Gangnam Style and Sound of Silence

Often with giant, amusing or enjoyable viral memes, I stop listening before I stop enjoying them.  Then several months later I go back and pick out the really interesting remixes and spoofs from the chaff.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as brilliant, but it got me thinking.

I present to you - Gangnam Style, sans music.

Because the Rich and Powerful Don't Already Have a High Enough Opinion of Themselves

From some leaked memos from Citigroup:

We project that the plutonomies (the U.S., UK, and Canada) will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization… Since we think the plutonomy is here, is going to get stronger… It is a good time to switch out of stocks that sell to the masses and back to the plutonomy basket.

Depressing.  

I can see why Citigroup would pay millions to keep this under-wraps; this reads like a parody of Scrooge McDuck's evil accountant.  Not good for attracting private, low profile, rich investors.

It seems awfully limited in prognosis.  It seems to implicitly assume that what a world run by neo-feudal, capitalist states would be best for everyone, or at least everyone that matters.  Obviously no one knows the future, but our current system of technological upheaval is based, in large part, on the promise that people can and do make a decent living through invention and have the chance of striking it rich.  I suppose inequality doesn't necessarily defeat this scenario, but it does make it harder for the natural talent and ambition to eke it's way into competition with immensely substandard education, resources and support.  

But I suppose they weren't writing those memos to advise people on how to run society, so much as to flatter rich people and make them feel important, so that they will continue to pay them idiotic amounts of money for stock tips.

A realization of no particular relevance.

Do you ever get a sudden insight that is brilliant, hilarious, or interesting, and then realize the obvious nature of this observation?  Obvious, not in the sense of 1+1=2, but in the sense of "if I were in that scenario, the mostly likely outcome of 1(being some particular quantity that I deal with) +1(ditto) = 2(as someone in this scenario this answer is too obvious to mention).

I would appreciate it if someone could come up with a more pithy way of putting that,

BUT

My realization of today was perhaps obvious, but amusing: the tech engineers and the stylistic engineers at Apple must hate each other.  I'm talking Montague and Capulet level hate.

AmIright?


POST HASTE EDIT
The word is that I am wrong and Apple is much more together than I had suspected and/or doesn't divide the technical from the stylistic engineering.  First of all: wow.  Second: those poor engineers must go mad from the war that goes on in their minds; between the artistic and mathematical sides.

Or maybe they're just much smarter than I.

Republicans are Crazy (and getting Crazier) Part XXIII

Voteview's amazing graph of Clarity.

I want to order a poster-sized-print of this graph, and carry it around with me, so that when people claim "the liberals have gotten more extreme!" or "it's both parties' fault!" I can beat them over the head with this.

A pox on both their houses! if by Houses you mean the GOP Senate and House.



Hat-tip Andrew Sullivan: go subscribe to his soon-to-be-independent site.

Hostages in Algeria: Khrushchev's in Afghanistan

It all sounds like something out of We didn't Start the Fire, but the hostage scenario going on in Algeria right now sounds incredibly chaotic.  Reports of hostages escaping, being killed along with their captors by an Algerian strike force, and who knows.  Lots of different sources; the situation is occurring at a B.P. gas field, so my guess is that there are as many sources leaking news as there are officials representing the countries the various employees work for.  Plus BP, the militants, and various army officials.

It all makes for an interesting media circus.

From the L.A. Times article:

Captives being held are believed to be from the U.S., France, Japan, Norway and other countries. Reports on Wednesday suggested that as many as 41 foreigners were being held by an Al Qaeda-linked group calling itself the Signed-in-Blood Battalion.The ordeal has shown the volatility of a region bristling with gunrunners, smugglers and a visceral strain of Islamic ideology. Militant groups, including Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have been deadly at home but now present a widening danger in North Africa, including in Tunisia and Libya, where Islamic extremists have gained a foothold since the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

Does this sound like a bad Hollywood action movie to anyone? 

"Let's prop-up a corrupt, crumbling government that is rapidly losing its territory to

France has recently committed a good deal of air power and some 2,500 troops to pushing back the hard-line Islamist rebels in the north of Mali.  

It's like what we should have done in Afghanistan!  Wait, forget I said anything, and I definitely didn't bring up Afghanistan.      

Tell us the story, Time.

"On Tuesday, President Francois Hollande, said the goal of the operation was 'To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory.'"

In other News, French President Francois Hollande has admitted dismay over the lack of laughter during his recent stand-up comedy act.

"That’s an ambitious agenda given the conditions that prevail in Mali and its neighborhood..."

Well, you know what they say, shoot for a stable, pro-Western Democracy and if you miss, you'll land among the rest of the failed, unstable and corrupt narco-states.
I mean, I get why the Malian government isn't unhappy about having a superpower-light bomb the hell out of its enemies, but what I don't understand is why France is so eager to commit troops to what looks oh-so-similar to the war in Afghanistan that France only just left.  

Short-sighted doesn't begin to describe the problems with this situation...  I linked earlier to this article explaining why the US isn't involved; mainly because one of the Malian officers we trained launched a coup and overthrew the Civilian government.  Now maybe Mali is one of those really backwater countries where coups happen all the time, heck, this may have even been an improvement, but this doesn't argue for the stability of the current government.

I'll come back to this, but I'd like to pose the question; viewing the French action in the same light as the Afghanistan invasion in 2001-2002, do governments knowingly make military commitments of which they cannot guarantee any reasonable expectation of achieving?  Is this a problem with the Democratic impetus for short-term planning?

Still the greatest Gif Ever Created

Adam West is a hero to us all.

Quote for the Day

"I was sorely disappointed that a military with whom we had a training relationship participated in the military overthrow of an elected government. I mean, there is no way to characterize that other than wholly unacceptable," -General Carter Ham, head of US Africa Command, last month at Brown University.

I suppose "oops" just doesn't cut it.


Courtsey AFP's Dan De Luce

Glenn Beck to Build A Libertarian Utopia (possibly underwater)

This post involves heavy references to Bioshock, which in turn  references the dystopian disaster that Ayn Rand's Libertarian  ideals would inevitably create should they actually be carried out.  Bioshock is a pretty cool game; you should consider playing it.

This is the best idea I've heard of all year. From Right Wing Watch:

On his program last night, Beck revealed that his intention to "go Galt" is quite literal, unveiling grandiose plans to create an entirely self-sustaining community called Independence Park that will provide its own food and energy, produce television and film content, host research and development, serve as a marketplace for products and ideas, while also housing a theme park and serving as a residential community.At the center -- in the middle of the lake that is itself larger than all of Disney Land - Beck (with the help of David Barton) will create a massive "national archive"/learning center where people can send their children to be "deprogrammed" and elected officials can come to learn "the truth."

I wonder if they'll allow misery tourism?


Or Genetic Splicing?

Wealthiness is next to Godliness

And perhaps money does make you happier, or at least more than previous data indicated.  Derek Thompson does his usual thing for the Atlantic  which is to actually read those complicated studies that come out, and not only read them but try and convey their meanings, complexity and all, to the reader.  And with as minimal translation costs as needed.

It's a admirable goal, and one wonks everywhere no doubt appreciate, but I don't imagine he hears warm reviews from members of the Liberal Elite at their Liberal Elite Cocktail Parties - so much as blank stares.  But good can be good for goodness sake, right?

Anyway the gist of Thompson's analysis is that 

"According to the modern godfather of income and well-being research, Richard Easterlin, it is better to be rich than poor, but rich countries don't get any happier as they got richer. They hit a happiness ceiling, essentially. This idea matters a great deal, because in a world where only relative income matters, there might be less need to care about growth or pursue policies that maximized lower-income families' post-tax incomes. The work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers suggests Easterlin was simply wrong. Absolute income matters absolutely, and voters, economists, and policy-makers have everything to gain by putting the spotlight on income gains for the average family."

It seems there is an exception in that most exceptional of countries; the USA.  The authors of the study (who are Sacks, Stevenson and Wolfers, if we are to take Thompson at his word, the sneaky devil), explain this as partly a result of our income equality, and partly because of single-family households; whatever that means.   My guess at a translation would be that Americans don't really share a sense of community beyond the right-in-front-of-us stuff.  Or perhaps we play too many video games?  No, that doesn't seem to be the case...

So all this comes down to an interesting set of propositions: 

1. Making money makes humans happier, to a point
2. A few Americans make more money than God; everyone else can suck it

I hope you'll find my cynicism understandable.  

But the most important part of Derek's entire post is easily lost in all the facts; notice this in his 5th point (latter emphasis mine):

"(5) Europe's lesson: A steadily rising level of satisfaction from a steadily rising level of income. The graphs below are a bit more pointilist and messy, but they make a similarly compelling point. The Eurobarometer survey, which has measured life satisfaction across the continent since 1973, clearly shows that in eight of the nine countries for which the researchers have the most data, well-being has increased through time with economic growth. Except for Belgium. You're weird, Belgium."

Belgium, you are wierd.

.