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</description><title>.::. sungolog</title><generator>Tumblr (3.0; @mario0318)</generator><link>http://mario0318.com/</link><item><title>A Ron Paul-Gary Johnson Presidential Ticket</title><description>&lt;p&gt;The November election is looking to be another dreary choice &lt;a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2012/04/23/democrats-and-republicans-together-assault-our-liberty/" target="_hplink"&gt;between the lesser of two evils&lt;/a&gt;. Do you want the big spending interventionist or the big spending interventionist? One probably would spend a bit more money while the other one probably would start a few more wars.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;American democracy at its best!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A few years back &amp;#8212; I&amp;#8217;ve forgotten the particular profligate war-mongers involved &amp;#8212; the Cato Institute&amp;#8217;s president, Ed Crane, posited that the foundation&amp;#8217;s policy staffers were forced into the voting booth at gunpoint. Which of the evils would we choose? Several of us responded: pull the trigger!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So it appears likely to be in November. We already know that President Barack Obama goes to bed dreaming of new spending schemes and has yet to meet a civil liberty that he is unwilling to violate. The permanently premature winner of the Nobel Peace Prize also routinely threatens to loose the dogs of war around the world and, albeit with perhaps a tinge of reluctance, follows through by escalating existing conflicts, bombing other nations, and assassinating foreign citizens.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;His presumptive Republican Party opponent, Mitt Romney, is a late, convenient, and not altogether convincing convert to limited government and fiscal responsibility. The former governor&amp;#8217;s foreign policy sounds more bellicose than that of George W. Bush, who not only started unnecessary and counterproductive foreign wars, but sacrificed domestic liberties even when doing so did not advance Americans&amp;#8217; security.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a choice? When I step into the voting booth, just pull the trigger, please!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But it doesn&amp;#8217;t have to be this way. In 2008 Congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich offered genuine choices, not echoes, in the Republican and Democratic primaries, respectively. This time only Rep. Paul ran. But he has presented a vision of a republic rather than an empire to enthusiastic audiences crossing partisan lines.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, he lost out to a dubious mix of crack-pots, wind-bags, narcissists, authoritarians, ignoramuses, and opportunists. Naturally, most of them wanted to spend more money &amp;#8212; they just argued about how much on what &amp;#8212; and all wanted a foreign policy focused on killing foreigners. Washington has rich friends to protect, failed societies to remake, inconsiderate allies to manipulate, bad guys to overawe, and an entire world to reengineer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The principal exception to this dismal parade was former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He took many of the same positions as Rep. Paul, but was excluded from most of the debates despite originally registering the same one percent in the polls as former Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who were invited to participate.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Johnson finally gave up the GOP race and decided to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. The LP convention opened on Wednesday May 2, with the vote scheduled for Saturday May 5. He would be a good choice, but even as the LP nominee he still would have difficulty winning gaining media attention in the fall.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another option is a Paul-Johnson ticket.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;No doubt, representatives of Republicrat duopoly will cast 2012 as a decisive election, one of the most important if not the most important in a generation. They will rally their respective &amp;#8220;bases&amp;#8221; by demonizing the other side, even as the two candidates hug the center line while proposing more domestic spending and new foreign interventions. Partisans will prophecy disaster if the opposing candidate wins, even though we all know that the result will be the same irrespective of who ends up taking the oath of office next January: higher spending, fewer liberties, and more wars.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The American people desperately need an alternative to the Republicrat Parties. For four decades the Libertarian Party has made an effort with only limited success. Candidates serious (former Rep. Bob Barr in 2008) and pure (a variety of unknowns over the years) have been unable to break the one percent barrier. Even Rep. Paul tried in 1988 with no more success.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Former Gov. Johnson alone isn&amp;#8217;t likely to do much better. He remains barely known outside of New Mexico. The LP lacks an effective national organization. The political class will avoid mentioning his name. The media will largely follow suit. As partisans insist that any defection will help the devil on the other side, he will be lucky to break the one percent barrier.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, Rep. Paul is the potential Transformer. Like the movie, he shows up in everyday garb, an avuncular grandfather who looks like he should be collecting Social Security while enjoying retirement near a golf course in Florida. But then he turns into a vigorous otherworldly machine committed to combating statism in all its variants, from bloated entitlements to executive surveillance to promiscuous war-making. And on his second successive Republican presidential run he has broken into the national consciousness by challenging the GOP status quo and winning double digit support in many states.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Most important, he has picked up the most name recognition ever for a presidential outlier espousing explicitly libertarian ideas. Transferring that name recognition to the Libertarian Party would immediately turn it into a serious force in November. Admittedly not with a realistic chance for victory. There just aren&amp;#8217;t enough libertarian-minded Americans to give him a majority or plurality in November as the LP nominee. However, he could aspire to match Ross Perot&amp;#8217;s 19 percent in 1992. And he might win double-digit poll ratings from the start, making it harder, and perhaps even hard, for debate organizers to exclude him.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With only 14 Republican primaries to go, he should drop out of the GOP race and announce his intention to seek the LP nomination. Some Paul supporters still hope he will triumph at the convention in August. But Rep. Paul isn&amp;#8217;t going to capture the GOP nomination in August, even if his supporters continue to pick up extra delegates with good local organizations and smart political tactics.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Nor is Mitt Romney, despite his apparently friendly personal relationship with Rep. Paul, going to make meaningful substantive concessions warranting the latter&amp;#8217;s political support. A speaking slot at midnight? Maybe. A serious commitment to slash entitlements or foreswore new wars? Fuggedaboutit! And with the 76-year-old Paul planning to retire from Congress, a Romney administration couldn&amp;#8217;t even offer assistance for Paul&amp;#8217;s congressional legislation if it was inclined to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The congressman also may hope to use his sway to promote his son&amp;#8217;s future prospects. However, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) already is making his way &lt;a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2011/05/30/standing-for-individual-liberty-and-limited-government-ron-and-rand-paul/" target="_hplink"&gt;by making waves&lt;/a&gt;. Sen. Paul will do better if libertarian ideas do better. And that will not come from Rep. Paul showing up at the GOP convention supinely endorsing Romney. It will come from Rep. Paul raising the standard of individual liberty and limited government in all their forms during the November race.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Finally, a few states might bar Rep. Paul from their November ballots under so-called &lt;a href="http://www.dailypaul.com/222396/sore-loser-laws" target="_hplink"&gt;&amp;#8220;sore loser&amp;#8221; laws&lt;/a&gt; since he already has run in the primaries as a Republican. In fact, most &lt;a href="http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/01/12/sore-loser-laws-dont-generally-apply-to-presidential-candidates/" target="_hplink"&gt;do not apply to presidential races&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70727.html#ixzz1h7yo7kvh" target="_hplink"&gt;Gary Johnson faces the same problem&lt;/a&gt;. But to the extent such statutes create a barrier, it could be chalked up as a cost of &amp;#8220;doing business&amp;#8221; &amp;#8212; necessary to win the public attention that comes only from participating in intra-major party debates. And this public attention would yield far more recognition and votes nationally in November even if he was denied a ballot line by some states.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Although the case for Rep. Paul heading the LP ticket is strong, so is Gary Johnson&amp;#8217;s claim to the vice presidential position. In fact, the latter is well-qualified for the presidential nod. A successful businessman, he served two terms as New Mexico governor, from 1995 to 2003. He cut spending growth with prolific use of the veto &amp;#8212; more than the other 49 governors combined. As governor, he backed educational choice and, though a physical fitness fanatic (climbing Mt. Everest in May 2003), promoted marijuana legalization. Since then he opposed the Iraq war and nation-building in Afghanistan. He is a likely future LP star.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Competition is good, but this year joining Rep. Paul in the second spot would buttress the ticket, giving the LP its best tandem ever. Two serious people, two serious political figures. The VP slot, normally a public unknown and political nullity, would be held by someone with as good a claim to the vice presidency and even presidency as the current office holders.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Running with Rep. Paul would allow Gary Johnson to tap into the former&amp;#8217;s fervent fan base this year. Moreover, it would well-position Johnson for a run for the LP presidential nomination &amp;#8212; or conceivably the GOP nomination, as well &amp;#8212; in four years. Strengthening Johnson as a publicly recognized advocate of libertarian ideas would simultaneously bolster Sen. Rand Paul&amp;#8217;s present position and future prospects in the Republican Party. Sen. Paul and the libertarian movement are unlikely to succeed if the ideas have only one champion. As they acquire wider attention and acceptance they are more likely to triumph in the political marketplace.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Indeed, the battle for liberty is for the long-term. The Republicrat duopoly is certain to win in November &amp;#8212; at least, as certain as anything in politics. And the usual suspects want to keep voter choices forever constrained.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When facing Republican presidents, the left talks of peace and civil liberties, but most of its activists &lt;a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/01/05/democratic_party_priorities/" target="_hplink"&gt;unite behind a president who gives war and betrays civil liberties&lt;/a&gt; so long as he pushes the welfare state ever upward and outward. The right takes a similar approach, with most partisans glorifying in war and repression while forgiving bloated spending. Indeed, columnist Michael Gerson, who served President George W. Bush &amp;#8212; &lt;a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/hes-baaack-george-w-bush-freddy-krueger-4449" target="_hplink"&gt;an enthusiastic big spender and warmonger&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#8212;&lt;a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-conservative-reformers-win-out/2012/04/26/gIQAkvMCjT_story.html" target="_hplink"&gt;seemingly views this as &amp;#8220;Reform Conservatism.&amp;#8221;&lt;/a&gt; So much for the supposed battle of principle in Washington.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson can change that. They should run together for the Libertarian Party nominations for president and vice president, respectively. That wouldn&amp;#8217;t guarantee their selection &amp;#8212; Libertarians, even more than libertarians, are a tempestuously independent lot. However, Paul-Johnson would be the strongest ticket the LP could offer. It would be the best alternative available to the Republicrats. And only it would encourage real long-term political change.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Come November, another big-spending war-monger seems certain to win the presidency. The result will be more American money and lives needlessly wasted. However, the future is not fixed and people can rise to the challenge. Calling on Ron Paul and Gary Johnson: Your moment has arrived. Will you step forward and seize it?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Doug Bandow&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/22304051133</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/22304051133</guid><pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 23:57:35 -0400</pubDate></item><item><title>Dangerous ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012</title><description>&lt;p&gt;From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss. I&amp;#8217;m not on Facebook or Twitter. I don&amp;#8217;t watch YouTube and the Ugandan papers didn&amp;#8217;t pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the US about the video by Invisible Children and the massive online response to it.&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;I have not watched the video. As someone who has worked in northern Uganda and researched the war there for more than a decade, much of it with a local human rights organisation based in Gulu, the Invisible Children organisation and their videos have often left me infuriated - I remember the sleepless nights after I watched their &amp;#8220;Rough Cut&amp;#8221; film for the first time with a group of students, after which I tried to explain to the audience what was wrong with the film while on stage with one of the filmmakers.&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;My frustration with the group has largely reflected the concerns expressed so convincingly by those online critics who have been willing to bring the fury of Invisible Children&amp;#8217;s true believers down upon themselves in order to point out what is wrong with this group&amp;#8217;s approach: the warmongering, the narcissism, the commercialisation, the reductive and one-sided story they tell, their portrayal of Africans as helpless children in need of rescue by white Americans.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As a result of Invisible Children&amp;#8217;s irresponsible advocacy, civilians in Uganda and central Africa may have to pay a steep price in their own lives so that a lot of young Americans can feel good about themselves, and a few can make good money. This, of course, is sickening, and I think that Kony 2012 is a case of Invisible Children having finally gone too far. They are now facing a backlash from people of conscience who refuse to abandon their capacity to think for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But, as I said, I wouldn&amp;#8217;t have known about Kony 2012 if it hadn&amp;#8217;t been for the emails I&amp;#8217;ve been receiving from the US. And that, I think, is telling. Kony 2012 and the debate around it are not about Uganda, but about America. Uganda is largely just the stage for a debate over the meaning of political activism in the US today. Likewise, in my view, the Kony 2012 campaign itself is basically irrelevant here in Uganda, and perhaps the best approach might be to just ignore it. This is for a couple reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;First, because Invisible Children&amp;#8217;s campaign is a symptom, not a cause. It is an excuse that the US government has gladly adopted in order to help justify the expansion of their military presence in central Africa. Invisible Children are &amp;#8220;useful idiots&amp;#8221;, being used by those in the US government who seek to militarise Africa, to send more and more weapons and military aid, and to bolster the power of states who are US allies.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for this strategy - how often does the US government find millions of young Americans pleading that they intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources? The US government would be pursuing this militarisation with or without Invisible Children - Kony 2012 just makes it a little easier. Therefore, it is the militarisation we need to worry about, not Invisible Children.&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;Second, because in northern Uganda, people&amp;#8217;s lives will be left untouched by this campaign, even if it were to achieve its stated objectives. This is not because all the problems have been resolved in the years since open fighting ended, but because the very serious problems people face today have little to do with Kony.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The most significant problem people face is over land. Land speculators and so-called investors, many foreign, in collaboration with the Ugandan government and military, are grabbing the land of the Acholi people, land that the Acholi were forced from a decade ago, when the government herded them into internment camps.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another serious problem is so-called &amp;#8220;nodding disease&amp;#8221; - a deadly illness that has broken out among thousands of children who had the bad luck to be born and grown in the camps, subsisting on relief aid. Indeed, the problems people face today are the legacy of the camps, where more than a million Acholi were forced to live, and die - for years - by their own government as part of a counterinsurgency that received essential support from the US government and from international aid agencies.&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;Which brings up the question that I am constantly asked in the US: &amp;#8220;What can we do?&amp;#8221;, where &amp;#8220;we&amp;#8221; tends to mean relatively privileged US citizens. In response, I have a few proposals:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The first, perhaps not surprising from a professor, is to learn. The conflict in northern Uganda and central Africa is complicated, but not impossible to understand. For several years, I have taught an undergraduate class on the conflict, and although it takes some time and effort, the students end up being well informed and able to come to their own opinions about what can be done. (I am more than happy to share the &lt;a class="InternalLink" href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~abranch/Teaching.html" target="_blank"&gt;syllabus&lt;/a&gt; with anyone interested!)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In terms of activism, the first step is to re-think the question: Instead of asking how the US can intervene in order to solve Africa&amp;#8217;s conflicts, we need to ask what we are already doing to cause those conflicts in the first place. How are we, as consumers, contributing to land grabbing and to the wars ravaging this region? How are we, as US citizens, allowing our government to militarise Africa in the name of the &amp;#8220;War on Terror&amp;#8221; and its effort to secure oil resources?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These are the questions that we who represent Kony 2012&amp;#8217;s target audience must ask ourselves, because we are indeed responsible for the conflict in northern Uganda - responsible for helping to cause and prolong it. It is not, however, our responsibility, as Invisible Children encourages us to believe, to try to end the conflict by sending in military force. In our desire to ameliorate suffering, we must not be complicit in making it worse.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adam Branch is senior research fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda, and assistant professor of political science at San Diego State University, US. He is the author of &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/19402920002</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/19402920002</guid><pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:30:40 -0400</pubDate></item><item><title>Brazil takes new measure to halt appreciation of real </title><description>&lt;p&gt;(Xinhua) &amp;#8212; In a move to halt the excessive appreciation of Brazil&amp;#8217;s real, the Brazilian government announced on Thursday changes in the incidence of the Tax over Financial Operations (IOF) charged to foreign investments.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Last April, the government raised to six percent the IOF charged over short-term foreign investments that leave the country within two years. Now, the government extended the six percent IOF to foreign loans and bonds that exit Brazil within three years. &amp;#8220;We are discouraging the inflow of short-term capitals in Brazil, &amp;#8221; said Finance Minister Guido Mantega.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;According to him, there is currently excessive liquidity in the international market. In the first two months of 2012, the U.S. dollar depreciated 7. 95 percent against the real, and the real-dollar exchange rate reached 1.70:1. The weaker dollar has stimulated Brazil&amp;#8217;s imports but made exports more difficult, damaging the local industry.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Mantega said the government will keep monitoring capital inflows and may take additional measures if necessary. However, the minister denied plans to tax foreign direct investments, which target mainly the productive sector.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Productive investors are welcome, but speculators will be penalized,&amp;#8221; he added.&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/18645199076</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/18645199076</guid><pubDate>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:18:27 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish</title><description>&lt;p class="first" id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315200"&gt;The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1330455362_3"&gt;political candidate&lt;/span&gt;, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315189"&gt;The research, led by &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1330455362_0"&gt;David Dunning&lt;/span&gt;, a psychologist at &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1330455362_2"&gt;Cornell University&lt;/span&gt;, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people&amp;#8217;s ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1330455362_4"&gt;candidates&lt;/span&gt; who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315205"&gt;As a result, no amount of information or facts about &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1330455362_5"&gt;political candidates&lt;/span&gt; can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, &amp;#8220;very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is,&amp;#8221; Dunning told &lt;a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;Life&amp;#8217;s Little Mysteries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315208"&gt;He and colleague &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1330455362_6"&gt;Justin Kruger&lt;/span&gt;, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people&amp;#8217;s ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found  that people always assess their own performance as &amp;#8220;above average&amp;#8221; — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile. [&lt;a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2187-incompetent-people-ignorant.html" id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315384" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315386"&gt;We&amp;#8217;re just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. &amp;#8220;To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people,&amp;#8221; Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for &lt;a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/600-what-is-the-hardest-language-to-learn.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;grammar skill&lt;/a&gt;. &amp;#8220;We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students.&amp;#8221; Essentially, they didn&amp;#8217;t recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The reason for this disconnect is simple: &amp;#8220;If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others,&amp;#8221; Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315399"&gt;The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a &lt;a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2099-blind-people.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;degree of blindness&lt;/a&gt; stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315195"&gt;Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger&amp;#8217;s theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters&amp;#8217; own &lt;span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1330455362_1"&gt;leadership skills&lt;/span&gt; were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315404"&gt;Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other &lt;a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/1096-what-are-the-different-types-of-governments.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;forms of government&lt;/a&gt; is merely that they &amp;#8220;effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html;_ylt=AhKHf88n1.Zx1xYnqVh37bwjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTNqZW9iNms5BGNjb2RlA2N0LmMEcGtnA2E2Y2Q3NjU0LTJiNmItMzlmOC04YzczLTc3MGI4M2YyYzdmMgRwb3MDNQRzZWMDbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHZlcgNkYmVjMjk0MC02MjNkLTExZTEtYmZkZi1iNzgxZDM3N2FiZTY-;_ylg=X3oDMTFvaGJsMzhmBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN0ZWNoBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span&gt;By &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="fn" id="yui_3_3_0_23_1330717180315431"&gt;Natalie Wolchover&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/18616128969</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/18616128969</guid><pubDate>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:41:30 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>GASLAND Trailer 2010</title><description>&lt;iframe width="400" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dZe1AeH0Qz8?wmode=transparent&amp;autohide=1&amp;egm=0&amp;hd=1&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;showsearch=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h1 id="watch-headline-title"&gt;&lt;span id="eow-title" title="GASLAND Trailer 2010"&gt;GASLAND Trailer 2010&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/17600458857</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/17600458857</guid><pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:27:14 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>scribblecee:

Quack
</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzc55y4hAB1qhmn8no1_500.png"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzc55y4hAB1qhmn8no2_500.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzc55y4hAB1qhmn8no3_500.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="tumblr_blog" href="http://scribblecee.tumblr.com/post/17551122675" target="_blank"&gt;scribblecee&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Quack&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/17573871435</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/17573871435</guid><pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:08:31 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>oakekater:

yup , yup , mmhmm , nya
</title><description>&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7yb6a0L91r9u0hwo2_400.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7yb6a0L91r9u0hwo1_400.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7yb6a0L91r9u0hwo4_r1_400.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7yb6a0L91r9u0hwo3_400.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="tumblr_blog" href="http://oakekater.tumblr.com/post/17416906601/yup-yup-mmhmm-nya" target="_blank"&gt;oakekater&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;yup , yup , mmhmm , nya&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/17447711898</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/17447711898</guid><pubDate>Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:48:16 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Physicists 'record' magnetic breakthrough</title><description>&lt;p&gt;The researchers found they could record information using only heat - a previously unimaginable scenario. They believe this discovery will not only make future magnetic recording devices faster, but more energy-efficient too.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The results of the research, which was led by the University of York&amp;#8217;s Department of Physics, are reported in the February edition of &lt;em&gt;Nature Communications&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;York physicist Thomas Ostler said: &amp;#8220;Instead of using a magnetic field to record information on a magnetic medium, we harnessed much stronger internal forces and recorded information using only heat. This revolutionary method allows the recording of Terabytes (thousands of Gigabytes) of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard drive technology. As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less &lt;a class="textTag" href="http://www.physorg.com/tags/energy+consumption/" rel="tag" target="_blank"&gt;energy consumption&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The multinational team of scientists included researchers from Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. Experimental work was carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the &lt;a class="textTag" href="http://www.physorg.com/tags/russian+academy+of+sciences/" rel="tag" target="_blank"&gt;Russian Academy of Sciences&lt;/a&gt; and Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr Alexey Kimel, from the Institute of Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, said: &amp;#8220;For centuries it has been believed that heat can only destroy the magnetic order. Now we have successfully demonstrated that it can, in fact, be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Modern &lt;a class="textTag" href="http://www.physorg.com/tags/magnetic+recording/" rel="tag" target="_blank"&gt;magnetic recording&lt;/a&gt; technology employs the principle that the North pole of a magnet is attracted to the &lt;a class="textTag" href="http://www.physorg.com/tags/south+pole/" rel="tag" target="_blank"&gt;South pole&lt;/a&gt; of another and two like poles repulse. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information – by inverting the poles of a magnet – there was a need to apply an external &lt;a class="textTag" href="http://www.physorg.com/tags/magnetic+field/" rel="tag" target="_blank"&gt;magnetic field&lt;/a&gt;. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, the team of scientists has demonstrated that the positions of both the North and South poles of a magnet can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces of magnetic media.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Provided by University of York&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-physicists-magnetic-breakthrough.html" title="Source" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-physicists-magnetic-breakthrough.html" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-physicists-magnetic-breakthrough.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/17252027428</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/17252027428</guid><pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:41 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Photo</title><description>&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lye92yrNvb1qz90mfo1_500.png"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16512760372</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16512760372</guid><pubDate>Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:06:34 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Organic shopping basket</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lycbd7QMWA1qz90mfo1_500.png"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;Organic shopping basket&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16454017958</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16454017958</guid><pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:00:43 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Gizmo!</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_liv25iOMpB1qhc528o1_500.gif"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gizmo!&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16109308815</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16109308815</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:05:24 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>retreat from all sensory experience
settle in neutrality
begin anew</title><description>&lt;p&gt;retreat from all sensory experience&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;settle in neutrality&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;begin anew&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16109274089</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16109274089</guid><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:02:59 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Photo</title><description>&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxil9tyPwV1qipw1jo1_500.jpg"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16085446562</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16085446562</guid><pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:58:38 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Yeast Experiment Hints at a Faster Evolution From Single Cells</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Our ancestors were single-celled microbes for about three billion years before they evolved bodies. But in a laboratory at the University of Minnesota, brewer’s yeast cells can evolve primitive bodies in about two weeks.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The transition to multicellular life has long intrigued evolutionary biologists. The cells in our bodies have evolved to cooperate with exquisite precision. The human body has more than 200 types of cells, each dedicated to a different job. And a vast majority of the 100 trillion cells in our bodies sacrifice their own long-term legacy: Only eggs and sperm have a chance to survive our own death.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These demands for cooperation and sacrifice ought to make it hard for single-celled life to become multicellular. Yet animals, plants and other life forms have evolved bodies. “We know that multicellularity has evolved in different lineages at least 25 times in the history of life,” said William Ratcliff, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff and his adviser, Michael Travisano, are experts in experimental evolution. They design experiments in which microbes can evolve interesting new traits within weeks.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“We were sitting in his office drinking coffee, talking about what would be the coolest thing you could do in the lab,” Dr. Ratcliff said. “O.K., the origin of life would be too hard. But other than the origin of life, what would be the coolest thing?” They decided it would be observing single-celled microbes evolving a primitive form of multicellularity.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The scientists designed an experiment with brewer’s yeast, which normally lives as single cells, feeding on sugar and budding off daughter cells to reproduce.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff and his colleagues set up an experiment that might favor multicellularity in yeast. They reared lines of yeast, starting from a single cell, in 10 flasks of broth. They kept the flasks shaking for a day and then let the yeast settle. The scientists then took out a drop of the settled yeast cells and transferred it to a fresh flask, where the yeast could continue to grow. In this experiment, natural selection favored any new mutation that would let the yeast fall quickly. Yeast cells that were still floating high in the broth would not have a chance to be delivered to the next flask.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In a matter of weeks, Dr. Ratcliff noticed, the yeast was sinking fast, forming a cloudy layer at the bottom of the flasks. He put the yeast under a microscope and discovered that most of it was no longer growing as single cells. Instead, the broth was dominated by snowflake-shaped clusters of hundreds of cells stuck together.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These were not clumps of unrelated cells, he found. When he isolated individual cells and let them grow, they formed new snowflakes. Instead of drifting away, newly budded yeast cells remained stuck to their parents. By staying stuck together, these yeast clusters fell faster than individual cells.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A single cell needs a few hours to grow to “adult” size, Dr. Ratcliff found. After it matures, its growing branches start to press against one another until they snap apart. These broken branches are yeast versions of plant cuttings: Each one grows into a snowflake of its own, which then snaps apart in turn.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff also found that this new form of reproduction is possible only because some of the yeast cells make the ultimate sacrifice. Once a snowflake reaches adult size, a fraction of the cells commit suicide. “The cells that kill themselves act as weak links,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The scientists describe their experiments in a paper being published this week in&lt;a href="http://www.pnas.org/" title="The publications Web site." target="_blank"&gt;Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“This is a really interesting and important study,” said Richard Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University and the editor of the paper. “It shows that a major transition in evolution — going from unicellular to multicellular life forms — might not be as hard to achieve as most biologists have long thought.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff suspects that the transformation of the yeast in his lab may offer hints about how animals and other lineages became multicellular hundreds of millions of years ago. “Forming clusters isn’t a freaky yeast thing,” he said. The closest single-celled relatives of animals, called &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/science/14creatures.html" title="Times article." target="_blank"&gt;choanoflagellates&lt;/a&gt;, also sometimes grow as clusters of cells.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Animals and plants did not evolve inside flasks, of course. But natural conditions could have favored clusters of cells. They might have been harder for predators to eat, for example. A cluster of cells might also be able to feed more efficiently in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff and his colleagues are now examining 25 genomes of the evolved yeast, looking for the mutations that gave them snowflake bodies. Meanwhile, their yeast continues to evolve. Once the cells gain the ability to form snowflakes, they become better adapted to multicellular life. They snap off smaller branches, allowing them to reproduce faster.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ratcliff would not go into detail about where the yeast evolution was going until he published the latest results. “We’re getting really interesting things happening now” was all he would say.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/yeast-reveals-how-fast-a-cell-can-form-a-body.html" target="_blank"&gt;By CARL ZIMMER&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/16085214092</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/16085214092</guid><pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:54:37 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>beautiful</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx54wfvY671qhr0mho1_500.jpg"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;beautiful&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/15613218536</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/15613218536</guid><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:53:37 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>I didnt do anything. The guy went on one date with me. And we tried hanging out 4-5 times and he canceled &amp; had an excuse for all of em. I'm ignoring the rest of his texts. I'm so annoyed lol I was dressed and everything and he stood me up. oh and this excuse wasnt even a good one.  He said "I was sleep" -____- so you dont text me til the next day? then tells me he was sleeping from 3pm - 10 pm . we were supposed to hang at 5 pm. Why are you just now texting me at 2pm the next day =_=</title><description>&lt;p&gt;Damn that is very low of him. I guess he doesn’t have the face to tell you the truth. Was it one of those dates where you end up digging the guy a lot and he just disses you&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/15613183464</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/15613183464</guid><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:51:16 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Photo</title><description>&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxj0p3KYK91qdl72fo1_500.png"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/15612968014</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/15612968014</guid><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:37:07 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Laptop Oven</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxkqg3Vbmx1qz90mfo1_500.jpg"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;Laptop Oven&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/15612915524</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/15612915524</guid><pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:33:39 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>The Four Branches of US Government</title><description>&lt;img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx0frynFro1qz90mfo1_500.png"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Four Branches of US Government&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/15020486538</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/15020486538</guid><pubDate>Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:31:10 -0500</pubDate></item><item><title>Calendar Logic</title><description>&lt;img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwofbiIMMT1qz90mfo1_500.jpg"/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;p&gt;Calendar Logic&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://mario0318.com/post/14687817959</link><guid>http://mario0318.com/post/14687817959</guid><pubDate>Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:50:06 -0500</pubDate></item></channel></rss>

