Incredible chart shows how intelligence changes as we age Business Insider (David L). I wonder how much of the decline in short-term memory is due to no longer having to cram for exams. Would we be better at that if required to exercise that skill more often?
Facebook enters money transfer market Financial Times
Black Hole “Firewalls” Could Change Physics Forever Scientific American
Japan debt: It’s not what it looks like Adair Turner, Project Syndicate (Scott H)
Debunking $1.4 Trillion Europe Debt Myth in Post-Heta Age Bloomberg
Grexit?
Greeks find support for German reparations claims — in Germany Financial Times
Could Greece swing to the right? Golem XIV
Ukraine/Russia
The Rage of the Cultural Elites Yu Shan, ClubOrlov (YY)
Kiev’s every move undermines the position of the United States Vineyard of the Saker (timbers)
Serbia Asks People To Please Stop Throwing Their Grenades In The Garbage Huffington Post (YY)
Syraqistan
US loses drone over Syria, which claims to have brought it down Guardian (furzy mouse)
Netanyahu Wins Israeli Elections Wall Street Journal. So how did it go from “too close to call” to “decisive”?
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
A critique of a review of a book by Bruce Schneier Cathy O’Neil. Moral: never let ex investment bankers review books about surveillance and Big Data.
Imperial Collapse Watch
France, Germany and Italy Say They’ll Join China-Led Bank in Rebuff to U.S.New York Times (Bob H)
Why British Prime Minister Cameron Is Stiffing Obama To Woo Beijing Forbes (Bob H)
Hillary Clinton never signed statement when she left State Department saying she had turned over emails and other documents Daily Mail (Li)
Republican budget cuts social spending, boosts military Reuters (EM)
SEC Examinations Director Raises Eyebrows With Flattery Of Private Equity International Business Times. Our post yesterday gets picked up and amplified by the MSM.
Aaron Schock resigns after new questions about mileage expenses Politico (furzy mouse)
As California Drought Enters 4th Year, Conservation Efforts and Worries Increase New York Times
Georgia’s horrific religious ‘freedom’ bill and why it should worry everyone, not just gays DailyKos
NYC tour bus firms agree to $7.5 million anti-trust settlement Reuters
Nestle Continues Stealing World’s Water During Drought Boston Indymedia. EM: “I was unaware of just how corporate-welfare-ish Jerry Brown’s apparently cynically-named Delta Conservation Plan is.”
Premera Blue Cross reveals cyberattack that affected 11 million customers Fortune (Carol B)
In Shift, Firms Give Investors New Clout Over Board Seats Wall Street Journal. The SEC is missing in action.
Oil
100,000 Layoffs and Counting: Is this the New Normal? OilPrice
Economy Finally Reaches “Escape Velocity,” Heads South Wolf Richter
Fed
Dalio warns Fed of 1937-style rate risk Financial Times
IMF Fears “Taper Tantrum”; Rear View Mirror Discovery Michael Shedlock
Currency wars, the Swiss franc, policy divergence and Fed rate hikes Ed Harrison
Class Warfare
“Right To Work” law’s racist inventor, Vance Muse Mark Ames, Pando
Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions Sunlight Foundation (EM)
Slaughter on Eighth Avenue: A St. Patrick’s Day Commemoration Pando (bob)
NCAA heads to U.S. appeals court over athlete pay Reuters. EM: “Guffaw at the NCAA ‘[being] determined to enforce amateurism in college sports.'”
Class and the Classroom: How Elite Universities Are Hurting America Foreign Affairs (furzy mouse). Today’s must read.
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Hillary didn’t want to perjure herself by signing anything, like she was supposed to turn over all government documents, not just the classified ones. Government documents belong to the government. But as part of the Deep State, the Clintons are always part of the government, aren’t they?
The definition of “is” … depends on if you are an uber-mensch or not. And you can’t blame a pol, if the other pols or the other party didn’t get in trouble for it. Why not just abolish the rule of law, and go back to the jungle, join Somalia as a failed state. Maybe Russia can send its counter-terrorism agents to ameliorate conditions in the US.
For you pseudo-experts in classification work … the combination of some unclassified papers, in the same presentation, makes some presentations classified … it all depends. I have seen military officers get in trouble for this simple mistake. Say nothing, present nothing, unless it is vetted by the authorities first … and you aren’t an authority yourself, because you have conflict of interest and vision. Ms Clinton stole public property … same as if I took stuff home from my work … but I am not part of the Deep State.
Colin Powell didn’t sign them either. Nobody raised a big stink then. This is a manufactroversy.
Class and the Classroom: How Elite Universities Are Hurting America Foreign Affairs (furzy mouse). Today’s must read
Must read, indeed.
The article reminded me of something I’d read in “The Creature from Jekyll Island”. (4th Edition) in a section entitled “Education as a Tool for Human Engineering.”
This quote is from a 1904 report issued by a John D. Rockefeller “foundation” called the General Education Board, the purpose of which was “not to RAISE the level of education in America, as was widely believed at the time, but to influence the DIRECTION of that education.” (“Occasional Paper No. 1,” General Education Board, 1904.)
In our dreams we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. (Bolding mine.) We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers of mental learning or of science. We have not to raise from among them authors, editors, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one: to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are….in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm.
Paging John Gatto and his Underground History of American Education!
Please come to the white courtesy phone.
And now we have “common core.”
“….in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm.” And now in the gutter. But some are refusing to go quietly. Which, I suspect, is why the crime of “domestic terrorism” was invented.
http://www.arkansasagainstcommoncore.com/blog/arkansas-mom-obliterates-common-core
And other works, such as Donald Macedo’s Literacies of Power, Konrad Lorenz’ The Waning of Humaneness, and Noam Chomsky’s continual evaluations.
For those dreams to come true, for them to be operational today, they would require a lot of banal followers in our current educational system.
“You may not become enlightened, but we guarantee a career upon graduation.”
That’s the ideal of running a college like a business. Try to aspire to that.
Sadly, most can’t do that…guarantee a career or just a job, that is.
Evil intention or incompetence?
can somebody summarize it? it was awfully long. Sounds like things are getting worse and worse for the Ivy Leaguers. I skipped around and saw something about Max Weber and then the phrases . . . “insecure, uninformed, apathetic sheep” and “drastic measures must be taken.”
It sounds bad.
I would never hold out my life path as anything to be emulated, but there’s always the University of Magonia if somebody really wants to learn. The problem is, when you come upon truths so radiant the sun is a mere candle in comparison, nobody believes you! It’s a lonely pursuit. No prestigious degrees or credentials or professional associations that cultivate and stroke you like a house cat. You just walk around in a state of knowing — both that you know, that nobody knows you know, and that they wouldn’t care even if they did. That’s an education right there! It keeps you humble and unpretentious. Not that you wouldn’t be anyway but it’s like a life coach, reminding you the middle finger is there to be used if needed. hahahah.
From what I gather of it, if you’ve read any of Henry Giroux’s work on Truthout, this offers nothing new in the way of information (i.e. schools aren’t what they used to be, colleges are profit centers, etc.) If it’s your first foray into this sort of thing, then yes, it’s a must read. I sometimes wonder if I should just cash in the few credits I obtained a while back for an Associates, just to say that I did it as opposed to having to deal with debt and all of the stigma that brings by pursuing the new HS diploma (bachelors), as I heard someone call it while out and about once.
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2088
Look at this, if you want to know what it took to get into college 100 years ago ;-)
Richard Wolff referenced a Economic Policy Institute report that showed everyone loss value since the Great Recession. The only people to not lose value, or gain it, was doctorates.
The worse off are people that had some college but no degree.
Depends on what kind of doctorate you got, I imagine.
A Ph.D. in People’s History or in Alternative Modern Money Theory can’t be too popular.
Oooo! A dIg at MMT.
I haven’t bothered to read it yet either. Lazy, I know. I do know that, in spite of what may be printed on their diploma, Ivy Leaguers deep down inside know that they will be Fearless Leaders of some sort (could be in either government OR private sector – possibly even in the higher, safer echelons of the military sector) , so if they are getting worried I would have to assume things are downright frightening for the Queens Community College graduate. Plus the QCC grads aren’t really trained in the field of Idle Philosophy, or even Higher Human Knowledge. Learning to spell fuggetaboutit is a start – but they have a long, long ways to go.
Hitting the U of M via the innertubes – or better yet, using our preferred method of direct telepathy – is becoming more and more relevant in todays’ world. IMO.
On the University of Magonia:
fuckk I took a class in college where Gordon Wood’s book was taught. I was too mentally deranged at the time to even read it. I just drank beer and wandered around trying not to go insane. it was really weird.
I bet he probably has a point,Gordon Wood probably does, like Whitman in Crossinng Brookly Ferry where he says how incredibly alive and beautiful every workman is (and he wasn’t just being gay, he went waay beyond that), but nothing is ever true that way completely. It’s something sparkling on the boundary that divides imagination and reality. Then people give it names. Sometimes lots of people see it and then it’s true to a point. he probabaly has a point.Gordon Wood does. He probabaly does. But it’s not true completely at all.
whatever happened to your hot pic by the way? You used to have a hot pic by your name that looked like something a Renaissance Master would paint. I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed. hahahaha
sylvia kronstadt pushing back against the Sanitary Industrial Complex: http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/new-etiquette-de-toilette-lets-stop-flushing-forests-and-wasting-water-5715
btw, my post explaining graphics from the January Mortgage Monitor is also over there: http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/foreclosure-starts-rise-55-january-foreclosure-pipeline-still-well-over-4-years-long-5714
An article in a local NY newspaper about oil trains rolling through and track defects.
Demonstrations at the new (rather expensive) ECB building in Frankfurt. Live ticker (in german) on FAZ site – (no link to avoid purgatory…). Interesting photos. Like the Je suis Greece-placard. And the heavy equipment police has taken out.
WRT Netanyahoo, I remember how I felt the last time he got re-elected (hopeful, then horrified). I had no doubts that he would be re-elected yet again.
So, here is something that made me feel a little better: “Why I Hope Israel’s Elections Will Give Netanyahu a Fourth Term as Prime Minister”- by Alan Hart. This- “Netanyahu is a disaster for Zionism so let’s have more of him.”
http://www.just-international.org/articles/why-i-hope-israels-elections-will-give-netanyahu-a-fourth-term-as-prime-minister/
So there’s that…..
According to Andrea Mitchell, reporting from israel, exit polling indicated that the election was neck and neck. It wasn’t until the “raw” vote was “counted” that Netanyahu emerged with a decisive victory.
While details are sketchy, it has been reported that during Mr. Netanyu’s time as a university student in America, his roommate was one Mr. Diebold. (/sarc)
My guess is that people lied at the exit poll. Netanyahu has set himself up as the racist / pro-war candidate. Who wants to admit they support that?
So Netanyahu promises: “No Palestinian state on my watch”. Israeli voters elect him and he will claim he got a “Mandate” to enforce that.
This will really help ‘fix’ the problems in the MiddleEast. ahahaha. Israel will reap its reward from this election, I’m sure. Better build those walls higher.
When a two-state solution is officially taken off the table, what’s left is a one-state solution.
Chest-thumping from South Africa’s apartheid regime was at its height, just before de Klerk handed over power to Mandela.
But Israelis look to be a much more recalcitrant lot than white South Africans were, with rich America bankrolling and arming them (to our eternal shame).
I think I was playing Non-Trivial Pursuit game a while back, and some one mentioned ‘Vichy American.’
I was like, what? What is that? Where is its capital? I haven’t heard anyone mention that before.
I mean, just curious here, did we lose an abstract-dimensional-war? Did we surrender to Money? I thought we had the strongest currency army in the world – the Might Dollar?
I have an alternate theory (or perhaps just an extension). So much of life’s demands on short term memory are actually bullshit (like so much of rote memory education after you pass basic arithmetic tables), and most of us understand this fairly early on. (It’s probably why many otherwise quite smart kids get bad grades.) The only thing that actually changes over time by a significant amount is our willingness to allow others to see this knowledge in us.
I think it’s the same with IT workers over 40: if anyone from the last go-round brings in perspective, that all this has been “innovated” before and all this will be “innovated” again, that stock options are sucker’s compensation, or that libertarianism really isn’t as awesome as twentysomethings might imagine, well, the whole jig is up. Eliminating the cultural memory solves more problems on the labor side than it causes on the product side, from the standpoint of the IT vendor.
I am an IT worker. It is nothing but 1s and 0s since the 1950s … only the arrangements and hype have changed. That and pretty much anyone can use, not program, a computer now … whereas back then you had to be somebody … probably in the bowels of accounting ;-)
Another cause for speculation – we are not what we were before.
Maybe all the GM foods have altered our biology.
They (those bad foods) may even cause us to vote neoliberal all the time.
Remember, you are what you eat (including absorbing the genes).
President Frankenstein the Neoliberal Monster at work:
Link:
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/03/02/internal-documents-reveal-extensive-industry-influence-over-epa-s-national-study-fracking
Religious Freedom Acts: The continuing crisis of monotheism. A sign that the religious right (especially U.S. evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants) have created the enemies they deserve in the Middle East (Salafis and ISIS). These laws even allow the spiritual-but-not-religious to do all kinds of heinous things–anti-vaxxing as a sacramental, anyone? Wasn’t it that Marx guy who said something about religion being the opiate of the people?
Tom Robbins said it’s the cyanide.
Revisionist history from the FT article linked above:
This is an example of anachronism — retroactively applying contemporary standards to the past, when they didn’t exist. Gold constituted more than half the Fed’s balance sheet in 1933. When Frank Roosevelt devalued the dollar from 0.0484 to 0.0286 troy ounce, naturally the dollar value of the Fed’s balance sheet rose. Gold inflows added to it. As Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz documented in Monetary History of the United States (p. 473):
After 44 years of ‘full fiat’ degeneracy, financial journalists can’t even interpret expanded Fed holdings of gold except as ‘money printing.’ Because the current global economy is founded on central bank check kiting, they assume it’s always been that way.
Huh?
From today’s WaPo a bit of NC worth meta
http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/18/how-survival-of-the-fittest-became-survival-of-the-richest/
Or to put it another way the upper class twit problem has been with us since the beginning of agricultural society. Monty Python was known for providing in depth examination of the phenomenon.
re: Economy Finally Reaches “Escape Velocity,” Heads South
Wolf links to another of his blog posts showing “Wholesale inventories-sales ratio spikes worse than in Oct. 2008”. That was an interesting read and does not sound real good. The Oligarchs can only rig the system in their favor to a limit– before workers can’t afford to buy any sh1+.
If an oligarchic man fell to an empty Earth, does he make a happy, satisfied sound?
To this koan, there is actually an answer.
And the answer is NO. He will not be happy.
Oligarchs need you. They can’t exist without you. They need you to 1. labor mightily for them (when their robots can’t) in order for you to 2. get sustenance from them for yourself and your family.
And that’s their Achilles Heel.
You cut off this connection, they are gone.
They also need you to exist so they can be superior to you. Their nightmare planet is a world of only billionaires. Starving hordes need to exist somewhere or the game isn’t nearly as fun.
The world has been turned upside-down. XKCD helpfully offers a map.
Been awhile since ive been to his site, he does good work
Meanwhile, on the living-wage front, Seattle Magazine, in a recent issue, had a story about restaurant closures, and speculated about the $15/hr min. wage enacted last year being a “contributing factor”. Well, of course all the right-wing media and so-called “think tanks” rushed out statements asserting as fact that this was indeed the case; however, in no instance were the restaurant owners actually ever contacted about exactly why they were closing. The Seattle Times did in fact contact the four owners mentioned in the original article, and none mentioned the $15 min. wage as a reason for closing. It is to be noted that the higher min. wage has a 7-year transition period, and new restaurants are continually opening in the Seattle area where the new wage structure is in place, with more jawbs being generated as a result. And, coincidentally, the Brookings Institute just released a report showing – amongst other cities – that those income-earners in Seattle within the top 5% salary bracket had seen a 14.9% increase in income compared to a 1.1% increase for those in the bottom 20th percentile bracket, the period covering 2012-2013. It remains absolutely stunning how there is continuous pushback by the Right and the wealthy against raising wages for the lower income brackets, as if the former aren’t getting “their fair share” due to “left-wing redistributive ideology”, and that the wage increases “are costing jawbs”, a total fiction. Perhaps the lower orders are indeed waking up to the naked exploitation and income transfers that have driven the middle-classpractically out American life today, and demanding their in fact “fair share”.
Truth Needle: Is $15 wage dooming Seattle restaurants? Owners say no
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/truth-needle-is-15-wage-dooming-seattle-restaurants-owners-say-no/
The rich got richer fastest in Seattle, study finds
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/economy/the-rich-got-richer-faster-in-seattle-study-finds/
Yesterday’s Bowden piece was also in Matt Levine’s newsletter this morning.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-18/asset-managers-and-mall-mergers
Antidote: GET THEM OFF ME!!
Cats should not drink.
This is what happens when a cat has too much catnip.
re: “Rage Of The Cultural Elites” (Ukraine)
Makes some good observations but should have steered clear of the Brown Acid:
—“The Victoria Nuland clone army, like a cruel, evil, insidious high school rumor, like the reflection of a witch’s face in a polluted river, spread and flew into every crevice and corner of this land, high and low, far and wide. We encounter her avatars and lookalikes everywhere—in Hollywood, in the publishing houses, universities, school boards, kindergartens, in elevators on the way to our offices, and of course, on the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times.”—
Why this belittling of witches?
What does the author have against those women?
I think the author was referring to the Bad Witch – the one that has the nasty flying monkeys. Not the Good Witch – the one that looks like a fairy, except much, much hotter.
What about those who proffer soothing words?
‘Hi, my name is Patience. I am your new potions and dark arts instructor for this semester.”
Yes, witches are people too, and we shouldn’t stereotype. One may take offense and turn you into frog. Same is true of Wizards and Warlocks – plus we need to be careful of gender bias as well, no matter how much extra typing that causes us.
Yea, I’d take your average, middling witch over Obama as prez any day.
Re: Nestle California water story:
Yep, our very own neoliberal captured DINO Jerry Brown. Between him, DiFi, Babs, and Pelousy, proving that Dems are rotten not just in NYC and D.C. but coast-to-coast.
It hurts more when you thought they were on your side.
Remember how we (except the really wise men and women, of course) worshipped them back then…
The objection I have to the word DINO, is more democrats in power are like them than are like you.
If anything, youre the DINO. They represent the real nature of the party these days, and the way its been for decades.
As somebody once observed, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; it left me”.
How does it feel, to be on your own? Like a complete unknown…
re: “Incredible chart shows how intelligence changes as we age,” Business Insider
“It’s not all downhill once you hit your 20s — at least as far as some markers of intelligence are concerned.
Not only do we get wiser with age, new research suggests that in several ways we may also actually get smarter.”
Is that a quote? Can I quote you on that?
If one’s life is a walking science experiment, at least let the news be good.
Can I quote you on that?
Quote you on what again?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-automakers-are-building-new-factories-in-mexico-not-the-us/ar-BBikGE4
Veeery interesting, mine commandant. Zo. Ze Old Country charges 10% import duty for German cars made in America, but none for German cars made in Mexico?! Und zis means America needs to become a more better free trader???
I just looked in my crystal ball and scared myself. Mexico has an official minimum wage of about $5. I read an article interviewing the mayor of TJ a few years ago. He said the $5 min wage wasn’t enforced because the multinationals convinced the Mexican government that they wouldn’t be competitive with China, and would have to shift production elsewhere. He said the actual wage was more like $2.50. In around 1990 the company I worked for had a Juarez plant and paid $2.50/hr. ‘Tis a slippery slope!
Multinationals and the Mexican government.
Your story sounds like, at the highest levels, it’s cooperation, not competition that gets the job done. The Mexican government ‘cooperated.’
And furthermore, or because of that, it should be trusted to print as much as it wants to help all, yes, all Mexicans.
Veeery interesting, mine commandant. Zo. Ze Old Country charges 10% import duty for German cars made in America, but none for German cars made in Mexico?!
The more than free trade model in this case, It caught me by surprise as well.
The Mexicans are making the right play in this case. Give them the land for free to develop and future expansions are easier to justify, as with MB across the border. the other interesting point is the 0 greenfield development in the south, just expansions.
As far as wage, I’m guessing working here will play out to be net improvement in quality of life for the Mexicans. Better frankly, than some backroom illegal slave work in Chicago or NYC, or the like. In this case, I dont think “China” or equal is an alternative stick to beat them with, but its surely a cold bowl of soup for southern US competitor that have little to offer other than being the traditionally cheaper US labor alternative. Slippery slope indeed.
It’s premature to play the China card in the auto assembly plant biz. It did work for more mundane consumer products – my Hoover vacuum cleaner was made in TJ. $60 American Dollars!
But give it another 5 years or so….
Actually, if the Mex Guv was smart, they’ll have a lot higher sunk costs as leverage and could easily enforce a higher min wage. But bribes have a way of making leaders do dumb things.
Also I just remembered the peso is dropping. The $5/hr was at 11p/$. Now it’s 15.
Re. Bibi, how did it go from “too close to call” to “decisive”?
BLS-applied ‘seasonal adjustments’, is my wild guess.
Maybe he’s Bibi The Rruthless Campaigner.
Or Bib Ruth Less.
Neo liberals neo conservatives neo progressives neo neos.
“Neo, Neo, Neo, how many times do I have to remind you? I can only lead you to the door. You have to enter yourself.”
Similarly, you can only lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.
In Zen, there is a saying, a hen can only warm the egg, the chick has to peck the eggshell open itself. So, no master can achieve satori for you.
Divinity or greatness is within each of us. The people have to do the heavy lifting themselves…in this case, print and spend money to stimulate the economy.
Tough job, but the people have to do it.
No government can do that…without spending it on imperial adventures and Big Brother-hood.
Thusly, we arrive at AMMT – Alternative Modern Money Theory.
Republican budget cuts social spending, boost military.
EZ way out – print more money.
Everyone is happy, right?
Wrong.
The vanquished and the conquered, or about to be defeated suffer from that.
The only way is to insist that, without military/color revolution spending cuts, we can’t in good conscience (to the world) accept more social spending.
Unless we want to bury our heads in the sand and just ignore that global implication.
Who knows, maybe we don’t need more money created.
This just in
http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/03/18/white-house-email-archiving-office-exempts-self-from-foia-disclosures/