This is Ted S., Catskills, NY's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Ted S., Catskills, NY's activity
Ted S., Catskills, NY
Recent Activity
Back in the day a lot fewer people were getting college degrees. Supreme Court cases like Griggs v. Duke Power Co. made it more difficult for employers to use testing in hiring, which has (probably) led to college degrees being used as a sort of proxy for the testing that would have been done in the past. Hence, jobs that used to require only a high school diploma now require a bachelor's degree, and everybody feels they need to get a college diploma, leading to the higher education bubble.
Elsewhere (54)
Tim Worstall on poverty redefined: One benefit, recall, just one benefit that this family receives, is to be cut from a little under median full time wages to a little under median full time wages after tax. From £23,000 a year to £18,000 a year. This one benefit is to be cut - and recall that ...
Are the hunters cross-dressing, or the pigeons?
Tidings (5)
As the holidays near – and this rickety barge approaches the end of its fifth year afloat - posting will for a while be more intermittent than usual. Subscribing to the blog feed is therefore recommended. As always, thanks for taking the time to comment and for all the donations made towards the...
They gladly accept what charity is offered them, then take by force the rest.
Excellent quote, although some may not enjoy the rather obscene nature of the reason comments section.
It’s the Calibre of the People That Impresses Me the Most
Denver’s occupodpeople take umbrage with a Wal-Mart distribution centre and wrestle with some difficult philosophical questions. Among which, “What right do you have to do that?” and “What money have they stolen from you?” And of course the big one, “Why are you doing this?” Readers should also ...
"We need more; you have more," one protester, Amin Husain, 36, told a Trinity official on Thursday, during an impromptu sidewalk exchange between clergy members and demonstrators.
Quote of Note
Or, We’re Much Too Fascinating to Register the Comedy: I’m tempted to talk about the irony of kids taking out student loans to enrol in a class that will “study” why irate college grads who can’t get jobs are camped out in tents complaining about the amount they owe on student loans; but then I ...
The real problem was the police trying to clear out the parks. Instead, they should have Occupied the Exits, and either not let anybody pass by them, or let people move in only one direction (in which case I suppose it would be Occupy the Entrances). By definition this would be no more violent than the original Occupation.
Quote of Note
Or, We’re Much Too Fascinating to Register the Comedy: I’m tempted to talk about the irony of kids taking out student loans to enrol in a class that will “study” why irate college grads who can’t get jobs are camped out in tents complaining about the amount they owe on student loans; but then I ...
How might we live without a rigidly binary gender system?
We'd be extinct, since there wouldn't be any males to mate with any females.
Quote of Note
Or, We’re Much Too Fascinating to Register the Comedy: I’m tempted to talk about the irony of kids taking out student loans to enrol in a class that will “study” why irate college grads who can’t get jobs are camped out in tents complaining about the amount they owe on student loans; but then I ...
to privatise and marginalise populations
Hells bells, I'd rather have my identity privatised. The alternative is having these nasty collectivists trying to define my identity for me.
Anybody who wishes to deny me the right to define my identity is evil.
Quote of Note
Or, We’re Much Too Fascinating to Register the Comedy: I’m tempted to talk about the irony of kids taking out student loans to enrol in a class that will “study” why irate college grads who can’t get jobs are camped out in tents complaining about the amount they owe on student loans; but then I ...
I don't know why I read the comments to that article, Anna. I'd like those five minutes of my life back. :-)
My "elsewhere" moment came over the weekend. With the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States on Thursday, that made Friday "Black Friday", the day on which there's stereotypically a big rush of shoppers starting their Christmas shopping. This year, thanks to the OWS people, there were calls to "Occupy Black Friday" and punish the "big" retailers and "shop local". The local TV stations duly reported on this uncritically.
My favorite part of this doe-eyed reportage was when they went to the local outlet of the Fa Irt Rade business (because splitting two words up into three is no dumber than joining them up as one Newspeak-style). Apparently, there was a bit of disappointment in the Fa Irt Rade camp because the American branch of Fa Irt Rade is in a dispute with the global brand about what constitutes "fair". Tha fact that you have this large Western business imposing its own arbitrary ideas of fairness upon people in the Third World and calling it "fair" is no different from other Western business practices was lost on both the shoppers and the media propagandists.
Elsewhere (52)
KC Johnson encounters more protesting intellectuals: According to the New York Times, organisers “were protesting not only tuition increases [of $300 per year] but also the university’s push for a public-private partnership,” such as the $1.4 billion in private philanthropy that [City Universit...
The thing is, Moody’s article is only slightly more unhinged than much of what passes for academic critique of popular culture.
I know I've argued it before, David, and I think you even agreed with me (with links and all!) the last time I argued it, but the further problem is that these are the sort of people the monopolist media treat as the Serious People Who Should Be Listened To.
As are the Occupy People, because even though their ideas are inchoately incoherent at best, they say they want to use the power of Big Government to punish businesses, and that's somehow virtuous enough to trump all the other crap that's going on in the Occupy camps.
Hush, Our Betters Are Speaking
It’s about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit and waking them up to reality. So says Kalle Lasn, editor of the anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters and inspiration for Occupy Wall Street. He and his OccupodPeople are slapping us around for our own good. It’s altruism, see - ...
"Are Ridley Scott's falling petals… anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?"
One wonders what he would think of Zuzu's petals.
More seriously, a good decade or so ago I heard a Sunday morning program on the CBC discussing Christmas movies, and one of the women on the panel talked about how she hated It's a Wonderful Life because the whole story line was about stroking George Bailey's ego with Clarence telling him how important he is.
Kinda misses the point of the movie, if you ask me, which argues that the world around us would be a much lesser place if we gave in to our selfish wishes.
But the woman went on, and complained about how horrible it was that the Lionel Barrymore character isn't seen getting his at the end of the movie. (We all know it's going to happen; it doesn't have to be shown.) I seem to recall her making comments about capitalism too, but this was a good 10 years or more in the past and it's not as though I've got a recording of the show. But it was one of those things that solidified the idea that there are some nasty people who think things can't be art unless those things have the correct political viewpoint. And the corollary that politics trumps beauty when it comes to art, something that's even more frightening.
Hush, Our Betters Are Speaking
It’s about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit and waking them up to reality. So says Kalle Lasn, editor of the anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters and inspiration for Occupy Wall Street. He and his OccupodPeople are slapping us around for our own good. It’s altruism, see - ...
If you donate more than a grand to the exploding duck boner fund, they'll cook you a roast duck dinner. Not to mention the USB drive filled with all the exploding duck boner porn your donation will fund. The PBS fundraising drones will have to up their game to top that!
They should market it as art instead, and charge Damien Hirst prices for it.
Friday Ephemera
Measuring explosive duck erections. Make a donation and advance science! (h/t, Jim Cambias) // The museum of the modern snowglobe. // Baby teeth and adult teeth. // Wombat in a tea cup. // Pig-shaped pork. // On eating insects. // The hazards of running shoes. // HumanForm, a flexible phone. // ...
I think the starlings of Rome video would go better with this piece of music.
Friday Ephemera
The starlings of Rome. // Surfing, Matrix-style. // This is exactly why I’ve never had a moustache. // How to relocate a sedated rhino. (h/t, Ka-Ching!) // The perpetual dilemma of Michael Moore. // Mythical injustice. // Unfolding apartment. // The interactive periodic table of swearing. // Why...
Julia:
I'd agree with that comment, but in a different way. I never got what was so romantic about the relationship between Betty Persky and Mr. Mayo Methot.
Friday Ephemera
The starlings of Rome. // Surfing, Matrix-style. // This is exactly why I’ve never had a moustache. // How to relocate a sedated rhino. (h/t, Ka-Ching!) // The perpetual dilemma of Michael Moore. // Mythical injustice. // Unfolding apartment. // The interactive periodic table of swearing. // Why...
"Free" degrees also mean, if we follow the logical road down to its conclusion, that we can force people to teach the courses.
Of course, every time people here in the States start talking about single-payer medicine, I suggest single-payer legal care, since no lawyer does anything that's worth more than minimum wage.
A Better World (2)
Another one for the pile marked passive-aggressive, from Occupy Portland. It’s a long clip but instructive, and as things progress, unpleasantly tense. I can’t help thinking it captures the, er, flavour of so much of what we’ve seen. There’s something for everyone. An ineffectual pacifist who ar...
WTF? They knock two elderly women down concrete stairs and just carry on chanting.
They should have giggled sinisterly like Tommy Udo.
Don’t Be So Mean to the Titans of Tomorrow
Julia steers us to this exchange between the Independent’s Joan Smith and pocket radical Laurie Penny. In it, Laurie tells us that what we’ve seen unfold over the last few weeks (and laughed at quite a lot) are merely the “teething problems” of a “movement that is trying to do something so profo...
I would have suggested this wine:
http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=524918
Friday Ephemera
Fly Geyser, Hualapai Valley, Nevada. (h/t, MeFi) // Superconductor sorcery. (h/t, Nick Pullar) // Those public spending cuts. // The debt crisis illustrated. // Don’t aim your laser pointer at a police helicopter. // That’s some starboard firepower. // The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault. // Ants...
Ah, I see Anna's link is to the same story as my second link, only from a different source.
I Am Radically Repeating What I Was Told
Or, I Know, Let’s Put These People in Charge. Via Kate, and further to this and this, more radical wisdom from the “occupiers,” or would-be nomenklatura. This time in Oakland, California, where ideas tend to get tangled and obligatory terms, such as “fair” and “justice,” are invariably self-serv...
From the fine folks at reason, 49% of OWS protesters think the bank bailouts were necessary:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/10/18/poll-49-of-occupy-wall-street#comments
From the potty-mouthed comments, comes the linked story that thieves are preying on the protestors:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/criminal_occupation_oh3CnKANUqYHrGPCaZaLRK
The first person quoted has a Mac stolen, which she claims is worth $5,500. I'd think that's in the top 1% of all home computers out there.
I Am Radically Repeating What I Was Told
Or, I Know, Let’s Put These People in Charge. Via Kate, and further to this and this, more radical wisdom from the “occupiers,” or would-be nomenklatura. This time in Oakland, California, where ideas tend to get tangled and obligatory terms, such as “fair” and “justice,” are invariably self-serv...
US Representative who marched for civil rights in the 60s first allowed, then disallowed, from speaking at Occupy Atlanta:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/10/10/silencing-john-lewis-is-what-d#comments
As the article says, if they want a rule preventing any elected official from speaking, that's great. But that's not what happened.
A Better World
Andrew Breitbart takes a stroll through the crowds at Occupy LA. Note that Breitbart is accused of “spreading violence” by a woman who then indignantly denies saying any such thing – despite having said it on camera - all while Breitbart is stalked by a union heavy, whose purpose, presumably, ...
Density Duck:
Barry Goldwater owned slaves??
A Better World
Andrew Breitbart takes a stroll through the crowds at Occupy LA. Note that Breitbart is accused of “spreading violence” by a woman who then indignantly denies saying any such thing – despite having said it on camera - all while Breitbart is stalked by a union heavy, whose purpose, presumably, ...
Brett Favre should have suggested he was smashing cultural taboos when he texted those photos of himself to Jenn Sterger.
Militantly Nude
Zombie pays a visit to a San Francisco “nude-in” and isn’t impressed by what he sees: Yet no matter how successful they are in smashing cultural norms, they still can’t escape the general consensus that day-to-day urban nudity has public health consequences. The nudists’ reply is that the public...
I think the film could have done with an extra hour, but I fear film-makers are becoming increasingly discouraged from testing their audience's attention span.
Funny you should say that; I'm a fan of classic cinema who thinks there's little reason why many movies can't tell their story in under two hours. Indeed, if you go back to the 1930s, there are a lot of all-time classic movies (and Oscar winners) that are even under 90 minutes. Even the multiple intertwined stories of Grand Hotel and Dinner at Eight all get resolved in 112 minutes.
Friday Ephemera
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (And previously.) // A history of invisible ink. // Manhattan in marble. (h/t, dicentra) // The Musée Dupuytren at the University of Paris medical school. // Video game in a box. // The single molecule motor. // The morality of profit. // “There are no Z-rays.” // C...
Dogs jumping rope:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtwPzyppOyY
Friday Ephemera
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (And previously.) // A history of invisible ink. // Manhattan in marble. (h/t, dicentra) // The Musée Dupuytren at the University of Paris medical school. // Video game in a box. // The single molecule motor. // The morality of profit. // “There are no Z-rays.” // C...
I don't know if this belongs here or in the "Elsewhere" thread, but here's a great example of defacing the luvvies' virtual wall in the "wrong" way:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0915/breaking36.html
Suddenly when it's done to them it's not funny. And this is only a virtual defacement.
It’s Cool When It’s Done to Other People
Being as it is the very yardstick of hip and edgy, the Guardian is once again defending criminality and antisocial behaviour. A few weeks ago, it was academic radical Alexander Vasudevan and his enthusiasm for the “seizure and reclamation” of other people’s belongings as “a potent symbol of prot...
Well, quite. And you can't help but wonder how Mr Bakare would feel about similar "solidarity" and "trenchant resistance" if it were aimed at his property, or that of his family, or were informed by some cause he doesn't find quite so congenial.
Well, I would have suggested defacing the Guardian's headquarters. Why go at one of them when you can go at all of them?
Could you imagine rioters storming the Guardian or the BBC?
It’s Cool When It’s Done to Other People
Being as it is the very yardstick of hip and edgy, the Guardian is once again defending criminality and antisocial behaviour. A few weeks ago, it was academic radical Alexander Vasudevan and his enthusiasm for the “seizure and reclamation” of other people’s belongings as “a potent symbol of prot...
More...
Subscribe to Ted S., Catskills, NY’s Recent Activity