Basic Rules of Human Life

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Sunday 28 August 2011 by: Shamus Cooke, Truthout | News Analysis

"Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself," said Mr. Roubini, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We thought markets worked. They're not working."

The world economy is in shambles and about to get worse, according to even mainstream economists. How bad is anybody's guess. Some things, however, are certain: the recovery that politicians have been promising for years existed only in their heads. The reality of the situation is now apparent to millions of people across the globe, who, before, clung to the empty promises of economic recovery. This newfound consciousness will inevitably find expression in the political realm and, more importantly, the streets.

A key aspect of this sudden mass awareness is in response to high unemployment and the deeply unpopular measures that politicians are forcing upon working people, both byproducts of the Great Recession. Politicians are blaming "the markets" for demanding austerity measures, but "markets" are simply places where wealthy people invest their money. To guarantee a profitable return on their money these investors demand that labor laws be squashed and social programs be eliminated, all over the world. 

Spain, for example, is one of many countries having austerity measures forced down their throats. Reuters reports:

"Analysts see the shaking up of the country's inflexible labor laws [laws that protect workers] and the easing of hiring and firing [so older, activist, or slower workers can be fired] as vital to restoring the country's competitiveness. The labor reforms are crucial. They will help to restore growth [profits] in the long term. Growth is the only way out of these adverse fiscal trends,' said Luigi Speranza, analyst at BNP Paribas." [May 27, 2010]

To summarize, creating new laws that enable Spanish corporations to work their workers harder will be better for profits.

Greece faces a similar austerity plan, according to The Guardian UK:

"Tax increases, spending cuts and wage reductions and a sweeping privatisation programme have led to violent protests in Greece, with many arguing that the International Monetary Fund and European Union have demanded too high a price for their financial support." [August 2, 2011]

In the United States, these policies find expression in the attack against public-sector unions and the targeting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for cuts, while mass unemployment is allowed to act as a very efficient way to lower wages for all workers.

Politicians have made it clear that economic growth, especially corporate profits, will increase in response to these anti-worker policies. They are only partially right. Corporate profits in fact have been on the rise, but the austerity measures have been responsible for the depressed economies throughout Europe and the US. When workers' wages are lowered and social programs are decimated, working people and the poor are left with little money for any purchases other than the bare necessities. Without consumer demand for their products, corporations curtail operations even more. This global dynamic has been decades in the making, with the recession having finally forced the issue into the forefront.

The Reagan and Thatcher administrations were the first Western representatives during the post-World War II era of this now dominant trend, which aimed at pushing back the social programs and wages won by the labor movements. Their policies were in response to the lower corporate growth rates that began in the 1970s and continue to this day. Now, all of Europe is suffering because banks and corporations demand a more profit-friendly business environment: universal health care and education programs are in jeopardy, plus wages and other benefits are under attack.

For the wealthy and corporations this is a life-and-death struggle. The Great Recession has already bankrupted the banks and corporations who were not fit enough to survive under a crumbling market economy. The existing companies are thus forced to squeeze more work for less pay out of their workers, since labor is the most flexible cost of any business. Pushing labor costs down - and by extension cutting social programs - is thus the priority of the corporations and their paid-for politicians across the globe, since the global economy is tightly connected and they all play by the vicious rules of the market. In fact, the intensity with which the corporate elite is pursuing these policies is a reflection of their negative outlook for the global economy.

This constitutes a new era in global capitalism, one that mimics the market economy of past generations. The 2008 recession was not a temporary phenomenon, but the ushering in of a new period in which the corporate elite attempt to restructure social relations, meaning that past assumptions regarding wages and social programs must be destroyed, as a new, more profitable equilibrium is sought between the corporate elite and working people.

Implied in this nation-by-nation restructuring is a restriction of democracy, since these anti-worker policies negatively affect the vast majority of the population. The riots in London are an expression of this, as are the mass demonstrations throughout Europe as well as the Middle East. In the United States, democracy is circumvented via the so-called Super Congress, whose duty it is to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Austerity programs throughout Europe are being implemented against the wishes of the general working populations.

Also included in this attack on working people is the corporate elite's doubled efforts to divert the working-class anger toward fake populist movements - like the Tea Party in the US - or against minorities, such as Muslims and immigrants in the US.

This will require that working people stay focused on who exactly is attacking them, while focusing on measures that can serve as alternatives to what the corporate elite are forcefully implementing.

The most immediate and important demand of working people must be taxing the rich and corporations, since social programs need to be funded and expanded and a massive jobs program with a strong green component is desperately overdue. It's not by coincidence that taxing the rich is rarely used in austerity plans; and when, on rare occasions, the rich are taxed, it's at low levels with high publicity, so the angry public will think the illusion of "shared sacrifice" is a reality.

For example, in the US, President Obama is again calling to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich (after allowing them to continue less than a year ago). It is doubtful that the Bush tax cuts will be ended, but if they were, it would be insufficient. Working people must demand that taxes on the rich be raised to at least pre-Reagan levels (70 percent), while President Eisenhower levels would be best (90 percent). Over the decades, the tax burden has shifted dramatically, causing wealth to accumulate into the bank accounts of the top 1 percent of the population, the same people who are now demanding that social programs be destroyed so that their investments are secured and their corporate profits remain high.

Since illusions of an economic recovery have now been shattered, it's up to working people to demand that their labor unions and community groups unite to tax the rich and corporations in order to finance a massive jobs program. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO is organizing actions for the first week of October to demand jobs and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many within the labor movement are calling for massive demonstrations across the country for October 1. It will take these types of actions to unite working people to fight for a positive solution to the economic crisis.

Kad masveidīgi iestāsies pozitīvā saite 'masu cilvēka pirktspējas samazināšanās izsauc ražošanas samazināšanu un bezdarbu, tas savukārt rada aizdevumu un parādu palielināšanos, tālāku pirktspējas samazināšanos un masu cilvēka dzīves līmeņa krišanos', tad sabiedrības, kuras nespēs atrisināt šīs pretrunas, sabruks.

The 27 Club: A Life Cut Short Could Neuroscience Have Helped Amy Winehouse? Do roots of the troubled rock star's death lie in brain chemistry? by Melanie A. Greenberg, Ph.D.

Why Rock Stars Die at 27 Sex, drugs -- death -- and rock. by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Ph.D.

Who's Responsible for Amy's Death? Did a policy of abstinence uber alles cause Amy Winehouse's death? by Stanton Peele Celebrity Rehab

The best way to good health is not getting sick. by Matthew J. Edlund, M.D. Topsy Turvy - the

Death of Jeret Peterson We overrate our most popular mental health therapies' effectiveness by Stanton Peele

The Most Powerful Words Ever Spoken Do You Need Someone to Talk to? by Victoria Costello

Thinking about Amy Winehouse at the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Taking certain drugs is like playing Russian Roulette by Ben Y. Hayden, Ph.D.

Did Cavemen Have Addictions, Too? How did prehistoric man get back to his roots? by Donna Barstow Our Rehab Habit

What's so addictive about the struggles of tedious addicts? by Lynn Phillips

The Good and Evil of Alcohol Why do people drink? Why do they abstain? by Stanton Peele The Key to Alcohol Dependence Addiction is almost always about trying to fix feeling bad. by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. Addiction and the Human Car Wreck

The antidote to addiction is learning to tolerate reality. by Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D.

Why have famous musicians died at 27? Is there such thing as a "27 Curse"? by Dr. Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.

\The Real Lives of the Romantics? Not So Pretty The lives of those famous poets were anything but romantic. by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201107/the-27-club-life-cut-short

Famous People and Their Bad Decisions Why do famous people often get in such big trouble? by Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. Charlie Sheen and the Science of Stand-Up Comedy Charlie Sheen and the science of stand-up comedy by Guy Winch, Ph.D.

The Lonely Creativity of David Foster Wallace Twelve years before his suicide, David Foster Wallace shared his inner self. by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.

Before you say, "I do," scrutinize your lover's drinking habits. Or eating patterns. Your choice of romantic partner helps determine how healthy—or how sick—you'll be.

By Rebecca Webber, published on November 01, 2008 - last reviewed on August 06, 2010

Psychology Today

It definitely has its delights, but falling in love shakes up your life quite a bit. Devoting yourself to a partner includes taking on new friends, new relatives, and a new living arrangement. Pairing up also sparks sweet dreams about the goals you'd like to reach, trips you want to take together, kids you hope to have...

Likely, the last thing on your mind is how your beloved will tweak your cholesterol levels. Yet, a large body of research shows that relationships steer our physical well-being as well as our emotional health. A romantic partner often has more influence on our behaviors than anyone else. Exactly how he or she affects our health is sometimes common sense (if not obvious) and sometimes as mysterious as love itself.

We tend to hook up with people like us. "Everyone says opposites attract, but opposites don't stay together for that long," says Deanna Meyler, who co-authored a review of research on the tendency of partners' health habits and statuses to merge, a phenomenon known as health concordance. Sustained relationships tend to occur among people who have comparable backgrounds, attitudes, and behaviors—qualities that often find their way into one's physical condition.

Lifestyle like-mindedness is part of what drew Kelly McMasters, 32, to her now-husband, Mark Milroy, 40, back in October of 2000. She's a writer. He's a painter. When they met, both were self-employed. Both smoked. "A lot of our early courtship was going out to bars and diners," says Kelly. "We drank lots of coffee and ate lots of cheese. We didn't worry about it because we weren't seeing the effects on the outside. Little did we know what it was doing to our blood."

When two people marry, their habits become even more alike. A study of newlyweds found that each individual's health behaviors before marriage affected those same behaviors in their partner in the years after the wedding. Eating isn't the only ritual that synchs up. Researchers have found that spouses influence each others' exercise habits, doctor visits, and use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana.

Soul mates can even develop the same afflictions over time—a condition in one spouse often places the other at increased risk for the same disorder. This may be true for cancer, stroke, arthritis, hypertension, asthma, depression, and peptic ulcer disease. One study shows that a person's hypertension risk doubles when their spouse is diagnosed as hypertensive.

That's probably because commitment typically leads to shared meals, activity patterns, financial resources, and social networks. Couples may also find themselves true partners in health by means of social control, in which one spouse tries to keep the other wholesome, and mood contagion, where one partner's anxiety washes over the other and even takes a toll on his or her body: Men whose wives are upset by their work are nearly three times more likely to develop heart disease.

"Individuals don't live in a vacuum," says Gregory Homish, an epidemiologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who conducted the newlywed study. "Everyone who's in a relationship should be aware that they're making some physically relevant decisions based on their partner's influence," he says. Our doctors should be noting it too. "They'll ask about your family history, but not about your spouse," Homish says. As a result, they might end up missing obvious risk factors for disease.

While some research shows that marriage is good for well-being, there are many ways in which it can have the opposite effect. It's not uncommon for lovebirds to trade vices such as smoking, drinking, and drug use. "They often serve some adaptive function for the relationship," says Michael Rohrbaugh, a professor of family studies at the University of Arizona. "We'll hear, 'We have our best talks, or good sex, when we smoke together.'" Rohrbaugh believes that addiction interventions including both partners are much more likely to succeed than individual counseling sessions.

You may feel betrayed if your partner wants to drop your shared illicit pleasure, and you may take out your frustration in passive-aggressive ways since it would be taboo to directly discourage his robust goal. "The dynamics are sometimes covert," says Rohrbaugh, "and the cessation effort in such cases usually doesn't succeed."Leaving open packs of cigarettes around the house could easily break your partner's resolve to quit.

On the other hand, if your man keeps lighting up or downing pints of Ben and Jerry's, you could pay a price, too. A study of Korean women found significantly higher risks of lung cancer and breast cancer among those whose husbands smoked, most likely from the effects of secondhand smoke. And wives of men with heart disease are more likely than other women to have cardiac risk factors.

There are even sneakier forces at work between partners. Think of a wife kept awake by a husband's insomnia, or a guy whose girlfriend noisily leaves for work at 6 a.m., robbing him of his morning rest. "Sleep problems can screw up a person's physical and psychological well-being even more than eating and exercise," says Barry McCarthy, a couples therapist and a psychology professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

The tone of your love nest factors into your medical status, too. Women in marriages full of hostility have more coronary artery disease than those in warmer relationships, while men in more controlling relationships (whether they are the dominator or the one getting bossed around) have more coronary artery disease than those in egalitarian marriages. Both situations likely activate stress responses, which are known to contribute to, if not cause, an array of ailments.

Similarly, marital conflict and strain are associated with heart disease and mortality risk. For example, women who "self-silence" during arguments with their spouses are four times more likely to die over a 10-year period than their peers who express themselves. These women (23 percent of the wives studied!) may be bottling up anger out of fear of the husband's reaction. But suppressing feelings clearly has a negative effect on physiology, probably akin to stress damage, though the exact pathway isn't yet known.

Marital Sway

The good news is, you can influence your beloved's health just by changing your own behavior. Jody Sindelar, a professor at Yale School of Public Health, co-authored a study of 6,012 people over a course of 4 years. "In every single behavior we looked at, there was a big spousal effect."

  If one spouse quit smoking, the other was six to eight times more likely to swear off cigarettes, too. If one gave up alcohol, the other was five times more likely to stop drinking. And if one got a flu shot or a cholesterol screening, chances were the other would, too. Contrary to what you might imagine, these effects aren't necessarily the result of a conscientious wife needling her husband; men had as much influence on women as women had on men.

Exercise, interestingly, turns out to be the exception, in that one spouse's lacing up the tennis shoes had a much milder influence on the other's tendency to do so. Sindelar explains that out of all the practices studied, getting in shape takes the most effort. You've got to muster your own willpower to get on the treadmill, no matter how pleasingly toned your honey is getting.

Positive lifestyle changes arise when one partner talks up salubrious actions to the other or simply creates a conducive environment, such as when Nettie Hartsock's husband, Andrew, quit his IT job to become a gym teacher and Pilates instructor.

Raising two kids and working a full-time job, Nettie hadn't exercised in years, but she tried out a few of her husband's classes and became a Pilates aficionado herself, practicing it about three times per week. "I have more energy and I'm less moody," she says, and he appreciates the companionship. "Having a regular activity to do together is really nice," he says.

Some pairs may even successfully attenuate the risks for physical maladies by attending couples therapy for other reasons. The therapy may have a beneficial effect on hostile or controlling behaviors, or stress-prone dispositions that undermine the health of one or both partners.

Nagging a sweetheart to alter her temperament or her bad habits, though, does not work, and can have the opposite of its intended effect: "The spouse is trying to be helpful—they don't want their partner to die! But the more they demand change, the less the other person is likely to change," explains Rohrbaugh. "Don't yell at your overweight spouse, but say, 'Let's go for a walk together,'" says McCarthy.

Even if you can't get your mate on board for therapy, you can adjust your mind-set, says Smith. "Find a way to not let them get under your skin." Not getting worked up each time she leaves the table for a cigarette break will lighten your mood, and may paradoxically push her to clean up her act. Hold your tongue for a week, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Loving a Health Nut

Sometimes a spouse goes all out in his quest for a sound body, leaving his love behind. "My wife isn't as into fitness as I am and that's fine," says jock Andrew Hartsock. "I'm not going to go on a 50 to 100 mile bike ride with her, but we can ride around the neighborhood. We can still enjoy the activity together even without being on the same level." But compromise is not always so easy for the hyper-healthy and their sweethearts.

When 32-year-old Antima Sadhukhan's live-in boyfriend of 10 years adopted a raw-food diet, their relationship suffered. "I tried raw food, too, but I couldn't stand the taste and I felt horrible. I couldn't peel myself out of bed," she says. "Meanwhile, Alex was like the Energizer bunny."

Sadhukhan went back to cooked cuisine, and she and Alex, who always used to eat together, often at restaurants, started dining separately. "He'll eat before he leaves work and I'll eat before he gets home," she says. It's not a perfect solution. "At first, we argued about it a lot. I couldn't understand why this raw diet was so important, and I'd get offended when he wouldn't taste what I cooked," she says.

"One of the most dangerous things to say is, 'If you loved me, you would do this,'" says McCarthy. It sets up an unnecessary contingency. A better approach is to state your feelings and make a request that your partner can accept, modify, or say no to, without fearing it is a test of love.

Sadhukhan admits that though she'll never be able to completely adopt Alex's hard-core ways, a few filtered-down effects are appreciated: She's lost weight, and when she craves a snack, she reaches for the nuts and fruits he keeps in their kitchen, instead of junkier fare.

Hale and Not Hearty

While couples who thrive or suffer together grow closer, those who experience a divergence in health might fall apart. Health-mismatched pairs are more likely to get divorced than couples whose health is similar, whether good or bad. The risk of divorce is greatest for those who were happiest before the disparity emerged. Among couples battling a chronic disease, the partner in better condition typically reports greater personal life strain, worse social relations, and increased financial burden.

When Wendy Percoulis was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 33, she immediately stopped chatting with her partner, Dolly Miconi, about the tomatoes growing in their garden and where they'd take their next vacation. Instead, they talked mastectomies, and chemo appointments, and how they'd get by financially. "It put a humongous strain on us," says Percoulis.

Miconi accompanied Percoulis to all of her medical appointments and missed work to help her when chemo hit her hardest. She also took on all of the couple's day-to-day responsibilities. Percoulis battled depression and eventually had a nervous breakdown. Miconi struggled with her own moods, too.

"Once you have cancer, you change," says Percoulis. "Dolly was kind of mad that I wasn't the same person she'd met." But the two have worked through their difficulties and are now planning a trip together.

"Accept and adapt," may be the best advice for a couple confronted with a disparity. "In good relationships, people don't blame each other—'This is your fault, you should have quit smoking five years ago,'" says McCarthy. "They say, 'we can get through this one step at a time.'"

Making Good on Vows Serious illness often turns one partner into a caregiver, and while many people describe this role as rewarding, it's also demanding—and dangerous to the caregiver's health. Depression is common. One study found that women who nursed an ill or disabled spouse for nine or more hours per week had a higher risk of coronary artery disease, probably because they were stressed by time constraints, financial burdens, and the difficulty of seeing their loved ones suffer.

That's not even the worst of it. Caregiving spouses who experience strain have a 63 percent higher overall death risk, compared to non-caregiving controls. The risks can persist even after the loved one dies. It's not unusual for people in very close relationships to die within a short time of one another. "You see people developing cancer or chronic illness about 18 months after losing someone very significant," says Laura Young, who spent 10 years as a rehabilitation psychotherapist. She couldn't escape her knowledge when she met Michael, a charming quadriplegic man, 18 years ago.

"We had an instant crush," she says. The two flirted and became close friends, but Young went on to marry another man. "One day, Michael and I discussed why he hadn't wheeled me off my feet when he had the chance. I realized he had made the decision to spare me the intensity of his needs. I don't think I could have handled it," she confesses. "It would have been extremely easy for me to fall into the caregiver role and not even realize I had let my life be subsumed by someone else's needs."

Of course, already committed couples don't have the same choice. "There's a lot of very difficult territory to negotiate when one spouse gets ill or injured," says Young. "The healthy spouse must figure out, 'To what degree am I obligated to adopt your disability?'" Open communication, allowing for psychological adjustment, and a sense of humor are critical.

Just ask Kelly McMasters—the ex-smoker and cheese-eater whose husband suffered his second heart attack months after their wedding. "If you had asked me before this went down, I would have said I didn't have a caretaking bone in my body," she says. "The last time my parents visited us, they stared at me as if I were an alien child: 'When did you learn to cook?!'"

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200810/in-sickness-and-in-health

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25708

Global Research, July 20, 2011

As eavesdroppers go, next to Uncle Sam and John Bull, Rupert Murdoch, the moral force behind Fox News, is an amateur.

That's because a global eavesdropping scheme being run today by the United States and Great Britain dwarfs anything that Rupert Murdoch's editors at The News of The World (TNTW) ever dared attempt.

British Prime Minister David Cameron may well deny he knew TNTW was tapping the phones of members of UK's Royal household or those of American 9/11 victims. But he can't claim he doesn't know his country is a partner in ECHELON, which, according to Washington journalist Bill Blum, is a “network of massive, highly automated interception stations” that is eavesdropping on the entire world.

Bērnišķigas vaimanas. Pasaules iedzīvotāji tiks pārvaldīti aizvien pilnīgāk. MIL piepildīs ar vajadzīgu saturu masu pilsoņa smadzenes, un viņš rīkosies saskaņā ar savu smadzeņu saturu.

Zemes iedzīvotāju skaita ierobežošana? Tiek lietoti daudzi paņēmieni:

- viņiem tiek doti ieroči, lai viņi apkautu viens otru, un viņi par to vēl samaksā;

- globālas katastrofas, bads un slimības strādā jau tagad un strādās turpmāk;

- vīriešiem i-podus, bet sievietēm - vibrātorus, un cilvēces vairošanās tiks ierobežota. Tas notiek jau tagad, Psychology Today raksta, ka tas varētu strādāt;

- lētā darbaspēka zemes strādās priekš mums par 1$ dienā. Slimības, ūdens trūkums un bads? Nekā nevar darīt, tāda ir dzīve.

Jautājums ir daudz nopietnāks: - Vai šī civilizācija ir nolemta rīkoties saskaņā ar mantoto gēnu programmām? Vai mēs spēsim pacelties tām pāri?

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.

- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg, 1991

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25337

Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. (Mahatma Gandhi)

The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok. (William Rockler, Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. (François-Marie Arouet – Voltaire, 1694-1778)

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25540

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend upon the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

    --- Albert Einstein

A common mistake made by anyone who attempts to map a better direction for the country is to assume that all sides seek the same good outcome but differ on how to get to a better outcome. This is completely false.

People actually seek to create a world where poverty and class privilege are permanent fixtures of the social structure. To put this in its most benign light people think a society is more just and more free must include great wealth disparity and human suffering. To give a concrete example, people don't view 50 million or more Americans without health care, with 60.000 a year dying needlessly and children suffering from lack of medical treatment as a problem to be  solved,  but rather  the price that needs to be paid for freedom and having  the best health care system in the world. ( Never mind that's a total fiction, truth need not apply in the faux zone.)  

So how can a democracy navigate people who actually seek to create a better society. Where is there room for compromise with people like this? That's just one  the difficult problems democracy faces in the 21st century. It's part of the reason  why we are where we are today.   Bob Zannelli

If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.

Montesquieu

You asked, Where did all the money and jobs go? 

We took the money. We can never have enough. .We shipped the jobs overseas. We started internatio­nal corporatio­ns where we seek out the cheapest labor and the least stringent regulation­s.

We invested in scams which produced nothing but debt for you. 

We crashed the economy. Now Americans are just as desperate to have a low paying job as anywhere else in the world. .We arranged the largest theft in history and stuck you with the bill. 

We set up offshore businesses and accounts. We deposited our money in Swiss and Cayman Island banks. .We bought enough politician­s and judges to write the laws. We implemente­d free trade, free markets, low taxes for us, and no taxes for our corporatio­ns. 

We used the military (you pay for) to take over any competitio­n that can't be stolen or bought. We will destroy anyone in our way. 

 We bought TV networks, radio stations, newspapers­, and Internet providers. 

We propagandi­zed our point of view to convince enough of you to vote against your own interest. .

Then to make certain, we promoted "lesser-evil choice" after buying out both major parties.  Either way you vote, we win..We will go after civil rights, education, environmen­tal laws, unions, Healthcare­, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare ...any group or law that stands in the way of us controllin­g the economy and government­. This allows us to profit as much as possible. That's our goal. That is all that matters. 

Forever looking down on you, 

..................The Top 2%

Supplied by Bob Zanelli

By Johannes Koelman | June 11th 2011 06:43 PM

The hammock physicist

The British have their Copley medals, the French the CNRS Gold medals, the Germans have Leibniz awards, and the Dutch... they have their Spinoza prizes. Each year three to four Spinoza laureates split a total of ten million euros (14.3 mln US$). In the Netherlands the prize, named after the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, is often referred to as the 'Dutch Nobel Prize'. No other Dutch science prize comes close, neither in monetary amount nor in prestige. 

Amongst the three winners of this year's Spinoza prize is theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde.* A well-known name for readers of this column. (See here, here, here, and here.) The jury report describes Verlinde as creative, ingenious and ambitious, and mentions Verlinde's role in four major scientific breakthroughs:

"As a young PhD student he achieved world fame with his Verlinde formula that is now widely used by mathematicians and physicists. Together with his twin brother Herman, and Edward Witten and Robbert Dijkgraaf, Verlinde formulated the Witten-Dijkgraaf-Verlinde-Verlinde equations. These are used by string theoreticians in their calculations. In 2000, Verlinde developed the Cardy-Verlinde formula and recently he was in the spotlight with his theory to explain gravity. Verlinde proposes that gravity is not a fundamental force but rather an amalgamation of other forces. If Verlinde’s gravitational theory is correct, then that will have huge consequences for how we think about the universe and its evolution."

It is great to hear that Verlinde's recent entropic gravity conjecture has contributed to him receiving this prestigious prize. However, I am rather disappointed in the way the Spinoza prize report refer to this contribution of Erik Verlinde. Entropy an amalgamation of other forces? Bollocks. Either the jury members have completely failed to understand Verlinde's hypothesis, or they have knowingly dumbed down beyond recognition the very core idea.

Gravity is not a force let alone an amalgamation of forces. Since Einstein we know that the effects we refer to as 'gravity' can be understood as the absence of straight line motion in bend spacetimes. And now Verlinde has postulated that this bending, and hence gravity, is nothing more than the consequence of differences in densities of micro states available to the system. Verlinde's central idea is that in a theory in which spacetime is emergent, inertia and motion are both based on differences in information content.

I encourage the Spinoza prize jury to have a look at the entropic toy model dubbed 'Mikado universe', and then to reconsider their description of Verlinde's entropic gravity idea.

 Whether or not the Spinoza prize jury understood Verlinde's latest results, fact is that the multiple million euros that come with the prize will allow Erik Verlinde to dedicate his energy to this line if research without many distractions on issues like securing research grants. We should not forget that despite 175+ subsequent entropic gravity articles by researchers from all over the world, the whole entropic gravity idea is nothing more than a potential lead towards the still elusive quantum gravity theory. Verlinde's entropic gravity is to quantum gravity as the Bohr model is to quantum field theory. As Verlinde has repetitively announced, the real work is still ahead of us.

 When I asked Erik what his research plans are, he mentioned to be busy with two new articles. He expects to finish these at the end of this month, and will disclose the central ideas at the string theory conference in Uppsala. Erik's thoughts on entropic dark energy will be part of his presentation.

 http://www.science20.com/hammock_physicist/blog/entropic_gravity_snatches_spinoza_prize-79902

Bob Zannelli

Written by Jonathan D. Moreno, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress

A few days ago The New York Times reported that new organizations are sprouting up “to encourage scientists and engineers to speak out in public debates and even run for public office.” There are many good reasons for science to be put on the front burner of our public agenda. More than fifty percent of our economic growth since World War II is attributable to science and technology; this is the best investment our country has made. And our scientists and engineers are the best possible advocates for reinvestment in innovation, especially considering the state of our economy.

But the very fact that American scientists feel the need to aggressively advocate for science conceal a bitter irony that the Times article failed to note: We once had a group of brilliant, influential and politically engaged leaders who were fascinated by science, wanted the country to be the world leader in the pursuit of new knowledge about the natural world, and in some cases even made original contributions.

They were called the founding fathers.

Consider, for example, Benjamin Franklin, after whom one political action group, Ben Franklin’s list, is named. One can draw a line of descent from Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of his day, to Benjamin Franklin, the greatest scientist of his (and the founder of my university). The list goes on. Thomas Jefferson (founder of my previous employer, the University of Virginia), was famously preoccupied with both astronomy through Newton and political liberalism via John Locke. As a student at King’s College, now Columbia University, Alexander Hamilton was intent on a medical career and attended all the lectures on natural philosophy that he could.

John Adams, John Hancock and James Bowdoin founded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. Jefferson and Hamilton, otherwise bitter rivals, made complementary contributions to the innovative foundations of the new country: Jefferson through the patent statute, Hamilton by laying the foundations for history’s most successful capitalist economy. By way of the wildly popular pamphlet Common Sense Thomas Paine was not only the most effective propagandist of the American Revolution, he also closely followed current scientific breakthroughs. In The Age of Reason he declaimed on the size of the earth, the nature of the planetary system, and the scale of the universe. Paine theorized that there must be millions of worlds like ours millions of miles apart.

President Lincoln chartered the National Academy of Sciences just as the modern meanings of the words “science” and “progress” were emerging. Especially in the industrial boom times after the Civil War, moral values were seen as a key consequence of scientific progress. Historian Charles Rosenberg has observed that “[t]he vast majority of nineteenth-century Americans never doubted that human beings had progressed and that this progress — inevitably — subsumed dimensions both moral and material. It was inconceivable to them that the steam engine and morality were not somehow interconnected.” Piety, productivity and, by the end of the nineteenth century, efficiency were all within the same universe of desirable values and consequences of science and progress.

Physics, engineering and chemistry were regnant, and biology was still largely observational rather than experimental, so the great debates about evolution and the origins of life were yet to come. Partly for this reason, conservative religious beliefs were quite compatible with a cohesive moral vision through the late 19th century. Ministers and naturalists could agree on their beliefs about nature. What has changed this American sensibility?

At the turn of the last century the atmosphere shifted due to misconceptions about Darwinism, debates about creationism and, in our time, the advent of experimental biology and modern genetics, which has stimulated political controversies like those over cloning and stem cells. Modern biology has become a cultural wedge. In popular culture, movies like Rise of the Planet the Apes continue a tradition of anxiety about the power of the life sciences that began with “Frankenstein,” with scientists the true villains who, in their fits of hubris, create innocent suffering and creatures who destroy themselves and their creators.

The United States is still by far the biggest producer of new knowledge, but China and other competitors are on the rise. In the 21st century leadership in science is not optional for a nation that proposes to remain a superpower. The new experimental biology will inevitably be part of that new foundation of power and prosperity, but the long-term investments involved require a deep and broad cultural commitment, the kind we’ve had since World War II and that fulfilled the founders’ vision. As I argue in my forthcoming book The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, we need to find ways to include the new biology as part of the American narrative of the 21st century.

This post was originally published by Science Progress.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/are-we-still-a-nation-of-science.html#ixzz1VZV8BCDf" target="_blank">http://www.care2.com/causes/are-we-still-a-nation-of-science.html#ixzz1VZV8BCDf

Bob Zannelli

Economic systems are not a matter of natural law. There is nothing

scripted in the natural world which mandates one sort of economy over another.

But history shows clearly which economic systems work, and provide the necessities of life, and which don't. I would not call this "natural law" either. It is just the dynamics of "human action", as v. Mises put it- man trying to support himself in a world indifferent to his survival or well-being.

Investment banking is to me a bit like horse racing. You can breed up

thoroughbred horses and keep up a gambling game. By analogue companies

have to perform in order to keep stock value up, which can blunt

internal investment: Money used to capitalize the actual business is not

available for shareholder return.

"Thoroughbred" here means nothing more than successful. Shareholders expect to get back their capital, and more, from a successful enterprise- in fact this is the definition of "successful" in this context. They get this return from dividends, as well as from the appreciation of their stock. But of course there is risk, which always accompanies the chance of success.

I think market consumerist capitalism has broken up civic life. It

fractures groups of people, even families, into "loan wolf"

individuals. Advertizements are all about individual empowerment, and

marketers target advertizements towards increasingly atomized social

groups or individuals.

So what should such "advertizements" promise? that some group, to which the advertiser thinks you belong, will benefit? This was the appeal of the failed communist states.

Capitalism liberates the individual from utter dependence upon the group into which he is born, and makes transit from one group to another possible, in ways unknown before capitalism. The individual's birth status is no longer also his final destination. So yes, capitalism broke up the civil life of the feudal period, as Marx so famously pointed out. This is the "individual empowerment" possible only through capitalism, and is the fundamental moral principle thereof.

The Ayn Rand ideology is an anthem of moral

supremacy along these lines. It is an ideal system in a way, for it

give a moral license to those at the top to mine out the human sphere,

and it gives the average knucklehead the illusion of individual

freedom. The NRA anthem is similar, "I am free if I can carry a gun."

I can see you are quite baffled by existentialism, of which Rand represented one form. I don't know if the principle- that the only freedom *is* individual freedom, and that group "freedoms" are just entitlements to some dole, promised by a tyrant, to gather support for his regime- was ever explicitly stated by her, but it is a very important part of what she, and all the existentialists (this one included) are about.

Success for a few centuries is not uncommon. Some have failed due to foreign invaders, but ours is global. Environmentally induced collapse from a peak seems to be the most common theme available to us. Ours is the first civilization armed with sufficient knowledge of the past to recognize the cycle, yet it appears doomed to follow the same sequence. Nothing new under the Sun.

George Tucker

If we are to argue which system is more natural for the human species the answer is very clear. It is tribal paleolithic culture. Our species evolved into that and existed for 95% of its history, about 143,000 years, that way. By comparison we have through our 7-8000 years of history had an array of complex social systems in place to manage our larger scaled social existence. They largely all have only lasted at most 500 years, our history is a graveyard of empires and nations, kings and dynasties, beliefs and grand ideals, and we are just living in the most recent in this list which will be snuffed out pretty soon.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Why are we all so different? Here is a toolkit for finding out what people are really like

IN THE 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, Aristotle's student and successor, wrote a book about personality. The project was motivated by his interest in what he considered a very puzzling question: "Why it has come about that, albeit the whole of Greece lies in the same clime, and all Greeks have a like upbringing, we have not the same constitution of character?"

Not knowing how to get at the answer, Theophrastus decided to instead focus on categorising those seemingly mysterious differences in personality. The result was a book of descriptions of personality types to which he assigned names such as The Suspicious, The Fearful and The Proud. The book made such an impression that it was passed down through the ages, and is still available online today as The Characters of Theophrastus.

The two big questions about personality that so interested Theophrastus are the same ones we ask ourselves about the people we know: why do we have different personalities? And what is the best way to describe them?

In the past few decades, researchers have been gradually answering these questions, and in my new book, Making Sense of People: Decoding the mysteries of personality, I take a look at some of these answers.

When it comes to the origins of personality, we have learned a lot. We now know that personality traits are greatly influenced by the interactions between the set of gene variants that we happen to have been born with and the social environment we happen to grow up in. The gene variants that a person inherits favour certain behavioural tendencies, such as assertiveness or cautiousness, while their environmental circumstances influence the forms these innate behavioural tendencies take. The ongoing dialogue between the person's genome and environment gradually establishes the enduring ways of thinking and feeling that are the building blocks of personality.

This developmental process unfolds, in part, through progressive changes in brain circuits, something largely completed during critical periods - windows of time that allow environmental and genetic processes to work together to build stable neuronal connections. For example, many aspects of language development take place during a window that remains open until around puberty. The difficulty in overcoming an accent in later life is a sign of the reduced brain plasticity that follows as this window is progressively closed.

On the other hand, certain programmed changes come online later in life, such as those that begin in adolescence and give rise to changes in personality and brain structure. Although it will be difficult to unravel the contributions that specific genes and events play in the decades-long process of constructing a brain and a personality, the general principles are now established.

We have also learned a lot about the second big question: how to describe personality differences. We now think of every personality as a unique blend of components. To use these discoveries to assess a specific person, it is useful to organise what we know about them into four sets of components: dispositional traits, troublesome patterns, character strengths and sense of identity. Bringing these together is, I find, the best way to build a descriptive picture of someone's personality.

The first set of components, the dispositional traits, are ones that we intuitively pay attention to in sizing someone up - and they make a useful rough initial profile. For example, when we meet someone new we intuitively ask ourselves, are they assertive or reserved? Warm or cold? Organised or disorganised? Tense or relaxed? Open to new ideas or closed? Psychologists call these traits the Big Five, labelling them: extraversion/introversion; agreeableness/antagonism; conscientiousness/disinhibition; neuroticism/emotional stability; and openness to experience/closedness.

Once these prominent traits have been identified, the next step is to look for signs of potentially troublesome personality patterns psychiatrists have identified because they may bring grief to the individual or to the people he or she deals with. Amusingly, some of these patterns resemble those Theophrastus described. For example, his Suspicious type is similar to what psychiatrists call the paranoid personality pattern, in which other people's motives are interpreted as malevolent. His Fearful type resembles the avoidant personality pattern, in which an individual is socially inhibited, with feelings of inadequacy and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation, while the Proud type resembles the narcissistic pattern, with someone exhibiting grandiosity, a need for admiration and low empathy.

As with dispositional traits, these patterns can be thought of in a graded, dimensional way rather than in the categorical yes-no mode that Theophrastus used. After all, you can be more or less paranoid, or avoidant, or narcissistic, or even some combination of all three. If you see signs of one or more of these patterns, take note. If you don't, that, too, tells you something.

After noticing any potentially troublesome patterns, attention should shift from a simple description of dispositional traits to an assessment of their adaptive value - that is, is the trait or pattern helping the person get along in life or is it getting in their way? This also sets the stage for another type of judgement, using criteria that are explicitly moral. Unlike the adaptive criteria, which are based on observations of what works for a person, moral criteria are influenced, in part, by our instincts about good and bad.

Although cultures influence moral standards, every culture values self-control (temperance and courage), mutually beneficial relationships with other people (kindness and fairness), and a personal awareness of one's place in the universe (self-transcendence and wisdom). The degree to which someone expresses these globally admired character strengths can, therefore, be taken as a measure of the "moral" structure of his or her personality, which is why I recommend adding this assessment to a personality profile.

The final stage in completing a description of a personality is to figure out the person's sense of identity - their personal narrative of where they are headed and how they got to be the way they are. Grounded, in part, in reality, this personal story also includes plans for the future and selective reconstructions of the past. To understand a personality it is, therefore, necessary to observe this story as it is expressed in words and actions.

While the first three parts of the tool kit assessment outlined above provide a good description of someone's behaviour, it is the person's sense of identity that helps me grasp the meaning of their behaviour.

The steps I take to describe someone's personality help me consciously think over the intuitive observations and assessments I make as I get to know the person. The result is a picture that incorporates much that researchers have found to be important.

Although this method oversimplifies, it is a practical way to prepare an explicit description of a personality. It should help us make sense of the people around us and may influence the approach we use to engage with them. I suspect Theophrastus would have approved. As a bonus, I find that this conscious descriptive process helps me more fully appreciate the complex humanity of those with whom I share my life.

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Samuel Barondes is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist based at the School of Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco. Among his books is Better than Prozac. This essay is based on his new book, Making Sense of People: Decoding the mysteries of personality (FT Press)