Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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Archive for Short Takes »
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Category Archives: Methods
When Bad News Is Good News
The other evening at dinner a friend asked me if my prognosis for our economic system meant that I was actually hoping for bad news. He wondered how anyone could actually think bad news could be good.
The title of my … Continue reading
Probably Guilty
I just finished reading Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom. It’s a very quick read and quite entertaining, but the statistics component doesn’t run all that deep. You’ll find a few bits to entertain … Continue reading
Why A Capitalist Society Can Never Be Free And Democratic
In a capitalist society a few people have obtained by means of hard work, good luck and connections, or through inheritance from family, the ownership and control of the means for producing wealth, called “capital”. These Capitalists describe themselves as … Continue reading
See you at the barricades
Here’s a film worth watching: Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream – Why Poverty?
This film is quite good, though maybe a bit disjointed. The difficulty with stories like this is that the story tellers try to explain how Capitalism … Continue reading
Capitalism Works!
Today’s headline in the NYT reads “Dow Average Surpasses Record High as Market Opens.”
The DOW is today, higher than it was before the Great Recession began in 2008, which is to say, that stocks are trading at prices higher today … Continue reading
Gun Cultures
According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics for 2009 there are 254,212,610 registered passenger vehicles in the United States. It is generally agreed that the United States is a car culture in which virtually everyone owns or has access … Continue reading
Turn out the lights, the party’s over
Adam Frank, a real scientist and one of NPR’s Cosmos and Culture bloggers, commented on the power outage during last week’s Super Bowl.
“It was a reminder that everything we have built with it is its own kind of miracle. And, … Continue reading
“Reach what you cannot”
In his autobiographical novel, Report To Greco, author Niklos Kazantzakis, (who wrote Zorba the Greek) gives an account of his asking God how he might live a life of value. God answers: “Reach what you can.” But Kazantzakis responds that … Continue reading
Causes of Freewill
In the article “Scientific evidence that you don’t have freewill,” Sam Harris denies that we have freewill, saying:
“Recognizing that my conscious mind is always downstream from the underlying causes of my thought, intentions and actions, does not change the fact … Continue reading
New Year’s Resolutions, 2013: It’s Too Late
NYT, Sydney Austrialia — Record Heat Fuels Widespread Fires in Australia: Four months of record-breaking temperatures stretching back to September 2012 have produced what the government says are “catastrophic” fire conditions along the eastern and southeastern coasts of the country, … Continue reading
The Letter Diane Feinstein Wrote To Me In Reply To My Letter And The Letter I Wrote Back To Her In Reply To Her Reply
Several weeks ago I sent a letter to Senator Diane Feinstein in which I expressed my concerns about the proposed changes in the formula for calculating the cost of living increases for Social Security Insurance. Ms Feinstein got around to sending me … Continue reading
The Great Scam
I woke this morning thinking about the ticking Doomsday machine–the “fiscal cliff”–that our politicians, left and right, created about a year ago. How, in our great democracy, could such an everyone-looses sort of thing be permitted?
It strikes me that the … Continue reading
Suicide is Painless
I realize I can see..
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
So this is all … Continue reading
The Will of Guns
In my previous post I entertained the idea that guns don’t kill innocent people, evil or mentally ill people who have guns do the killing. In point of fact, I do not subscribe to the “mental illness” explanation of the … Continue reading
Our Kingdom of Lies
Heres an interesting but not surprising article in NYT today on healthcare pricing.
“There’s very little transparency out there about what doctors and hospitals are charging for services,” Mr. Zirkelbach said. “Much of the public policy focus has been on health … Continue reading →