NEW statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem. Even in a country that sometimes seems inured to income inequality, these takeaways are truly stunning.
In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.
Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent.
The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.
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National Geographic: Deepsea Challenge “Follow National Geographic Explorer-In-Residence James Cameron as he and the Deepsea Challenge team embark on a dive to the ocean’s deepest point. Related site: Latest News Update.”
Ancient Romans believed that seeing an owl was a bad omen, sniffing cyclamen flowers would prevent baldness, and ringing bells eased the pain of childbirth. The presence of bees, which were considered sacred messengers of the gods, were seen as a sign of good luck. – Provided by RandomHistory.com
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Upping the ante for sexist grooming product ads everywhere, the latest Turkish TV commercial for Biomen-brand shampoo features Adolf Hitler admonishing men for using “women’s shampoo.”
“If you’re not wearing women’s clothes, you shouldn’t be using women’s shampoo either,” says Turkish Hitler. “Here it is. A real man’s shampoo. Biomen. Real men use Biomen.”
You may be surprised to learn that some people are pretty unhappy about this.
“The use of images of the violently anti-Semitic dictator who was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust to sell shampoo is a disgusting and deplorable marketing ploy,” said Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman. “There can never be any justifiable purpose for using the images of Hitler, Nazis or any other depiction of the Nazi killing machine to sell products or services.”
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Listening to Xanax
How America learned to stop worrying about worrying and pop its pills instead.
Last summer, near the end of my mother’s life, I woke up in my childhood bedroom in the middle of the night in a fever of panic. My heart was thrumming, my mind racing. In 1819, the English poet John Keats called anxiety a “wakeful anguish,” and so it was with me. Relief seemed impossible.
Then I had an idea. I wandered into the room where my mother lay dying and found the hospice nurse—a gentle, generous soul—sitting quietly beside my mother as she slept. She looked up from her fat paperback.
“Do you want to hold her hand?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m looking for the Ativan.”
The nurse went back to her book, and I went rummaging through the pill bottles. Point-five milligrams and fifteen minutes later, the anti-anxiety medicine prescribed to my mother had bound itself to my GABA receptors, and I was calm enough to sleep. Afterward, I felt the occasional twinge of regret about my priorities at that moment. Then a friend told me she had swiped drugs from her just-dead mother to cope with her own surging anxiety. “I was glad for it,” she said.
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Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.
“They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did,” Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.
It is an astonishing admission that goes that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.
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So Mike Daisey’s been outed. The things he said he saw, he didn’t. The people he said he spoke to, he didn’t. The discoveries he said he made, he didn’t. He lied.
It matters a lot that Mike Daisey lied, and it matters that he was caught. You really should listen to the episode of This American Life in which Ira Glass takes a deep breath and lets it all out. It’s great storytelling by Rob Schmitz, as fantastic as the story Daisey himself told. Anyone who has become invested in this story of Apple and Foxconn needs to listen to that episode. If you’ve ever tweeted about how bad Apple is, blogged about the evils of Foxconn’s sweatshops, or “Liked” a Facebook post excoriating how iPads are made, then you should listen. Don’t take the word of the dozens of bloggers and news outlets who’ve tried to summarize the whole saga into bite-sized morsels—go listen for yourself. Go on, do it now. I’ll wait. You heard it? Good.
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[Government agencies pay hackers big money for early access to exploits]
It might come as a surprise to many of you, but there is a booming market of buying and selling zero-day exploits of popular software and operating systems. An exclusive zero-day hack for iOS could get you anywhere in between $100,000 to $250,000.
According to reports in Forbes, any resourceful hacker today has an option to sell zero-day exploits to government agencies via middlemen like Bangkok based ‘the Grugq’. For those of you not familiar with the term ‘zero-day hack’, it is basically a software hack that tries to exploit software vulnerabilities, which are unknown to others or the developer of software in question.
Traditionally, hackers would tell about a security vulnerability to the original software developer, or present it at a security conference or even participate in zero-day initiatives by software firm and earn $5,000-$10,000. But, within last year the market of selling the hacks to government spy agencies has grown many folds and there are suddenly deals worth millions going around all over.
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Top 10 tips for cycling and staying fit
Cyclists’ squats
If you ride around a lot, most likely you’re going to have pretty tight calves, which can make squatting well fairly tricky. Elevating the heels about 5 cm by placing some weighted plates (if you are in the gym) or books or magazines (if you are at home), allowing you to squat deeper with an upright torso. Keep the feet parallel (as you would if you were cycling). Try three sets of 12 repetitions, with enough weight to mean the 12th repetition is very hard indeed.
Core training
Just because cycling seems to use mostly leg muscles doesn’t mean you should neglect your core strength. A strong core will help you to keep good posture while you ride, especially when you’re out of the saddle, going uphill for example. The plank is an exercise you can do at home, outdoors, or under your desk: lie chest-down on the floor. Push yourself up onto your elbows (kept directly beneath your shoulders) and tuck your toes under. Hold this position, keeping your back straight, for as long as you can.
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Hacktivists Stealing More Data than Criminals
According to Verizon, more than half of all the data stolen from large corporations in 2011 was taken by so-called hacktivists, hackers who gain unauthorized entrance into computers to steal data or perform mischief in pursuit of political ends. In the past, hacktivists mainly defaced websites or carried out denial of service attacks, but last year saw a major shift toward data theft. By comparison, just 35 percent of the data stolen last year was taken by organized criminal groups. More …
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After a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred 17 civilians in Afghanistan, a top-level Pentagon health official ordered a widespread, emergency review of the military’s use of a notorius anti-malaria drug called mefloquine.
Mefloquine, also called Lariam, has severe psychiatric side effects. Problems include psychotic behavior, paranoia and hallucinations. The drug has been implicated in numerous suicides and homicides, including deaths in the U.S. military. For years the military has used the weekly pill to help prevent malaria among deployed troops.
The U.S. Army nearly dropped use of mefloquine entirely in 2009 because of the dangers, now only using it in limited circumstances, including sometimes in Afghanistan. The 2009 order from the Army said soldiers who have suffered a traumatic brain injury should not be given the drug.
The soldier accused of grisly Afghanistan murders on March 17 of men, women and children, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq in 2010 during his third combat tour. According to New York Times reporting, repeated combat tours also increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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NASA’s Cassini Space Probe Finds New Saturnian Ocean – TIME
It’s hard enough for kids to remember all the known oceans and seas — Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Norwegian, Barents — and now they can add one more to the list: the Enceladan Ocean. The name is lovely, and the place is nifty, but there’s not much chance of visiting it soon. It’s located on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s 66 known moons. While Enceladus has been familiar to us since it was first spotted in 1789, the discovery of its ocean, courtesy of the venerable Cassini spacecraft, is a whole new and possibly game-changing thing.
(MORE: Secrets of the Rings)
Enceladus has always been thought of as one of the more remarkable members of Saturn’s marble bag of satellites. For one thing, it’s dazzlingly bright. The percentage of sunlight that a body in the solar system reflects back is known as its albedo, and it’s determined mostly by the color of the body’s ground cover. For all the silvery brilliance of a full moon on a cloudless night, the albedo of our own drab satellite is a muddy 12%, owing mostly to the gray dust that covers it. The albedo of Enceladus, on the other hand, approaches a mirror-like 100%.
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Lost-Wax Casting
The lost-wax method of casting metal sculptures was developed thousands of years ago and is still used by metalworkers today. In this labor-intensive process, a clay or plaster model is coated with wax and then covered with a perforated plaster or clay mold. When the cast dries, the wax is melted and drained and replaced with molten metal. Archeological evidence suggests that metalworkers in India and Mesopotamia were using this method as early as 3500 BCE to make what sorts of objects? More…
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At 80, a woman with a fatal disease knows she doesn’t want to die in the hospital and discovers, with her family, what that really means
By Ann Hulbert
“Your hands are so wrinkly. Are you going to die?” my nephew asked my mother when he was about three. “Yes I am,” she answered, pausing to stick a knitting needle behind her ear and take his small, smooth hand in hers as they sat on the couch more than 15 years ago. “And you never know when it might happen.” Here she resumed work on the row of whatever it was she was knitting and added, “I’m an old toad, you know.” Daniel looked stricken. Telling this story, my sister rolls her eyes, knowing the rest of the family won’t be surprised by it. “Promise me you’ll pull the plug when my time comes” is a refrain we’d been hearing from my mother for ages.
Two years ago this coming June my mother—“an 80-year-old in a 60-year-old’s body,” the pulmonologist told her—was ambushed by a diagnosis of Stage IV adenocarcinoma of the lungs. It had already spread to her spine and left hip. Barely two weeks earlier, she’d gone out west for another grandchild’s college graduation and hiked along a cliff on the Oregon coast. Could she really have inoperable lung cancer? The pulmonologist, to whom she was referred by a GP alarmed at what he saw on her chest x-ray, needed a CT scan to be convinced. In the windowless examining room at the hospital in Brooklyn, my mother said sadly yet matter of factly, “Well, I guess that’s pretty much what I’ve been expecting to hear. We’ve all got to go somehow, don’t we?”
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Top ten myths about introverts
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.
Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.
Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.
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As Brazil readies itself for the upcoming 2014 World Cup, an even larger global sporting event looms just a couple more years in the future. In conjunction with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, several new structures will be erected in Rio’s cityscape. One of the many projects creating huge buzz is the Solar City Tower, an artificial waterfall designed to generate clean, renewable energy.
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This unique geological sight is known as Danxia landform. The Danxia landform refers to various landscapes found in southeast and southwest China that “consist of a red bed characterized by steep cliffs”.
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Graduating seniors at schools like Drew University in Madison, N.J., have felt the stresses of the job market acutely. For all its merits — including a much-admired theater department and a prestigious Wall Street internship program — Drew ranks 94th among 178 private liberal-arts colleges on U.S. News & World Report’s annual list. The middle of the collegiate pack is not where you want to be when you’re competing for a diminishing number of entry-level jobs.
Members of Drew’s Class of ’11 are typical of their peers nationally in that their success in the job market seems to have less to do with their G.P.A.’s or their persistence and more to do with their family connections, fields of study, networking skills and luck. How else to account for the unemployed Phi Beta Kappa waiting by a silent phone? Or the anthropology major who is forgoing grad school to become a dog groomer? Or the English major who can’t earn enough money to make the monthly payment on her $128,000 student loan? (Drew is unusually expensive; tuition plus room and board run more than $50,000 a year.) Equals on campus, the 309 members of Drew’s Class of ’11 are already being divided into the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Seven months after graduation, The Times Magazine spoke with 226 of them about their rough journey into the real world.
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Universities and the Price of Ignorance
My friend and American Enterprise Institute colleague Alex Pollack had a brilliant column in the Wall Street Journal on March 14 that unintentionally speaks importantly to one of the many scandals surrounding higher education: our students are weak in core knowledge about the development of our civilization.
More specifically, Pollack said an even cursory glance through history would tell you that the recent European financial crisis and threatened Greek debt default are hardly surprising—history is replete with scores if not hundreds of other examples. Governments use their sovereign and coercive powers to pressure people to buy their bonds. For example, our system of national banks created in the National Banking Act of 1863 resulted in considerable part because of Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase’s desire to peddle bonds to finance the North’s effort in the Civil War. Banks were coerced to keep U.S. bonds as part of their reserves. Political leaders love bond financing because it is less of an overt form of taxing the people than explicit direct taxation, and thus sometimes imposes a lower political cost.
We used to make kids in college know about these things. I still do.
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African Women And A Western Woman Compare Breasts – Gallery
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As well as being a great diet food, popcorn also contains a high level of antioxidents, which help fight harmful molecules. Posed by model
Plain popcorn has already been hailed as a great diet food for its low calorie content but now a group of scientists claim it may even top fruits and vegetables in antioxidant levels.
Antioxidants – known as polyphenols – have huge health benefits as they help fight harmful molecules that damage cells.
Popcorn was found to have a high level of concentrated antioxidants because it is made up of just four percent water while they are more diluted in fruits and vegetables because they are made up of up to 90 percent water.
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The wife suggested I get myself one of those penis enlargers, so I did. She’s 21, and her name’s Kathy.
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Went to the pub with my girlfriend last night. Locals were shouting “pedophile!” and other names at me, just because my girlfriend is 24 and I’m 50. It completely spoiled our 10th anniversary.
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My son was thrown out of school today for letting a girl in his class give him a hand-job. I said “Son, that’s 3 schools this year! You’d better stop before you’re banned from teaching altogether.”
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The cost of living has now gotten so bad that my wife is having sex with me because she can’t afford batteries.
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A man calls 911 and says “I think my wife is dead”. The operator says, “How do you know?” The man says “The sex is about the same, but the ironing is piling up!”
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I was explaining to my wife last night that when you die you get reincarnated but must come back as a different creature. She said she would like to come back as a cow. I said, “You obviously haven’t been listening.” Then the fight started.
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My wife has been missing a week now. The police said to prepare for the worst. So, I had to go down to Goodwill to get all of her clothes back.
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The Red Cross just knocked on my door and asked if we could contribute towards the floods in Pakistan . I said we’d love to, but our garden hose only reaches the driveway.
Originally posted 2012-03-26 11:49:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
