Neal Jansons

""The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." So wrote Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It is one of my favorite quotes and it popped into my head as I was reading about last week's settlement between JPMorgan and the SEC in which the banking giant agreed to pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees owed by Alabama's Jefferson County as the result of a complicated derivatives deal that blew up in the county's face. As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing -- despite ample evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing. Things like paying off local officials with millions to win no-bid contracts worth billions and convincing county officials to switch from fixed-rate bonds to bonds hedged with risky derivatives -- a switch that has driven Jefferson County to the brink of bankruptcy. "We have been victimized by our creditors," said a county official. JPMorgan released a... more... - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

"Rupert Murdoch has suggested that News Corporation is likely to make its content unfindable to users on Google when it launches its paid content starategy . When Murdoch and other senior News Corp lieutenants have criticised aggregators such as Google for taking a free ride on its content, commentators have questioned why the company doesn’t simply make its content invisible to search engines. Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up lionks to it in users’ search results. Murodch claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via search have little value to advertisers. Asked by Sky News political editor David Speers why News hasn’t therefore made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: “I think we will.”" - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

"As Amanda reported in the Quickies a few weeks ago, Stephen Fry and Chris Hitchens participated in a debate over the topic “The Catholic Church is a Force for Good.” Fry and Hitchens were, naturally, on the anti- side, and absolutely destroyed the poor souls on the pro- side. Check out the full video in five parts here. The first is below:" - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

"This should come as no surprise. Brandishing a gun is a good way to get yourself shot. Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05). Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures." - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

"“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”" - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

"Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws - or lack of them. You'd think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood this week. But no such luck. How many times have we seen this movie before? It's only the locations that change. There was only scant mention in all the coverage that suspected mass murderer Nidal Hasan had bought his lethal cop-killer handgun at "Guns Galore" in nearby Killeen, Texas. How charming." - Neal Jansons from Bookmarklet

Well, that's a personality and worldview issue. I happen to prefer one side, but I can't really defend a claim that it is somehow objectively right (I am an ethics and epistemological nihilist; I don't believe that knowledge or ethical claims can ever be truly justified, only pragmatically justified from a subjective, situated view). Many conservatives believe, essentially, that there... more... - Neal Jansons

But you know that teabaggers will claim the bill as it passed as a victory, right?! - Rene Wirtz

That's a hard argument to defend, considering only one Repub. voted for it and they are flipping out on him. Regardless, this is just another place where the crazies are getting shown for the ineffectual force they are, which will force all of them to flip out again, like after the last two elections, and then double-down on "getting more conservative" and alienating some more possible... more... - Neal Jansons

All true, but just as with the elections on Tuesday the Repubs define winning by losing. And you are right, it may be in an effort to purify. - Rene Wirtz