I have been extremely busy and in a lot pain this last week.  Ended up having a Root Canal after an insane "pulsing pain" week.  Regardless, I feel bad because I haven't posted in awhile and my non-search delivered page views are still up pretty high, so I decided to get this together.  I have about 7 posts/ideas jotted down that I hope to get to before Turkey day, but I thought I would at least share some of the interesting reads I have found over the past week.  Here is some from the past week that has led me to took further into whatever the topic it discusses:


This Crisis Could Have a Happy Ending - CNNMoney

I am still in firm belief that we are all just hitting the global reset button (which isn't exactly a good thing for the US).  This article doesn't really offer any single point about WHY we will have a happy ending (in all honestly 'At some point, and it may be a few years from now, we will likely be subjected to an unforeseen positive.' is about as close to hope/faith as it gets, but for some reason the article does strike a chord with my gut instinct.



How to Run a Con - Psychology Today

Fascinating read about how conning comes from more of an inversion of trust from the conman rather than you to him.   It is kinda awful, but if anything I took away from this article that the most dangerous people are not the people you trust, but the people who simulate the reciprocal.



Will Beer Be the Next Casualty of the Crisis? - US News & Report

I have discussed it with the wife, and I am very close to making my New Years resolution for 2009 to be that no beer will be drank by myself within my home unless I brewed it.   This article lends a bit of financial credibility to that scenario if we wanted to save money (somewhat - the price of hops is still going up).    I really want to read Mittelman's book Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer, but sadly it isn't on the Kindle yet.   Hopefully soon.  This article really didn't spurn me to look more into homebrew/beer trends, but research more into so called "sin" investments in periods of recession.  I think this recession will be different from previous recesion in regards to beer because of the global availablity of many brands as of now (will that stop?  will the recipes just be brewed by local distributors for that brewery?  Maybe a 'beer' will just be a recipe used by a network of brewery and licenced to whomever wants to keep to its brewing standards.  Franchised Beer?)  Will be interesting to watch regardless.


The Penny Gap - Redeye VC

Great article about subscription models for websites and how getting people to pay is the biggest hump.  The amount they pay isn't as big of a variable in getting over that mountain than you think.



J. Eric S. Thompson (Sir) - Wikipedia

I get tons of hits for my name all the time, generally about a dozen a day.  I would say that about 5% are actually meant for myself, and that about 90% of them are someone looking for THIS Eric Thompson.  Seems that Eric Thompson is a WONDERFUL bluegrass player with a pretty big following.   Over the course of the past month or so though I have been getting an increasing number of hits from searches on J. Eric Thompson which is odd because my first name is "James" and I go by my middle name.   Checking into the actual terms searched I see that a lot of it is about the Mayan culture and the year 2012.  Turns out there is a movie (which looks pretty cool by the way) coming out called "2012" and that is (presumably) about the end times for the world, because the Mayan calendar will end it's 13th Bak'tun cycle on December 21st 2012.   Many people believe that this will mark a major shift in world order and bring humanity into a new age.  Where my non-namesake fits into this is that J.Eric S. Thompson (1898 - 1975) was an archeologist from Cambridge who did a lot of linguistic work  deciphering Mayan Hieroglyphics related to the Mayan Calendar.  I have not found a clear vision for what will happen on 12/21/2012, but have read of Asteroids, Earth Shaping, a Noonsphere, the singularity etc.   Regardless I did order a used copy of Thompson's Maya History and Religion and received it last Thursday, so I will probably make a post Xmas Non-kindle exception and read it.

 

Forget Red vs. Blue -- It's the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda - Alternet

Please consider the source on this one, but still a good read.  I noted to go back and semi fact check some of this article, but this paragraph really struck me:

There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.

which kept me further reading the article.   It actually makes decent points about pictorial arguments vs discussion, but the author seems to take one thing as a premise for the article that I can't stand: 

The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies.

The majority of the illiterate CAN do something about their illteracy.    It does not take pictures or discourse or reading to understand what it is that they can do.  It should be obvious everytime they they see obscure letters on a page.




The Muppet 'Whatnot Workshop' - FAO Schwartz

Oh so cool.

 

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potpourii, 2012, mayan, economy, muppets

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