Tidbits From The Web #63

The contortionist archer...
Office prank FAIL!
Just remember this during tax season... (watch the video)
Batman beats Superman...
Life in Iran via the comics...
Beware the electric smog that surrounds you!
What are all those camera modes for anyways?
A twist on Romeo and Juliet...
Before getting any vaccination remember this...
Anybody for some $15,000 cognac?
Who needs art...get some badass decals for that wall instead!
Looking forward to some July flames...
Free point and click game...Beneath a Steel Sky... (you must register)
Root beer Mozart...
Introducing artist...Tim Lillis...
Don't bore yourself to death...
Remember this when you get a soda...
Pacman illusion...
Cancer's secret weakness...
10 things you didn't know about the Brat Pack...
Run with the wolves...



Connections -- The Trigger Effect



The first in the Connections series Both the beginning and the end of the story are here. The end is our present dependence on complex technological networks illustrated by the NYC power blackouts. Life came almost to a standstill: support systems taken for granted failed. How did we become so helpless? Technology originated with the plow and agriculture. Each invention demands its own follow-up: once started, it is hard to stop. This segment ends in Kuwait, where society has leapt from ancient Egypt to the technology of today in 30 years.


Illuminati III Murdered by The Monarchs



The Illuminati Volume 3: Murdered by the Monarchy is the latest release from Enigma Motion Pictures. It takes a long hard look at the gruesome history of the 'Royals' and shows how they bludgeoned, murdered and tortured their way to power. It also looks at events surrounding Princess Diana's untimely death and reveals information the Royals would rather stay hidden. After seeing this film 'Royal' is the last word you'll use to describe them.
Chris Everard’s new film, released through Enigma Motion Pictures, continues this rebellious British director’s assault on the senses, combining a thoroughly educational, historical documentary, which at once is erudite and shocking. A film most definitely not for the feint of heart, but essential viewing for those of us who want to make sense of the wickedness at the pinnacle of government and society.

Today's Message

LEAVE THE WORLD A BIT BETTER

by Ron White

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem on success. One of his measures of success in that poem was to, “Leave the world a bit better.” That line has always stuck in my head. Emerson said you have succeeded if you leave the world a bit better. I have made that line part of my life philosophy. When the tide goes out, there is a mark where the water was. When the waters of life recede from the shore of my being and my heart pumps for the last time, my desire is that there will be a mark where I stood. My aim is that the mark will say, “For some decades, a man occupied this space that saw others more important than himself and made an effort to leave the world a better place for them and those yet to come.”

Our society tells us that success is measured by bank accounts, power, beauty and wealth. These are often the result of hard work, luck or birth. They are not evil and I strive for some of them daily. However, they are not the marks by which I will measure the success of my life.

So how do you do it? How do you “leave the world a bit better?”

- Give a percent of your income away to a charity or church. This makes your community better.
- Save a percentage of your income to pass down to your family when you leave.
- Volunteer your time for those who are less fortunate. Are you volunteering anywhere?
- Mentor someone who needs a positive direction in life.
- Follow and get involved in politics. Our laws and leaders will determine the future. You can have a hand in that future.

Or you can amass as much wealth as you can, spend it as fast as you can on the fading desires of your heart and seek to please yourself first. Our culture might tell you that this is success. Emerson tells us that it is not. I encourage you to realize that the waters of your life will eventually withdraw from the shore. When it does, will there be a watermark?

Knowledge

ARTCYCLOPEDIA, The Guide to Great Art on the Internet

Artcyclopedia's 'mission is to become the definitive and most effective guide to museum-quality fine art on the Internet.' You'll find 'a comprehensive index of every artist represented at hundreds of museum sites, image archives, and other online resources.' Additionally, there are 'links for most well-known artists to keep you surfing for hours.' Over 2,600 art sites plus 140,000 links artworks by 9,000 renowned artists will be at your fingertips. Just enter the artist's name and let the Artcyclopedia search facility do the rest. If browsing is more your style, you can do so by Artist's Name, Medium, Subject, Nationality, Women Artists and also by the particular Movements in the art world, whether it be abstract expressionism, regionalism, the Renaissance or wildlife art, in addition to many other categories. Here's the ultimate site for art study as well as developing an appreciation of works of art and the artists who created them.

North American Mammals

"Welcome to the National Museum of Natural History's North American Mammals web site. This is a searchable database of all living mammals of North America." 'Based on The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals, by Don E. Wilson and Sue Ruff (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999) and Mammals of North America, by Roland W. Kays and Don E. Wilson (Princeton University Press, 2002),' over 400 mammals native to North America are included. A map of the entire continent can be checked for specific locations for particular species; Species Name search capability in addition to searches by Family Tree, Conservation Status and Special Collections that allows you to search by skull and/or bone and teeth images are available. The user can look up mammals native to a certain area then print a guide for actual field study. This resource is invaluable for general reference and more detailed study of particular species.

uPrint Personal 3D Printer

As a personal 3D printer, uPrint makes 3D printing immediate and convenient through every design iteration. Designed for the desktop, uPrint requires only a 25 x 26 in. footprint and features an 8 x 6 x 6 in. build envelope. Using Dimension's proven FDM technology, uPrint builds models with Stratasys ABSplus - a material on average 40 percent stronger than the company's standard ABS material, making it ideally suited for testing the form, fit and function of models and prototypes. uPrint also features a soluble support removal system, allowing for hands-free removal of the model support material.

D-Link Boxee Box

Boxee Box by D-Link, winner of the CES Best of Innovations award in the Home Entertainment category, delivers movies, TV shows, music, and photos from a user’s computer, home network, and the Internet to their HDTV with no PC needed. Instead of sifting through millions of confusing Web sites, when users search on Boxee, TV shows and movies are delivered to them with the click of a remote control.

Insight

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.
-- English Proverb

The same wind snuffs candles yet kindles flames; so, where absence kills a little love, it fans a great one.
-- Francois de la Rochefoucauld

What the Past Tells Us
David Walker
New York, New York

Perhaps because we are a young country, Americans tend not to pay much attention to the lessons of history. Well, we should start, because those lessons are brutal. Power, even great power, if not well tended, erodes over time. Nations, like corporations and people, can lose discipline and morale. Economic and political vulnerability go hand in hand. Remember, without a strong economy, a nation's international standing, standard of living, national security, and even its domestic tranquility will suffer over time.

Many of us think that a superpowerful, prosperous nation like America will be a permanent fixture dominating the world scene. We are too big to fail. But you don't have to delve far into the history books to see what has happened to other once-dominant powers. Most of us have witnessed seismic political shifts in our lifetime. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev settled into his job as the Soviet Union's young and charismatic new leader and began acting on his mandate to reenergize the socialist empire. Seven years later that empire collapsed and disappeared from the face of the Earth. Gorbachev runs a think tank in Moscow now.

In a sense, the larger world is starting to resemble the nasty and brutish life that long has characterized the corporate world. Just ask Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric. Of the twelve giants that made up the first Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896 - all of them once considered too big to fail - only GE remains. The other towering names of the era - the American Cotton Oil Company, the US Leather Company, the Chicago Gas Company, and the like - all have faded away. And as GE stands against the winds of today's financial challenges, ask Immelt whether there is such thing as a company that is too big to fail.

I love to read history books for the lessons they offer. After all, as the homily goes, if you don't learn from history, you may be doomed to repeat it. Great powers rise and fall. None has a covenant to perpetuate itself without cost. The millennium of the Roman Empire - which included five hundred years as a republic - came to an end in the fifth century after scores of years of gradual decay. We Americans often study that Roman endgame with trepidation. We ask, as Cullen Murphy put it in the title of his provocative 2007 book, are we Rome?

The trouble is not that we see ourselves as an empire with global swagger. But we do see ourselves as a superpower with global responsibilities - guardians if not enforcers of a Pax Americana. And as a global power, America presents unsettling parallels with the disintegration of Rome - a decline of moral values, a loss of political civility, an overextended military, an inability to control national borders, and a growth of fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. Do these sound familiar?

Finally, there is what Murphy calls the "complexity parallel": Mighty powers like America and Rome grow so big and sprawling that they become impossible to manage. In comparing the two, he writes, one should "think less about the ability of a superpower to influence everything on earth, and more about how everything on earth affects a superpower."

A superpower that is financially reliant on others can be vulnerable to foreign influence. The British Empire learned this in 1956, when Britain and France were contesting control of the Suez Canal with Egypt. The Soviet Union was threatening to intervene on Egypt's side, turning the regional dispute into a global showdown between Moscow and Washington. The Eisenhower administration wanted to avoid that, and the United States also happened to control the bulk of Britain's foreign debt. President Eisenhower demanded that the British and French withdraw. When they refused, the United States quietly threatened to sell off a significant amount of its holdings in the British pound, which would have effectively destroyed Britain's currency. The British and French backed down and withdrew from Suez within weeks.

The US dollar has never come under a direct foreign attack (though its vulnerability is growing). A direct foreign attack would result in a dramatic move away from the dollar. That would lead to a significant decline in its value, as well as higher interest rates. This is often referred to by economists as a "hard landing." In lay terms, it's more like a crash landing. Still, Americans have become intimately acquainted with the shocks of financial instability. Americans of a certain age still vividly recall the depths of the Depression in the 1930s and the chaos of inflation and long gasoline lines during the oil shock of the 1970s. We will also remember the financial collapse that began in 2008, and we pray for nothing worse. Some of our smartest financial thinkers are praying right along with us. "I do think that piling up more and more and more external debt and having the rest of the world own more and more of the United States may create real political instability down the line," investor Warren Buffett has said, "and increases the possibility that demagogues [will] come along and do some very foolish things."


America 2030: Why We Must Act - Now
By David Walker
New York, New York

Those of you who are parents (and I'm a parent) may want to reject out of hand the idea that we are in effect stealing from our children's future and bequeathing to them a far less prosperous life. But if we don't begin to address our fiscal challenges soon, it's only a matter of time before the consequences begin to show up, most likely starting with higher interest rates. As things get worse, our children will slowly see their living standards decline. We can still prevent these things from happening. The ultimate goal of cleaning up our fiscal policy is not to avoid a recession or even to balance the budget per se - it's to pass on the kind of healthy, vibrant nation that we inherited.

It's easy to fall back on generalities - that America is a great country, and that we always rise to great challenges and will do so again. True, but we can only succeed by taking action, and we have a lot of action to take. Let's say we do take only small steps to address our fiscal crisis. Let's say we stop cutting taxes, but we don't increase them radically either. Let's say our government continues to take in about the same level of historical revenues, but we hold discretionary spending to 2008 levels as a percentage of the economy, and we don't expand health care or other entitlements any further. That sounds pretty benign, but it's actually a disaster scenario for our children.

Let's take the example of kids born in early 2000, when our national budget was in balance and the technology-powered future seemed bright.

During the first eight years of their lives, we have learned, the nation's financial hole grew by 176 percent to $56.4 trillion. And the number is not standing still. That was its size as of September 30, 2008 - before the official declaration of a recession, before the significant market declines of October 2008, and before the big stimulus and bailout bills designed to jump-start the economy and address our immediate financial crisis. In fiscal 2007, recall, our budget deficit was $161 billion, or 1.2 percent of the economy. By 2009, the deficit soared to $1.42 trillion, which is about 9.9 percent of the economy. Just think about that for a second. Our federal deficit grew by almost nine times in the past two fiscal years!

Given our scenario - no benefit cuts, no tax hikes - the government would have to finance this gaping hole mainly by borrowing money from domestic and foreign investors, with interest. Don't forget, according to the GAO's latest long-range budget simulation, even without an increase in overall interest rates, our interest payments would become the largest single expenditure in the federal budget in about twelve years. And what do we get for that interest?

Nothing!

Of course, something will have to give before we get to that point. However, the government has overpromised and underdelivered for far too long. How can we fix things? Will we cut benefits, those mandatory payments that are chiseled into law? Or will we raise taxes to onerous levels? We will probably have to do some combination of both. That is, we will have to renegotiate the social contract with our fellow citizens and raise taxes. However we do that, our kids will pay the price. And the bigger the bill we pass on to them, the bleaker the future we will bequeath to them.

Let's assume that Washington policy makers continue to punt on making tough spending choices and ultimately raise taxes to address the growing deficits. Nobody will reach in our kids' pockets and take their money because the government will take it before it even reaches their pockets. What will that mean for their after-tax income? Right now, on average, Americans pay about 21percent of their income in federal taxes and another 10 percent to state and local governments. By 2030, to pay our rising bills, that amount could be at least 45 percent - higher even than the average 42 percent that most Europeans pay. By 2040, it would be at least 53 percent and climbing. In reality, total taxes in 2030 and 2040 would be even higher than these estimates because of the fiscal challenges facing state and local governments - such as Medicaid costs, unfunded retiree health care promises, underfunded pension plans, deferred maintenance and other critical infrastructure needs, and higher education funding.

With reductions in disposable income like that, the children of 2000 will inherit a much different kind of America in 2030. That's when they will be turning thirty, entering their most productive years.

So much of their money will be devoted to keeping the government afloat that they'll have relatively little for everything else in life. Their homes will be smaller and drabber. There will be less to spend for cars, vacations, dinners out, and big TV sets, all of which their parents took for granted. They'll still read about the consumer society and conspicuous consumption, but mainly in history texts. Maybe it's a good idea for America to become less materialistic - but the idea should be to give our children that choice, not to impoverish them.


Peace, love, and happiness...until next time...