“So Sambo beat the bitch!” -Palin

by Charley James

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk

It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical ViewsSarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She’s doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t hers. Worse, ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant.

So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?
For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Sarah Barracuda

En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being “anti-pork”.

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert.

Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

“Sambo Beat the Bitch”

“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

“Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether.

The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

by Charley James
Charley James is an American journalist, author and essayist who lives in Toronto.
Reprinted with permission from The Progressive Curmudgeon

Thank you Joy, for bringing this article to our attention!
Kentke

Sarah Palin: Who do they think they're foolin'?

She certainly isn't Hilary.

Good friend Dedan brought our attention to a similarity with the 1970's comic book inspired TV character

Wonder Woman !

What do you think?

The saying goes, the fruit doesn't fall to far from the tree...Presenting the Palin daughter to society,

debutante Bristol~

Or as another old friend Aaliyah put it, folks overseas might think the U.S. fall line up has a new Reality TV show called

Britney Goes to the White House!!!

But no.....that's not Britney, that's Bristol....there's a new gun in town.

Bristol with baby's daddy Levi Johnston

You're right!

She ain't Chelsea either!
Already, this is looking like serious Reality TV.

Remember the lowlife (style) of the Bush twins? So far, this season we've got reruns of those scenarios, plus teenagers with a baby on the way, and an 'a' la Posse Comitatus' plot twist.
Stay tuned.

My brother Mose and his family are on the right track urging people to step into the Voter Registration Mode in a big way.

If for no other reason, than to avoid having to have your eyes and ears pestered with images of the folks I've presented here for the next four years......

Get out there and sign someone up to vote. Please.

Do Not feel good about yourself, until you have helped to register at least one person to vote in November to save us all from the greater *hell we're doomed to if we don't show up at the polls.

*greater hell: as in having to look at, listen to, be governed by people that are less developed, less intelligent and evolved, and far less wholistically focused on Being here on Earth, for the good of All Life. Yes I said it...less evolved. I mean really. A woman who's favorite sport is shooting wolves, running free in a pack, from a helicopter flying overhead......the image I've received mentally as I write this is enough to break me down into tears.

Oh God forgive her.

Kentke

Meditate on the Dark....Matter that Is.....

Dark matter is shown in blue, ordinary matter is coloured pink.

As it is above, so it is below~

The following article is deep.

Not only does it reveal new findings about deep space, but it brings to our attention new information about one of the most mysterious, unknown aspects of the Cosmic realm.....Dark Matter, and Dark Energy.

I always seek ways to relate what's happening in the Cosmos to my own little micro-Cosmic Being. And by following discoveries in the heavens, I too have discovered greater freedom, stemming from an acceleration of the expansion of my conscious awareness.

I also find this article interesting because earlier this summer I finished a book entitled, "Why Darkness Matters ~ The Power of Melanin In the Brain". Edited by Edward B. Bynum, Ph.D, Ann C. Brown, Ph.D, Richard D. King, M.D , and T. Owens Moore, Ph.D.



The book was a fascinating read about the properties of Neuromelanin. Much of the time, we hear melanin discussed in terms of skin surface melanin which is responsible for dark pigment in skin and hair cells. To quote the editors, "The importance of variable surface skin melanin in Western and European-influenced societies, and the subsequent psychodynamics of racism and color are well known and documented....Melanin as a social and skin perception experience is a complex, political and cultural phenomenon."



I really appreciate these authors for putting together a work that goes beyond the usual to explain that, "Brain or neuromelanin, however, is an altogether different phenomenon that has less to do with various human prejudices and fears, and more to do with human nervous system functioning, evolutionary unfoldment, and ultimately, (they suggest), consciousness itself."

Neuromelanin is present in all human beings, and indeed, as melanin and neuromelanin are present in higher life forms, (and the 'higher' the level of nervous system development among animals, on through the primates, the higher the amount of neuromelanin found in the cerebral structures) scientist feel that this substance that is paradoxically 'dark' but has a profound 'light' absorbing quality, plays a crucial role which is not yet fully understood, in the complex processes of life.

But not just in matters of skin color and social status, darkness has been on the short end of human understanding for far too long now. Think of the Star Wars stories, with Darth Vadar, and his issues...giving in to the 'Dark Side'. References as to the negativity of Darkness just never end in our world.

It's about time, that we begin to see the light and the Truth about this marvelous rich phenomena that is the hiding place of the Divine, the source of all Creation,..... and ......who know's what else??????

da shadow do~

Pretty heavy stuff, when you connect it with this article about Dark Matter in the Cosmos......

In the article, I've used a colored font to highlight the descriptions of Dark Matter the scientists have come up with so far.

I wonder what are the correlations that can be drawn from these studies of Dark Matter in the Cosmos? Are there prototypes, templates, influences from up above that permeate everything everywhere and beam down, filtering into our existence? Can we follow threads of intelligent pondering back out into space for explanations of similar phenomena we witness in the natural world here on Earth? How can these new insights stimulate understanding of the self that contribute to a greater relaxing into the Wholeness that is Life?

Beam me up Scotty! I'm ready to go check this out....

Afterall....we are All made of the same stuff as star dust.....

Dark Matter in the Cosmos.....Dark Matter in us~
Kentke



By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
Saturday, 30 August 2008 08:29 UK


Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic "stuff" called dark matter which makes up 23% of the Universe, yet is invisible to our eyes.

The results come from astronomical observations of a titanic collision between two clusters of galaxies 5.7 billion light-years away.

Astronomers detected the dark matter because it separated from the normal matter during the cosmic smash-up.

The research team are to publish their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.
They used the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes to study the object MACSJ0025.4-1222 - formed after an incredibly energetic collision between two large galaxy clusters.

Each of these large clusters contains about a quadrillion times the mass of our Sun.

A technique known as gravitational lensing was used to map the dark matter with Hubble.

If an observer looks at a distant galaxy and some dark matter lies in between, the light from that galaxy gets distorted. It looks as if it is being seen through lots of little lenses. And each of these lenses represents a piece of dark matter.

Astronomers used the Chandra X-ray telescope to map ordinary matter in the merging clusters, mostly in the form of hot gas, which glows brightly in X-rays.
As the two clusters that formed MACSJ0025 merged at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, hot gas in the two clusters collided and slowed down.

However, the dark matter kept on going, passing right through the smash-up.

Speeding Bullet

This phenomenon has been seen before, in a structure called the Bullet Cluster - which also formed after the collision of two large galaxy clusters. The Bullet Cluster lies closer to Earth, at a distance of 3.4 billion light-years.

"It puts to rest all the worries that the Bullet Cluster was an anomalous case. We have gone out and found another one," co-author Richard Massey, from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, told BBC News.

The study sheds light on the properties of dark matter.

The fact that dark matter does not slow down in the collision supports a view that dark matter particles interact with each other only very weakly or not at all (when one excludes their gravitational interaction).

"Dark matter makes up five times more matter in the Universe than ordinary matter," said co-author Marusa Bradac, from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).

"This study confirms that we are dealing with a very different kind of matter, unlike the matter that we are made of. And we're able to study it in a very powerful collision of two clusters of galaxies."

Larger sample

The latest astronomical observations suggest that dark matter makes up some 23% of the Universe. Ordinary matter - such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4%.

The remaining 73% is made up of another mysterious quantity; dark energy, which is responsible for speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

According to one model, dark matter

may be comprised of exotic

sub-atomic "stuff" known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS).

The Large Hadron Collider may shed further light on
dark matter.

Others hold that the dark substance consists of everyday matter, rather than some elusive sub-atomic particle. However, this ordinary matter, referred to as Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOS), happens to radiate little or no light.

A powerful physics experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, situated on the French-Swiss border, could shed further light on this question after it begins operating later this year.

Dr Massey said his team had found other candidates for colliding clusters.
"Ideally, we don't want just one or two, we want lots of these things to really study them statistically," he explained.

"Then we either use the whole lot, or pick out one 'golden bullet' which will provide the best constraints on what dark matter is."

The Hubble Space Telescope failed just after the team had taken their image of MACSJ0025, so they have not yet been able to study these other candidates.

Dr Massey said the astronomers hope to do this after the next Hubble servicing mission with the space shuttle, which is due to launch in October 2008.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Thought I was done....checked my home page, and found this for you~

Yes...more science.

And only 'High Science'.

As in The latest, the highest understanding and processes. The Universe unraveling right in your hands, what was muddy becoming clear. Right before your eyes, within your mind, thru the intelligence of your loving Heart---All so you can work your magic ~ or ~ the Magic can work thru you!

Everybody has the Magic within, so share this with your lovers of hip hop:

This ain't no jive, particle physics rap is a hit

Sep 1, 2:38 PM (ET)
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP)

Who says science doesn't turn people on? Kate McAlpine is a rising star on YouTube for her rap performance - about high-energy particle physics.
Her performance has drawn a half-million views so far on YouTube.
The 23-year-old Michigan State University graduate and science writer raps about the Large Hadron Collider, the groundbreaking particle accelerator that has been built in a 17-mile circular tunnel at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
McAlpine raps that when the collider goes into operation on Sept. 10, "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."
The $3.8 billion machine will collide two beams of protons moving at close to the speed of light so scientists can see what particles appear in the resulting debris.
"Rap and physics are culturally miles apart," McAlpine, a science writer at CERN, wrote to the Lansing State Journal in an e-mail last week, "and I find it amusing to try and throw them together."
Others, including physicists, also find it amusing.
"We love the rap, and the science is spot on," said CERN spokesman James Gillies.
McAlpine received permission to film herself and friends dancing in the caverns and tunnels where the experiments will take place.
"I have to confess that I was skeptical when Katie said she wanted to do this, but when I saw her previous science rapping and the lyrics, I was convinced," Gillies said. "I think you'll find pretty close to unanimity among physicists that it's great."
McAlpine honed her physics rapping skills at Michigan State's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, where she was part of a student research program two years ago.
---
Information from: Lansing State Journal, http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/

Science at it's best...Illuminating subtle insights that deepen our understanding and enhance our ability to exist in harmony

I offer you two interesting articles from the realm of natural science today. They are both rich with concepts for your contemplation. Have some fun and let your imagination expand and play with the possibilities that your new awareness of these latest revelations might create in your personal world.

Nature at it's Best with a twist~

I usually note instances of what I call 'Nature at It's Best' in the form of photos of animals of different species demonstrating kindness and compassion to one another. Some favorite images are those of animals nurturing the young of other species. Here's an article that focuses on how some of these traits have evolved into the human animal.

I note this because it's promising in terms of the new humans that we must become if we wish to continue to exist. The article reveals that we already possess the qualities that would make us more like our animal brothers and sisters in knowing how to share, respect and be concerned for the well being of the Homo Sapian genus of the animal kingdom.

Kids may be hardwired to 'share and share alike': study

by Marlowe Hood

Paris (AFP)

27, Aug. 2008

Humans are selfish in earliest childhood but by the age of seven or eight are keen to share equally, a developmental change so sudden that it can only be explained, at least in part, by genes, according to a study released Wednesday.

Behavioural scientists and sociologists have quarrelled for decades as to whether generosity and selfishness are inherited or result from social conditioning.

But new experiments with 229 Swiss children between the ages of three and eight suggest that Homo sapiens is probably somewhere in between: humans look out for No. 1, but also express, if not outright generosity, at least an aversion to inequality.

The study, published in the British journal Nature, could help explain how humans developed the ability to cooperate in large groups of individuals who are unrelated, the researchers say.
The children were asked to take part in three different games.

In each game, the child was confronted with two options as to how to distribute portions of jelly beans and other small sweets.

He or she was faced with another kid, shown only in a photo to avoid complications arising from face-to-face encounters.

One of the options was the same in all three games: divide the sweets equally.

In the first game, the child had the alternate option of keeping a single portion of sweets for himself and giving nothing for the other child.

In the second, more sweets were added, and the child had the option of giving the other child two portions and keeping one.

And in the third game, the child had the choice of taking two portions and leaving the other child empty-handed.

Lead researcher Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich said the three- and four-year-olds were consistently motivated by self-interest, with almost no regard for the well-being of the other. The next age bracket was almost as selfish.

"But if we look at the seven-to-eight year olds, a different picture emerges," Fehr told AFP.
In the first game, nearly 80 percent of the older kids made sure the other child got the same amount of sweets rather than none at all.

And in the last game, more than 40 percent of them refused to let the other go away with nothing even when they had the opportunity of gaining a double portion by doing so.

By comparison, less than nine percent of three- and four-year-olds were willing to do the same.
But generosity had its limits. In the second game, the older children were reluctant to let their counterpart have twice as many as themselves.

'If I can't have more,' their actions seemed to say, 'I don't see why he or she should.'

In an e-mail exchange with AFP, Fehr said the results suggest that Nature and Nurture jointly shaped behavioural responses, although the study was not designed to calculate the share of each influence.

"I think that both genes and culture play a role," Fehr said. The results, he added, suggest that "social norms of equality can come into being even without extended forms of cultural transmission."

"Nobody would dispute that the sexual maturation of children is driven by biology and genes, so why should other phenotypes -- like those associated with fairness behaviour -- not also be driven by biology and genes?", he asked rhetorically.

At least one result was unexpected, said Fehr: children with no siblings were more, rather than less, generous.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

Don't think all viruses are bad

It's a pretty common thing to look upon a virus as something negative that you don't want to be infected with. Whether it's dealing with our bodies, or one's favorite tool of staying in touch with the world --- the computer --- we do everything we can to thwart the 'attack' of a virus in our system. Check out this article to get a more balanced view of these living organisms.

We cling to many perceptions about Life and our existence, but like Sammy sang in the character of Sportin' Life, in Porgy and Bess...."it ain't necessarily so....."

Viruses are hidden drivers of ocean's nutrient cycle

PARIS (AFP)
27, Aug. 2008

Scientists on Wednesday said they had discovered deep-sea viruses to be an unexpectedly potent driver of the so-called carbon cycle that sustains oceanic life and helps dampen global warming.

Under the carbon cycle, microscopic algae at the sea surface suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Many of these microscopic creatures, called prokaryotes, become infected by naturally-occurring marine viruses.

When they die, their carbon-rich remains gently sink to lower depths, where they are then cannibalistically gobbled up by other bacteria.

These prokaryotes in turn become a meal for a larger life form and so on, up the food chain.
Researchers long ago grasped that viruses on the sea surface play a Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde role, killing biomass while at the same time sustaining it.

Now, though, evidence has emerged that these tiny bacterial pathogens also carry out unsung work at the ocean depths -- a dark, inhospitable, nutrient-poor place that counts as last great unexplored ecosystem on the planet.

Marine scientists led by Roberto Danovaro of Italy's Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona sifted through samples of sediment hauled up from scores of sites from around the world, at depths ranging from 183 metres (595 feet) to a bone-crushing 4,603 metres (14,959 feet).
Team member Antonio Dell'Anno said the virus count was astonishingly high.

"We found surprising results," he told AFP in an interview.
"In the deep ocean, there is a strong interaction between viruses and prokaryotes, which helps sustain the deep-sea ecosystems independently of the nutrient inputs coming from the surface waters.
"It's a sort of self-sustaining mechanism, helping the ocean depths to overcome severe nutrient limitations."

The virus work has "huge implications" for understanding the ocean carbon cycle, he said.
It not only helps to sustain life at great depths, he said.

Beyond 1,000 metres (3,250 feet) or so, prokaryotes account for 90 percent of the total biomass.

Humans are among the indirect beneficiaries of the process, because the abyssal nutrients help sustain the seafood that ends up on our plates.

Another big question is what role viruses may play in the complex arithmetic of global warming.

The sea absorbs billions of tonnes of atmospheric CO2 each year, thus acting as a cushion for man-made emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The carbon detritus from prokaryotes killed by viruses on the ocean floor is mostly respired thus not effectively stored there forever.
Viruses are by far the most abundant "life form" in the oceans, according to the study, which appears in Thursday's issue of Nature, the London-based science weekly.

They number roughly 4 X 10 to the power of 30 -- a four following by 30 zeroes.
Globally, as much as 630 million tonnes of carbon are taken up each year by "viral shunt," when the remains of one microscopic organism, which has been killed by a virus, are later snapped up by another one.

Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse.

Yep.....that's your President.......

.....yes America.....that's your face in the world.

Keep your head to the sky

This photo, released by NASA and the European Space Agency to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery.

Master told me one day
I'd find peace in every way,
but in search for the clue
wrong things I was bound to do.

Keep my head to the sky
for the clouds to tell me why.
As I grew with strength
Master kept me as I repent.

Keep your head to the sky
Keep your head to the sky

Gave me the will to be free
purpose to live His reality.
Found myself never alone
changes come to make me strong.

Step right up, be a man
You need faith to understand
so we're saying for you to hear
Keep your head in faith's atmosphere...

Keep your head to the sky
Keep your head to the sky

Earth, Wind and Fire

Scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, (image above), on Sunday,Aug.10, 2008.

The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies.

In this representative color image, red shows emission from sulphur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

(AP Photo/NASA-ESA)

Jesse goes Nuts!!!

Turn up the volume, and pay close attention at the beginning:
http://www.236.com/video/2008/jesee_jackson_goes_nuts_7668.php

Behavioral Economics 101~Economists and psychologists team up to deepen their understanding of how to get your dollar.

I'm bringing you the latest goings on over at EDGE, a website I subscribe to just to keep my former intellectual ideal of myself from being completely starved into oblivion. These people consider themselves on the cutting edge of everything.

Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.
The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

I particularly like to follow the articles and doings of their "Third Culture". You can read their full description of what's meant by Third Culture here: http://www.edge.org/about_edge.html

but a summary of the concept reads:

The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.

Now all of this is coming from a group of Americans whose cultural base is a European Western civilization perspective. That's very important to keep in mind. Everyone does not think like these folks do. But it's important to know how and what they are thinking, as most of them occupy powerful and influential positions in both society and their respective fields. For that reason....I like to know what's on their minds.

And I think you should know also.

On this blog, I spend a lot of time encouraging you to know and listen to the intelligence of your own Heart. If you've been practicing that, by now you might have experienced that often times, doing so, can place one in opposition to the 'powers that be'. Maybe even in conflict with one of the policies of one of these guys that are a member of the mind set of EDGE members. Knowing what they base their thinking on, and how they come up with their decisions, plans and solutions can be quite fascinating, and really a revelation.

I have friends that think that there those that launch conspiracies and actual plots to undermine, subvert,oppress and destroy certain groups, and the freedoms and activities of segments of the population. Paying attention over the years, I've come to believe that we're giving these Devious Entities way more credit than they deserve.

I've come to believe that they're not smart enough to actually concoct the schemes that we might think they are behind. I think that they're actually just blundering their way through the World....stupid, blind, ignorant, greedy, and basically very deeply hurt and sick psyches. They represent humanity in 'arrested development' so they are perpetually immature, and act this out on a global playground.

For various reasons, they are disconnected from a deep feeling of connectedness to All of Life. So instead of relying upon the Love and Intelligence of the Heart, they push their center of consciousness up in to brain, and thus, they like to THINK. Alot.

And the thinking goes on and on and on. And they like to just think up stuff. Abstract reasoning and rationalsim. To quote, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, " Since the Middle Ages, our Occident (Western culture) has been blinded, particularly by the cerebration of the Greek Eleatics who preferred reasoning to experimentation. The beginning of this disquieting period of 'argurers' can be situated with the Eleatic school around 550 or 500 B.C."

He goes on "No sooner had a doctrine seen the light of day than a rejoinder was being born, either a contradiction or an extolling of the idea expressed. To contradict, and to argue, have always been part of the intelligent and subtle temperment of the Greek".

I include this, because the people that live from the Third Culture mentality, and those that I spoke of that produced that tasteless cover of 'The New Yorker Magazine' featuring the Obamas, are all the descendants of Western intellectualism that began with Greek philosophers.

The sad part is that the philosphical and intellectual system the world operates upon today is a deviation of the teachings Greek students ~later to be know as 'philosophers' received in the temples in Egypt. DEVIATION is the key word in that sentence.

De Lubicz said that the Greeks "searched for answers that reason could accept". The problem was, they were dealing with trying to understand levels of Life, that don't fit within rational terms. And here is where one of the first major deviations in man's wholesome thinking date from: They (the Greeks) attributed a physical character to metaphysical principles.

Now don't give up on me....I'm not trying to loose you here. I'm telling you all of this so that you can understand that many of the ideals, concepts and ways which we've been programmed to live and see our world by, conflict with what 'our inner truth' tells us, because they are out of alignment with an organic understanding and ordering of the flow of Life.

I'm suggesting that one's tinge or roar of inner rebellion, is one's innate reaction to these critical deviations in fundamental understandings about how Life works that were suffered long ago. These misunderstandings were allowed to go uncorrected, and thus, continue, flourish and proliferate. Right up to today, where we actually have a President with the intellectual capacity of George W. Bush. And groups like EDGE's Third Culture, quite full of themselves, are on top of the world, influencing society, directing and naming the flow of human civilization.

Okay....I'll get back to the point.

And that is that I want you to check out how these folks are thinking about economics. I'm directing you to a conference they just had where the keynote speakers discussed Behavioral Economics. New to me, but this is something that's been a topic for some time. So if you're loosing your home, or now earning minimum wage because Arnold is your Governor, then I want you to understand where the thinking for the policies that allow you to be in those circumstances stems from.

Because as I said.....these guys....and they are 99.9% men....are simply wingin' it. Just making up stuff....They ain't got a clue. And that's why everything is a mess. But look at the names and the companies in attendance. There's genius present yes. Just notice how it's being directed.

Now. Once you understand this, I'm counting on you to join me in opening yourself up to receive BETTER IDEAS from Cosmic Consciousness, for the needs of our world. DIVINE IDEAS, captured in your meditation and contemplation of the moment. The solutions will come from within YOU.

Not in an economic stimulus of $600. They will be organic, expressions of God/Allah/Cosmic Consciousness/Enlightenment simply Being the Divine Operation. A quote that I've claimed daily is from Judge Thomas Troward. He declares ,"The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth". You and I are those centers of such Divine Operation.

So Beloveds, check out the reports from this conference and acquire the information you need to understand how those that have made our world what it is, are thinking. There are some interesting and stimulating ideas presented. You can clearly get a glimpse into the minds of those whose purpose in life is to manipulate you for their ends and needs. And unfortunately, that is usually to add to their or someone else's profit margin.

Do remember, what the Prophet Bob said,

"They made their world so hard

Every day we got to keep on fighting

They made their world so hard

Every day the people are dying".

Bob knew, ...and he was telling us that this ain't the way it's supposed to be. Let me know what you get out of this. You're the best and the brightest on the planet.

Kentke

Click on the links and explore the website for more info.

"Retreating to the luxury of Sonoma to discuss economic theory in mid-2008 conveys images of Fiddling while Rome Burns. Do the architects of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, PayPal, and Facebook have anything to teach the behavioral economists—and anything to learn? So what? What's new?? As it turns out, all kinds of things are new. Entirely new economic structures and pathways have come into existence in the past few years." —George Dyson

A SHORT COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS Edge Master Class 08

By Richard Thaler, Sendhil Mullainathan, Daniel KahnemanGaige House, Glen Ellen, CA,
July 25-27, 2008

AN EDGE SPECIAL PROJECT
RICHARD H. THALER is considered to be one of the founders of behavioral economics—the study of how thinking and emotions affect individual economic decisions and the behavior of markets. He investigates the implications of relaxing the standard economic assumption that everyone in the economy is rational and selfish, instead entertaining the possibility that some of the agents in the economy are sometimes human. Thaler is Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is coauthor (with Cass Sunstein) of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
Richard Thaler's Edge Bio Page


SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN, a Professor of Economics at Harvard, is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and conducts research on development economics, behavioral economics, and corporate finance. His work concerns creating a psychology of people to improve poverty alleviation programs in developing countries. He Executive Director of Ideas 42, Institute of Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University.
Sendhil Mullainathan's Edge Bio Page


DANIEL KAHNEMAN is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Princeton University, and Professor of Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.
Daniel Kahneman's Edge Bio Page


ATTENDEES: Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com; John Brockman, Edge Foundation, Inc.; Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc.; George Dyson, Science Historian; Author, Darwin Among the Machines; W. Daniel Hillis, Computer Scientist; Cofounder, Applied Minds; Author, The Pattern on the Stone; Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist; Nobel Laureate, Princeton University; Salar Kamangar, Google; France LeClerc; Katinka Matson, Edge Foundation, Inc.; Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Economics, Harvard University; Executive Director, Ideas 42, Institute of Quantitative Social Science; Elon Musk, Physicist; Founder, Telsa Motors, SpaceX; Nathan Myhrvold, Physicist; Founder, Intellectual Venture, LLC; Event Photographer; Sean Parker, The Founders Fund; Cofounder: Napster, Plaxo, Facebook; Paul Romer, Economist, Stanford; Richard Thaler, Behavioral Economist, Director of the Center for Decision Research, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; coauthor of Nudge; Anne Treisman, Psychologist, Princeton University; Evan Williams, Founder, Blogger, Twitter


INTRODUCTION
This edition of Edge is a prelimanary report of tne second annual Edge "Master Class," which occured July 25-27 in Sonoma, which was followed on July 28th by a San Francisco dinner.
Below we present a summary of the Master Class by Nathan Myhrvold (Day 1) and George Dyson (Day 2) as well as some spirited exchanges among the attendees regarding the reports. Also, you will find the photo galleries of both the Master Class and the dinner.


A year ago, Edge convened the first "Master Class" in which psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman taught a 9-hour course on "Thinking About Thinking". Among the attendees were a "who's who" of the new global business culture. This year, to continue this discussion, Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, one of the fathers of Behavioral Economics, and Sendhil Mullinaithan, a brilliant young Harvard economist, along with Daniel Kahneman taught an intensive 9-hour course on behavioral economics.

[See Edge Master Class 07; "Thinking About Thinking";

Indeed, as one distinguished European visitor noted, the weekend involved "a remarkable gathering of outstanding minds. These are the people that are rewriting our global culture."
The Master Class is the most recent iteration of Edge's development. which began its activities under than name "The Reality Club" in 1981. Edge is different from The Algonquin, The Apostles, The Bloomsbury Group, or The Club, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. The closest resemblances are to the early seventeenth-century Invisible College, a precursor to the Royal Society, whose members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Another, perhaps, more apt example, is the nineteenth-century Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age — James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, Benjamin Franklin.

In a similar fashion, Edge, through it's "Master Classes" is attempting to gather together those intellectuals and technology pioneers who are exploring the themes of the post-industrial Internet age.

In the coming weeks, Edge will publish the proceedings of ths year's Master Class, including streaming video and edited transcripts

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler_sendhil08/thaler_sendhil08.html



A SHORT COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICSEdge Master Class 08 By Richard Thaler, Sendhil Mullainathan, Daniel KahnemanGaige House, Glen Ellen, CA, July 25-27, 2008



Look, this is science. Belief isn't an option. —Daniel Kahneman

FIRST DAY REPORT—EDGE MASTER CLASS 08 [7.26.08]
By Nathan Myhrvold
DR. NATHAN MYHRVOLD is CEO and managing director of Intellectual Ventures, a private entrepreneurial firm. Before Intellectual Ventures, Dr. Myhrvold spent 14 years at Microsoft Corporation. In addition to working directly for Bill Gates, he founded Microsoft Research and served as Chief Technology Officer.
Nathan Myhrvold's Edge Bio Page


The recent Edge event on behavioral economics was a great success. Here is a report on the first day.

Over the course of the last few years we've been treated to quite a few expositions of behavioral economics—probably a dozen popular books seek to explain some aspect of the field. This isn't the place for a full summary but the gist is pretty simple. Classical economics has studied a society of creatures that Richard Thaler, an economist at University of Chicago dubs the "Econ". Econs are rather superhuman in some ways—they do everything by optimizing utility functions, paragons of bounded rationality. Behavioral economics is about understanding how real live Humans differ from Econs.In previous reading, and an Edge event last year I learned the most prominent differences between Econs and Humans. Humans, as it turns out, are not always bounded rational—they can be downright irrational. Thaler likes to say that Humans are like Homer Simpson, Econs are like Mr Spock. This is a great start, but to have any substance in economics one has to understand that in the context of economic situations. Humans make a number of systematic deviations from the Econ ideal, and behavioral economics has categorized a few of these. So, for example, we humans fear loss more than we love gain.

Humans care about how a question is put to them—propositions which an Econ would instantly recognize as mathematically equivalent seem different to Humans and they behave differently.

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate for his work in behavioral economics told us about priming—how a subtle influence radically shifts how people act. So, in one experiment people are asked to fill out a survey. In the corner of the room is a computer, with a screen saver running. That's it—nothing overt, just a background image in the room. If the screen saver shows pictures of money, the survey answers are radically different. Danny went through example after example like this where occurred. The first impulse one has in hearing this is no, this can't be the case. People can't be that easily and subconsciously influenced. You don't want to believe it. But Danny in his professorial way says "Look, this is science. Belief isn't an option". Repeated randomized trials confirm the results. Get over it.

The second impression is perhaps even more surprising—the influences are quite predictable. Show people images of money, and they tend to be more selfish and less willing to help others. Make people plot points on graph paper that are far apart, and they act more distant in lots of way. Make them plot points that are close together, and damned if they don't act closer. Again, it seems absurd, but cheap metaphors capture our minds. Humans, it seems, are like drunken poets, who can't glimpse a screen saver in the corner, or plot some points on graph paper without swooning under the metaphorical load and going off on tangents these stray images inspire.

This is all very strange, but is it important? The analogy that seems most apt to me is optical illusions. An earlier generation of psychologists got very excited about how the low level visual processing in our brains is hardwired to produce paradoxical results.


The priming stories seem to me to be the symbolic and metaphorical equivalent. The priming metaphors in optical illusions are the context of the image—the extra lines or arrows that fool us into making errors in judgment of sizes or shapes. While one can learn to recognize optical illusions, you can't help but see the effect for what it is. Knowing the trick does not lessen its intuitive impact. You really cannot help but think one line is longer, even if you know that the trick will be revealed in a moment.I wonder how closely this analogy carries over. Danny said today that you can't avoid priming; if he is right perhaps the analogy is close. Perhaps not.I also can't help but wonder how important these effects are to thinking and decision making in general.

After the early excitement about optical illusions, they have retreated from prominence—they explain a few cute things in vision, but they are only important in very artificial cases. Yes, there are a few cases where product design, architecture and other visual design problems are impacted by optical illusions, but very very few. In most cases the visual context is not misleading. So, while it offers an interesting clue to how visual processing works, it is a rare special case that has little practical importance.

Perhaps the same thing is true here—the point of these psychological experiments, like the illusions, is to isolate an effect in a very artificial circumstance. This is a great way to get a clue about how the brain works (indeed it would seem akin to Steven Pinker's latest work The Stuff of Thought which argues for the importance of metaphors in the brain).

But is it really important to day-to-day real world thinking? In particular, can economics be informed by these experiments? Does behavioral economics produce a systematically different result that classical economics if these ideas are factored in?I can imagine it both ways. If it is important, then we are all at sea, tossed and turned in a tumultuous tide of metaphors imposed by our context. That is a very strange world—totally counter to our intuition. But maybe that is reality.

Or, I could equally imagine that it only matters in cases where you create a very artificial experiment—in effect, turning up the volume on the noise in the thought process. In more realistic contexts the signal trumps the noise. The truth is likely some linear combination of these two extreme—but what combination? There are some great experiments yet to be done to nail that down.

Dick Thaler gave a fascinating talk that tries to apply these ideas in a very practical way. There is an old debate in economics about the right way to regulate society. Libertarians would say don't try—the harm in reducing choice is worse than the benefit, in part because of unintended consequences, but mostly because the market will reach the right equilibrium. Marxist economists, at the other extreme, took it for granted that one needs a dictatorship of the proletariat—choice is not an option, at least for the populace.

Thaler has a new creation—a concept he calls "libertarian paternalism" which tries to split the baby. The core idea (treated fully in his book Nudge) is pretty simple—present plenty of options, but then encourage certain outcomes by using behavioral economics concepts to stack the deck. A classic example is the difference between opt-in and opt-out in a program such as organ donation. If you tell people that they can opt-in to donating their organs if they are killed, a few will feel strongly enough to do it—most people won't. If you switch that to opt-out the reverse happens—very few people opt out. Changing the "choice architecture" that people have, changes choices. This is not going to work on people who feel strongly, but the majority don't really care and can be pushed in one direction or another by choice architecture.

A better example is a program called "save more tomorrow" (SMT), for 401K plans in companies. People generally don't save very much. So, the "save more tomorrow" program lets you decide up front to save a greater portion of promotions and raises. You are not cutting into today's income (to which you feel you are entitled to spend) but rather you are pre-allocating a future windfall. Seems pretty simple but there are dramatic increases in savings rates when it is instituted.

Dick came to the session loaded for bear, expecting the objections of classical economics. Apparently this is all very controversial among economists and policy wonks. It struck me as very clever, but once explained, very obvious. Of course you can put some spin on the ball and nudge people the right way using to achieve a policy effect. It's called marketing when you do this in business, and it certainly can matter. In the world of policy wonk economists this may be controversial, but it wasn't to me.

An interesting connection with the discussion of priming experiments is that many policy contexts are highly artificial—very much like experiments. Filling out a driver's license form is a kind of questionnaire, and the organ donation scenario seems very remote to most people despite the fact that they're making a binding choice rather than . So the mechanics of opt-in versus opt-out or required choice could matter a lot in these contexts.


Dick has a bunch of other interesting ideas. One of them is to require that government disclosures on things like cell phone plans, or credit card statements be machine readable disclosure with a standard schema. This would allow web sites to offer automated comparisons, and other tools to help people understand the complexities. This is a fascinating idea that could have a lot of merit. Dick is, from my perspective, a bit over optimistic in some ways—it is unclear that it will be overwhelming.

An example is unit prices in grocery stores—those little labels on store shelves that tell you that Progesso canned tomatoes are 57 cents per pound, while the store brand is 43. Consumer advocates thought these would revolutionize consumer behavior—and perhaps they did in some limited ways. But premium brands didn't disappear. I also differ on another point—must this be required by government, and would it be incorruptible were it so mandated.

In the world of technology most standards are de facto, rather than de juris, and are driven by private owners (companies or private sector standards bodies), because the creation and maintenance of a standard is a dynamic balancing act—not a static one. I think that many of the disclosure standards he seeks would be better done this way. Conversely, a government mandate disclosure standard might become so ossified by changing slowly that it did not achieve the right result. Nevertheless, this is a small point compared to the main idea which is that machine readable disclosures with standardized schema allow third party analysis and enables a degree of competition that would harder to achieve by other means.


Sendhil Mullainathan gave a fascinating talk about applying behavior economics to understand poverty. If this succeeds (it is a work in progress) it would be extremely important.He showed a bunch of data on itinerant fruit vendors (all women) in India. 69% of them are constantly in debt to money lenders who charge 5% per day interest. The fruit ladies make 10% per day profit, so half their income goes to the money lender. They also typically buy a couple cups of tea per day. Sendhil shows that 1 cup of tea per day less would let them be debt free in 30 days, doubling their income. 31% of these women have figured that out, so it is not impossible.


Why don't the rest get there? Sendhil then showed a bunch of other data arguing that poor people—even those in the US (who are vastly richer in absolute scale than his Indian fruit vendors)—do similar things with how they spend food stamps, or use of payday loans. He was very deliberate at drawing this out, until I finally couldn't stand it and blurted out "you're saying that they all have high discount rate". His argument is that under scarcity there is a systematic effect that you put the discount rate way too high for your own good. With too high a discount rate, you spend for the moment, not for the future. So, you have a cup a tea rather than double your income.He is testing this with an amazing experiment. What would these women do if they could escape the "debt trap"?

Bono, Jeffery Sachs and others have argued this point for poor nations—this is the individual version of the proposition.Sendhil is studying 1000 of these fruit vendors (all women). Their total debt is typically $25 each, so he is just stepping in and paying off the debt for 500 of them! The question is then to see how many of them revert to being in debt over time, versus the 500 who are studied, but do not have their debt paid off. The experiment is underway and he has no idea what the result will be.The interesting thing here is that, for these people, one can do a meaningful experiment (N = 500 gives good statistics) without much money in absolute. It would be hard to do this experiment with debt relief for poor nations, or even the US poor, but in India you can do serious field experiments for little money.

Sendhil also has an amusing argument, which is that very busy people are exactly like these poor fruit vendors. If you have very little time, it is scarce and you are as time-poor as the fruit ladies are cash-poor. So, you act like there is a high discount—and you commit to future events—like agreeing to travel and give a talk. Then as the time approaches, you tend to regret it and ask "why did I agree to this?". So you act like there is a high discount rate. This got everybody laughing.

The difference here is that time can't be banked or borrowed, so it is unclear to me how close an analogy it is, but it was interesting nonetheless.Indeed, I almost cancelled my attendance at this event right before hand, thinking "why did I agree to this? I don't have the time!". After much wrestling I decided I could attend the first day, but no more. Well, this is one of those times when having the "wrong" discount rate is in your favor. I'm very glad I attended.
Nathan



There's new technology emerging from behavioral economics and we are just starting to make use of that. I thought the input of psychology into economics was finished but clearly it's not! —Daniel Kahneman [7.27.08]
SECOND DAY REPORT—EDGE MASTER CLASS 08 [7.27.08]
By George Dyson
GEORGE DYSON, a historian among futurists, is the author Baidarka; Project Orion; and Darwin Among the Machines.
George Dyson's Edge Bio Page


The weekend master class on behavioral economics was productive in unexpected ways, and a lot of good ideas and thoughts about implementing them were exchanged.


Day 2 (Sunday) opened with a session led by Sendhil Mullainathan, followed by a final wrap-up discussion before we adjourned at noon. Elon Musk, Evan Williams, and Nathan Myhrvold had departed early. In the absence of Nathan's high-resolution record, a brief summary, with editorial comments, is given here.


"I refuse to accept however, the stupidity of the Stock Exchange boys, as an explanation of the trend of stocks," wrote John von Neumann to Stanislaw Ulam, on December 9, 1939. "Those boys are stupid alright, but there must be an explanation of what happens, which makes no use of this fact." This question led von Neumann (with the help of Oskar Morgenstern) to his monumental Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, a precise mathematical structure demonstrating that a reliable economy can be constructed out of unreliable parts.


The von Neumann and Morgenstern approach (developed further by von Neumann's subsequent Probabilistic Logics and the Synthesis of Reliable Organisms From Unreliable Components) assumes that human unreliability and irrationality (by no means excluded from their model) will, in the aggregate, be filtered out. In the real world, however, irrational behavior (including the "stupidity of the stock exchange boys") is not completely filtered out. Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Sendhil Mullainathan, and their colleagues are developing an updated theory of games and economic behavior that does make use of this fact.


Sendhil Mullainathan opened the first hour, on the subject of scarcity, by repeating the first day's question: what is it that prevents the fruit vendors (who borrow their working capital daily at high interest) from saving their way out of recurring debt? According to Sendhil, many vendors do manage to escape, but a core group remain trapped.


Sendhil shows a graph with $$ on the X-axis and Temptation on the Y-axis. The curve starts out flat and then ascends steeply upward before leveling off. The dangerous area is the steep slope when a person begins to acquire disposable income and meets rapidly increasing temptations.

"To understand the behavior you have to understand the scale." Thaler interjects: "It's a mental accounting problem—but I think everything is a mental accounting problem." All human beings are subject to temptation, but the consequences are higher for the poor. Conclusion: temptation is a regressive tax.

Paul Romer notes that the temptation of time is a progressive tax, since time, unlike money, is evenly distributed, and wealthy people, no matter how well supplied with money, believe they have less spare time. Bottom line: the effects of temptation do not scale with income.


How best to intervene? Daniel Kahneman notes: "Some cultures have solved that problem... there seems to be a cultural solution." Sendhil, whose field research may soon have some answers, believes that lending at lower interest rates may help but will not solve the problem, and adds: "It would be better for the microfinanciers to come in and offer money at the same rate as the existing lenders, and then make the payoff in some other ways." The problem is the chronic effects of poverty, not the lending institutions (or lack thereof).


Sendhil moves the discussion to the subject of "depletion"—when judgment deteriorates due to the effects of stress. Clinical studies and real-world examples are described. Mental depletion correlates strongly with high serum cortisol (measurable in urine) and low glucose. Poverty produces chronic depletion, and decisions are impaired. High-value decisions are made under conditions of high stress. This results in what Sendhil terms the scarcity trap.


During the mid-morning break (with cookies), Richard Thaler shows videos from a 40-year-old study (Walter Mischel, 1973) of children offered one cookie now or two if they wait. The observed behavior correlates strongly, by almost any measure, with both the economic success of the parents and the child's future success. Hypothesis: small behavioral shifts might produce (or "nudge") large economic results.


After the break we begin to wrap things up. Richard Thaler suggests a "nudge" model of the world. The same way a digital camera has both an "expert mode" and an "idiot mode," what the economy needs is an "idiot mode" resistant to experts making mistakes.

Thaler notes that Government is really bad at building systems that can be operated in "idiot mode"—just compare private-sector websites vs. public-sector. Imagine if the Government had designed the user interface for Amazon!


Sendhil makes a final comment that elicits agreement all around: "R&D in the poverty space has huge potential returns and there is too little thinking about that."


Daniel Kahneman concludes: "There's new technology emerging from Behavioral Economics and we are just starting to make use of that. I thought the input of psychology into economics was finished but clearly it's not!" The meeting adjourns.


My personal conclusions: retreating to the luxury of Sonoma to discuss economic theory in mid-2008 conveys images of Fiddling while Rome Burns. Do the architects of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, PayPal, and Facebook have anything to teach the behavioral economists—and anything to learn? So what? What's new?? As it turns out, all kinds of things are new. Entirely new economic structures and pathways have come into existence in the past few years. More wealth is flowing ever more quickly, and can be monitored and influenced in real time. Models can be connected directly to the real world (for instance, Sendhil's field experiment, using real money to remove real debt, observing the results over time). The challenge is how to extend the current economic redistribution as efficiently (and beneficently) as possible to the less wealthy as well as the more wealthy of the world.


A time of misguided economic decisions, while bad for many of us, is a good time for behavioral economics. As Abraham Flexner argued (26 September 1931) when urging the inclusion of a School of Economics at the founding of the Institute for Advanced Study: "The plague is upon us, and one cannot well study plagues after they have run their course." All the more so amidst the plagues of 2008.


It was Louis Bamberger's wish (23 April 1934), upon granting Abraham Flexner's request, that "the School of Economics and Politics may contribute not only to a knowledge of these subjects but ultimately to the cause of social justice which we have deeply at heart."
George Dyson


ON "A SHORT COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS"
W. Daniel Hillis, Daniel Kahneman, Nathan Myhrvold, Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahneman, Nathan Myhrvold, NEW Daniel Kahneman, NEW Nathan Myhrvold
...
John Brockman, Editor and PublisherRussell Weinberger, Associate Publishermailto:editor@edge.orgCopyright © 2008 By Edge Foundation, IncAll Rights Reserved.
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Juice!

More Human Waste~ You old bag you!

If the pictures of our plastic cups didn't move you to think deeper about our ways of Being in the world, click on the link for another very graphic tale of the effects of human waste not just on the environment, but on other species that have a right to a clean habitat for their survival.

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/MULTIMEDIA02/80505016

Human Waste ~ Picturing Excess

Click on this link for a shocking presentation by artist Chris Jordan whose work shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images help us picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html