Interesting ...

http://www.disinfo.com/2011/11/the-neuroeconomics-revolution/
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111122155856959773.html

Much of modern economic and financial theory is based on the assumption that people are rational, and thus that they systematically maximise their own happiness, or as economists call it, their "utility". When Samuelson took on the subject in his 1947 book, he did not look into the brain, but relied instead on "revealed preference". People's objectives are revealed only by observing their economic activities. Under Samuelson's guidance, generations of economists have based their research not on any physical structure underlying thought and behaviour, but only on the assumption of rationality.


As a result, Glimcher is skeptical of prevailing economic theory, and is seeking a physical basis for it in the brain. He wants to transform "soft" utility theory into "hard" utility theory by discovering the brain mechanisms that underlie it.

In particular, Glimcher wants to identify brain structures that process key elements of utility theory when people face uncertainty: "(1) subjective value, (2) probability, (3) the product of subjective value and probability (expected subjective value), and (4) a neurocomputational mechanism that selects the element from the choice set that has the highest ‘expected subjective value…'"

... though I wonder if we'll learn anything significant enough to save the species from permanent extinction.

29 years ago today ...

... the greatest selling record of all time was released ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)
Released November 30, 1982

Listening today, that record has so much in it, and is still ahead of today's music in terms of songwriting, performance, adn produndion. It has so much life and energy in it, things that have been missing in music the last 10-15 years.

"I'm sorry"

No term in the English language (in my mind at least) has become more superficial than this one -

I'm sorry

Why, you may ask?

Long ago - okay when I was a kid - I was taught that you said this when you did something wrong, did something to hurt someone and you didn't mean to, and most importantly, that how you expressed it indicates your feelings of sorrow and genuine concern over what you caused.

Expressing something that when one in fact does something wrong I learned is a sign of maturity and honest concern for a fellow person.

No longer.

Nowadays, people use it in every possible way and with every other possible intonation possible. Except as it was orignally intended

And don't give me this crap - we all know women love to hear the words from a man. Just look at the mounds of stupidity in the comments here. I think it's really a form of an ego-power trip many women like to play on men. To me it's self-defeating. What value is there in it if there is no genuine feeling behind it? It's just paying lip service to one's power trip.

But really, someone constantly apologizing to me for every little thing and even things they didn't do, doesn't make me like or respect the person even more. Quite the opposite, it tells me a number of possible things -

• The person tends to do a lot of wrong things, which could indicate some cognitive problem
• The person is trying to cover up for something really big that they're not telling you
• The person is completely superficial and really doesn't give a rat's ass how you feel. Consequently they are using the term simply as a license to do whatever the fuck they please
• Some combination of the above.

With that mind, here's are the best from the list below- http://www.askmen.com/dating/curtsmith/43c_dating_advice.html/


15. Not shaving

Tell her that you're growing a beard to make up for neglecting your own male instincts, ever since you've been paying extra attention to her sensitive needs.



14. Stiffing a despicable waiter

Tipping is not a requirement. It's an option that you have when a waiter provides good service. So if you ever have the pleasure of being served by a waiter who hits on your woman or makes you look bad in front of her, don't leave a tip and don't apologize for it.



13. Working hard and coming home late

Crying to your wife, "I'm sorry for ignoring your needs and working harder and staying late at work so that I can pay for your expensive Gucci shoes, diamond anniversary ring, and mink fur coat" just doesn't sound right.



12. Looking at beautiful women

Try to avoid doing it in front of her, but don't apologize if she catches you. She's also looking at others when you're not around. Just let her know that you appreciate beautiful things.


10. Checking the restaurant bill twice

No one's perfect and waiters do make mistakes with bills at times, so if you're paying for it, don't apologize for giving the bill a second glance.



9. Not checking with your spouse or girlfriend

Women like it when men are spontaneous. So the next time she gets mad at you for not consulting with her first before making plans, tell her, "Oh, but it's so impulsive, and I know you like spontaneity."



7. Being rude to one of your wife's friends

She'll probably be the reason for your marriage's failure, so you may as well be rude from the start.



6. Not calling

You shouldn't make a habit of forgetting to call your ladybug, but you don't need to get on your knees and beg for forgiveness when you do. The next time it happens, tell her you forgot.



5. Leaving the toilet seat up

Tell her that you'll put the toilet seat down when you're done doing your thing, if she puts it back up when she's done doing her thing.



4. A wandering eye... in public places

As long as you aren't too obvious and refrain from drooling this shouldn't be a problem. After all, you can't walk around with your eyes closed all the time.



3. Quick performances

It happens to the best of them so don't worry too much about this. If you didn't last as long as she would have liked you'll do better next time.

Dooming us all - a grim reminder of the consequences of the 1%.

(Courtesy The Disaffected Lib)

Rich nations 'give up' on new climate treaty until 2020

Ahead of critical talks and despite pledge for new treaty by 2012, biggest economies privately admit likelihood of long delay

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/20/rich-nations-give-up-climate-treaty

This is what happens when our societies are controlled by right-wing establishments beholden to non-person entities like governments, conglomerates, corporations, foundations, militarises, and others who have no legal or moral accountability to anyone in the societies they claim to serve. They see every person as a nothing more than a fucking number in their database, representing their level of product consumption, and how they squeeze as much money from them further, as quickly as possible. And often times, many of these entities either control other entities to the point of placing their interests over others, or they span across several entities (e.g. a multi-national conglomerate) that they are effective immune to any kind of rational discourse.

The iron triangle of government, industry, and military has a stranglehold on our future, and freed from any kind of accountability or reality, are slowing pushing us all to an inevitable demise.

This is also the result when the so-called most powerful and richest nations are allowed to dictate to everyone else our own fate.

Even if such an agreement were to actually happen at that time, I fear it'll be too late. The damage done to the planet will be irreversible.

It's very hard to escape the conclusion that none of the entities described above are ever really going to provide any kind of answer or solution to the coming - irreversible - crisis facing all of us. And like a cancer that couldn't care if the patient dies, it pursues it's own financial, political and military interests with virtually no thought or care or concern to any one's actual future, including really their own.

What is the answer?

Our previous centuries of instruments of society - like the entities described above - are products from a day and age where they simply don't scale. They simply don't have the capacity to really aid all peoples in all societies on either a global or long-term way.


The only thing I can think of is - the people of the planet, the overwhelming populations must find a way across all nations, states, provinces, regions, cities, towns, and so forth to unite with the scientists, engineers and the like a implementing a lasting solution to save the planet - on our own. We must find a way to come together and work together as a single planetary guardian - and solve this problem on our own.
 
To that end - we must find a way for this global society to communicate together, speak effectively the same language of understanding of the complex nature of the problem, and devise a long-lasting solution. It's a very difficult task.
 
And even if this were to happen - is there really a solution? I mean let's face it - this problem was caused by us. Our consumption of fossil fuels, our cars, our planes, trains, boats, our roadways; the solutions to our development from previous centuries now threaten our common future demise now. How does one simply rip out centuries of development and replace it with something far less damaging? Telling people to simply stop driving cars and ride bicycles isn't the answer.
 
And ... even if magically there were a solution and the will to implement it - and it could be done in spite of the efforts of the establishment entities above likely doing everything to stop it - could such a thing be implemented successfully, and in time? Have we reached a point of no return already?
 
I don't have the answer to any of these questions. Admittedly my own personal problems leave me very much a hypocrite in that I'm unable to really contribute anything meaningful or positive to solving the problem myself.
 
Like a lot of people, I have many grave concerns, many problems of my own, and very little time to solve these larger issues, let alone straight focus.
 
I guess right now, the only thing I have going - is that I know that our current way of life is really no way of life at all. We're on a path to demise, and maybe not my generation, but the next one, and the next one, and the next one, will really start to see all our last millenium's worth of global destruction.
 
That's all I know - I wish there were more.

Overheard on a bus - 11-22-2011.

Belated edition -

Black female with somewhat fake curly hair arrives on bus and from her first steps, proceeds to shower the entire bus with her diatribe about her sister some unfortunate person (or equally moronic individual; or both) named Alana. Highlights include -

• Sister's name is Brittany (sic)
• Sister has slept w/ Vitrin (sic) and a host of other guys
• Has had two abortions
• The person herself is infalleable despite admitting she's herself is getting kicked out of her own apartment
• Brittany makes up stories; bitches about her life living in Florida, but was apparently only born there, grew up in Alaska instead
• Brittany's truck was recently impounded, and had made the claim that Alana herself had loaned her $100
• Brittany uses people, lies - though the caller herself never lies (okay she lies when she has to, like when she's carrying on with a couple of guys)
• Mother knows Brittany is like this

Now this is more like it.

Somebody actually doing something -

(Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy)
http://teddeutch.house.gov/UploadedFiles/DEUTCH_036_xml.pdf

gotta love that acronym - OCCUPIED


“No matter how long protesters camp out across America, big banks will continue to pour money into shadow groups promoting candidates more likely to slash Medicaid for poor children than help families facing foreclosure,” said Deutch in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “No matter how strongly Ohio families fight for basic fairness for workers, the Koch Brothers will continue to pour millions into campaigns aimed at protecting the wealthiest 1%. No matter how fed up seniors in South Florida are with an agenda that puts oil subsidies ahead of Social Security and Medicare, corporations will continue to fund massive publicity campaigns and malicious attack ads against the public interest. Americans of all stripes agree that for far too long, corporations have occupied Washington and drowned out the voices of the people. I introduced the OCCUPIED Amendment because the days of corporate control of our democracy. It is time to return the nation’s capital and our democracy to the people.”





(thank you ThinkProgress)

If we only knew ...

this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie) would've led to this - the largest conglomerate in the world; so large .... that is has it's own Wikipedia criticism page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_The_Walt_Disney_Company ...

... then maybe none of us would've thought it cool -

"Steamboat Willie premiered at Universal's Colony Theater in New York City on November 18, 1928."

Quote of the day - 11-15-2011

"This is the same kind of repression that the Arabs faced earlier. If we faced a powerful external enemy, these repressive acts could well serve as a pretext to war and regime change, as Libya experienced.


But we don't, and our governments feel safe in doing what they want.."

IanMacallister111

More here - http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/15/occupy-ny-park-cleared.html

Arbitrage - article in The Awl.

Not only does this make me not want their products, but frankly I don't want to go anywhere near any 'fast-food' business.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/a-conspiracy-of-hogs-the-mcrib-as-arbitrage

Arbitrage is a risk-free way of making money by exploiting the difference between the price of a given good on two different markets—it’s the proverbial free lunch you were told doesn’t exist. In this equation, the undervalued good in question is hog meat, and McDonald’s exploits the value differential between pork’s cash price on the commodities market and in the Quick-Service Restaurant market. If you ignore the fact that this is, by definition, not arbitrage because the McRib is a value-added product, and that there is risk all over the place, this can lead to some interesting conclusions. (If you don’t want to do something so reckless, then stop here.)


The theory that the McRib’s elusiveness is a direct result of the vagaries of the cash price for hog meat in the States is simple: in this thinking, the product is only introduced when pork prices are low enough to ensure McDonald’s can turn a profit on the product. The theory is especially convincing given the McRib's status as the only non-breakfast fast food pork item: why wouldn't there be a pork sandwich in every chain, if it were profitable?

Fast food involves both hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of. What makes the McRib different from this everyday horror is that a) McDonald’s is huge to the point that it’s more useful to think of it as a company trading in commodities than it is to think of it as a chain of restaurants b) it is made of pork, which makes it a unique product in the QSR world and c) it is only available sometimes, but refuses to go away entirely.

If you can demonstrate that McDonald’s only introduces the sandwich when pork prices are lower than usual, then you’re but a couple logical steps from concluding that McDonald’s is essentially exploiting a market imbalance between what normal food producers are willing to pay for hog meat at certain times of the year, and what Americans are willing to pay for it once it is processed, molded into illogically anatomical shapes, and slathered in HFCS-rich BBQ sauce.

Off for the weekend.

Yeah, I figure to take 11-11-11 off.

In the meantime, Ms Klein has something very long and very important to read through -

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=full

See you all next week.

Yes, but what next?

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011114508/occupy-movement-spreading-and-growing

Great, but how does this translate into something meaningful for 99% they represent?

Wow - this is fucking awesome!

Very glad to see Buzzflash is still running.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13125

Keep at it folks. The world needs you to keep doing what you do.

Lost in the shuffle

Think the US has forgotten about getting retribution on Assange?

Think again -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/02/julian-assange-loses-appeal-extradition

And of course, there's the double-standard that the accused in this case is known, but of course, the accuser is not.

Quote of the day - 11-02-2011 - "plutonomy and a precariat"

Noam Chomsky

Context:

...A couple of years ago [Citibank] came out with a brochure for investors. They urged investors to put their money in what they call the “plutonomy index.” The world is dividing into a plutonomy, the rich and so on. That’s where the action is. They said their plutonomy index is way outperforming the stock market, so put your money into it. And as for the rest? We set them adrift. We don’t really care about them and we don’t need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state to protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but they essentially have no function. It’s sometimes called these days the “precariat,” people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. It’s not the periphery anymore...

Relevance:

...Well, now the world is indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat, again in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The plutonomy is where the action is. It could continue like this, and if it does, then this historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. The Occupy movements are the first major popular reaction which could avert this. It’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to go on and form structures that will be sustained through hard times and can win major victories.

Bonus:

...There are very dangerous developments in the international arena, including two of them which are kind of a shadow that hangs over almost everything we discuss. There are, for the first time to human history, real threats to peace and survival of the species. One has been hanging around since 1945 and it’s kind of a miracle we’ve escaped it and that’s the threat of nuclear weapons. That’s a threat that’s being escalated by the administration and its allies. Something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble. The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Every country in the world is taking at least halting steps toward trying to do something about it. The US is also taking steps, namely to accelerate the threat. The US is now the only country that’s not only not doing something constructive…it’s not climbing on the train. It’s pulling it backwards.