Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces with their yellow-slobbered mouths
We are in a state of harassed busyness from which – we are now promised – there will never be any relief.
{ Gonzo Circus | Continue reading | via Rob }
economics
Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life.
For the most part, it’s illegal to sell your body in Britain. But, in fact, there are various legal ways human body parts can be sold that don’t involve waking up in a bath of ice with a kidney missing. In a research experiment, I tried to see how much of the human body can lawfully be put up for sale: by trying to sell as much of my own body as I could. […]
I tried to sell my hair. I was quoted £50 by a hairdresser in London that specialises in harvesting human hair to make wigs for chemotherapy patients. I was hoping they’d offer me considerably more, given that wigs can sell for £1,000. […]
The best offer I got was £30 for some blood. Another clinic would have paid me £50 for some skin – if I had psoriasis. […]
Human urine is about £30 a pot, breast milk £5, even fingernails and faeces do their own roaring trade. […]
My most valuable sale item was eggs. In the UK, they only allow donors £750 compensation, which means almost no donors come forward – and many desperate prospective parents are driven overseas to buy eggs. But in the US, thousands of women sell eggs – it’s a mainstream market.
What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself. God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself, becomes that self.
What are some things that money can’t buy?
Per the answers given below, in no particular order:
Health, strength, athleticism
Unconditional love
Time
A clean conscience or genuine serenity
Genuine human companionship
A natural good night’s sleep
Rain
Taste/Class/Character
Artistic ability
Natively high water pressure (debatable)
[…]
Here’s one thing that most people probably won’t realize money can’t buy: natively high water pressure.
related { How is being a billionaire better than being a millionaire? }
photo { William Gedney }
The men won’t look at you and women try to walk on you because they know you’ve no man
Married couples who undergo long-term separations appear to be those who can’t afford to divorce, a new nationwide study suggests.
Researchers found that about 80 percent of all respondents who went through a marital separation ultimately divorced, most within three years.
About 5 percent attempted to reconcile. But 15 percent of separations didn’t lead to divorce or reconciliation within 10 years. Couples in these long-term separations tended to be racial and ethnic minorities, have low family income and education, and have young children.
“Long-term separation seems to be the low-cost, do-it-yourself alternative to divorce for many disadvantaged couples,” said Dmitry Tumin, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University.
photo { Richard Klingshirn, The Mini Dress, 1980 }
‘Eventually I’m going to crawl inside your mouth and replace your internal organs.’ –Ben Gold
There are well over 100 small, irregular, asymmetric, and revolutionary wars ongoing around the world today. In these conflicts, there is much to be learned by anyone who has the responsibility of dealing with, analyzing, or reporting on national security threats generated by state and nonstate political actors who do not rely on highly structured organizations, large numbers of military forces, or costly weaponry—for example, transnational criminal organization (TCO)/gang/insurgent phenomena or politicized gangs. In any event, and in any phase of a criminal or revolutionary process, violent nonstate actors have played substantial roles in helping their own organizations and/or political patrons coerce radical political change and achieve putative power.
In these terms, TCO/gang/insurgent phenomena can be as important as traditional hegemonic nation-states in determining political patterns and outcomes in national and global affairs. Additionally, these cases demonstrate how the weakening of national stability, security, and sovereignty can indirectly contribute to personal and collective insecurity and to achieving radical political change. […]
Jamaican posses (gangs) are the byproducts of high levels of poverty and unemployment and lack of upward social mobility. Among other things, the posses represent the consequences of U.S. deportation of Jamaican criminals back to the island and, importantly, of regressive politics in Jamaican democracy. […]
It is estimated that there are at least 85 different posses operating on the island with anywhere between 2,500 to 20,000 members. Each posse operates within a clearly defined territory or neighborhood. The basic structure of a Jamaican posse is fluid but cohesive. Like most other gangs in the Americas, it has an all-powerful don or area leader at the apex of the organization, an upper echelon, a middle echelon, and the “workers” at the bottom of the social pyramid. The upper echelon coordinates the posse’s overall drug, arms, and human trafficking efforts. The middle group manages daily operational activities. The lowest echelon performs street-level sales, purchases, protection, and acts of violence as assigned. When posses need additional workers, they prefer to use other Jamaicans. However, as posses have expanded their markets, they have been known to recruit outsiders, such as African Americans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, and even Chinese immigrants, as mules and street-level dealers. They are kept ignorant of gang structure and members’ identities. If low-level workers are arrested, the posse is not compromised and the revenue continues to come in. […]
Jamaican posses are credited with being self-reliant and self-contained. They have their own aircraft, watercraft, and crews for pickup and delivery, and their own personnel to run legitimate businesses and conduct money-laundering tasks. In that connection, posses have expanded their operations into the entire Caribbean Basin, the United States, Canada, and Europe. The general reputation of Jamaican posses is one of high efficiency and absolute ruthlessness in pursuit of their territorial and commercial interests. Examples of swift and brutal violence include, but are not limited to, fire-bombing, throat-slashing, and dismemberment of victims and their families. Accordingly, Jamaican posses are credited with the highest level of violence in the English-speaking Caribbean and 60 percent of the crime in the region. […]
Today, it is estimated that any given gang-cartel combination earns more money annually from its illicit activities than any Caribbean country generates in legitimate revenues. Thus, individual mini-state governments in the region are simply overmatched by the gang phenomenon. The gangs and their various allies have more money, better arms, and more effective organizations than the states. […]
The great city of São Paulo, Brazil—the proverbial locomotive that pulls the train of the world’s eighth largest economy—was paralyzed by a great surprise in mid-May 2006. […] More than 293 attacks on individuals and groups of individuals were reported, hundreds of people were killed and wounded, and millions of dollars in damage was done to private and public property. Buses were torched, banks were robbed, personal residences were looted and vandalized, municipal buildings and police stations were attacked, and rebellions broke out in 82 prisons within São Paulo’s penal system. Transportation, businesses, factories, offices, banks, schools, and shopping centers were shut down. In all, the city was a frightening place during those days in May.
During that time, the PCC [one of the largest and most powerful gangs in the world] demonstrated its ability to coordinate simultaneous prison riots; destabilize a major city; manipulate judicial, political, and security systems; and shut down the formal Brazilian economy. The PCC also demonstrated its complete lack of principles through its willingness to indiscriminately kill innocent people, destroy public and private property, and suspend the quality-of-life benefits of a major economy for millions of people.
Leading a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. The arch conspirator of the age.
Swiss scientists have developed an algorithm which they claim can determine the source of spam, computer viruses or malware by analysing a small percentage of network connections. […]
The researchers said the algorithm could also be used as a tool for advertisers who use viral marketing strategies by using the Internet and social networks to reach customers.
The algorithm would allow advertisers to identify specific Internet blogs that are most influential for their target audience and to understand how these articles spread throughout the online community.
‘Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.’ –Annie Dillard
The price a consumer will pay for a product is often significantly less than the price they will accept to sell it. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, this occurs because ownership of a product enhances its value by creating an association between the product and consumer identity.
Donald Trump has a guy on his payroll whose job it is to add ‘billionaire’ before his name everywhere it appears on Wikipedia
Data on how personality varies around the world is puzzling. Take the dimension of conscientiousness. Among individuals within a particular country, those with higher conscientiousness tend to earn more money and live longer. […] Compare across countries, however, and what you find is that richer countries with longer life expectancy tend to have lower average conscientiousness. Now a new study has tested a possible explanation for this paradox - perhaps there’s a systematic bias between countries in people’s tendency to tick more extreme scores on questionnaires.
Using Swedish registry data, we study the impact of class origin on becoming part of the business elite between 1993 and 2007 for men aged 35–44 years. The elite is defined as the top 1 per cent of wage earners within large firms. We find a clear working class disadvantage and, with time, a polarization between those of working class origin and others. Decomposition analyses indicate that differences in educational attainment levels cause a large part of the gap, but less so over time. Differences in personality traits measured at around the age of 18 years also help explain the class origin differentials, and more so over time. The decomposition analyses indicate that the net effect of cognitive abilities is small. The results suggest a change in the value of education and personality in the labour market over time, but as men of working class origins have disadvantages in both domains, the relative disadvantage of coming from the working class was rather stable during the period 1993–2007.
photo { Duane Michals }
Small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming
In many restaurants throughout the world, wait staff’s income depends largely on the tips received from customers. According to this study, male restaurant customers give higher tips to waitresses wearing red. […]
Men gave between 14.6% and 26.1% more to waitresses wearing red, while color had no effect on female patrons’ tipping behavior at all.
photo { Nick Meek }
Nicky’s methods of betting weren’t scientific, but they worked
Whether or not certain crime syndicates control illegal markets, or both the legitimate and illegitimate business activities in a neighborhood, a town or even a region, is an important question in scholarly discussions of organized crime. In the early 1970s, American scholars such as Donald Cressey and Thomas Schelling identified monopolistic control of this kind as one of the defining features of organized crime. In the words of Schelling, “real organized crime is striving to control the underworld.”
The notion that “mafia-type” criminal organizations dominate criminal markets and even succeed in regulating the activities of other criminal groups immediately met with fierce criticism from the criminology world. Various researchers who had studied the American drug and gambling markets failed to find Cosa Nostra or any other crime syndicate in control of these illegal activities. Peter Reuter, for example, concluded that the mafia did not dominate the New York illegal gambling market. Instead, it was “disorganized” and made up of many independent criminal groups of varying sizes competing for market share. This powerful image is now widely thought to describe how criminal markets are structured in states with a functional legal system, the assumption being that criminal groups cannot grow “big” under constant law enforcement pressure.
‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.’ –Hunter S. Thompson
Top actors, writers, and athletes have agents, who help them find good jobs, in exchange for a small part of their income. But having an agent is pretty rare – why don’t the rest of us have agents?
You might think its only worth paying an agent 5% of your income for jobs where wages vary by large factors, and that most people’s wages are pretty much set by their occupation, education, etc. Not true, however. Consider: workers in the same occupation, with the same observable experience, school, etc. can easily earn 30% more, or 30% less, just based on the industry they work in. For example, in the auto industry both janitors and truck drivers make twice the salary of janitors and truck drivers in the “eating and drinking place” industry.
Powerful man he was at storing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass.
The first Target store opened in the U.S. in 1962. […] Target found itself having to investigate things like slip-and-falls, shoplifting, theft by employees, and the like. To do so, they created a centralized investigation unit in their Minneapolis, Minnesota headquarters. And over time, this unit became more and more advanced. Today, it and a sibling outfit in Las Vegas are, combined, one of the more sophisticated crime labs out there. And even that may be an understatement. In 2006, an FBI agent familiar with the labs told the Washington Post that “[o]ne of the nation’s top forensics labs is located at Target’s headquarters building in downtown Minneapolis. They have abilities and technology that far surpasses many law enforcement agencies in the country.”
artwork { Jasper Johns, White Target, 1957 }
If someone eggs your house, burn theirs down
If you’re a lawyer in New York, there’s no sweeter deal than getting assigned to an estate case in Surrogate’s Court.
The work is often routine — selling assets, paying bills, contacting heirs — but the pay can reach into the millions.
Landing such a gig requires currying favor with one of the city’s seven surrogate judges, who handle wills and estates. They have the power to appoint lawyers and approve their sometimes jaw-dropping invoices.
The jobs often go to the judges’ friends, associates or campaign contributors, court authorities admit. Looting of the estates can sometimes result.
The most recent example involves Bronx Judge Lee Holzman, who last week faced removal from the surrogate bench after he signed off on legal work that was never done.
The bills, according to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, totaled $300,000 and went to the judge’s associate, lawyer Michael Lippman, a Democratic Party crony who ran Holzman’s campaign financing, raising $125,000, a court watchdog claims.
Lippman then got into money trouble himself, racking up $1 million in gambling debts and allegedly faking bills to cover his losses.
Prosecutors say they uncovered the cooked books and charged him with fraud.
Another alleged thief preyed on a lucrative and largely unsupervised part of the system — cases in which there is no will.
Such cases go to public administrators, who work with Surrogate’s Court judges in handling their finances.
In May, Richard Paul, the bookkeeper for the Brooklyn public administrator, was indicted for stealing $2.6 million from these estates, allegedly manipulating the check-writing process to get at the cash.
photo { Dina Goldstein }
Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost.
Rates are at historic lows of 3.53% for 30-year mortgages. Rents are at record levels all over the country, hitting highs in 74 markets tracked by real-estate-data provider Reis Inc. And housing prices appear to have finally begun increasing, with gains posted for three months in a row according to the index put out by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. So why aren’t more Americans buying houses?
The answer to that is rather complex, but one major factor is that trade-up buyers — folks who upgrade from smaller, cheaper “starter homes” to pricier properties, and who classically are a pumping piston in the engine that drives the housing market — are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to trade up right now. This key segment of the market is especially likely to be “equity poor.”
photo { Robert Adams }
‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’ –Charles Bukowski
They might say that sex between people who are in love is special (maybe even sacred), but they also know sex is part of the partnership of getting through life together and has to be considered pragmatically as well. Even people in love do not have identical physical and emotional needs, with the result that sex takes different forms and means more or less on different occasions. […]
Part of the mythology of love promises that loving couples will always want and enjoy sex together, unproblematically, freely and loyally. But most people know that couples are multi-faceted partnerships, sex together being only one facet, and that those involved very often tire of sex with each other. Although skeptics say today’s high divorce rate shows the love-myth is a lie, others say the problem is that lovers aren’t able or willing to do the work necessary to stay together and survive personal, economic and professional changes. Some of this work may well be sexual. In some partnerships where the spark has gone, partners grant each other the freedom to have sex with others, or pay others to spice up their own sex lives (as a couple or separately). This can take the form of a polyamorous project, with open contracts; as swinging, where couples play with others together; as polygamy or temporary marriage; as cheating or betrayal; or as paying for sex. […]
Many people, not just professional sex workers, know that the work of sex can mean allowing the other to take an active role and assuming a passive one as well as taking the active role or switching back and forth. Sometimes people do what they already know they like, and sometimes they experiment. Sometimes people don’t know what they want, or want to be surprised, or to lose control.
For some critics, the possession of money by clients gives them absolute power over workers and therefore means that equality is impossible.
photo { Tim Geoghegan }
The first three months she was not well
Back in October 2008, just after the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, the International Monetary Fund unveiled its forecasts for growth in 2009. The IMF is the global lender to national governments; its economic pronouncements are highly respected. So what did it predict? The US would grow 0.1% in 2009, countries in the euro zone 0.2% and the world as a whole 2.6%. The actual outturns were declines of 3.5%, 4.2% and 2.6% respectively.
This lamentable short-sightedness was not unique. […]
To be fair to economists, there are two reasons why their forecasts are often likely to be wrong. The first is that humans are not inanimate objects; we change our behaviour and we watch the news. If every economist forecast a recession for 2013 and the predictions were widely publicised, businesses would cancel their investment programmes and consumers would start saving, not spending, for fear of losing their jobs. The recession would occur now, not next year.
Second, the economy is a complex mechanism with many working parts. Economists cannot run real-time experiments in the same way as scientists; operating one version of the economy with high interest rates and another with low rates, as a pharmacologist can offer one patient a new drug and another a placebo. There is no way of isolating the various factors that affect growth.
But there are more fundamental questions about the nature of the subject beyond the failure of economists to make accurate forecasts.
photo { Mathew Scott }
Never lease what you can buy
My theory, when it comes to buying lottery tickets, is that if you have disposable income to spare, then often the dreams and fantasies that accompany your lottery ticket purchase are in and of themselves worth $1. This is true not because dreams and fantasies are wonderful amazing and valuable things, although they can be; it’s more true because $1 is a very small amount of money. All too many people spend a significant percentage of their disposable income on lottery tickets, and that is a tragedy.
Now Ian Bogost has come along with a similar theory, relating to Kickstarter. Funding projects on Kickstarter is in itself “another form of entertainment.”
{ Felix Salmon/Reuters | Continue reading | Thanks Rob }
photo { Joel Barhamand }
Fake orgasms count, as long as they’re not yours
Guys, I know it sounds crazy, but just hear me out. Here’s the plan:
From here on out, we’re going to run our banks and brokerages completely by the book and within the bounds of the law. We’re going to play it straight and keep it low-key. In short, we’re going to stop looking for ways to fuck the customers.
(indignant shouts and table slaps)
Sit down and let me finish. Gentlemen sit down! I haven’t even gotten to the diabolical part yet.
Now I know I’m asking you to stretch quite a bit here, and yes, I understand that something like this hasn’t been attempted in our industry in decades. But just imagine the possibilities! We show up for work, we do what we say we’re going to do, we hire people who are every bit as motivated to do a good job for the customers as they are to be successful for themselves. We only offer products and services that we would offer to our grandmothers and children. We make the fine print into bold lettering. We eliminate hidden fees or at least disclose them where necessary. We treat people’s money like it’s our own. We stop intentionally blowing massive asset bubbles to profit on both their inflation and eventual bursting.
Cologne: overrated. Deodorant: a must.
Many CEOs, including Dow Chemicals’ Andrew Liveris, have declared their intentions to bring manufacturing back to the United States. What is going to accelerate the trend isn’t, as people believe, the rising cost of Chinese labor or a rising yuan. The real threat to China comes from technology. […]
Several technologies advancing and converging will cause this. First, robotics. […] Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. Several companies, such Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9th Sense, sell robot-development kits for which university students and open-source communities are developing ever more sophisticated applications. The factory assembly that China is currently performing is child’s play compared to the next generation of robots. […]
Then there is artificial intelligence. […]
Other advances in the next decade will likely affect manufacturing, particularly advances in nanotechnology that change the equation further. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites, and new carbon fibers. These new materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient, and more durable than existing manufactured goods. A new field — “molecular manufacturing” — will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision.
