Before you dash out to frantically buy gifts, read this essay “Put Your Brain and Your Money to Better Use Than Thoughtless Gift-Giving This Christmas” by Jill Richardson on being appropriate. Do you buy a Christmas gift for a Jewish friend?
My goddaughter Shayla is an superb dancer and sometimes I play that Dance video game with her. There is never really a loser when you dance with someone you love, but Shayla is definitely the winner when it comes to moving to the beat. … Read the rest
Today Geoff shares this “Last Letter” written by Tomas Young to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq.… Read the rest
Editors’ Note: It was twenty-five years ago today that John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota building on Central Park West in New York City. We doubt many CounterPunchers have read the following 1971 interview with Lennon done by CounterPunchers TARIQ ALI and Robin Blackburn.
Besides a disregard for the environment, or people and animals destroyed by the oil spills, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports big oil is number one when it comes to taking bribes. Here are some details from Common Dreams:
Large multinational corporations are behind the majority of documented bribes worldwide, with most payers and takers hailing from rich nations, according to a study released Tuesday by the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).… Read the rest
+Wow. This is a madcap romp through the favorite songs of 2014 featuring many of the most popular YouTube personalities including John Green and his brother What’s His Name, The Pentatonics, Bark Baker, and lots of other superstars of the streamwaves. … Read the rest
New research from Symantec shows that government spy technology called Regin infiltrate s the computers of small businesses and individuals using a Microsoft “back door” – or would that be back “window”?
The global Regin “hit list” belies the intelligence agencies’ claims that their spying is limited to missions of national security.… Read the rest
Rich with solar energy, Florida could be basking in the sun, but our policies do not embrace this vision. Instead, solar rebates and efficiency goals have been axed by the Public Service Commission.
Katie Valentine writes about this in ThinkProgress:
Florida’s Public Service Commission voted last week to cut energy efficiency targets for power companies and to do away with a solar rebate program in the state, decisions that served to scale back the state’s already paltry efforts in renewable energy.… Read the rest
The ancients said every experience leaves a residual element in our mind, and modern neuroscience agrees. Here is more from The Vedanta Center about such “samskaras” and the yoga techniques developed to help you manage this:
The “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” constitute the most important and the fundamental work on yoga psychology.… Read the rest
We all wanna get the bad guys, so the trick is to define who the bad guys really are! Government propagandists have pointed at boozers, then stoners and commies, and now religious nuts, keeping the whack-a-mole focus right where they want it as they line the pockets of Haliburton, et al with $50 per cup of coffee and other swindles on the American public.… Read the rest
Mary Allan shares this (perhaps apocryphal) information about some very old expressions:
Where did “piss poor” come from? If you’re young and hip, this is still interesting and us older people need to learn something new every day…Just to keep the grey matter tuned up.… Read the rest
Here is the script for Lovers’ Quorum , a one minute play first produced in 2006 as part of the Got A Minute? breast cancer fundraiser in Sarasota, Florida.
m1
Boy loves girl
f1
who loves girl
f2
who loves girl back
f1
so you would think boy
f2
would get the clue and go
m1
but he doesn’t.
Big boxes and online bargains have crushed downtown America, forcing local businesses to close, including Greaton’s Jewelers, owned by my friend Karen Greaton, who is ironically a direct descendant of some of the very city founders of New Richmond. How sad it is that the thriving community that once existed has been lost, perhaps for good – or would that be “for bad”?… Read the rest
Go ahead, try and be clever about your passwords. You are likely making predictable choices, according to Jeff Fox, leaving yourself vulnerable. How smart are your tricks? Consider this:
In a 2013 study for DARPA (the Federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) called Pathwell, security consulting company KoreLogic found that, among the thousands of users within an unnamed Fortune 100 company, roughly half had relied on just five patterns to compose their passwords and 85 percent had relied on just 100 patterns.… Read the rest
Did I post this already? I must be getting older than I thought cuz I honestly don’t remember. But I am a zygote compared to the oldest rocks ever discovered in our solar system. They have been dated back about 4.57 billion years, meaning Earth obviously finished forming later than that.