Clipmarks | dmegivern's Comments

The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:36:51 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Washington's "Farewell Address" to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: "In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ..."

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism

This Fourth of July, let's remember that it's not our God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking.

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling -- but before we are too besotted with ourselves -- might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend?

We are drowning in the "impostures of pretended patriotism," used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Limbaugh: I am defender of Corporate America

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:40:43 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: An unashamed cadre of the corporatocracy

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

Limbaugh: ‘I consider myself a defender of corporate America.’»

right-wing radio talker Rush Limbaugh declares himself “the intellectual engine of the conservative movement.” Described by reporter Zev Chafets as “less a theoretician than a popularizer”

“I consider myself a defender of corporate America.” Limbaugh’s claim is supported by the aggressive manner in which he acts as a “pitchman” for products on his show:

Some simply run their usual ads. Others use Limbaugh as their pitchman, which costs them a premium and a long-term commitment. And lately he has created a new option. At a much higher rate he will weave a product into his monologue (To a caller who said he took two showers after voting for Clinton in Operation Chaos, Limbaugh responded: “If you had followed my advice and gotten a Rinnai tankless water heater, you wouldn’t have needed to take two showers. And I’ll tell you why. . . .”)

Tags: limbaugh, media

Man found in WI basement covered in BBQ sauce

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:53:52 GMT

clipped by: karokan
clipper's remarks: WoW! =-D

Clip Source: www.wwmt.com

Man found in WI basement covered in BBQ sauce

APPLETON, Wisc. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A couple telephoned police in the middle of the night after finding a man in their basement covered head to toe in barbecue sauce.

"He told the officers that it was urban camouflage," said the homeowner.

This happened in Wisconsin.

The homeowners say they woke up to whistling sounds.

The husband grabbed his shotgun and headed toward the basement where he found the sauced-up intruder.

He held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

The guy told officers he covered himself in barbecue sauce because he wanted to hide from the government.

He now faces burglary charges.

Tags: news, funny

US Teacher Is Suspended For Letting Pupils Read

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:40:31 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: When do they start the burning?

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months.

The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.

The Writers Diary, a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers, was put together by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives. It was made into a film with Hilary Swank last year.

“If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised,” she told the Guardian. “I thought my students would very much relate to those kids.”

Connie Heermann, a teacher for 27 years, sought permission to introduce the book to her students

&Why people believe Americans are Stupid&

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:59:05 GMT

clipped by: Yassin_M

Clip Source: video.stumbleupon.com

&Why people believe Americans are Stupid&

[Video]

MN judge finds against WalMart in 2 MILLION labor violations

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:14:55 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Will WalMart ever stop leeching American workers?

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Wal-Mart may face up to $2 billion in fines after a Minnesota state judge found a total of 2 million contractual violations by the retail giant.

The judge also ruled on Monday that Wal-Mart owed $6.5 million to 56,000 current and former employees because of contractual violations, including a failure to give workers promised rest breaks at least 1.5 million times. The judge also found that Wal-Mart managers in Minnesota had systematically broken the law by having employees take in-house training while off the clock.

“It’s only through a decision like this that Wal-Mart can be held to its contractual agreements and to complying with Minnesota law.”

Tags: walmart

Why Do We Remember Bad Things?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:01:07 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.time.com

Why Do We Remember Bad Things?

TIME asked Matt Wilson, a professor of neurobiology at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Q: Why do we remember unpleasant events better than ordinary ones?

A: We think of memory as a record of our experience. But the idea is not just to store information; it's to store relevant information. [The idea is] to use our experience to guide future behavior.

The speculation is that we process memory in order to solve problems. And things we should learn from, things that are particularly important or that have strong emotions tied to them, may be things that are going to be important in the future. If you present stimuli with a strong negative emotional component, the memories do seem to be more easily retrieved than neutral stimuli or even those that are somewhat positive, for example happy faces versus angry faces.

[Emotional content] does not necessarily mean that events are remembered more accurately, and that's an important distinction.

Tags: memory, trauma

The Corporate Soul

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:33:52 GMT

clipped by: sillysam

Clip Source: www.weeklystandard.com

THE PRIVATE

corporation is so ubiquitous in our economy that it's easy to overlook the vital role it plays. Yet these "little republics" are the essential wealth-creating constituents of free economies and free societies in the West

The philosophy and spirit that animates private sector companies therefore has an enormous impact on all of civil society. The more companies strive to treat their employees and customers with justice and respect, the less need or excuse government will have to interfere with their liberty. As the great philosopher of freedom Edmund Burke said: "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites...Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Rational Recovery - No "Higher Power" necessary

Sun, 11 May 2008 08:18:04 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: substance-abuse-recovery.suite101.com

1. Admit you have a problem. You do not have to admit to being powerless over alcohol. You do have to admit that you have a problem and that you want to change

2. Determine your allies as soon as you make the decision to quit. Who is in your life that will support you in your decision? Surround yourself with the people in your life that will assist you in your decision to quit

3. Make a commitment. Don't be afraid to imagine yourself sober for the rest of your life. It is true that you take one day at a time

You also need to have emotional acceptance that it is a good thing that you will not ever be drinking again

4. Avoid the labels. It is not necessary to announce to everyone that you are an alcoholic, or a recovering alcoholic. Share your victories with your allies

Know that you do not have a disease, and you are not sick-

it's o.k. to simply say, "no thank you

Avoid situations that will lead to being pressured for a drink

Spend time with your allies

Be gentle with yourself

Psychiatric Emergency Rooms are Appalling

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:54:17 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: My dissertation research uncovered dozens of stories of abusive and incompetent psychiatric emergency rooms. I hope at least these woman's death will draw attention to an invisible and longstanding American problem.

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Kings County Hospital Lets Woman with Mental Illness Die

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

The below hospital surveillance video shows a dying woman while people around her, including a hospital security guard, did nothing to help. Apparently hospitals aren’t good places for people with mental illness to be (click here to read the full entry and view the video):

After a full hour, another patient alerted hospital staff of the woman dead on the floor. But it gets better:

Why their psych ward is even allowed to remain open is beyond me. And while 6 staffers have been fired, including 2 security guards who saw the woman and did nothing, it still leaves a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth who watches this tape. The loss of a job just doesn’t seem sufficient punishment for the death of a person with mental illness — in a hospital.

Read the full story: Hospital video shows no one helped dying woman

AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State'

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:04:04 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate's vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.

Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T's internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government's warrantless wiretapping program broke.

Wired.com independently acquired a copy of the documents (.pdf) -- which were under court seal -- and published the wiring documents in May 2006 so that they could be evaluated.

Neither the House nor the Senate has had Klein testify, nor have telecom executives testified in open session about their participation.

Counting monkeys tick off yet another 'human' ability

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:41:09 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

[Video]

At this rate a monkey might prove the Riemann hypothesis. Rhesus macaques have been shown to possess yet another numerical talent once thought unique to humans – they can simultaneously count audible beeps and dots on a computer screen.

Their ability to comprehend numbers not as just discrete images or sounds, but as abstract representations that can be combined suggests that such maths skills aren't unique to humans, says Kerry Jordan, a psychologist at Utah State University, Logan, US, who led the new study.

This sort of evidence "shows that [animals] have these precursors to math very early on in the evolutionary line and early on in development," she says.

Tags: monkey, math, evolution, human

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:26:27 GMT

clipped by: rmowery
clipper's remarks: So if you have a small container with lots of water and lots of ice and the ice melts....what happens to all the extra water and where does it go?

WaterWorld anyone?

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

Tags: polar ice caps, northpole, ice, metling, arctic sea

Artificial brain predicts death-row executions

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:55:38 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Since the direct approach had failed, the researchers turned to an artificial neural network (ANN) - an intelligent computer system, modelled after the human brain - that is able to deduce how various factors within a jumble of data relate to each other. The system can then take what it has learned and make predictions about a new set of data.To find out which factors might be linked to executions, the researchers first "trained" their ANN by entering the profiles of 1000 death row inmates between 1973 and 2000. Half of this sample of prisoners had been executed and the other half had survived. Each profile contained 18 factors, including the inmate's sex, age, race, marital status, educational level and information on their capital offences.

Clip Source: technology.newscientist.com

WHICH inmates on death row will eventually be executed? Many never make the final journey from prison cell to execution chamber - but nobody really understands who will be spared.

Until now. A new computer system can predict which death row prisoners will live and which will be killed - with chilling accuracy. And its dispassionate analysis has confirmed suspicions that the people most likely to be executed are those who have had the least schooling, rather than those who have committed the most heinous crimes.

The US, the only western democracy to retain the death penalty, executes only a small proportion of the people it sentences to death. For instance, just 53 of the 3228 inmates on death row were executed in 2006.

So how were those 53 chosen? "We couldn't see any clear patterns in the data," says computer scientist Stamos Karamouzis,

Tags: ai, death row, computing

Frustrated with FEMA in Cedar Rapids

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:00:33 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: top priority getting financial assistance for living expenses

Clip Source: www.gazetteonline.com

A long wait in lineat FEMA centers

James Cummins of Cedar Rapids and his daughter, Jenny Jaquette of Urbana, talk to FEMA representative Greg Henshall (left) at the FEMA mobile disaster recovery center at the Westdale Mall on Thursday.

James Cummins, 54, registered with FEMA last week before Cedar Rapids was declared a federal disaster area. He's already spoken with FEMA representatives.

But there he was Thursday morning standing in line outside the FEMA mobile disaster recovery center at Westdale Mall because he still doesn't feel like he has all the answers he needs.

Cummins has been living in his fifth-wheel trailer since he evacuated his house at 1668 First St. NW late last week. His top priority now is getting financial assistance to help cover his day-to-day expenses.

"That would be a start," said Cummins, who hasn't been able to get back into his home. "I don't know what to do, to be honest. I just keep making phone calls — that's the frustration.

Tags: flood