View high resolution
A Non-Partisan Request , posted by Rob Tisinai, January 27, 2012
One small edit suggested by Lucrece in Comment 1 and this becomes PERFECT:
Replace senator with politician.
It took a relatively obscure former British academic to propagate a theory of the financial crisis that would confirm what many people suspected all along: The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame.
Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”
As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”
The gap between the United States’ rich and poor continued to grow last year, according to new government wage data. …
The [Social Security Administration] said 50 percent of workers made less than $26,364 last year — and most Americans have fewer job opportunities available to them. But the wealthiest Americans are relatively unscathed, with those earning $1 million or more jumping 18 percent from 2009. …
The average income for Americans was $39,959 last year, but the median wage was just $26,364. The SSA wrote that this shows “the distribution of workers by wage level is highly skewed,” the AP reported. …
From Democracy Now!:
The internet is increasingly becoming an echo chamber in which websites tailor information according to the preferences they detect in each viewer. When some users search the word “Egypt,” they may get the latest news about the revolution, others might only see search results about Egyptian vacations. The top 50 websites collect an average of 64 bits of personal information each time we visit—and then custom-design their sites to conform to our perceived preferences. What impact will this online filtering have on the future of democracy?
Guest:
Eli Pariser, author of the new book, ‘The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You’. He is also the board president and former executive director of MoveOn.org, which at five million members is one of the largest citizens’ organizations in American politics.
Two quotes from Pariser:
“[D]emocracy really requires this idea of discourse, of people hearing different ideas and responding to them and thinking about them. And, you know, I come back to this famous Daniel Patrick Moynihan quote where he says, you know, “Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.” It’s increasingly possible to live in an online world in which you do have your own facts. And you google “climate change,” and you get the climate change links for you, and you don’t actually get exposed necessarily — you don’t even know what the alternate arguments are.”
“[W]hat this raises is a sort of larger problem with how we tend to think about the internet, which is that we tend to think about the internet as this sort of medium where anybody can connect to anyone, it’s this very democratic medium, it’s a free-for-all, and it’s so much better than that old society with the gatekeepers that were controlling the flows of information. Really, that’s not how it’s panning out. And what we’re seeing is that a couple big companies are really — you know, most of the information is flowing through a couple big companies that are acting as the new gatekeepers. These algorithms do the same thing that the human editors do. They just do it much less visibly and with much less accountability.”
NEW YORK — “Gleeks” around the world will be able to enjoy more “Glee” with merchandise tied to the Fox hit show starting this fall.
Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products on Thursday unveiled plans for its merchandising launch for the freshman TV show at the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas. The News Corp. unit said the global licensing program will tap into key attributes of the show — music, dance, self-expression and comedy -– and focus on several categories, including video games, games, apparel, accessories and books.
“Glee has hit a high note as one of the most attractive entertainment properties in the market today and ‘Gleeks’ are embracing the show into all aspects of their lives,” said Robert Marick, executive vp of Fox Consumer Products. “The merchandise launch will allow fans to continue to engage and express themselves in ways that are core to the essence of the show.”
He said the company has held back the launch to create an event feel at retail stores.
Here’s a look at select “Glee” merchandise planned for the fall:
* Fox Consumer Products has partnered with Konami Digital Entertainment on a Wii game called “Karaoke Revolution Glee,” in which players can sing alongside their favorite “Glee” characters and perform some of the most memorable music scenes from season one.
* Griffin International will develop a “Glee” karaoke machine, boom box and other electronic devices, while Cardinal Industries will launch board games, trivia games and puzzles.
* Hallmark will launch a line of greeting cards with sound that capture the show’s humor.
* Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will launch a “Glee” publishing program in the fall with a series of “Glee” original novels and the like.
* Various partners will launch t-shirts, sweatshirts, sleepwear, headwear and other apparel, as well as bags and small leather goods.
* Holiday gift sets and back-to-school merchandise, such as branded pens, notebooks and school planners, will also be available.I have mixed feelings, though if I found a Sue Sylvester-shouting-at-whoever greeting card, it’s going straight to my LALM. But books? Really?
Do kids read?
Okay, that’s it for me. From now on, I am completely boycotting anything Glee that makes (more) money for Fox. Do NOT send card(s)!
As much as I love Sue and Kurt and all the rest of the cast, I just can’t get past that Fox logo. It really creeps me out. And now this BLATANT advertisement that reads like a well-planned money-laundering/Ponzi scheme and even boasts about their success with market manipulation. *headdesk*
Don’t fund the casino capitalists, people! Seriously. A rube is a rube is a rube, and rubes don’t win. By definition. In poker, they’re called Dead Money. At Fox, they’re called fans.
So in MY head/lizard brain, there are no mixed feelings. A Fox is a Fox is a Fox, whether it’s entertainment, advertisement, opinion, or (so-called) news, and everything Fox REEKS of evil to me. *shudder*
