i'm on the left. methinks. not even sadly. bitter bitter bitterly.

Harper's Index for December 2006

Posted on Sunday, January 7, 2007.


Amount a 2006 defense bill authorized for a daylong “celebration” of “success” in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20,000,000

Date on which the authorization was extended to 2007: 9/30/06

Number of life-size photo cutouts of troops that Maine’s Army National Guard has given to relatives: 200

Chances that a Guantánamo detainee was turned over to Coalition forces by an Afghan or Pakistani citizen: 9 in 10

Average reward that leaflets airdropped over their countries promised for every “terrorist” turned in: $5,000

Amount a cable TV reporter paid a former Army interrogator to waterboard him in July: $800

Minutes into the waterboarding that a producer decided he had to stop it: 24

Number of incidences of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2005: 624

Number on shows the previous seven years: 110

Number of people the U.S. counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer personally killed last season on the TV show 24: 38

Percentage change from 2004 to 2005 in the number of criminal violations by U.S. military recruiters: +106

Number of private firms that have been hired since 2002 to recruit soldiers for the Army: 7

Average amount the firms are paid per recruit: $5,700

Number of Americans and Britons who now work in the IT industry in India: 30,000

Monthly cost for a U.S. student to receive unlimited online tutoring from a Bangalore-based “e-tutor”: $100

Minimum number of PlayStation 3s whose spare processing power will be used next year for biological research: 10,000

Factor by which the interconnected game systems will be faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer: 5

Factor by which the number of “perfect games” bowled last year exceeds the number in 1985: 7

Percentage of N.F.L. fourth downs on which teams are better off “going for it,” according to a Berkeley study: 40

Percentage of fourth downs on which N.F.L. teams do go for it: 13

Score by which Russia defeated Kazakhstan in the 2006 Homeless World Cup final in September: 1‒0

Ratio of the number of people worldwide who are overweight to the number who are undernourished: 5:3

Chances that a patient who undergoes weight-loss surgery will develop complications within six months: 2 in 5

Percentage of Britons who say they would give up sex to live to 100: 40

Portion of Britain’s fertility clinics that have an insufficient supply of sperm: 7/10

Percentage of women who have an orgasm during sex with a man, according to an Australian study: 69

Percentage who do during sex with another woman: 76

Percentage by which a man’s chances of being gay increase for every older brother he has: 33

Number of Texas high schools that offered Bible courses as electives last year: 25

Number of these courses that broke the law by being primarily devotional and sectarian, according to a September study: 22

Number of times President Bush has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable” so far this year: 42

Number of times he said this the previous three years combined: 33

Percentage of Americans in October who said that Congress should impeach President Bush: 51

Number of non-citizens charged with vote fraud in U.S. elections since 2002: 21

Cost, in one Mexican town, of a six-hour tour “full of obstacles and persecution” across a mock U.S.-Mexico border: $14

Estimated percentage of the town’s population that has illegally crossed the real border: 90

Cost of an eight-day tour of Israel’s “struggle for survival and security in the Middle East”: $1,895

Minimum number of checkpoints Mary and Joseph would face today on their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem: 10

Number of worldwide incidents last Christmas of “Santarchy,” which involves roving mobs of unruly Santas: 29

Number of fruitcakes that drunken Santas catapulted into the air at the event in Portland, Oregon: 6

Found shit...

I love this site...

www.foundmagazine.com

The stuff people find and then excitedly TALK about or some of the pictures that are just kinda lost or thrown away...some of the stuff is soooooo very very very funny. the first one is kinda mean but ummmm i don't think i'm apologizing. i think it's funny a fuck but then i have such a strange strange dark as night sense of humour sometimes.

Tom Green in Adbusters....


I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws – or crafts its advanced
treaties – if I can write its economics textbooks.
— Paul Samuelson

If you’re a business undergrad, the introductory economics course is a prerequisite – no way to avoid it if you want to get out with that degree. Maybe you figure the course won’t be all bad. After all, you’d like to understand how the economy works, how it affects your future. Climate change is on your mind, and you know rising greenhouse gas emissions are linked to economic growth. You’re also concerned about social justice, whether free trade will lift people out of poverty or whether it’s a race to the bottom. You want your economics course to help you deal with these issues.

Scenario 1: Faced by over a million North American undergrads in 2007

“You’ll need to memorize 1001 supply and demand curves, be able to regurgitate stuff for the exam that you know is wrong,” warns the second-year student as you hand over your cash for his tattered text, “It’ll put you off economics for good.” You brace yourself for the worst.

Flipping through Paul Samuelson’s Economics, you see that it was first published in 1948, and you wonder how they can teach from a text that had already celebrated half a century in print before the new millennium rang in. Samuelson, now in his nineties, has handed over the pen to Nordhaus, who put out the eighteenth edition. (Even for those students whose introductory textbook isn’t written by Samuelson, there’s a good chance they are pretty hard to tell apart. Since Samuelson helped rewrite large parts of economic theory, his textbook inspired dozens of copycats.)



Introductory microeconomic theory rests on the idea that individuals are perfectly rational and seek to maximize their “utility.” Samuelson admits that utility is a construct that has no basis in psychology; although he uses the terms ‘consumer’ and ‘individual,’ his model is built around a fictional character that critics have dubbed Homo economicus. This economic man (yes, he is male) never had a childhood, never has children, has never depended upon a caregiver and does not have anyone he provides care for. He only experiences well-being by consuming. He is rational, selfish, a psychopath.

Economists must never question whether Homo economicus’ consumption actually makes him happy. They assume he isn’t influenced by hundreds of billions of dollars in advertising or the purchases of his neighbors. If Homo economicus buys something, it gives him utility; his consumer sovereignty must be respected.

Relying on Homo economicus excuses us from tackling difficult questions about how real individuals, groups of citizens or members of families actually seek to find happiness. The framework within which he acts excuses us from troubling ourselves with the distribution of wealth, since utility comparisons between individuals are not allowed. In other words, neoclassical economists will say they cannot comment on whether a millionaire or a pauper would get the most utility from a handful of coins.



Samuelson’s Economics wastes few pages before introducing us to the profession’s magic wand: the word ‘assume.’ The typical economics professor will have already made six implausible assumptions before their students have digested breakfast. To use the word is to signal that we are about to enter into a neverland with features warped as needed to fit into an elegant mathematical model. The next time you hear it, ask what would change if ‘assume’ were replaced with ‘pretend.’

The weakness for basing models on unrealistic assumptions could be a harmless intellectual pastime, equivalent to solving Sudoku puzzles. But these flimsy models are used by economists to formulate policies believed indispensable to solving society’s economic woes. These policies are then flogged to politicians and corporate leaders. Rarely mentioned are the original assumptions that might limit the application of these policies in the real world.

If Samuelson’s book has one take-home message, it’s that societies must promote economic growth now and for all time. With growth, we are all better off. Without growth, we cannot afford to help the poor or to clean up the environment. We must get richer by pumping more oil, mining more ore, chopping more trees, consuming more widgets, so that we have new wealth to tackle climate change from burning more oil, to restore habitat damaged by logging, to help people displaced and poisoned by mining, to dispose of broken widgets. Welcome to the growth treadmill.

How does Samuelson square infinite economic growth with a non-growing planet? By omitting nature, because to economists land is a constant that doesn’t affect our calculations. Ignoring the biosphere makes the math easier and suggests policies that make the corporate world happy.



Meanwhile, over in environmental studies, students discuss the warning of the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: “Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.” And in the psychology department, an instructor puts up a graph that shows that the average per capita income in the developed world has doubled in a generation, yet people are no happier. Do economists never leave their department hallway?

Samuelson’s Economics, along with the copycats found in classrooms across North America, would be merely a waste of time and trees if they did not have such a noxious effect on public policy. Most students only take one or two economics courses, and while research has shown that the typical student recalls few details from these courses, they do absorb the neoclassical canon. Well-being comes from consumption, economies must grow, free trade makes nations wealthier, governments should let markets do their magic. Equipped with simplistic recipes, many of these same students, in positions of influence and power years later, will make shoddy decisions that damage the climate, result in habitat loss, propagate injustice, or undermine prospects for happiness.


Read part two of this two-part series, in which we look at new alternatives in economics education.

_Tom Green is a Vancouver-based economist who has worked for over a decade using ecological economic analysis to improve resource management. Frustrated by the fact that economics departments are still subjecting their students to obsolete theory, he’s been putting increasing effort into bringing curricula into the twenty-first century.

sometimes....

the loneliest you feel is surrounded by others.

and i don't have it that THAT bad. it seems everyone i'm surrounded by is equally NO NO MORE surrounded by their own loneliness and sense of arm breaking off, alone without a limb they didn't know they had or would therefore, miss kinda loneliness...

severed really.

i have flashes throughout the days. of lines in books i should start writing. never a line that should fit into the book mid way through or somewhere, but a slight little taste of a line that should start it and maybe that is where the problem is, if i had a slight of a line midway through than the first and the end of the book wouldn't be that fuckin hard to write now would it? then i forget the lines. they're gone almost as quickly as they came and MAYBE this is it! maybe this is beginning of the book. GOB gave me a christmas present...the only present i was ever given for christmas that didn't come from a b/f or my family but from someone i can legitimately call a friend...which is a whole other weird new experience and why i am 26 and still having these natural parts of development moments is beyond me, i could kinda dismiss them as being weird and kinda intense as a child but i don't really know....ANYWAY....and on the cover she wrote to take pictures and i guess it's weird because writing is so internal to me but we all know everything internal comes from somethin external and it's like my brain too quickly takes things that are external and makes them internal, like de ja vu one of the theories is you experience is because your brain too quickly processes whats happening throwing the experience into your long term memory making you retrieve it WHILE it's happening which is like WHOAH think about that too long and yeaaaaaah....so....i do need to take ink polaroids of my thoughts to start that freakin book which isn't at all what i'm talking about....

it would seem

and i apologize for the immediate honesty...

everyone around me is falling out of love when all i'm trying to do is fall madly INTO it (again).

all weekend....a good weekend a very very good weekend and i know if COI is reading this he will take this as negative and it is nothing of the sort, but an awesome weekend...not without it's challenges and the challeneges involve the fruit or fruits of a love that is now not a love....and then another weekend is planned that involves the fruits, or fruits of a love that is now not a love....

and it doesn't piss me off, i can do this, i can handle it i'm cooooool with my weird displaced fucked up placement within it...

but it has humbled me entirely within my own love-ness.

thats all i'm saying.

i shouldnt have but feel better for

saying

it.

phew.

"Imagine that you have to break someone's arm.

Right or left, doesn't matter. the point is that you have to break it, because if you don't...wel, that doesn't matter either. Let's just say bad things will happen if you don't.

Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly -- just snap, whoops, sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint -- or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and all together howlingly unbearbale?
Well exactly. Of Course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over with as quickly as possible,. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.
Unless.
Unless unless unless.
What if you were to hate the person on the other end of the arm? I mean really, really hate them.
This was the thing I now had to consider."

-- The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie.

back in blogging...

been awhile. strangely, no one has cared. GOB hasn't written the obsessive "POSTPOSTPOSTPOST" emails to me, so in fact, the ol' blog has been in some ways forgotten. it seems there is a very very specific time to blog. it's not really boredom, nor is it a sense of necessity, but some days are just blog days. today is a blog day. you show up at work, powers down, so you start rearranging the furniture for the arrival of g monday, then because you've dropped your computer and are now relying both on the tedious interface that is the mac and COI's ability to stop by your desk and somehow do whatever it is he does that looks like the same thing i did but isn't to get my email up, you begin to organize. first the desk, than the filing cabinet, you file, colour coded labels, everything all chic and ocd...then the desktop, then the bills and receipts and alllllll that fun stuff. it's cool i have the corporate card NOT so cool that i gotta fill in all the little boxes, including exchange etc etc on the little expense form. tediousssssssssssssss

so

new stuff....

in order of appearance throughout the last month (i think...)

1. went to china. QUICK QUICK QUICK trip. kinda way too QUICK. i didn't sleep. got a lot done, the office looks great, bradley IS great, had a decent time with GOB, although so quick i feel bad we didn't do a lot of what we could have should have would have if we had more time. next time...

2. came home. SLEPT. A LOT.

3. THE CAR...sweet little seamus. himmler (GOBS nickname NOT mine...) disagrees with the name saying it's the opposite of what it should be named, as a product of divine German engineering...if i had MY computer i could put the exact picture of seamus up here but i DONT and can't get into email yet, so i will put up a picture of one of his relatives...Seamus will come up a little later in the day...abolutely the coolest fuckin thing i have ever seen never mind HAD.

4. seamus makes me kinda cocky, i've racked up 2 parking tickets and one ticket for turning down my street when you weren't allowed. which like what kinda rules are those? and why don't canadian police office speak English?? Honestly. i think, if you're here to protect me, and uphold our laws you should be in the country long enough to understand grammar laws. really.

5. THE HIP. ROCKED. FUCKIN AWESOME!!!! Yeah. they were great great great....and meeting fph was pretty cool too. i feel honoured GOB brought him and introduced him and didn't get upset when i promised not to swear as much as her :) it was a great concert and a real real good night.

6. valentines day...oi. fell asleep, bought a chameleon for COI girls. had a good good night with COI. the nicest valentines day yet..nothing weird or too valentinesy at all which is apparently how i like it...

i think that's it. i'm gonna post some more today since i AM in the mood...but that is the brief update into things indeed.

Tom Thompson came paddling past
I'm pretty sure it was him

And he spoke so softly in accordance

To the growing of the dim

He said, "Bring on a brand new renaissance

Cause I think I'm ready

I've been shaking all night long

But my hands are steady.

"Three pistols came and three people went, on their way

Three pistols strong and three people spent"