Mitt Romney has been an “effective leader his entire career,” said The Detroit News, both in the private sector and in government. As a venture capitalist with Bain Capital, he gained the “ability to make a deal” between warring parties—experience he put to use as governor of Massachusetts, where he worked with Democrats to reform health care and education policy. In 2002, he proved his skill as a turnaround expert by transforming the Salt Lake City Olympics from a fi nancial disaster into a success. It’s our belief that Romney will use his experience as a businessman and a leader to turn around our country. He will reconcile our divided Congress and “employ a results-oriented approach” to creating jobs and taming big government, all while being “mindful of his customer, the taxpayer.”
We just can’t afford four more years of Obama, said the Boston Herald. His “vague promises of hope and change” have led us down a radical, redistributionist path. The $767 billion stimulus package offered the country nothing but “ecocronyism,” with energy companies like Solyndra receiving taxpayer cash in return for political favors. Over the four years of economic stagnation since he was elected, more than 4 million people have given up even looking for work. And under Obama’s rule, a nation that was once a “shining beacon” of liberty around the world now prefers to “lead from behind.” That means bowing to Vladimir Putin in Russia, “looking away from the human rights abuses of our bankers in China,” and failing to stop Iran from moving toward nuclear armament. At home and abroad, “that’s not change we can believe in.”
Obama’s failures can be summed up in one “ham-fi sted power play,” said the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. That’s Obamacare—the “massive, one-party overhaul of health care” he rammed through Congress instead of fi xing the economy. Romney, on the other hand, has pledged to fi x health care, said the Richmond, Va., Times- Dispatch, using “means-testing, market solutions, competition, and state-level innovation” to prevent Medicare and Social Security from going bankrupt. He has also promised to replace Obamacare with reforms that will neither “bust the budget” nor “trample individual rights.” Repealing this job-killing legislation “may be the most effective stimulus package passed in nearly a decade.”
What this election comes down to, said The Des Moines Register, is “pulling the economy out of the doldrums.” That will require a president able to boost confi dence in the private sector, enabling it to renew spending and hiring. Judged by that yardstick, “Romney emerges the stronger candidate.” His formula of tax cuts and sweeping government obstruction out of the path of private industry should “unlock this nation’s economic potential.” Obama’s strategy of tax increases for the rich and more stimulus guarantees more division, and less private-sector confi dence. The president is a “decent man,” said the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and in many ways he has tried his best. “But even he predicted he would be a one-term president if he failed to turn things around.” He has failed—and so the choice is clear.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Swimmer Ryan Lochte confesses
American swimming star Ryan Lochte admits he sometimes pees in the pool, and he has plenty of company. “Nearly 100 percent of elite competitive swimmers pee in the pool,” said Carly Geehr, a former U.S. Olympian. “As a swimmer, you just have to accept the fact that you’re swimming in pee.”
Slate.com
Slate.com
#Technology: Is it making #addicts of us all?
Technology: Is it making addicts of us all?
Gimme that dopamine.
“The latest trend on the Internet,” said Tracy McVeigh in The Observer (U.K.), “is to step away from the Internet.” With smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices reshaping how people work, communicate, and spend their free time, scientists and psychologists are starting to question what our reliance on these devices is doing to our minds. Next year, for the first time, “Internet use disorder” will be listed in the appendix of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, said Matt Richtel in The New York Times. Even in Silicon Valley, there is a growing concern that technology is taking over people’s lives. “We’re done with this honeymoon phase, and now we’re in a phase that says, ‘Wow, what have we done?’” says tech guru Soren Gordhamer, who has organized an annual conference of digerati called Wisdom 2.0 to explore the need for balance in a wired world. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are now teaching their own employees meditation and “mindfulness,” and warning them of the dangers of constant texting, tweeting, and web-surfing. “It’s this basic cultural recognition that people have a pathological relationship with their devices,” says Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, who consults with tech company executives. “People feel not just addicted, but trapped.”
Don’t blame the gadgets, said Alexis Madrigal in TheAtlantic.com. It’s not your smartphone’s fault that you compulsively check your email “at a stoplight, at the dinner table, in bed.” It’s mostly the fault of our employers, who now expect workers to be available 24/7. We can also blame the “strange American political and cultural systems” that make us feel guilty about taking any time off, and obligated to meet the growing demand for nonstop productivity. People have iPhones in Britain and Germany, too, yet “Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans.”
Beware: We’re already paying a steep price for our digital obsession, said Tony Dokoupil in Newsweek. Research shows that constant use of these devices is actually rewiring the physical structure of people’s brains. Every time your phone, tablet, or computer pings with a new text, tweet, or email, it triggers a sense of expectation, and the reward centers in your brain receive a pleasurable “squirt of dopamine.” Over time, a brain habituated to these quick fixes shrinks the structures used for concentration, empathy, and impulse control, while growing new neurons receptive to speedy processing and instant gratification. Brain scans of Internet addicts—defined as anyone online more than 38 hours a week—can resemble those of cocaine addicts and alcoholics. Symptoms of Internet addiction can range from depression to acute psychosis. The Internet, in other words, is “driving us mad.”
I know of a good treatment, if not a cure, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. It’s called nature. When we get into the great outdoors, the illusion of control that technology provides disappears, and we are “deflated, humbled, and awed all at once.” In the “vast natural cathedral,” we are reminded of a world much larger than ourselves—one that predates us, will outlive us, and at whose mercy we exist. To escape our “post-industrial self-absorption,” we all need to leave our iPhones at home at least once a week, and go take a walk in the woods. Your devices will be waiting when you get back, and you’ll be a bit saner when you rejoin the endless conversation.
Gimme that dopamine.
“The latest trend on the Internet,” said Tracy McVeigh in The Observer (U.K.), “is to step away from the Internet.” With smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices reshaping how people work, communicate, and spend their free time, scientists and psychologists are starting to question what our reliance on these devices is doing to our minds. Next year, for the first time, “Internet use disorder” will be listed in the appendix of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, said Matt Richtel in The New York Times. Even in Silicon Valley, there is a growing concern that technology is taking over people’s lives. “We’re done with this honeymoon phase, and now we’re in a phase that says, ‘Wow, what have we done?’” says tech guru Soren Gordhamer, who has organized an annual conference of digerati called Wisdom 2.0 to explore the need for balance in a wired world. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are now teaching their own employees meditation and “mindfulness,” and warning them of the dangers of constant texting, tweeting, and web-surfing. “It’s this basic cultural recognition that people have a pathological relationship with their devices,” says Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, who consults with tech company executives. “People feel not just addicted, but trapped.”
Don’t blame the gadgets, said Alexis Madrigal in TheAtlantic.com. It’s not your smartphone’s fault that you compulsively check your email “at a stoplight, at the dinner table, in bed.” It’s mostly the fault of our employers, who now expect workers to be available 24/7. We can also blame the “strange American political and cultural systems” that make us feel guilty about taking any time off, and obligated to meet the growing demand for nonstop productivity. People have iPhones in Britain and Germany, too, yet “Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans.”
Beware: We’re already paying a steep price for our digital obsession, said Tony Dokoupil in Newsweek. Research shows that constant use of these devices is actually rewiring the physical structure of people’s brains. Every time your phone, tablet, or computer pings with a new text, tweet, or email, it triggers a sense of expectation, and the reward centers in your brain receive a pleasurable “squirt of dopamine.” Over time, a brain habituated to these quick fixes shrinks the structures used for concentration, empathy, and impulse control, while growing new neurons receptive to speedy processing and instant gratification. Brain scans of Internet addicts—defined as anyone online more than 38 hours a week—can resemble those of cocaine addicts and alcoholics. Symptoms of Internet addiction can range from depression to acute psychosis. The Internet, in other words, is “driving us mad.”
I know of a good treatment, if not a cure, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. It’s called nature. When we get into the great outdoors, the illusion of control that technology provides disappears, and we are “deflated, humbled, and awed all at once.” In the “vast natural cathedral,” we are reminded of a world much larger than ourselves—one that predates us, will outlive us, and at whose mercy we exist. To escape our “post-industrial self-absorption,” we all need to leave our iPhones at home at least once a week, and go take a walk in the woods. Your devices will be waiting when you get back, and you’ll be a bit saner when you rejoin the endless conversation.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Interesting stats on voting, being superwealthy, Penn State football, and Canadians are richer than Americans
-About 5.85 million adults can’t vote in the November elections because of state laws that prohibit convicted felons from voting, even after they’ve completed their jail terms. Nearly 8 percent of blacks are disenfranchised, compared with 1.8 percent of other races, a study by the Sentencing Project found. In Florida, 23 percent of all blacks are legally prohibited from voting.
HuffingtonPost.com
-So far, 0.000063 percent of the country’s population—196 superwealthy people—have given more than 80 percent of the Super PAC money spent in the presidential election.
TheAtlantic.com
At the same time a grand jury was hearing evidence in the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse case,
-Joe Paterno negotiated a new, $5.5 million contract with Penn State that gave him a $3 million bonus for retiring, and forgave $350,000 in loans.
The New York Times
-The average Canadian is now richer than the average American. The net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household had a net worth of $319,970.
Bloomberg.com
Poll watch
-20% of registered voters say they’re less likely to vote for Mitt Romney because of his net worth of more than $200 million. 75% say Romney’s income will make no difference in how they cast their vote.
Gallup poll
-44% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in churches or organized religion. That’s a new low, and marks a long decline from the 1970s, when confidence in organized religion was as high as 68%.
Gallup poll
HuffingtonPost.com
-So far, 0.000063 percent of the country’s population—196 superwealthy people—have given more than 80 percent of the Super PAC money spent in the presidential election.
TheAtlantic.com
At the same time a grand jury was hearing evidence in the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse case,
-Joe Paterno negotiated a new, $5.5 million contract with Penn State that gave him a $3 million bonus for retiring, and forgave $350,000 in loans.
The New York Times
-The average Canadian is now richer than the average American. The net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household had a net worth of $319,970.
Bloomberg.com
Poll watch
-20% of registered voters say they’re less likely to vote for Mitt Romney because of his net worth of more than $200 million. 75% say Romney’s income will make no difference in how they cast their vote.
Gallup poll
-44% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in churches or organized religion. That’s a new low, and marks a long decline from the 1970s, when confidence in organized religion was as high as 68%.
Gallup poll
Monday, September 24, 2012
TV: The rise of ‘binge viewing’
TV: The rise of ‘binge viewing’
Tech-savvy young people have come up with a whole new way to watch TV, said John Jurgensen in The Wall Street Journal. The “binge viewer” compulsively views whole seasons of drama series in marathon sessions lasting a day or more, using new technologies like on-demand TV, digital video recorders, and streaming websites. Netflix says TV shows now account for 60 percent of its streaming volume, and has even introduced a feature that automatically plays the next episode of a series. TV networks aren’t happy, because binge viewers bypass advertising vital to their business, but the increasingly popular practice is “changing the economics of the industry.” Producers now create “highly serialized shows,” hoping to make streaming deals that invite bingers to devour them in one sitting. Immersing yourself in a well-told TV drama, psychologists say, produces “something akin to a trance”—making the characters, plot, and emotions they evoke seem more real.
Binge viewing may be popular, said Jim Pagels in Slate.com, “but it Binge viewing may be popular, said Jim Pagels in Slate.com, “but it destroys much of what is best about TV.” Series like AMC’s Breaking Bad are intended to be watched over periods of weeks, not hours—and gorging on them denies you a chance to develop a relationship with their characters, or to relish each episode as a story in itself. There’s nothing quite like the delicious suspense of a cliff-hanger—but “that pleasure evaporates when you simply click ‘play’ on the next episode.” To me, it’s disrespectful to watch the entirety of a nuanced, artful drama in “a few couch-buried sittings,” said Richard Lawson in TheAtlantic.com. “Something like Mad Men, which unfolds with elegant precision and demands a little thinking time, is probably best savored slowly.”
That’s silly, said James Poniewozik in Time.com. Is a great novel less wonderful if you read it in a long, “sustained trance,” or 20 pages at a time over the course of weeks? That’s purely a matter of personal preference; good storytelling “will take whatever viewing conditions you throw at it.” Besides, the era of everyone watching TV shows at the same time, the same way, is over, said Linda Holmes in NPR.org. Now you can watch your favorite series on “a big TV, or on a small TV, or on a tablet, or on a phone.” You can watch it on a train or bus, or in bed, in the afternoon, or at any time of day you like. How could that be bad?
Tech-savvy young people have come up with a whole new way to watch TV, said John Jurgensen in The Wall Street Journal. The “binge viewer” compulsively views whole seasons of drama series in marathon sessions lasting a day or more, using new technologies like on-demand TV, digital video recorders, and streaming websites. Netflix says TV shows now account for 60 percent of its streaming volume, and has even introduced a feature that automatically plays the next episode of a series. TV networks aren’t happy, because binge viewers bypass advertising vital to their business, but the increasingly popular practice is “changing the economics of the industry.” Producers now create “highly serialized shows,” hoping to make streaming deals that invite bingers to devour them in one sitting. Immersing yourself in a well-told TV drama, psychologists say, produces “something akin to a trance”—making the characters, plot, and emotions they evoke seem more real.
Binge viewing may be popular, said Jim Pagels in Slate.com, “but it Binge viewing may be popular, said Jim Pagels in Slate.com, “but it destroys much of what is best about TV.” Series like AMC’s Breaking Bad are intended to be watched over periods of weeks, not hours—and gorging on them denies you a chance to develop a relationship with their characters, or to relish each episode as a story in itself. There’s nothing quite like the delicious suspense of a cliff-hanger—but “that pleasure evaporates when you simply click ‘play’ on the next episode.” To me, it’s disrespectful to watch the entirety of a nuanced, artful drama in “a few couch-buried sittings,” said Richard Lawson in TheAtlantic.com. “Something like Mad Men, which unfolds with elegant precision and demands a little thinking time, is probably best savored slowly.”
That’s silly, said James Poniewozik in Time.com. Is a great novel less wonderful if you read it in a long, “sustained trance,” or 20 pages at a time over the course of weeks? That’s purely a matter of personal preference; good storytelling “will take whatever viewing conditions you throw at it.” Besides, the era of everyone watching TV shows at the same time, the same way, is over, said Linda Holmes in NPR.org. Now you can watch your favorite series on “a big TV, or on a small TV, or on a tablet, or on a phone.” You can watch it on a train or bus, or in bed, in the afternoon, or at any time of day you like. How could that be bad?
Monday, September 10, 2012
Some good news for a change
Robert Russell never gave up searching for the 1967 Austin-Healey sports car stolen from outside his Philadelphia home in 1970. Now, 42 years later and living in Southlake, Texas, he has finally found it. Having scoured the Internet for years for signs of his long-lost car, Russell spotted it on eBay in May, for sale at a California dealership. He tracked down his stolen-car report from police in Philadelphia, convinced the Los Angeles Police Department to impound the car, and finally took possession of it last month. Russell now plans to restore the vintage car to its 1970s condition. “We’re going to put it back the way it was,” he said.
As Doug Eaton prepared to turn 65, he asked his friends what he should do on the big day. One suggested doing 65 random acts of kindness—which is why Eaton stationed himself at a busy intersection in Oklahoma City on his birthday and handed out $5 bills to passersby for 65 minutes. Eaton said the gift of giving was the best present he could ask for. “It’s just been fantastic,” he said. “Some people who don’t take the money say, ‘Man, I love what you are doing. I won’t take it, but give it to someone who needs it.’”
A Marine was reunited this week with the disabled Afghan boy whose life he helped transform. Three years ago, Gunnery Sgt. Warren Coughlin spotted the then 10-year-old Sher Jan selling roadside snacks in Afghanistan, and was astounded by the boy’s optimism, given his badly deformed feet. Coughlin got the boy to an Army doctor, and Jan ended up being flown to the U.S. by a nonprofit for foot and heart surgery. The pair met again just weeks before the now recovered Jan was set to rejoin his family in Afghanistan.
As Doug Eaton prepared to turn 65, he asked his friends what he should do on the big day. One suggested doing 65 random acts of kindness—which is why Eaton stationed himself at a busy intersection in Oklahoma City on his birthday and handed out $5 bills to passersby for 65 minutes. Eaton said the gift of giving was the best present he could ask for. “It’s just been fantastic,” he said. “Some people who don’t take the money say, ‘Man, I love what you are doing. I won’t take it, but give it to someone who needs it.’”
A Marine was reunited this week with the disabled Afghan boy whose life he helped transform. Three years ago, Gunnery Sgt. Warren Coughlin spotted the then 10-year-old Sher Jan selling roadside snacks in Afghanistan, and was astounded by the boy’s optimism, given his badly deformed feet. Coughlin got the boy to an Army doctor, and Jan ended up being flown to the U.S. by a nonprofit for foot and heart surgery. The pair met again just weeks before the now recovered Jan was set to rejoin his family in Afghanistan.
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