ARE
web reviewers legit? Sometimes it's pretty
clear exactly who writes fake positive reviews on the Web:
friends or relatives of the author or the shop or restaurant owner,
or sometimes the author or shop owner himself. The goal of fake
positive reviews is to increase sales, and the reviewers are the ones
who benefit, or want their friends to benefit... A fascinating
new academic study sheds light on the fake negative review,
finding not only that the source is totally unexpected but also that
the problem is much bigger than a few malicious operators. According
to a study done by Eric Anderson of Northwestern University and
Duncan Simester of the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, customers
do it — in fact, devoted customers write those “reviews.”
Registered customers wrote over 325,000 reviews in the study period.
But for 16,000 of those reviews, there is no evidence that the
customer bought the item. I know it can be confusing, right? The
internet or web culture are simply confused and confusing, to say the
least.
EVER
wondered why you suddenly have spam emails about dating or food
recipes? Or whatever? It's because you are single and you are a
foodie. You are being watched online or whatever you're clicking and
typing on your smartphone, that's why... In fact, even retailers are
watching your social media persona... Or even your inbox? For
example, Nordstrom wanted
to learn more about its customers — how many came through the
doors, how many were repeat visitors — the kind of information that
e-commerce sites like Amazon have in spades. So last fall the company
started testing new technology that allowed it to track customers’
movements by following the Wi-Fi signals from their smartphones.
Nordstrom’s “experiment” is part of a movement by retailers to
gather data about in-store shoppers’ behavior and moods, using
video surveillance and signals from their cellphones and apps to
learn information as varied as their sex, how many minutes they spend
in the candy aisle and how long they look at merchandise before
buying it. All sorts of retailers — including national chains, like
Family Dollar, Cabela’s and Mothercare, a British company, and
specialty stores like Benetton and Warby Parker — are testing these
technologies and using them to decide on matters like changing store
layouts and offering customized coupons...
HOOK-UP
culture, who's taking the lead? Some experts say, now it's ladies'
choice... Hanna Rosin, in her book, “The End of Men,” writes that
hooking up is a functional strategy for today’s hard-charging and
ambitious young women, allowing them to have enjoyable sex lives
while focusing most of their energy on academic and professional
goals. Although others, like Susan Patton, the Princeton alumna and
mother who in March wrote a letter to The Daily
Princetonian urging female undergraduates not to squander the chance
to hunt for a husband on campus, say that de-emphasizing
relationships in college works against women. “For most of you, the
cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked
to the man you marry, and you will never again have this
concentration of men who are worthy of you,” advised Ms. Patton,
who has two sons, one a Princeton graduate and the other a current
student. In many places, Ms. Patton was derided for wanting to return
to the days of the “Mrs. degree,” though a few female writers,
noting how hard it can be for women to find mates in their 30s,
suggested that she might have a point. Majority of my current friends
and Facebook readers are females, so what do you think?
DO
clinical trials to cure cancers work? Every spring, some 30,000
oncologists, medical researchers and marketers gather in an American
city to showcase the latest advances in cancer treatment. At the last
annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, much of
the buzz surrounded a study that was anything but a breakthrough.
Mark R. Gilbert, a professor of neuro-oncology at the University of
Texas in Houston, presented the results of a clinical trial testing
the drug Avastin in patients newly diagnosed with glioblastoma
multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer. In other studies of patients
with recurrent brain cancers, tumors shrank and the disease seemed to
stall for several months when patients were given the drug, an
antibody that targets the blood supply of these fast-growing masses
of cancer cells. But to the surprise of many, Dr. Gilbert’s study
found no difference in survival between those who were given Avastin
and those who were given a placebo. Bottomline, there's no certainty
in recent assessments, but doctors get to learn during the process
and then incorporate that knowledge into the ongoing trial. But when
will they finally found a cure? Mr Gilbert's definition of a
successful clinical trial? “At the end of the day,” he says,
“regardless of the result, you’ve learned something.”
A
PLAN by a group of 17 major North American retailers, including
Wal-Mart, Gap, Target and Macy’s, commits $42 million for worker
safety in Bangladesh following recent fatal mishaps in local
factories. These sweatshops deliver job quotas from said US
companies. The money commitment shall cover inspections and an
anonymous hot line for workers to report concerns about factory
conditions, and more than $100 million in loans and other financing
to help Bangladeshi factory owners correct safety problems. However,
some labor rights groups—including the Worker Rights Consortium,
the Clean Clothes Campaign and United Students Against Sweatshops,
criticized the American plan. They maintained that it would cost as
much as $3 billion to bring Bangladesh’s garment factories up to an
acceptable safety standard. “Wal-Mart, Gap and the corporations
that have chosen to join them, are unwilling to commit to a program
under which they actually have to keep the promises they make to
workers and accept financial responsibility for ensuring that their
factories are made safe,” the groups said in a statement. Makes
sense?
HAS
the US government really fulfilled its promises to American Indians
(or Native Americans)? The proud nation of Sioux Indians who live in
South Dakota — like many of the 566 federally recognized tribes —
have a treaty with the United States, the 1868 Treaty of Fort
Laramie, which promised that their health care, education and housing
needs would be provided for by the federal government. Yet, according
to recent studies and findings by former Senator Byron L. Dorgan, who
chaired the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, American Indian
children are the country’s most at-risk population. Too many live
in third-world conditions. Reports Dorgan: “Tribal
leaders, parents and some inspiring children I’ve met make valiant
efforts every day to overcome unemployment, endemic poverty,
historical trauma and a lack of housing, educational opportunity and
health care.” These leaders and communities are once again being
mistreated by a failed American policy, adds Dorgan, this time going
under the ugly name “sequestration.” This budget maneuvering
requires across-the-board spending cuts to the most important
programs along with the least important. American Indian kids living
in poverty are paying a very high price for this misguided
abandonment of Congressional decision-making.
WHEN
people speak wistfully of the past, they typically become more
optimistic and inspired about the future. I agree... “Nostalgia
makes us a bit more human,” says a group of psychologists at
University of Southampton. They consider the first great nostalgist
to be Odysseus, an itinerant who used memories of his family and home
to get through hard times, but the shrinks emphasize that nostalgia
is not the same as homesickness. It’s not just for those away from
home, and it’s not a sickness, despite its historical reputation.
However, nostalgia does have its painful side — it’s a
bittersweet emotion — but the net effect is to make life seem more
meaningful and death less frightening. Nostalgia is common around the
world, including in children as young as 7 (who look back fondly on
birthdays and vacations). I guess, I do reminisce a lot about my
childhood and memories of home...
ARE
you an expectant mom? Stockpiling diapers and choosing car seats—or
are you struggling with bigger purchases? Heard of birthing tub as
epidural
anesthesia? According to a NY Times research, cost of maternity care
these days range from $4,000 to $45,000. An ultrasound for $935, and
a $256 bill to a radiologist to read the scan? Plenty of other
pregnant women are getting sticker shock in the United States, where
charges for delivery have about tripled since 1996, according to an
analysis done by Truven Health Analytics. Childbirth in the United
States is uniquely expensive, and maternity and newborn care
constitute the single biggest category of hospital payouts for
most commercial insurers and state Medicaid programs. The
cumulative costs of approximately four million annual births is well
over $50 billion. And though maternity care costs far less in other
developed countries than it does in the United States, studies show
that their citizens do not have less access to care or to high-tech
care during pregnancy than Americans. But then, do we really need
those “high-tech care”?
RECENT
studies suggest that Americans are buying fewer cars, driving less
and getting fewer licenses as each year goes by. Okay. Has America
passed peak driving? The United States, with its broad expanses and
suburban ideals, had long been one of the world’s prime car
cultures. America’s love affair with its vehicles seems to be
cooling? When adjusted for population growth, the number of miles
driven in the United States peaked in 2005 and dropped steadily
thereafter, according to an analysis by Doug Short of Advisor
Perspectives, an investment research company. As of April 2013,
the number of miles driven per person was nearly 9 percent below the
peak and equal to where the country was in January 1995. Part of the
explanation certainly lies in the recession, because cash-strapped
Americans could not afford new cars, and the unemployed weren’t
going to work anyway. But by many measures the decrease in driving
preceded the downturn and appears to be persisting now that recovery
is under way. The next few years will be telling. So let's wait and
see... Meantime, I need to score a bag of sugar at a store a mile
away.
HAVE
you heard of the term “stealth wear”? Cool? It’s a catchy
description for clothing and accessories designed to protect the
wearer from detection and surveillance. Really? Seriously? Then
there's flying surveillance cameras, also known as drones... Then,
have you also heard of advances in facial-recognition technology?
Wearable devices like Google Glass—which can be used to take
photographs and videos and upload them to the Internet within
seconds. Adam Harvey, an artist and design professor at the School
of Visual Arts and an early creator of stealth wear,
acknowledges that countersurveillance clothing sounds like something
out of a William Gibson novel. “The science-fiction part has become
a reality,” he said, “and there’s a growing need for products
that offer privacy.” Ah! When will all this paranoia going to end?
All this bizarre consumerism from our fear of forced disclosure.
Thing is, what are we really hiding?
EARLY
in June, at
a middle school in Mooresville NC, President Obama set a goal of
high-speed Internet in nearly every public school in America in five
years. It was a bold and needed pronouncement — except that in 1996
President Clinton said virtually the same thing, calling for
libraries and classrooms to be “hooked up to the Information
Superhighway by the year 2000.” Well, many people reading this are
probably hooked up pretty conveniently on a smartphone, tablet or
computer. Yet they might not know that half of Americans don’t
own a smartphone, one-third lack a broadband connection and
one-fifth don’t use the Web at all... That is a fact.
Meantime, virtually all of America’s schools are connected to the
Internet today. The question, however, is quality... Children who go
to school in poor neighborhoods are connected to the Web at speeds so
slow as to render most educational Web sites unusable. Luis
A. Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, says that despite huge
money his organization gave out to nonprofits to expedite projects
for the same purpose, nothing much has been done. “Like
any effort to develop our national infrastructure, success demands
more than the dedication of the nonprofit sector alone,” he adds.
Or maybe we have become more and more dependent on the machine,
knowing it will foster more progress and development than simply
improving on a technological infrastructure that was already in place
before?
NOTICE
this. Whether it is a photo of a college prom queen in green thong
underwear or a cat napping on top of a Labrador—it doesn't really
matter. Or what about a slew of whiny drama about a constantly
famished heart or a sweet row of delectable gluten-free culinary
delights? These will elicit dozens of likes for sure, and some may
even post very encouraging comments and funny retorts. That feedback
loop of generally positive reinforcement is the most addictive
element of social media. This keeps us coming back... Zeynep
Tufekci, a professor of sociology at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, says the vast amplification of the potential
audience a single person can reach has raised the stakes for all
online activity. She parallels this to graffiti, “it's
performative.” Part
of our increasing looseness with what we post on the Web has to do
with the realization that one raunchy photo is just a single data
point among hundreds. But Coye Cheshire, a professor of information
sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies how
we interact online, thinks there might be something more complex at
play. In his research, he has highlighted the power of social
approval. Interesting, isn't it? I just hope that this is all
virtual—and one day, we'd take the initiative to come out of this
box and at least say hello over latte or beer...
THE
baby market is essentially a commodity market... In this business,
the challenge is persuading parents that a product has a unique
feature worthy of a price premium. A glance at the shelves indicates
just how narrowly baby-product companies have divided parents into
subgroups. Some will pay extra for conveniences like a light,
easy-to-fold stroller; others want aesthetic luxuries, like leather
trim. Many respond to fear (is my child safer in Baby Trend’s
Inertia car seat for $179.99 or with Safety 1st’s Air Protect+
system, which costs $189.99?) Viviana Zelizer, a Princeton
sociologist, infers in “Pricing the Priceless Child,” that
parents' response to the baby commodity market comes along with “an
increasingly
sentimentalized view of children.” For the first time in human
history, having a child in the United States is a net financial cost
for a parent. This, of course, has been a huge boon to child-product
manufacturers. Companies profit from people's sentiment with
extraneous features. The whole process is prone to produce
absurdities like the $4,495 Roddler custom stroller... Well, why not
spend more time with your kids instead—in the woods, beside a
river, or at home? Your child needs your warmth, up front and
close—is all.
ARE
you old enough (like me) but who isn't that senile and absent-minded
to remember simpler things at work—like when you were talking,
whether
in person or on the phone, was the main way to communicate? Then
suddenly, in the 1990s, when e-mails came, things were never the
same. Besides delivering a serious blow to the sellers of those
pieces of paper, e-mail made communicating with people incredibly and
delightfully — easy. Really? An article in The Ergonomics
says, electronic communication tools can demand constant switching,
which contributes to a feeling of “discontinuity” in the
workplace. On the other hand, people sometimes deliberately introduce
interruptions into their day as a way to reduce boredom and to
socialize, the article said. We’re
only beginning to understand the workplace impact of new
communication tools. The use of such technology in the office is
“less rational than we would like to think,” said Steve
Whittaker a professor at the Univ of California, Santa Cruz. Or
is it what Alvin Toffler defined as Future
Shock? “Too much
change in too short a period of time.”
THIS
is what we already know: China's combination
of strength and aggressiveness, plus the economic stagnation in
Europe and America is making the West increasingly bothered. While
China is not taking over the world militarily, it seems to be
steadily taking it over commercially. Of late, Chinese companies and
investors have sought to buy two Western companies, Smithfield
Foods, the American pork producer, and Club Med, the French resort
company. Europeans and Americans tend to fret over Beijing’s
assertiveness in the South China Sea, its territorial disputes with
Japan, and cyberattacks on Western firms, but all of this is much
less important than a phenomenon that is less visible but more
disturbing: the aggressive worldwide push of Chinese state
capitalism. By buying companies, exploiting natural resources,
building infrastructure and giving loans all over the world, China is
pursuing a soft but unstoppable form of economic domination.
Beijing’s essentially unlimited financial resources allow the
country to be a game-changing force in both the developed and
developing world, one that threatens to obliterate the competitive
edge of the West, kill jobs in Europe and America and blunt criticism
of human rights abuses in China... But do we have to whine and heap
blames on China, instead of working things out our way? You see,
Spain, France and Britain marched to global mercantilism many
generations ago, with a sword and cross afront their ships and forced
the “savages” and “indios” to submit... The Chinese did not.
They sold us shit and we bought them, while we allowed the 1 percent
capitalist to hook up with them, while we are so busy finding ways to
disengage us from the collective, community or comradeship due to
obsession with privacy and techno-madnesses...
HAVE
you heard about a “gamified city tour”? It is an iPhone app
called Stray
Boots, which sells $2-to-$12 tours of more than a dozen cities
including New Orleans, Philadelphia and Miami. Introduced last year,
the apps (or game) began testing in 2009 using only text messages.
Since then, it has sold more than 85,000 tours, roughly doubling
sales each year, said its chief executive, Avi Millman. (Stray Boots
is also available in Britain, where it’s known as UK: The
Game.) Stray Boots is the new way to sell travel tours... This app is
merely one product in a wave of new travel programs and promotions
that are using game theory to win over customers, particularly those
under 30. Today online tour operators like Expedia are incorporating
avatars and trivia contests into the browsing and booking process.
Tourism offices in Pennsylvania and Illinois are proffering
exclusive Foursquare badges to those who check in at sites
in their states. Museums are using portable multimedia players to
make walking through their collections feel a bit like being in a
multiplayer video game. And the America’s State Parks
Foundation is rolling out a new app by ParksbyNature Network
called the Pocket Ranger — available in 40 states by the
end of the year — that enables users to earn points and win prizes
by signing up for GeoChallenges, outdoor quests that require players
to use the app’s GPS feature to navigate to sites like dams, trails
and reservoirs. Dot.com gods earn by gaming, profit by visiting. Tell
me, isn't that e-cool, or what?
WHEN
global economic downturn hit, Europe and Japan reeled bigtime on the
pavement. Meantime, while Europe continues to cling on to austerity
measures to rescue its sagging economy like a stubborn cat, Japan has
been squeezing out of the hole in the past few years. Japan
posted an unexpectedly robust growth rate of 3.5 percent under
the bold new stimulus measures forwarded by Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe. Called, the three-arrowed approach, Abe's strategy involves a
strongly expansionary monetary policy, increased fiscal spending and
structural changes to improve competitiveness. Analysts say these are
precisely the apt meds many have urged European leaders to take. Says
Stephan Schulmeister, an economist with the Austrian Institute of
Economic Research: “The elites in Europe don’t learn. Instead of
saying, ‘Something goes wrong, we have to reconsider or find a
different navigation map, change course,’ instead what happens is
more of the same.” Schulmeister adds that Angela Merkel, German
chancellor and President of the European Council, “is not willing
to learn from the Japanese experience.”
THE
United States has the world’s best basketball players, fighter
jets, lakeside camps, and dreadlocked ladies. But hardly anyone would
ever boast that the US has the world’s best retirement system.
Fifty-eight percent of American workers are not even in a pension or
401(k) plan. The Social Security system faces the threat of
a huge shortfall. One-third of America’s retirees get at least 90
percent of their retirement income from Social Security, with annual
benefits averaging a modest $15,000 for an individual. In Australia,
there is nearly universal participation among workers in a
401(k)-type retirement plan. In the Netherlands, pension laws
require that workers’ 401(k)-like plans be converted into lifetime
annuities to ensure they do not spend down all their savings before
they turn 70. In Britain, the government has pressed retirement
fund managers to keep administrative fees on many plans to less than
half the average in the US. A recent report by the Australian Center
for Financial Services, gives the US a C rating on retirement
systems, worse than the A received by Denmark and the
B-plus given to the Netherlands and Australia.
FOR
six decades, Americans have tended to drive more every year. But in
the middle of the last decade, the number of miles driven — both
over all and per capita — began to drop, notes a report by
U.S. Pirg, a nonprofit advocacy organization. People tend to drive
less during recessions, since fewer people are working (and
commuting), and most are looking for ways to save money. But Phineas
Baxandall, a senior analyst for U.S. Pirg, said the changes preceded
the recent recession and appeared to be part of a structural shift
that is largely rooted in changing demographics, especially the rise
of so-called millennials — today’s teenagers and
twentysomethings. Younger
people are less likely to drive — or even to have driver’s
licenses — than past generations for whom driving was a birthright
and the open road a symbol of freedom. Research by the Transportation
Research Institute at the University of Michigan suggests that online
life
might have something to do with the change: “A higher proportion of
Internet users was associated with a lower licensure rate. This
finding is consistent with the hypothesis that access to virtual
contact reduces the need for actual contact among young people.”
THE
Attorney
General of New York has recently announced that he plans to
sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for failure to adhere to the
terms of a $26 billion settlement that was supposed to provide relief
to homeowners and end foreclosure abuses. The lawsuits are another
sign that more than a year after the mortgage settlement between five
big banks and state and federal officials banks are still mishandling
foreclosures in ways to benefit themselves while harming borrowers.
Eric Schneiderman, the atty general, is right to object, but the sad
truth is that a concerted government effort to hold banks accountable
has never materialized. Am I being pessimistic or just realistic?
FENG
SHUI: From China to America and back to China. Yup, the Chinese once
again are believers of feng shui, an ancient mystical belief once
banned by the Communist Party... Recently, four top officials at
Zoumajie province's land resources bureau that were beleaguered by
all sorts of problems—like land grabs, jilted mistresses plotting
revenge and provincial graft—believe that there could only be one
explanation for the miasma of misfortune they believed was
threatening them: the pair of ferocious stone lions that guarded the
state-owned China Tobacco building across the street from their
offices. An official confided that the secret weapon they used was
feng shui, the ancient practice of arranging objects and designing
architecture to improve one’s health, prosperity and luck... When
the feng shui was outlawed by Mao Zedong decades ago, it gained
ground in the West, especially in the United States, where it became
a lucrative business commodity (just like yoga, tai chi, et al). And
since China has long embraced Western-styled capitalism, it's no
wonder that “feng shui” has gotten back into the mainstream
psyche again. Whatever works, works. The end justifies the means, I
guess...
THERE
was a time in my life (where I came from) when a mere awkward stare
at a woman (by a man) provokes a fight. You don't mess with a woman,
per se... But these days—it's more a case of, uhh, don't mess with
a woman's, well—iPhone... One April afternoon, on a busy corner of
Main Street in Flushing, Queens, a teenager snatched the phone out of
a lady's hand and kept running. Fact: Devices like hers were stolen
16,000 times last year in New York City. But that time, it's no
ordinary happening. The victim flagged a police officer, who put a
call over the radio with a description of the young man wearing a
yellow hooded sweatshirt. Another officer pulled out his own iPhone,
and together with the victim, logged into the Find My iPhone feature,
which should work if the thief had not turned the victim’s phone
off. He had not. A telltale dot appeared on the screen of the
officer’s phone. The victim’s phone was nearby, at 126th Street
and Roosevelt Avenue. Next, was a chase worthy of a chase sequence
from a crime-thriller.
DO
we really want to be privy with your kids' stuff these days? Today,
parents are just one click away from their 14-year olds' shenanigans:
buddied up on Facebook, logging on to Tumblr, peering over cryptic
text messages and trying to get a glimpse of Snapchat images before
they dissolve into the ether. Freely see them guzzle
beer, flirt with a girl who squeezes her bosom in every “selfie”
she posts on Instagram, and describe a fellow ninth grader in
language saltier than any you ever used at that age. Maybe
you are a parent who never even heard your kid swear. Yet you had no
idea where they went after they slammed the door behind you...
According to a study of 802 parents of teenagers by the Pew Internet
Project, 59 percent of parents of teenagers on social-networking
sites have talked to their child because they were concerned about
something posted to their profile or account, and 42 percent have
searched for their child’s name online to see what info is out
there. Tough! That is why parenting is always an individual matter.
But talking to them remains the key—just don't do it via texting or
Facebook posts.
A
GROUP of investors from Mountain View, California, partners of Y
Combinator, an organization that can be likened to a sleep-away camp
for start-up companies, are doing what could be the trend in future
“buy out” economics. These energetic bunch of dot.com wizards
check out cool ideas from entrepreneurs desperately wanting “start
up” capital, sink their own money in exchange for, of course, stake
in the company. Among
more prominent start-ups that graduated from Y.C.’s class were the
social-news site Reddit, the web-site builder Infogami, file-sharing
service Dropbox, and online market for vacation rentals Airbnb... I
am seeing a future where all companies in the world are owned by
maybe only five huge corporations—splintered via “small”
investors ready to sink moolah into your brainstorm for a
considerable percentage of your profit... then buy you out later.
Like a morbid futuristic movie. Or the future is happening now.
LISTEN
up, environmentalists who believe newsprints have to be dissed in
favor of electronic devices: Americans replace their cellphones every
22 months, junking some 150 million old phones in 2010 alone. Ever
wondered what happens to all these old phones? In far-flung, mostly
impoverished places like Agbogbloshie, Ghana; Delhi, India; and
Guiyu, China, children pile e-waste into giant mountains and burn it
so they can extract the metals — copper wires, gold and silver
threads — inside, which they sell to recycling merchants for only a
few dollars. In India, young boys smash computer batteries with
mallets to recover cadmium, toxic flecks of which cover their hands
and feet as they work. Women spend their days bent over baths of hot
lead, “cooking” circuit boards so they can remove slivers of gold
inside. Greenpeace, the Basel Action Network and others have posted
YouTube videos of young children inhaling the smoke that rises from
burned phone casings as they identify and separate different kinds of
plastics for recyclers.
MORE
Americans now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010 there
were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.
Suicide
has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly.
But recent studies say that suicide rate among middle-aged people
have
risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation
of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy
access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to
self-inflicted harm. “There may be something about that group (baby
boomers), and how they think about life issues and their life choices
that may make a difference,” says C.D.C.’s deputy director,
Ileana Arias. The rise in suicides may also stem from the economic
downturn over the past decade. Historically, suicide rates rise
during times of financial stress and economic setbacks. “The
increase does coincide with a decrease in financial standing for a
lot of families over the same time period,” Dr. Arias said. Another
factor may be the widespread availability of opioid drugs like
OxyContin and oxycodone, which can be particularly deadly in large
doses.
THIS
time nearly half of Americans agree with the president. According to
a Times/CBS News poll, about one-third (or 1 in 10) of the
citizenry—as with Mr Obama—said economy
will be hurt by spending cuts. President Obama and Republicans in
Congress could not agree on a budget plan. In a recent news
conference, Obama said that his administration’s disaster warnings
about the economic effects of the automatic spending cuts were not
overblown: “It’s slowed our growth, it’s resulting in people
being thrown out of work, and it’s hurting folks all across the
country.” Cutting down government spending or turning to austerity
measures—as employed by most European economies—meant another
massive spike on unemployment and social unrest, among other reasons.
This, however, would barely rattle the already rich—and getting
richer—1 percent.
PAYDAY
loans—the short-term, high-cost credit that can mire borrowers in
debt. Some banks offer the loans tied to checking accounts, with the
understanding that the lender can automatically withdraw the loan
amount, plus the origination fee, when it is due. Now, federal
regulators are cracking down on them, but instead of taking aim at
the big fish, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are gunning at
storefront payday lenders. Bigger players like Wells Fargo and
U.S. Bank are left unscathed. What else is new? The
regulators are expected to impose more stringent requirements on the
loans. Before making a loan, for example, banks will have to assess a
consumer’s ability to repay the money. Of course, they can—but
squeezing their guts more... Wells Fargo charges $1.50 for every $20
borrowed. Add other fees on ATM withdrawals etcetera etcetera...
ALL
these sports gadgets, life's gizmos that we are so fond of spending
hard-earned money on... Like goggles. Example: Oakley, the
eyewear company, makes a $600 ski goggle that comes with a warning in
the package: Do not operate product while skiing. But of course, the
digital goggles are meant for skiing and snowboarding... However,
safety advocates say the concept of high-tech displays for goggles —
and for other sports eyewear — is information overload run amok,
particularly when people are using them at high speeds. Surely,
Oakley, based in Foothill Ranch, Calif., argue such warnings.
Meantime, Google is expected to introduce soon its computerized
glasses, called Google Glass, which will perform many of the same
functions as smartphones. Jeez...
A
LOT of young people these days are like Pearl
Brady: a stable job with good benefits, holds two degrees, a
bachelor’s and a master’s. But despite her best efforts, she has
no savings, and worries that it will be years before she manages to
start putting away money for a house, children and eventually
retirement. “I’m in that extremely nervous category,” Ms.
Brady, 28, a Brooklynite who works for a union, told New York Times.
“I know how much money I’m going to be making for the near term.
I hope in my 30s and 40s to be able to save, but I have no idea how.
It’s scary.” A new study from the Urban Institute finds
that Ms. Brady and her peers up to roughly age 40 have accrued less
wealth than their parents did at the same age, even as the average
wealth of Americans has doubled over the last quarter-century.
Inequality? Let's look at life, per se. More millionaires, yes. Yet
there a lot more food-to-mouth wage earners.
WASHINGTON
officials recently said that they had opened an investigation into a
Web site, called “Exposed: The Secret Files,” that posted the
home addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal
information for more than a dozen celebrities and politicians,
including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Michelle Obama and
Jay-Z. The site, which included the Internet suffix “.su,” an
indication that it was originally from the Soviet Union, is linked to
a Twitter account that included postings in Russian. At the bottom of
the Web page was a list of the people whom the hackers claimed to
have compromised, including Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles
Police Department, Beyoncé, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.,
former Vice President Al Gore and Kim Kardashian. Blatant, isn't it?
I believe weapons of destruction can be stopped, but how do we snuff
out “internet terrorism?”
MIDWAY-Sunset
oil field near Fellows in California has been producing crude for
more than a century since Socal's oil boom. Midway-Sunset is tapping
crude directly from what is called the Monterey Shale, which could
represent the future of California’s oil industry — and a
potential arena for conflict between drillers and the state’s
powerful environmental interests. Comprising two-thirds of the US’
total estimated shale oil reserves and covering 1,750 square miles
from Southern to Central California, the Monterey Shale could turn
California into the nation’s top oil-producing state and yield the
kind of riches that far smaller shale oil deposits have showered on
North Dakota and Texas. Good news? Lesser dependence on OPEC oil?
That is not the question that I'd like to answer... Do we really need
more oil?
SINCE
Roomba, the iRobot, has been doing my daily floor vacuuming job
lately—no complaints here, so far. But then, wait... Robots
actually want our job, not just the housework. According to
professors at Cambridge University, robots also want our life and our
little dog, too. But then, such android anxiety has a long history.
John Maynard Keynes wrote about “technological
unemployment” during the Great Depression. In the Industrial
Revolution, disgruntled laborers smashed automated looms and
threshing machines that “stole” their jobs. In the 15th century,
scribes protested the printing press, with a futile zeal rivaled
perhaps only by that of modern journalists. Well, I also lost writing
jobs due to the internet's instant “blog journalism.” In
hindsight, historical fears of technological change look foolish,
given that automation has increased living standards and rendered our
workweeks both safer and shorter. In 1900, when nearly half the
American labor force was employed in backbreaking agriculture, the
typical worker logged 2,300 hours a year, according to Joel
Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University. Today that
number is 1,800. By year 2062, we’ll be working only two
hours a week... Good? Bad. Imagine Roomba doing all the housekeeping
work in a motel chain? More unemployment. In fact, I am very wary
that Georgia and Chloe—the lovable babedawgs under my care—might
be so enamored with Roomba that they'd eventually ignore me when
asking for food (1 click, here comes Roomba with a bowl of Purina!)
Then, I will just be a lifeless, useless human being in the
batcave...
ONCE
the monster is unleashed, there's no way that it can be stopped. Or
is there really a way? I am talking about the internet and the loss
of human privacy (willingness in disguise?) Yet, over the years, the
United States and Europe have taken different approaches toward
protecting people’s personal information. Here, Congress has
enacted a patchwork quilt of privacy laws that separately limit the
use of Americans’ medical records, credit reports, video
rental records and so on. Meantime, the European Union has
instituted more of a blanket regulatory system; it has a common
directive that gives its citizens certain fundamental rights — like
the right to obtain copies of records held about them by companies
and institutions — that Americans now lack. “Yes, we share the
basic idea of privacy,” says Peter Hustinx, Europe’s data
protection supervisor. “But there is a huge deficit on the US
side.” With a dizzying array of new e-baubles flooding the market,
expect more ways to reveal or invade privacies.
WHO
are most hit by the hard times? Young graduates are in debt, out of
work and on their parents’ couches. People in their 30s and
40s can’t afford to buy homes or have children. Retirees are
earning near-zero interest on their savings. The most hit,
according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company, are Americans
in their 50s and early 60s. The elderly do not yet have access
to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the
most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10
percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago.
Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst
possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are
supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children,
earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”
REVIEWS
on Amazon—or in the internet—are becoming attack weapons,
intended to sink new books as soon as they are published, or
“character assassinate” people without them even knowing it. This
a tragic reality that we have to deal with, I guess... Everybody is a
shrink, expert, holier-than-thou references when it comes to what is
racist, sexist, politically-correct, gender-sensitive or plain
appropriate... On the subject of books: In the biggest, most overt
and most successful of these campaigns, a group of Michael Jackson
fans, months ago, used Facebook and Twitter to
solicit negative reviews of a new biography of the singer. They
bombarded Amazon with dozens of one-star takedowns, succeeded in
getting several favorable notices erased and even took credit for
Amazon’s briefly removing the book from sale. “Books used to die
by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly
killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied
Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a
group of people for malicious reasons.” Imagine what would have
happened if Anais Nin or Oscar Wilde are so alive and writing
actively these days? And then some blogger “reviews” their
stuff...
IF
you are in psychotherapy, there’s a good chance your therapist
knows more about your inner thoughts and secret desires than anyone
else. Hence, he/she's better be the person to match you up with your
soulmate lovey-dovey, you reckon? Chuck eHarmony and Match.com and
other sites that rely on impersonal algorithms, and chuck your BBF's
super-zealous analysis that, anyways—simply mirrors his/her angst.
An NY Times article by Richard A. Friedman, himself a shrink, goes:
“Psychotherapy, especially insight-oriented therapy, is designed to
conjure intense feelings — on the part of the patient and
therapist. Much of what patients feel toward their therapists, the
so-called transference, are unconscious feelings that are redirected
from important early figures in their lives — parents, family
members and teachers. Your therapist mirrors this phenomenon with his
own countertransference.” Go get a psychotherapist, pronto!
CHINA
may not be manufacturing pencil holders and back scratchers anymore.
The next boom in China, according to the Center for China and
Globalization, a Beijing-based research group, are college
graduates... China's youths have highly specific ambition: to work
some day for a Chinese automaker and provide the cultural insights
and English fluency the company needs to supply the next generation
of fuel-efficient taxis that New York City plans to choose in 2021.
China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists
call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a
white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using
the G.I. Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the
Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of
millions of young people as they move from farms to cities. Good for
China's vaunted working class economy? Let's wait and see.
THE
“problem” of food in America—or such perceive problem—freaks
me out. Nobody gets hungry in this Western part of the universe... In
the UK as much as 30 percent of vegetable crops are not harvested due
to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical
appearance, it says, while up to half of the food that is bought in
Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers. As
much as half of all the food produced in the world –
equivalent to 2billion tons – ends up as waste every
year, engineers warned in a recent report. The
UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) blames the
"staggering" new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily
strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and consumer demand for
cosmetically perfect food, along with "poor engineering and
agricultural practices,” inadequate infrastructure and poor storage
facilities... I remember the days when whatever that was served on
dinner table had to be eaten—no complaints, no excuses, no qualms
whatsoever—and no speck of rice grain left on my plate...
LONG
come coming... Once thought to be exclusively biologically-based,
psychiatric research now looks to social and cultural factors to
explain and find treatments for schizophrenia. The side effects of
antipsychotics are not very pleasant. While they damp down the
horrifying hallucinations that can make someone’s life a misery, it
is not as if the drugs restore most people to the way they were
before they fell sick. How many more gruesome crimes—perpetrated by
mental psychosis—are going to pummel society's fiber for us to
realize that it's not just medications that bog down each time a
person goes deadly... To signal how much psychiatry had changed since
its tweedy psychoanalytic days, the National Institute of Mental
Health designated the 1990s as the “decade of the brain.”
Psychoanalysis and even psychotherapy were said to be on their way
out.
A
COUPLE of evolutionary psychologists recently published a book about
human sexual behavior in prehistory called “Sex at Dawn.”
Evolutionary psychologists who study mating behavior often begin with
a hypothesis about how modern humans mate: say, that men think about
sex more than women do. Then they gather evidence — from studies
and statistics — to support that assumption. Finally, and here’s
where the leap occurs, they construct an evolutionary theory to
explain why men think about sex more than women. Blahblahblah.. Men
do talk and brag and—and anchor their macho fixation—via a flood
of sex talk. Problem is, when it is already happening, one
shot—blam!--the talk fizzles out to limped surrender. This, while
the woman is just warming up...
WE
already see so many young college graduates toiling on wait staff and
blue collar jobs, just barely earning enough to pay rent, put
gasoline on their cars and attend to student loan debt... And the
woes aren't about to ease up. There's a growing body of evidence
suggesting that today’s young adults are also drowning in
credit-card debt — and that many of them will take this debt to
their graves. More than three-quarters of renters between the
ages of 18 and 24 spend more than they earn every month, according to
a survey of 1,000 renters (of all ages) by Rent.com. This is the case
even though 17 percent of respondents in that age bracket say they’re
willing to live with roommates to save money. More than 20 percent
overspent their income by more than $100. That’s every
single month. And since they haven’t built up their credit
histories yet, it’s a safe bet that these young adults are paying
relatively high interest rates on the resulting credit card debt.
SIMPLE
is an online banking start-up company based in Portland, Ore., that
offers its customers free checking accounts and data-rich analysis of
their transactions and spending habits. Co-founder Josh Reich,
a software engineer from Australia, started the outfit, with Shamir
Karkal, after Josh decided enough is enough with banks that charge
overdraft fees and who endure painful customer service calls to fight
them. Reich is confident that Simple’s minimalist approach — it
promises not to charge any fees for any services — will draw fans
and customers. The company, which began signing up customers late
last year in a deliberately slow fashion, now has 20,000 and has
processed transactions worth more than $200 million. I hoping the Big
Guys don't take a liking with Simple and buy it out...
ARE
the Chinese transforming into a white collar nation—sliding away
from its vaunted working class might? Guangzhou, a city of 15
million, is the hub of a manufacturing region where factories make
everything from T-shirts and shoes to auto parts, tablet computers
and solar panels. These days, however, many factories are desperate
for workers, despite offering double-digit annual pay increases and
improved benefits. Still, these don't suffice... Factory jobs don't
offer much future. Millions of recent college graduates in China want
higher salaries. Hence, an imbalance ensues. Jobs go begging in
factories while many educated young workers are unemployed. A recent
national survey of urban residents showed that among people in their
early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to
be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education. With
factories crumbling, this could be the downfall of China...
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