January 2012
6 posts
Is Social Security Bankrupt? →
squashed:
No.
No matter how many times conservatives repeat this, it’s simply not true. The social security trust fund has about $2.6 trillion in assets. Those assets are comprised of long term, interest-bearing U.S. bonds.
Without some changes, the social security trust fund will eventually run out…due to demographic shifts. Until 2010, the money paid into the fund exceeded the money paid out...
Watch
December 2011
31 posts
Swedes are the world's best dressed people, hands...
Everyone is fashion conscious. Everyone is making a fashion statement all the time.
Christmas in Goteborg is quite an odd thing. The streets have a “roof” of lights above them, and occasionally an enormous hanging crown.
Public Christmas trees are not trees whatsoever. There is a pole from which long strings of little lights dangle down making a sort of cone of light. Then, at the...
10 Reasons Not To Vote For Ron Paul →
stfuconservatives:
readyokaygo:
1. Ron Paul does not value equal rights for minorities. Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would repeal affirmative action, keep the IRS from investigating private schools who may have used race as a factor in denying entrance, thus losing their tax exempt status, would limit the scope of Brown versus Board of Education, and would deny citizenship for those...
FINISHED
My finals! Phew. Uni is hard. I’m really really looking forward to a month off. Happy, happy, happy Max.
New word for the day: conterminous
Adjective: Sharing a common boundary.
Having the same area, context, or meaning.
There is a British energy drink called Relentless....
I think it wants me to go really hard for my last final. This drink takes no prisoners. This drink will sleep when it’s dead. This drink burns villages and salts fields. This drink adopted a scorched earth policy.
This drink would reach Moscow in winter.
This drink would cross the Alps AND conquer Rome.
This drink would succeed in taking the Dardanelles.
This drink would take France in...
I am just going to make my own half and half for...
Things I am excited about: CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA...
America
Doylestown, Doylestown
Early morning, Doylestown
Late night, Doylestown
Friends, of course
Vine and Fig Tree Bistro
Baked on Main Mac N Cheese
Starbucks in Doylestown (my Starbucks, my second home for many years)
Starbucks which has half-and-half (only 2% and skim available on this side of the Atlantic)
American accents
Soft pretzels
STORES BEING OPEN PAST 5PM
Starbucks being...
I may be the only person who has read all of those...
Travel reading
3 articles of The Economist (I’ve deliberately put off reading)
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
http://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691142165
The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History
...
Travel plans for the next month and a half- set...
Edinburgh, UK to Gothenburg, Sweden- Dec. 21
Gothenburg, Sweden to Philadelphia, USA via Munich, Germany and Toronto, Canada- Dec. 26th
Philadelphia, USA to Gothenburg, Sweden via Newark, USA and Brussels, Belgium- Jan. 4th
Gothenburgh, Sweden to Edinburgh, UK- Jan. 13th
Edinburgh, UK to Barcelona, Spain- Jan. 25th
Barcelona, Spain to Edinburgh, UK- Jan. 30th
That’s 7 countries...
Historical Nonfiction: The Seven Wonders of the... →
historical-nonfiction:
Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest one, and the tallest building in the world from 2561 BC until the early 1900s.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were built by Nebuchadnezzer II around 600 BC for his homesick wife, Amytis of Media, who missed the forests of her homeland in the desert-like…
An excerpt on the why health care should not be...
p.202, ESSENTIALS OF ECONOMICS
John Sloman, 4th Edition, Pearson Education Printing, 2007
Should health-care provision be left to the market?
A case of multiple market failures
When you go shopping you may well pay a visit to the chemist and buy some paracetamol tablets, some sticking plasters or a tube of ointment. These health-care products are being sold through the market system in much the...
My Occupy LA Arrest by Patrick Meighan
darcibastiaan:
My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” ...
“By recent information from Boston, Genl Howe is goeing to Send out a number of...”
–
Bioterrorism, 1775-style (I’m not sure this is bioterrorism. Biological warfare, certainly, but why is it terrorism in particular?)
During the seige of Boston in the early part of the American Revolution, George Washington sent this letter to Congress, dated December 4, 1775, in which he...
November 2011
58 posts
I am very happy with how that dinner turned out....
Photos to follow!
Liveblogging my first Thanksgiving dinner
So the idea here is to have some fun recording what will obviously be a mistake-prone and sophomoric turkey preparation. Enjoy!
12:30pm
Start preparation. My kitchen is very much a dorm kitchen, so I’m taking the utmost precaution against bacteria. The turkey and everything else won’t come in contact with any surface which hasn’t been washed spic and spam recently.
I’m...
2 tags
New York's expanding coastline →
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Thanksgiving...
From the FDR Library
http://fdrlibrary.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/found-in-the-archives-20/
At the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday; it was up to the President to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation to announce what date the holiday would fall on. President Abraham Lincoln had declared Thanksgiving a national holiday on the last Thursday in November...
