georgesbluegirl

Well, that would solve our problem with Congress and the Supreme Court. . . . Not to mention killing a few million other people. Yeah....not funny.

That is not the point. Obama claimed that if we went along with the stimulous bill and the bail outs, it would curb unemployment. We spent all that money we don't have and the unemployment rate continues to rise. Because unemployment rate is a lagging indicator and will always be about six months behind the market no matter what you do. The stimulus plan was designed to a) tide us over to weather the storm and b) increase aggregate demand, thus strengthening the markets (by the way, the dollar is strengthening right now). Unemployment rates will lower as businesses catch up with the market (if it works, which for the intents of this explanation, I'm assuming it will). So it is very much the point that you can't use unemployment rates as a barometer - *yet*. It's just econ 101.

Um. Not to comment on the topic at hand, exactly, but -- Walt Disney, at this point, is pretty well known for being a bigot...racist, anti-Semitic, etc. I'm pretty sure the execs these days don't use what he would have "signed off on" as a metric for how to run the park, given that he resisted hiring black people to work at Disney World because he thought it would "spoil the illusion." These are serious charges. Can you provide some sources to back up those claims? You've really never heard about this? There was a book that came out a while ago that aired a lot of those grievances, but I guess the more legitimate source would be "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination," by Neal Gabler. If you're interested, most of the reviews you can pull up in a quick Google mention Gabler's treatment of Disney's well-known biases. His anti-Semitism is mostly inferred from his involvement with several groups hostile towards Jewish people in general, but he's definitely on record saying some pretty choice things about race relations....the "illusion" quote is fairly well known. I mean really, think about the whole company..."What Makes the Red Man Red?" Disney doesn't exactly have a reputation of being the most socially progressive organization when it comes to their films. Even as recently as "Aladdin" there was controversy.

Um. Not to comment on the topic at hand, exactly, but -- Walt Disney, at this point, is pretty well known for being a bigot...racist, anti-Semitic, etc. I'm pretty sure the execs these days don't use what he would have "signed off on" as a metric for how to run the park, given that he resisted hiring black people to work at Disney World because he thought it would "spoil the illusion."

Job loss is a lagging indicator, you guys. Even though it looks like this thing might have bottomed out, we'll still feel job hits for at least a little while still. It really doesn't have anything to do with anything Obama has done thus far in office.

Also -- altruism, which is the more technical term for performed compassion, is a pretty hot topic in theoretical biology right now. Lots of good papers!

...What? Buddhist philosophy is inherently esoteric. Darwin's views are not parallel. The article is drawing a parallel between how Buddhists view compassion and compassionate practice and Darwin's ideas about the existence of compassion, not likening the entire theory of natural selection to all of Tibetan Buddhist practice. In Tibetan Buddhism, compassion is a keystone -- once you move past the "self" and embrace the idea of emptiness, suffering is no longer "mine" or "yours," it is simply suffering, and thus all suffering is felt by the individual -- so you work to alleviate suffering in general. Darwin was trying to figure out why compassion would be selected for in a population, and so he framed it as action taken to aid another person and thus relieve discomfort in yourself. Hence the comparison. He also recognized the "pre-reflexive" compassionate response, which is something many Tibetan teachers have written about.

I mean, he's being pretty frank that his immediate reason is the primary situation. However, two things -- one, Biden's been working on Specter literally for years; apparently they've had the conversation about his possible switch; two, what does Snowe have to gain by saying something like this unless she wants to make a legitimate point from her corner? She's not beholden to him in terms of PR; she's a GOP moderate watching the ideological diversity within her party shrink day by day, and she sees Specter's defection -- and part of that IS his inability to win a GOP primary in PA -- as a real problem. Olympia Snowe has nothing to gain by making these observations. I don't fault Spector for switching parties either; he's akin to the subway passenger who suddenly realizes, at seven a.m., that he's on the express to the north side of the city and he works on the south side. I do NOT want to hear the press conference angst from him concerning his decision though. Just GO already. He's nearly 80; how much longer can he eat from the public trough anyway? First rule of politics -- nobody does anything unless they have something to gain.

McCain had a reputation as a moderate due to truly bipartisan achievements like the Feingold-McCain act, and if he'd stayed THAT McCain he might have had a shot at it. Instead, he bowed to party pressure and turned a sharp right -- and while many on this board, I noticed, generally supported it, the general American public didn't. Looking past the issue of having an ® next to his name after eight years of Bush, that change was what lost him a credible shot at the presidency. He wasn't staying true to himself. Just look at video of his last campaign stumps of October and compare it to the concession speech, which was relaxed, tremendously articulate, and positive -- if he had been that McCain all along, things might have been different...at least closer.

I mean, he's being pretty frank that his immediate reason is the primary situation. However, two things -- one, Biden's been working on Specter literally for years; apparently they've had the conversation about his possible switch; two, what does Snowe have to gain by saying something like this unless she wants to make a legitimate point from her corner? She's not beholden to him in terms of PR; she's a GOP moderate watching the ideological diversity within her party shrink day by day, and she sees Specter's defection -- and part of that IS his inability to win a GOP primary in PA -- as a real problem.

Woot Maine! From today's NY Times:

Here we go -- here's an abstract from one of the papers -- Lake Michigan Beach-Ridge and Dune Development, Lake Level, and Variability in Regional Water Balance Basically by looking at the pattern of dune-ridge development, you can think in terms of high vs. low variability and cross-reference that with historical air-mass shifts on the North American continent. That had an effect on judging fire regime shifts....I think because you'd see more fires in areas without fire regimes during periods of high variability (and thus shifts in fire-dependent species).

You're speaking my language! Fire regimes are SO COOL. There was a neat study done about fifteen years ago in some Illinois lakes looking at dune complexes as a history of climate variability that led to some interesting speculation on fire regime shifts in the west and midwest over time...I'll try to find it.

I mean, her response is actually incorrect. We DON'T live in a country where you can choose same sex marriage or "opposite marriage" (...), unless you live in one of a handful of states. So I might bust her simply for being wrong.