Clipmarks | masbury's clips

Folding Bicycle Information

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:47:12 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: Hasn't been updated since 2002, but has a lot of good information.

Folding Bicycle Information
Last Updated: 2002 August 15

There seems to be a burgeoning interest in folding bicycles.

At least in the U.S., folding bikes are purchased mainly for ease of carriage on public transportation (trains, ferries, planes), and private transportation (cars, RVs, small planes, and boats). Even public transit that permits bicycles often limits the number of bicycles and the hours that they are allowed.

The ideal folder has yet to be built. The Montague and Slingshot are excellent bicycles, but they don't fold small enough due to their large wheels. The bike friday suffers from the small wheel size which contributes to a harsher ride plus wheel heating problems reported by owners (though no Moulton owners report similar wheel problems so it may be strictly a bike friday issue). The Birdy, Brompton and the small DaHons lack a wide enough gear range for use in hilly areas (like San Francisco), though it is possible to modify them to provide adequate gearing.

Tags: bikes, folding-bikes, photos, reviews

folding bike review: the Giant Halfway

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:41:36 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: A few more foldies the writer likes:

Again, there are many great folding bicycles on the market today, another sign that the bicycle industry is moving to better serve the commuter market. Great folders include the Breezer Zigzag, the Brompton, and the KHS Mocha/Latte. If you are a multimodal bicycle commuter fearful of rapid crowding on transit systems, or live in a small apartment, or lack secure bike parking and need to bring your bike into your office/workplace--you might want to consider a folding bike.

Clip Source: bikecommutetips.blogspot.com

Of all the folding bikes available, what was appealing about this bike? First, the Giant Halfway is relatively affordable, sold at an attractive price point.

Second, it is relatively quick to fold. Many folders, such as some models of the Bike Friday line--are really travel bikes--offering great ride quality but requiring more time to collapse; suitable for a trip to Europe or elsewhere, but maybe not the best option for quick folding as you rush to your bus or train.

It is also very smartly designed. The geometry is great; meaning the ride quality doesn't feel cramped, "squirrelly," or uncomfortable. The single front fork (above) facilitates quick folding, and also easy repairs of flats. You don't need to remove the entire wheel, just the inntertube.

also offers great features, such as fenders, kickstand, and a rear rack. The designers even created a special mount (above) for the fenders and kickstand, showing the Halfway's intended purpose as a practical commuter.

Tags: bikes, folding-bikes, reviews, recommendations

Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:14:07 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: "There is also an area of the brain that responds strongly to positive feedback: the basal ganglia, just outside the cerebral cortex. The activity of this area of the brain does not change. It remains active in all age groups: in adults, but also in children, both eight-year-olds and twelve-year-olds."

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

In children aged 8 to 9, the areas of the brain involved in cognitive control show strong activation following positive feedback. This is no longer the case with 12-year-olds. (Credit: Image courtesy of Leiden University)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2008) — Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.

In children of eight and nine, these areas of the brain react strongly to positive feedback and scarcely respond at all to negative feedback

in children of 12 and 13,

Their 'control centres' in the brain are more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback.

Tags: brain

Social welfare programs do not keep a country from prosperity

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:03:26 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks:

The Nordic states have also worked to keep social expenditures compatible with an open, competitive, market-based economic system. Tax rates on capital are relatively low. Labor market policies pay low-skilled and otherwise difficult-to-employ individuals to work in the service sector, in key quality-of-life areas such as child care, health, and support for the elderly and disabled.

The results for the households at the bottom of the income distribution are astoundingly good, especially in contrast to...American social policy. The U.S. spends less than almost all rich countries on social services for the poor and disabled, and it gets what it pays for: the highest poverty rate among the rich countries and an exploding prison population. Actually, by shunning public spending on health, the U.S. gets much less than it pays for, because its dependence on private health care has led to a ramshackle system that yields mediocre results at very high costs.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

America's supply-siders claim that the best way to achieve well-being for America's poor is by spurring rapid economic growth and that the higher taxes needed to fund high levels of social insurance would cripple prosperity.

On average, the Nordic countries outperform the Anglo-Saxon ones on most measures of economic performance. Poverty rates are much lower there, and national income per working-age population is on average higher. Unemployment rates are roughly the same in both groups, just slightly higher in the Nordic countries. The budget situation is stronger in the Nordic group, with larger surpluses as a share of GDP.

The Nordic countries maintain their dynamism despite high taxation in several ways. Most important, they spend lavishly on research and development and higher education. All of them, but especially Sweden and Finland, have taken to the sweeping revolution in information and communications technology and leveraged it to gain global competitiveness.

Tags: community, politics, altruism, generosity, welfare, economics

Miss Congeniality

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:46:53 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Graphic aid of what happens when facts are brought out.

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

Palin's favorability trajectory

GOP senator: A 'stretch' to say Palin is qualified

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:31:56 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: here's a true maverick

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said his party's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, lacks foreign policy experience and called it a "stretch" to say she's qualified to be president.

She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said in an interview

You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world

I think that's just a requirement

Tags: politics

Presidential Candidates’ Healthcare Plans Compared

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:34:17 GMT

clipped by: pitim

Clip Source: www.researchrecap.com

The health care plans proposed by John McCain and Barack Obama come under scrutiny by the Tax Policy Center and Health Affairs. The Wall Street Journal offers a summary of the two critiques:

John McCain’s health-care plan would make only a small dent in the ranks of the uninsured, at best covering about five million more people, two new reports conclude.

Barack Obama would cover more people — eventually adding about 34 million, according to one of those reports, by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center

Writing in Health Affairs Joseph Antos, Gail Wilensky and Hanns Kuttner say the Obama plan amounts to a significant amount of new regulation, driving up the cost of insurance. In another Health Affairs article, Thomas Buchmiller, Sherry A. Glied 2, Anne Royalty and Katherine Swartz argue that higher administrative costs in the open market will make coverage more expensive and less generous under the McCain plan.

Mark V. Pauly combines elements of both plans to create a compromise proposal

Meet Jet-Man (with video)

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:22:21 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: www.cracked.com

Jet-Man

Real Name: Yves Rossi

Yves Rossi is a Swiss professional pilot and aeronautical engineer (we hope, since he designed his own jet pack) who, claiming to be inspired by his hero Batman, realized the first jet-pack-powered flight.

At this point someone should write the man a nice letter explaining to him that Batman doesn't really fly at all. We'd do it ourselves, but we don't like to argue about comics with a man who jumps out of a plane wearing nothing but a flammable death trap strapped to his ass. For all we care he can say Superman talks to fish, as long as he keeps flying homemade jet packs while he's saying it.

[Video]

Jet-Man's jet pack is capable of flying at a speed of 160 mph for up to six minutes. After those six minutes, Yves has to activate his secondary power, the Go-go-gadget-oh-please-God-don't-let-it-fail-parachute since there is no way to land the jet pack without becoming a red and chrome stain on the ground.

Very Perceptive Column by Deepak Chopra

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:01:20 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: cont.--virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of 'the other.' For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.)

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palinʼs message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.
Read the rest, pls, for details...

Clip Source: cathy-edgett.livejournal.com

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations

Biden on Fire

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:56:03 GMT

clipped by: lp97702
clipper's remarks: Wow...I can't get over this clip. Hard hitting, real, from the heart and effective....look at the crowd reaction..."What do you talk about when you can't explain the last eight years of failure?"

Clip Source: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Biden On Fire

One vice-presidential candidate is too fragile to talk to the press. The other is raising the roof. Man, this decision is easy, isn't it?

[Video]

Tags: biden

RNC Police arrests and beatings of those with RNC press passes..!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:59:49 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

[Video]

Tags: republicans, minnesota, st. paul, democracy now, associated press, police abuse, 1st amendment, constitution, free speech, free press

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) Arrested at RNC

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:52:33 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Now there going after journalists:

"Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department. Charged with conspiracy to riot. Footage from Rick Rowley and Brandon Jourdan. "

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: gop, represion, freedom, journalism, constitution, truth, news, arrest

McCain's endless supply of this one card.

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:45:00 GMT

clipped by: boniface
clipper's remarks: And he plays it a lot.

Clip Source: www.politico.com

GAO to Report Most US Corporations Pay No Taxes

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:06:46 GMT

clipped by: Wisco
clipper's remarks: Meanwhile, John McCain argues we should cut the corporate tax rate by 10%. Since the current corporate tax is pretty much theoretical, that'd be a decrease for most from 0% to what, John?

Clip Source: www.newsnet5.com

The Government Accountability Office is set to release a report that says most U.S. corporations pay no federal income taxes.

And most foreign companies that do business in the United States aren't paying corporate taxes.

The study says about two-thirds of American corporations paid zero income taxes to Uncle Sam between 1998 and 2005.

An even higher percentage of foreign corporations avoided federal corporate taxes. At the same time, said the GAO, the firms had trillions of dollars in sales.

The study was requested by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," Dorgan said.

Tags: news

Big Oil and their GOP lapdogs

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:40:47 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: jblaque.livejournal.com

Wait... what?

While Republicans, the U.S. oil industry and other assorted asshats piss and moan about more access to federal lands to (presumably) reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.

No, really.

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33% from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

The surge in exports appears to *ahem* contradict pleas from Big Oil and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," Bush told reporters last month. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil