Good Reads

[Jessie_Pinkman]

Where in the world is the Northwest Territories?

http://media.tumblr.com/cbb8d3180018ecbd0572f94961cdd72c/tumblr_inline_ng4hjeksUP1sy1jdx.jpg


One night last December, my cousin called me into the TV room, where my family was lounging after dinner, chatting, peeling clementines and sipping tea. “There’s a documentary about Yellowstone on TV right now!”

“You mean Yellowknife?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Spending the holidays with my extended family in Germany, I was subjected to many questions about life in the North. I don’t consider Yellowknife, my home for the past two years, all that remote. But to many of my friends and family, I live in a village near the North Pole. Fellow expats will know what I’m talking about: evoking the Northwest Territories is especially difficult.

Where in the world is the Northwest Territories?

 

[DesEsseintes]

A very interesting article, based on a range of proper neurological studies, about how the distractions of email and texting are weakening our intellect: and in particular how there is no such thing for the brain as 'multi-tasking', but rather performing a series of tiny tasks in rapid succession, and demonstrably doing each one worse than if we focused on it alone.

As someone whose ideal working day would be an uninterrupted ten hours with no human contact whatsoever, this rang very true. Always good to have one's sense of superiority and weltschmerz confirmed by SCIENCE.

 

[Miasorrow]

A very interesting article, based on a range of proper neurological studies, about how the distractions of email and texting are weakening our intellect: and in particular how there is no such thing for the brain as 'multi-tasking', but rather performing a series of tiny tasks in rapid succession, and demonstrably doing each one worse than if we focused on it alone.

As someone whose ideal working day would be an uninterrupted ten hours with no human contact whatsoever, this rang very true. Always good to have one's sense of superiority and weltschmerz confirmed by SCIENCE.

It sounds dangerously true..
I cannot have proof for the rest but for the following part
"..texting discourages thoughtful discussion or any level of detail.."
I have to say that most of the times when I moved from writing to someone to texting him the quality of communication derailed and deteriorated.

 

[trysail]

http://media.tumblr.com/cbb8d3180018ecbd0572f94961cdd72c/tumblr_inline_ng4hjeksUP1sy1jdx.jpg


One night last December, my cousin called me into the TV room, where my family was lounging after dinner, chatting, peeling clementines and sipping tea. “There’s a documentary about Yellowstone on TV right now!”

“You mean Yellowknife?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Spending the holidays with my extended family in Germany, I was subjected to many questions about life in the North. I don’t consider Yellowknife, my home for the past two years, all that remote. But to many of my friends and family, I live in a village near the North Pole. Fellow expats will know what I’m talking about: evoking the Northwest Territories is especially difficult.

Where in the world is the Northwest Territories?

Nahanni N.P.



​

 

[trysail]

An Alaskan view on the east coast media.

☝

★★★★★

​

 

[Laurel]

http://images.closerweekly.com/uploads/posts/image/50422/florence-henderson.jpg?crop=top&fit=clip&h=500&w=698

In an exclusive interview with 'Closer Weekly,' 80-year-old Florence Henderson talks sex, dating and aging, revealing, “I actually have a friend with benefits!”

“I still feel like I’m 28,” the star, who will celebrate her 81st birthday on Valentine’s Day, tells 'Closer' in an exclusive interview and photo shoot in Marina del Rey, Calif. “I do anything and everything to stay active because, let’s face it, I am not slowing down anytime soon!”

And that includes her sex life! “It’s foolish to think that older people don’t enjoy sex. It’s a big myth,” she confides to 'Closer.' “There is no age limit on the enjoyment of sex. It keeps getting better,” Florence says, adding, “You learn to do things with more experience, intelligence and the ability to choose more wisely.”​

- read the full article Florence Henderson, 80, Says "Sex Keeps Getting Better With Age!" (from Closer Weekly)​

 

[Que]

Austin Powers voice: Invented the LAY SZUR!

Charles Townes dies at 99:

Finally, the basic concept for a laser came to him in the spring of 1951, as he sat on a park bench in Washington D.C.
"Suddenly I had the idea. Well that was a revelation," he told NPR's Morning Edition during a 2005 interview.

~snip~

Fast-forward more than half a century, and the entire Internet uses lasers to send information over fiber optic cables. DVDs and Blu-ray discs also use lasers, as do doctors (for fixing eyes, among other things), engineers (for cutting material), and workers in many other professions.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/28/382178361/charles-townes-laser-inventor-black-hole-discoverer-dies-at-99

Interesting guy. Invented the principles that became the laser, then moved on to astronomy because he felt plenty of people were working on the laser.

 

[Wife of Bath]

So God Made A Lesson Horse

This made me teary. So true, of so many.

Imagine you’re a sturdy, reliable Appendix horse. You’ve just been bought by a riding school on the edge of the suburbs. Stepping off the trailer, you find your stall with fresh, clean shavings and fresh hay. “This is nice,” you think. “I like my new home.” Then, 4 o’clock rolls around. The lesson kids show up. They shout excitedly about the new horse at the barn and how gorgeous she is and “oh look at her stockings” and “I want to groom her” and they dart under your legs and yank some forelock out as they roughly slide a halter on over your head and you’re being dragged out of your stall and surrounded on all sides by a mini-van load of girls clad in pastel breeches and paddock boots and suddenly there are brushes everywhere and they’re trying to pick two of your feet at once and fighting over who gets to ride you in the lesson today and they haven’t even talked to the trainer yet about if you’re an appropriate horse to ride and it’s not even 4:15. Bless every lesson horse who can handle the poking, the prodding, the nose picking, the hair being brushed backwards, the tail being pulled, the ears folded under the crown piece, the saddle on the neck or on the croup, the girth too tight or too loose, the polo wraps done wrong, and the splint boots on the wrong legs. These half-ton animals can handle all that before they even walk to the arena without harming a hair on a child’s head.

Have you stopped imagining? Start again. You’re tacked mostly correctly by one of the lesson kids and she’s leading you to the arena for her 4:30 lesson. She is smiling up at you from beneath the brim of her pink helmet, her braids bouncing with each step. The trainer helps her redo your lavender polo wraps (thank goodness) before she leads you to the mounting block and scrambles aboard. You march to the rail as told. “I want a circle in every corner,” the trainer says. As you reach the first corner, you expect inside leg to outside rein contact, as the trainer did when she tried you at the sale barn. Instead, the child pulls harshly on the inside rein so the bit slides all the way to the left side of your mouth and she does the typical pony kick on your right side. She turns you in a circle with a 12-inch diameter and pulls you back to the rail by pulling the bit all the way to the right side of your mouth. “Bigger circles, Sophie,” the trainer shouts. You haven’t even started trotting yet. The other horses in the arena face similar fates. Not a single one has protested. You don’t either! Why? Because lesson horses are a special kind of soft-hearted.

full article here: http://www.horsenation.com/2015/01/15/so-god-made-a-lesson-horse/

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://40.media.tumblr.com/e092a43e47b92999ce999b9c3952134a/tumblr_nj7gq3lB111qfpi8no7_1280.jpg

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Black History Month!

My favorite parts of history (as might be obvious from my choice of subject matter when making books) are the ones that fall into easily-categorized genres, genres with associated visual iconographies. This is the sort of stuff I loved as a kid: pirates, knights, cowboys, explorers, romans and Egyptians and flying aces. Stuff you could find featured in a bag of toys or a generic costume.

For Black History Month, I thought I might visit some of these adventure-leaning periods and pick a few historic black people from those eras to draw, just for fun. If you’re doing a project or report in school this month, you could do worse than to tackle one of these toughies. Feel free to share some of these with youngsters that you know. And call them youngsters, they LOVE that.

http://schweizercomics.tumblr.com/post/109986050791/black-history-month-my-favorite-parts-of-history

 

[Laurel]

http://i.guim.co.uk/media/w-620/h--/q-95/4f310b38f35e48b40a6bec3daec095a8429cf632/0_14_3500_2101/1000.jpg

A new record was set in New York City at 12.01am on Thursday: no murders had been reported in the city in 10 days. The milestone broke a nine-day record set in 2013, when none were reported during the same time of year, in the chill of January.

A New York police department spokeswoman confirmed to the Guardian that no murders were committed in the city on Wednesday night into Thursday.

But criminologists cautioned against reading too deeply into the statistic: crime, they say, swings with the seasons, and pinpointing what causes a dip is difficult.

“There’s a lot of social forces going on,” said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “Crime rates, and homicides rates in particular, have declined very substantially since the early 1990s.”​

- read the full article New York City sets new record: no murders for 10 days (from The Guardian)​

 

[Laurel]

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ra6PA4uT--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/l7yswxufkewith08d4ma.jpg

The average American's daily hygiene ritual would seem unusual—nay, obsessive—to our forebears a hundred years ago. From mouthwash to deodorant, most of our hygiene products were invented in the past century. To sell them, the advertising industry had to create pseudoscientific maladies like "bad breath" and "body odor."

Americans had to be convinced their breath was rotten and theirs armpits stank. It did not happen by accident. "Advertising and toilet soap grew up together," says Katherine Ashenburg, author of The Dirt on Clean. As advertising exploded in the early 20th century, so did our obsession with personal hygiene.​

- read the full article How "Clean" Was Sold to America with Fake Science (from Gizmodo)​

 

[Laurel]

LOL

http://cdn3-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/fifty-shades-of-grey-1392399540/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey_1.jpg

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees—the Jamesians, as we must think of them—quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.

Ana, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. He is interested in “what motivates them—what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.​

- read the full article No Pain, No Gain: Review of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” (from The New Yorker)​

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://40.media.tumblr.com/8674fa5c1f0bc9fd692c658c974f52b9/tumblr_njj3jkd28T1rfbtioo4_1280.jpg

http://41.media.tumblr.com/d12101dd33f633c067efe8f4f2968c4d/tumblr_njj3jkd28T1rfbtioo1_1280.jpg

http://36.media.tumblr.com/f7b1f2267f5a9dbd21a21b82031f45fb/tumblr_njj3jkd28T1rfbtioo2_1280.jpg

http://41.media.tumblr.com/44412c688e193511232b4696e119f3df/tumblr_njj3jkd28T1rfbtioo3_1280.jpg

When Tori Sisson and Shanté Wolfe first met on the floor of an apartment party, they had no way of knowing they were on their way to making history — together. Shanté Wolf shares her side of the story with BuzzFeed News.

The Love Story Behind Alabama’s First Legally Married Same-Sex Couple

 

[Wife of Bath]

LOL

http://cdn3-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/fifty-shades-of-grey-1392399540/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey_1.jpg

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees—the Jamesians, as we must think of them—quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.

Ana, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. He is interested in “what motivates them—what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.​

- read the full article No Pain, No Gain: Review of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” (from The New Yorker)​

I read the whole review- oh my. Gasping-for-breath laughter.

 

[islandman]

Gilead Sciences Inc. may be one of the first drugmakers in history to have people asking why it’s not doing more to pitch its medicine.

Truvada, Gilead’s HIV drug, has been approved since 2004 for people with the virus. In 2012, use was expanded to people without HIV as a way of preventing transmission -- a practice called PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis. Taken daily, it can prevent infections 92 percent of the time, meaning it could drastically reduce new infections in sexually active gay men, among the U.S.’s highest-risk communities.

Thanks to its use in HIV patients, Truvada’s been a financial success, bringing Gilead $1.79 billion in the U.S last year. Yet out of 3.3 U.S. million prescriptions from January 2012 to March 2014, only 3,200 were for prevention.​

- read the full article Gilead's Pill Can Stop HIV. So Why Does Almost Nobody Take It? (from Bloomberg)​

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://40.media.tumblr.com/33fd3fe8818e50434c0acb49610d8964/tumblr_nf874qzxCc1rhavdko1_500.jpg

They are not some anonymous “a tribe in India”, they are the War-Khasi. Speaking as a former anthro student and as a reference librarian, I am beyond sick of posts (and articles, and emails, and museum displays) like this that present the work of a people without actually naming the people. It’s erasure, it’s reducing the great works of a culture to an Ozymandias-esque curiosity for foreigners to consume rather than an accomplishment that should help bring awareness of that culture’s existence.

http://media.tumblr.com/2306bfc3e45d61e986648c9b2d04c301/tumblr_inline_nj4azpFaFK1rxwfvw.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/5200e8f4f3ed7cde0513edcd5d30fdd1/tumblr_inline_nj4b01qqD21rxwfvw.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/00471f25ea590cfa42b0d03c6578e764/tumblr_inline_nj4b0kbQiF1rxwfvw.jpg

They are the War-Khasi, a division of the Khasi, a people who call themselves Hynñiew Trep. They live in Meghalaya, and they have been building these bridges in the town of Cherrapunji for longer than anyone knows. They are not anonymous.

via burningmandalalala

 

[trysail]

NATO Expansion At The Heart of Ukraine Crisis

by Steven R. Hurst
Associated Press
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c79d.../analysis-nato-expansion-heart-ukraine-crisis

...Since the Soviet collapse — as Moscow had feared — that alliance has spread eastward, expanding along a line from Estonia in the north to Romania and Bulgaria in the south. The Kremlin claims it had Western assurances that would not happen. Now, Moscow's only buffers to a complete NATO encirclement on its western border are Finland, Belarus and Ukraine.

The Kremlin would not have to be paranoid to look at that map with concern. And Russia reacted dramatically early last year. U.S.-Russian relations have fallen back into the dangerous nuclear and political standoff of the Cold War years before the Soviet collapse

It began with prolonged pro-Western demonstrations in the Ukrainian capital. The upheaval caused corrupt, Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Moscow nearly a year ago. The political turmoil broke out after Yanukovych — contrary to an agreement with the European Union for closer trade and political ties with the pan-European political and trading bloc — backed out and accepted Russian guarantees of billions of dollars in financial aid.

When a new, pro-Western government took power in Ukraine, Russia reacted by seizing the Crimean Peninsula and making it once again a part of Russia. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the strategic region from Russian federation control to the Ukraine republic in 1954. Crimea remained base to Russia's Black Sea fleet, and ethnic Russians are a majority of the population.

Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine — along the Russian border — began agitating, then fighting to break free of Kiev's control, variously demanding autonomy, independence or to become a part of Russia...​

​

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ueOFGl0IwDE/VJEaAsYTA3I/AAAAAAAADdo/st0xEF82AoE/s1600/nicki-minaj-anaconda-video-2.jpg

"Beyoncé has been Beyoncé-ing for over a year now and you’re still questioning her feminist credentials because her praxis doesn’t match yours. Nicki Minaj has been vocal about her feminism for years but you revoked her credentials because she made a video about her exquisitely crafted rear end and rapped about the men who want to fuck her. To me, all that debate sounded a lot like judgement of other women for the way they chose to express their sexuality. This really confuses me because I thought that sexual agency was a cornerstone of contemporary feminist thought. After all, a woman’s body is her own, and what she chooses to do with it or how she chooses to exercise and experience her sexuality is up to her alone. Except, apparently, if you’re black."

Read: BattyMamzelle: For Feminists Who Resort To Racism When Slut Shaming Is Not Enough

 

[Laurel]

Interesting

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/14/upshot/17UP-Leonhardt/17UP-Leonhardt-articleLarge.jpg

The notion that income inequality has continued to rise over the past decade is part of the conventional wisdom. You’ve no doubt heard versions: The rich just keep getting richer. Inequality is higher than ever. Nearly all of the gains from the economic recovery have gone to the top 1 percent.

No question, inequality is extremely high from a historical perspective – worrisomely so. But a new analysis, by Stephen J. Rose of George Washington University, adds an important wrinkle to the story: Income inequality has not actually risen since the financial crisis began.

How could that be? Because the crisis, which ran roughly from 2007 to 2010, reduced the pretax incomes of the wealthiest Americans more than the incomes of any group. The wealthy have indeed received the bulk of the gains since the recovery began, but they still haven’t recovered their losses. Meanwhile, the steps that the federal government took in response to the crisis, including tax cuts and benefit increases, have mostly helped the nonwealthy.​

- read the full article Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/22/magazine/22essay/22mag-22essay.t_CA0-articleLarge.jpg

In Lahore, Pakistan, the city where I was born and where I once again live after two decades abroad, my experience of picking up my children from school has recently changed. As of this term, I can no longer enter my daughter’s kindergarten. I must show an ID card with her photograph at the fortified gate, a rectangular aperture in a high wall, and she is then brought out to me, emerging like a blue-clad fairy from some strange castle.
[...]
I don’t recall encountering armed guards very often when I was a child. They were a rarity in this city. They became more common as law and order deteriorated in the 1990s — a result of rampant inequality, corrupt governance, misguided state support of extremist groups and the chaos in neighboring Afghanistan — and commoner still as terrorist attacks multiplied in the 2000s. After the truck bombing of the Islamabad Marriott in 2008 that killed 53 people, expensive hotels here became fortresses. I first noticed private schools beginning to secure themselves around that year. Now all schools must do so, and the sight of the new precautions — the tops of swing sets and jungle gyms disappearing behind curtains of brick — still has the power to shock. Perhaps only briefly, though: With time, you become used to even previously unimaginable things.
[...]
We do not live in a global culture that is shaped by freedom’s triumph over tyranny. Rather, we live in a global culture where the two have merged. If we are to speak freely, every word must be monitored. If we are to roam freely, every entrance must be locked.
[...]
There is magic in a mongrelized society. To live among those who are unlike us gives us permission to admit that we ourselves may be unlike what is expected; we may be gay or atheist or unmarried; we may be poets or worshipers with unorthodox approaches to the divine. To be surrounded by only those who appear to be as we appear to be is to feel a silent pressure to appear to be like them.

Perhaps we favor walls and watchers because we desire to be closer than what we know is safe. We are repelled by what is different, and we are fascinated by what is different. We long to mingle, and we long to protect ourselves. We are alarmed by what we might want. And yet we wander, and in doing so, we hope​

- read the full article The Great Divide (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/28/28690/3x4/90.jpg?6537

Listen, buddy, you’ve been pissing me off all night. I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m getting sick of your shit. So enough talk. Let’s do this. Let’s go outside and settle this like emotionally stunted men.

Forget the bouncers. Forget our friends. It’s just gonna be you, me, and our fragile egos that render us incapable of dealing with conflict in a socially responsible manner.

Let’s go, asshole. You’re about ready to see I’m not the kind of guy who just sits back and handles grievances constructively. If you think I’m some pussy who has enough self-esteem to let an insult roll off his back, you’ve got another thing coming. So let’s refuse to calm down or back off and instead allow this situation to spin out of control like the developmentally arrested little boys we effectively are. That is, unless you’re not man enough by the criteria of my very limited and damaging conception of manhood.​

- read the full article How About We Go Outside And Settle This Like Emotionally Stunted Men? (from The Onion)​

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Interesting

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/14/upshot/17UP-Leonhardt/17UP-Leonhardt-articleLarge.jpg

The notion that income inequality has continued to rise over the past decade is part of the conventional wisdom. You’ve no doubt heard versions: The rich just keep getting richer. Inequality is higher than ever. Nearly all of the gains from the economic recovery have gone to the top 1 percent.

No question, inequality is extremely high from a historical perspective – worrisomely so. But a new analysis, by Stephen J. Rose of George Washington University, adds an important wrinkle to the story: Income inequality has not actually risen since the financial crisis began.

How could that be? Because the crisis, which ran roughly from 2007 to 2010, reduced the pretax incomes of the wealthiest Americans more than the incomes of any group. The wealthy have indeed received the bulk of the gains since the recovery began, but they still haven’t recovered their losses. Meanwhile, the steps that the federal government took in response to the crisis, including tax cuts and benefit increases, have mostly helped the nonwealthy.​

- read the full article Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis (from The New York Times)​

The article is bull shit for a couple of reasons: One reason is the author confuses MIDDLE INCOME with MIDDLE CLASS, and substitutes one for the other. For example, the other day a welfare single parent of 4 kids won 1/3rd of the POWERBALL lottery. Its a one time event, and the money will likely be history in a year. People win money all the time, and usually end up poor again. Theyre middle income or high income for a season and their class remains the same....like the Clampetts. CLASS is determined by how you get your money, INCOME STATUS is determined by your assets. The other thing is, the MIDDLE CLASS are the self employed, and theyre entitled to deduct damn near everything from their income for tax purposes. Wage slaves are limited to fewer allowable deductions. Elites have trusts and foundations.

 

[Laurel]

The article is bull shit for a couple of reasons: One reason is the author confuses MIDDLE INCOME with MIDDLE CLASS, and substitutes one for the other. For example, the other day a welfare single parent of 4 kids won 1/3rd of the POWERBALL lottery. Its a one time event, and the money will likely be history in a year. People win money all the time, and usually end up poor again. Theyre middle income or high income for a season and their class remains the same....like the Clampetts. CLASS is determined by how you get your money, INCOME STATUS is determined by your assets. The other thing is, the MIDDLE CLASS are the self employed, and theyre entitled to deduct damn near everything from their income for tax purposes. Wage slaves are limited to fewer allowable deductions. Elites have trusts and foundations.

Good points.

 

[toubab]

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/28/28690/3x4/90.jpg?6537

Listen, buddy, you’ve been pissing me off all night. I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m getting sick of your shit. So enough talk. Let’s do this. Let’s go outside and settle this like emotionally stunted men.

Forget the bouncers. Forget our friends. It’s just gonna be you, me, and our fragile egos that render us incapable of dealing with conflict in a socially responsible manner.

Let’s go, asshole. You’re about ready to see I’m not the kind of guy who just sits back and handles grievances constructively. If you think I’m some pussy who has enough self-esteem to let an insult roll off his back, you’ve got another thing coming. So let’s refuse to calm down or back off and instead allow this situation to spin out of control like the developmentally arrested little boys we effectively are. That is, unless you’re not man enough by the criteria of my very limited and damaging conception of manhood.​

- read the full article How About We Go Outside And Settle This Like Emotionally Stunted Men? (from The Onion)​

That was not funny.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.laprensapopular.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/420-oliver-sacks.imgcache.rev1326837083532.jpg

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.​

- read the full article My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer (from The New York Times)​