11/10/11

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Film Worth Seeing - Online

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Watch Free Documentary Online:

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All about thinking

Michael Lewis on the King of Human Error | Business | Vanity Fair: "Billy Beane’s sports-management revolution, chronicled by the author in Moneyball, was made possible by Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. At 77, with his own new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize-winning Kahneman reveals the built-in kinks in human reasoning—and he’s Exhibit A.
Related: “The Quiz Daniel Kahneman Wants You to Fail.”"

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Perry gaffe number two

First Read - Perry says gaffe won't end 2012 bid: "'Everybody makes mistakes'
Perry says others have made similar mistakes and that the screw-up will humanize him."

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The first gaffe was not remembering what he would abolish.

The second was suggesting that this was just an ordinary mistake.

I think there must be some mystical reality in Texas that has enabled this man to remain in office. Whatever it is it is not with him during this mistake-fest. I cannot say I feel sympathy. Not to a man who boasts of successful executions and does not appear to understand what century this is.


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An ugly relic from a bygone, bigoted past

Historic Committee Vote Set on DOMA Repeal - Tomorrow » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union: "If Thursday’s vote is successful (call me cautiously optimistic), it will mark the first time since DOMA was signed into law in 1996 that a congressional committee will have taken the extraordinary step of actually voting to repeal it. It will also show that DOMA’s days are numbered. Whether this law is struck down by the courts or repealed by Congress, it will soon join “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in history’s dustbin — an ugly relic from a bygone, bigoted past."

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So Old Fashioned So Suzanne (Video)



Happiness is a good chord progression.

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Connotations of humble

Abba's Way Premises - Anthropology - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: "A spectrum implies motion from one end to the other. It also implies that within any possible action there are positives and negatives. It humbles us into an admission of profound ignorance regarding causes and effects."

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Uriah Heep might come to mind. Or humble pie. Or your humiliation that may rankle still. Or what you have inflicted knowingly or not. Humbling in athletics, Humbling in the mirror encounter. Humbling as age reflects on things undone.

But there is a more buoyant use of this term, a positive connotation if you will. A liberation. For we are humble by the spectrum variegated ever in motion. Aye, by the reality of its continual motion. And the vibrancy of its  massive multitasking. Turning every theory into crushed cosmo-pills that may wash away tomorrow then be reabsorbed in a newer declension.

Humble is as humble sees. As humble sees reality. And bows to its redemptive. Its redemptive incomprehensibility.



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A weapon in the cause of sexual abuse


Friendly banter is Herman Cain's apparent catch-all term for any physical encounters he cannot remember. I predict that it will become a standard excuse in the future to cover all manner of bullying, sexual advances and abuse. What would it mean to be able to subsume these things under friendly banter banner? It would mean a continued edge for patriarchy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse. It would mean a fuzzy layer of protective excuse around bullying. It was all friendly. No harm meant.

Obviously in the worst cases such obfuscation would have little weight. But this is precisely the point. The older an allegation the more useful are terms that minimize the possible reality. Absent hard evidence, Herman Cain or anyone else can call anything friendly banter. Whether it was a slap on the back or a genital grope.

Friendly banter joins "he said she said" in the lexicon of terms that minimize past realities. Words are so important that the Bible suggests that a word started everything. Friendly banter supports the idea that "nothing really happened" in reference to situations where aggression resulted in hurt feelings or worse.

The only apparent defense a victim has is a witness or witnesses. But sexual abuse tends to be private and concealed. To say years later that an actual instance of aggression was merely friendly banter is consistent with hear and see no evil perspective. Realities such as hurt, humiliation and shame of victims are deftly minimized. Absent witnesses, minus proof, the friendly banter protocol confers a sort of tough-it-out virtue on things and helps turn the victim into the accused. In this sense, we can say that the term friendly banter is indeed a weapon in the cause of sexual abuse.

Buried in Cain's own PR, the friendly banter protocol

Cain Truth | Getting out the Truth about Herman Cain: "Consider: I held various executive positions in corporate America for several decades. I had thousands of employees working for me. I can’t even begin to recall how many conversations I had with people during that time, how many directives I gave, how much friendly banter might have taken place."

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Here we have it. This is not he said she said about whether anything happened. It is forgotten friendly banter. Interpretive amnesia. Obfuscato-realm. I predict that friendly banter will be the standard male recollection from now on, as in I meant well and who could believe otherwise minus any tangible evidence?

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RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press