is canned beans

The Manifesto makes for quaint reading today. All that talk about “production,” for example:

Did the proletariat really slave away in factories instead of call centers? But on one point Marx and Engels proved right: Within capitalist societies, or at least the kind of wildly unregulated capitalism America has had, the rich got richer, the workers got poorer, and the erstwhile middle class has been sliding toward ruin

American workers have sweetly acquiesced to declining wages, rising prices, speed-ups at work, disappearing pensions, and increasingly threadbare health insurance. While CEO pay escalated to the 8-figure range

ordinary Americans took on second jobs

Tags: economy

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:35:51 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Go to site for information blurbs.

Some of these have been clipped before, but certainly not all

Clip Source: www.oddee.com

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town, complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings, was established in the barren sandy desert. But shortly after the drop in diamond sales after the First World War, the beginning of the end started. During the 1950's the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim what was always theirs.

PRYPIAT (Ukraine): Chernobyl workers' home

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the Zone of alienation in northern Ukraine. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.

KADYKCHAN (Russia): memories of the Soviet Union

Let the little Fishies nibble on your Tootsies

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:19:19 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: I want one!

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

Fish pedicures: Carp rid human feet of scaly skin
Tracy Roberts, 33, of Rockville, Md. has her toes nibbled on by a type of carp called garra rufa, or doctor fish, during a fish pedicure treatment in Alexandria, Va. on Thursday, July 17, 2008. Associated Press photo by Jacquelyn Martin

Mirrors Don’t Lie.. : -)

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:34:05 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: “When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,” Dr. Bodenhausen said. “A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.” Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself. "

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love.

To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? “Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don’t look exactly the same every time,”

“Which image is you?”

“Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.”

Multimedia

Graphic

Mirror Images

FAQ for dogs

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:00:27 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie

Clip Source: www.mcsweeneys.net

FAQ for Dogs.

1. Who's a good boy?

2. Who's got a fluffy tail?

3. What's in your tail?

4. What do you have?

5. What's in your mouth?

6. Where did you get that?

7. Where is the rest of that?

8. Where's your mom?

Tags: humor

The Cadaver Calculator

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:42:18 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug
clipper's remarks: your dead body is worth $4590
I feel cheap -.-

Clip Source: www.oneplusyou.com

The Cadaver Calculator - Find out How Much your Body is Worth

So you've bitten the big one and instead of pushing up daisies your loved ones decided it would be best to sell your body to science. This survey will tell you approximately how much money they'd get for it. Cadaver values are primarily based on overall health and the level of interest your corpse holds to the medical research industry.

Question 1 of 20

Please choose the option that best describes your body type.

Obese
Overweight
Average
Slim / Slender
Athletic
Body Builder

Top 10 reasons to quit your job

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:31:26 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee

Clip Source: humanresources.about.com

These are the top ten reasons why you might want to quit your current job. These are difficult, if not impossible, work problems to solve. You need to look out for your best interests. Your job consumes too many hours of too many days of your life for you to stay where you are if you're miserable. No excuses, now. If these problems exist in your current job, make a plan, and quit your job.

Your company is experiencing a downward spiral

Your relationship with your manager is damaged beyond repair

Your life situation has changed.

Your values are at odds with the corporate culture

You've stopped having fun and enjoying your job

Your company is ethically challenged

you have behaved in ways that are considered improper

You've burned your bridges with your coworkers

Your stress level is so high at work that it is affecting your physical or mental health

burnout and if they can't be cured, move on

You are unchallenged

By Susan M. Heathfield, About.com

So where's the big Bargain?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:22:22 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: It just doesn't make sense on so many levels, including $$, but somebody is gettin' rich on this Goddamned war.

Clip Source: c3.newdream.org

The following quote is from an episode of The History Channel's "Modern Marvels" entitled "Doomsday Tech 1."

One section of the show focused on the impending end of the global oil supply and the wars which would result. One of the experts said the following:

"The United States government now spends more money maintaining a military presence in the Persian Gulf than the net value of the oil it's getting from the Persian Gulf -- and that was before the war. That was 200 billion dollars ago."

The Cadaver Calculator

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:42:18 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug
clipper's remarks: your dead body is worth $4590
I feel cheap -.-

Clip Source: www.oneplusyou.com

The Cadaver Calculator - Find out How Much your Body is Worth

Question 1 of 20

Please choose the option that best describes your body type.

Obese
Overweight
Average
Slim / Slender
Athletic
Body Builder

'Snow flea antifreeze protein' could help improve organ preservation

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:04:44 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: A fascinating case of bio mimicry.

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Scientists in Illinois and Pennsylvania are reporting development of a way to make the antifreeze protein that enables billions of Canadian snow fleas to survive frigid winter temperatures.

Their laboratory-produced first-of-a-kind proteins could have practical uses in extending the storage life of donor organs and tissues for human transplantation, the researchers indicate in a report scheduled for the July 9 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The researchers made synthetic sfAFP, and showed that it has the same activity as the natural protein.

They also produced variants, including one form of sfAFP with a molecular architecture that is the reverse, or "mirror image," of natural sfAFP and different from any other protein found in living things on Earth.

The mirror-image form of sfAFP appears less likely to trigger harmful antibodies and more resistant to destruction by natural enzymes

Tags: molecular biology, biomimicry, organ preservation

Watermelon Art

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:07:35 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug
clipper's remarks: I got all jealous and tried one myself with my nephews
http://s3.supload.com/free/watermelon_art.JPG/view/

Clip Source: www.allweirdthings.com

Clipmarks | Socratoad's Comments

Why the Bailout isn't Working

'Tis the Season of Election Dirty Tricks: Scaring Student Voters

Fight the Right-Wing Smears

Fight the Smears

Sign up for the Obama Action Wire

Europe's Far-Right Revival

Ehrenreich: The Communist Manifesto Hits 160

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

PRYPIAT (Ukraine): Chernobyl workers' home

KADYKCHAN (Russia): memories of the Soviet Union

Let the little Fishies nibble on your Tootsies

Mirrors Don’t Lie.. : -)

Multimedia

Mirror Images

FAQ for dogs

The Cadaver Calculator

The Cadaver Calculator - Find out How Much your Body is Worth

Top 10 reasons to quit your job

So where's the big Bargain?

The Cadaver Calculator

The Cadaver Calculator - Find out How Much your Body is Worth

'Snow flea antifreeze protein' could help improve organ preservation

Watermelon Art