It’s rare, but once in a while you feel vindicated for the bad habit of keeping old newspapers around to catch up. This very good piece by Lee Siegel was worth it. It weaves economic, political and social theories to provide a 30,000 foot view of the sense and senselessness of unifying and decoding humankind’s journey.
Jon Stewart’s interview of Jim Cramer earlier tonight was a stunning indictment of the financial sector, the insider chicaneries of Wall Street, the complicity of financial networks like CNBC, and the overall sad state of affairs of corporate America. See art.
It is scary that the best reporting out there comes from a comedy show, while regular networks and publications have effectively sold out to corporate sponsors. One starts sounding like a conspiracy theorist or left wing radical, but when you listen to this stuff, it confirms some of the scarier theories! Just like you are not paranoid if you really are being followed, so too is the case that you are not wrong to suspect Wall Street’s transparency and integrity and to assume insiders are rigging it against ordinary investors.
Here are a couple of samples of good reporting:
On the subway this morning, a homeless man sat in a corner quietly scribbling notes on a newspaper, with all his belongings next to him.
No one else sat in that section of the subway.
The rest of the subway car was reasonably full. But there was an invisible line that kept newcomers from seating near the homeless man.
Was it out of respect that people gave him his space, recognizing this was his temporary home?
Or was it out of fear, repulsion or alienation?
How would you have approached it?
Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos
Here is a tidbit that Tom Pickering, the ultimate American Diplomat and member of the PeaceWorks Foundation’s Honorary Board, shared with me last time I met him:
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is like riding a bike: if you are not going forward, you are falling down.
Government changes every 2-4-8 years in democracies. In dictatorships,
it changes every two to four (or even eight) decades.
Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos
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Tom Friedman wrote a provocative article about how we have been living our lives and running our economy at the expense of the next generations – and how the environment and the planet will not bail us out.
Peter Thum, the co-founder of Ethos Water (later sold to Starbucks) and I had a conversation a couple weeks along these lines – about how successful new business models will strive to ensure retail, food, entertainment gifts and consumption are sustainable.
The advent of the internet and related electronic worlds and virtual worlds could theoretically provide some clues here – except for the sobering fact that a lot of these seemingly cost-free worlds and avatars actually cost a ton in terms of energy/electricity, storage, etc. Whoever decodes this will make a huge contribution…
Bill Mahr’s documentary about the excesses and idiocies of organized religion was not exhaustive.
The Vatican recently excommunicated the Mother and Doctors of a 9 year old who had been raped and received an abortion. The doctors "fear[ed] that the 80-pound girl would not survive a full-term pregnancy".
But that was apparently not enough suffering to this family. The regional archbishop deemed it prudent to also humiliate and intimidate this deeply Catholic family with excommunication.
from baby Romy… …as we were getting him ready for his bath…
I was giving him a bunch of kisses and he started imitating me and giving me kisses and smiling!
His kisses involve some licking – but give him some time – he is learning!
Thank goodness Ben Stein is an independent thinker who can elucidate why exuberant enthusiasm over a cap-and-trade system is misguided and dangerous. I am afraid we are condemned to this inefficient dreamed artifice, whereas straight taxation of emissions would be far more effective.