Think for a minute… when is the last time you had a bad day? When is the last time a couple things happened, not quite as you had planned, and you thought, "I cannot wait until today is over!"
Here's the thing… there is absolutely no such thing as a bad day in reality. A bad day only exists in our interpretation of reality, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When asked in an interview [1] if there is any science behind why a bad day occurs, Peter J. Bentley, PhD, writer of Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day, responded:
Yes, and it's our fault, I'm afraid! The statistics show that people who believe in bad luck will have more accidents on Friday the 13th. Those who have a negative attitude are more likely to endow normal little mishaps with some mystical significance. Some psychologists even suggest that it's a way of subconsciously avoiding responsibility for our actions. "It was Friday 13th, so I was bound to stick my fingers with superglue" or "Accidents happen in threes, so after the first mishap the next two were inevitable." Of course it's nonsense.
So there you have it, we have the ability to make a bad day exist if we believe it to exist.
The U.S. economic crisis has been called by some observers a balance sheet recession given the deterioration of the balance sheets in the banking system and the household sector. The U.S. banking system's balance sheets certainly took a beating during the crisis, but some progress has been made in repairing them. The IMF, for example, shows in its latest Global Financial Stability Report (chapter 1, pp. 7-9) that 60% of needed writedowns of U.S. bank assets had already occurred by late 2009. The November 2009 OECD Economic Outlook notes similar improvements, including sizable capital injections. Of course, there are still more writedowns to do, bank lending is still anemic, and much of the banking system's balance sheet problems have only been transferred to the Fed's balance sheet. Still, there has been some meaningful repair to banking system's balance sheet and that is more than can be said for the household balance sheet. This can be seen by examining the flow of funds data for the households, specially household net worth (i.e. household assets minus household liabilities). The figure below graphs this series as a percent of disposable income (click on figure to enlarge)
The team was founded in 1924. The owner, Charles Weston Adams, also owned a
local retail chain whose colors were brown with yellow trim. A naming
contest stipulated the nickname would be "an untamed animal whose name
was synonymous with size, strength, agility, ferocity, and cunning; and in
the color brown." (A bruin is a type of bear.) The uniform front shows
a wheel, which is believed to refer to the hub configuration of Boston's
streets.
My view is data based. The international evidence shows that if you want to balance the budget, something like 66 percent to 80 percent of your effort should go into cutting spending and something like a third to a fifth should consist of tax increases. If you rely on tax increases too much, you end up messing up the incentives for people who save and invest. Also spending cuts on entitlement programs have been the most enduring way to change long term fiscal trends. Cuts in other spending are too trivial to make a difference and don’t last because politicians reverse themselves.
The body armor-clad man who kept a dozen California Highway Patrol officers in a prolonged gunbattle late Saturday night was on his way to San Francisco with a plan to "start a revolution" by attacking prominent people at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, court documents state.
Though details of Byron Williams' plan were not released, authorities said they had gathered enough information to conclude that the 45-year-old was destined to create havoc had he not been stopped by CHP officers on westbound Interstate 580 just north of the Grand Avenue exit in Oakland.
"His intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and ACLU," a probable-cause warrant submitted to the court states.
And yes, the Tides Foundation is one of those groups that Glen Beck regularly rants about.
Why don't we innovate by making products last longer? Because then the companies couldn't sell us a new version. Doh! From Rik Wuts:
Innovation is borne out of this need to keep cranking out new products just to give people a reason to buy more stuff. Most of the time, it has very little to do with meeting actual needs. Every once in a while a game changer comes along, but for the most part it’s just filler designed to keep us buying.
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It’s a well known industry secret that Nokia was not at all happy that their 6310 model lasted for years and years. People loved that phone. Hung on to it for ages. Nokia fired the man who made it. Their average handset is engineered to last for two years.
In at least three U.S. states, it is illegal to film an active duty policeman:
The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law -- requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."
The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
This is a horrible idea, and will make us all less secure. I wrote in 2008:
You cannot evaluate the value of privacy and disclosure unless you account for the relative power levels of the discloser and the disclosee.
If I disclose information to you, your power with respect to me increases. One way to address this power imbalance is for you to similarly disclose information to me. We both have less privacy, but the balance of power is maintained. But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with.
An example will make this clearer. You're stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer's ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.
You can think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value, to you, of more information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.
Another example: When your doctor says "take off your clothes," it makes no sense for you to say, "You first, doc." The two of you are not engaging in an interaction of equals. This is the principle that should guide decision-makers when they consider installing surveillance cameras or launching data-mining programs. It's not enough to open the efforts to public scrutiny. All aspects of government work best when the relative power between the governors and the governed remains as small as possible -- when liberty is high and control is low. Forced openness in government reduces the relative power differential between the two, and is generally good. Forced openness in laypeople increases the relative power, and is generally bad.
Thelatest revelationsfrom Journo-list are deeply depressing to me. What's depressing is the way in which liberal journalists are not responding to events in order to find out the truth, but playing strategic games to cover or not cover events and controversies in order to win a media/political war.
You really can't believe anything you read or hear in the news industry without doing "opposition research" of the story.
