December 17, 2014

Harvard professor goes to war with chinese restaurant over $4

Ben Edelman is an associate professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit.

Ran Duan manages The Baldwin Bar, located inside the Woburn location of Sichuan Garden, a Chinese restaurant founded by his parents.

Last week, Edelman ordered what he thought was $53.35 worth of Chinese food from Sichuan Garden’s Brookline Village location.

Edelman soon came to the horrifying realization that he had been overcharged. By a total of $4.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a Harvard Business School professor thinks a family-run Chinese restaurant screwed him out of $4, you’re about to find out.

http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/09/harvard-business-school-professor-goes-war-over-worth-chinese-food/KfMaEhab6uUY1COCnTbrXP/story.html

Cheap elitist gets to eat crow.

December 17, 2014

Three Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was Looking

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a far-reaching Russia sanctions bill, a hydra-headed incubator of poisonous conflict. The second provocative anti-Russian legislation in a week, it further polarizes our relations with Russia, helping to cement a Russia-China alliance against Western hegemony, and undermines long-term America’s financial and physical security by handing the national treasury over to war profiteers.

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1. Sanctions of Russia’s energy industry, including Rosoboronexport and Gazprom.

2. Sanctions of Russia’s defense industry, with respect to arms sales to Syria.

3. Broad sanctions on Russians’ banking and investments.

4. Provisions for privatization of Ukrainian infrastructure, electricity, oil, gas and renewables, with the help of the World Bank and USAID.

5. Fifty million dollars to assist in a corporate takeover of Ukraine’s oil and gas sectors.

6. Three hundred and fifty million dollars for military assistance to Ukraine, including anti-tank, anti-armor, optical, and guidance and control equipment, as well as drones.

7. Thirty million dollars for an intensive radio, television and Internet propaganda campaign throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union.

8. Twenty million dollars for “democratic organizing” in Ukraine.

9. Sixty million dollars, spent through groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, “to improve democratic governance, and transparency, accountability [and] rule of law” in Russia. What brilliant hyperbole to pass such a provision the same week the Senate’s CIA torture report was released.

10. An unverified declaration that Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, is a nuclear “threat to the United States” and should be held “accountable.”

11. A path for the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, which went into force in 1988. The implications of this are immense. An entire series of arms agreements are at risk of unraveling. It may not be long before NATO pushes its newest client state, Ukraine, to abrogate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Ukraine signed when it gave up its nuclear weapons, and establish a renewed nuclear missile capability, 300 miles from Moscow.

12. A demand that Russia verifiably dismantle “any ground launched cruise missiles or ballistic missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers ...”—i.e., 300 and 3,300 miles.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/three_congressmen_just_reignited_the_cold_war_while_no_one_was_looking_2014

December 17, 2014

White screaming drowns out black voices at protests

Bay Area protests over the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and scores of others may assuage white liberal guilt and provide a righteous reason to rail against the machine, but it would be nice to actually hear from some black folks.

So far, it seems all I’ve seen and heard in three weeks of protest are some pretty vocal white folks screaming to have their way, or dismissing the actions of the wolves inside the flock as the ugly backside of democracy.

Assault, vandalism and looting are not protected forms of free speech.

In Oakland, black religious leaders who have traditionally stood front and center in every successful civil rights movement were not part of the revolution this time.

Their conspicuous absence has led to marches that, quite frankly, appear to be more about white rage than black empowerment. It’s more about what they want than it is about what African American communities truly need.


http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/johnson/article/White-screaming-drowns-out-black-voices-at-5958642.php

December 16, 2014

UN "Peace Keepers" shoot Haitians.

On the heels of bringing a cholera epidemic to the island nation the "peacekeepers" of the UN open fire with live bullets on peaceful protestors.

U.N. sued for 'bringing cholera to Haiti,' causing outbreak that killed thousands

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/09/world/americas/haiti-un-cholera-lawsuit/index.html

December 16, 2014

FBI Infiltration Of Gitmo Defense Team Tosses 9/11 Trial Into Disarray

An FBI investigation into the legal team representing Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed further delayed the military trial of him and his co-defendants in Guantanamo Bay on Thursday.

The full nature and scope of the FBI's investigation is not clear. A security contractor working for the defense team, however, did reportedly talk to FBI agents about Mohammed's manifesto, which was published by The Huffington Post in collaboration with Britain's Channel 4 News. The contractor signed an agreement with the FBI after two agents visited his home nearly two weeks ago, which one defense attorney described as an attempt to "introduce a Trojan Horse behind the wall of attorney-client privilege."

Members of the prosecution team, which includes both military officials and civilian lawyers working for the Department of Justice, said they didn't know about the FBI's investigation until last Sunday. They had previously asked the military judge to ask the defense attorneys how the manifesto, which they called "propaganda," got out.

Justice Department lawyer Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez, however, does know the details of the FBI's probe. Campoamor-Sanchez, a lawyer in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia who has worked drug and murder cases and has a top security clearance, was assigned to the prosecution as a special trial counsel late Wednesday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/fbi-guantanamo_n_5167296.html

Defense teams infiltrated with Law enforcement rats.

December 16, 2014

THE REVOLUTION ITS ON: As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up

A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.

Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.

And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise. Even with the economy’s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago — and lower than any point in the 1990s.

Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/upshot/as-robots-grow-smarter-american-workers-struggle-to-keep-up.html

Robots don't need benefits, they don't call in sick, they don't sleep, they don't unionize or vote, they work the same pace from the day you bought them till they break. Their wages are an depreciating asset to the businesses and a tax write off. Robots are kicking ass, watch out America they are coming for you and your job.

December 16, 2014

"Stars adoption of black children was little more than a fashion accessory"

Sony boss Amy Pascal is facing another race row over details made public from her email account.

RadarOnline reports that buried in her email sent folder is a message to another Sony executive saying that TV deals were becoming so popular in Hollywood that they were 'the new black baby' that everyone wants.

The comment appears to be a racially charged jibe at white Hollywood stars like Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron and Sandra Bullock who adopt African or African-American children, according to Radar.

Pascal's remarks imply that such adoptions were little more than a hot fashion accessory in her eyes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2875143/Sony-exec-race-row-saying-TV-deals-popular-Hollywood-new-black-baby-wants.html









http://madamenoire.com/260258/15-white-celebrities-you-didnt-know-were-raising-black-children/

http://jeffwinbush.com/2011/05/12/are-black-babies-hollywoods-hot-new-accessory/

As an industry insider she might know a thing or two.

The National Association of Black Social Workers has blasted trans-racial adoption as “cultural genocide.”

December 16, 2014

Young boy raises $1 million to help research best friend's rare disease

Most kids would do anything for their best friend and Dylan Siegel is no exception. The 8-year-old boy has raised $1 million to help research the rare disease afflicting his best friend.

Dylan's best friend Jonah Pournazarian is one of 500 children in the world suffering from glycogen storage disease type 1B, a liver disorder that has no cure.

Back when the boys were 6, Dylan wanted to help raise money to find a cure. His book, "Chocolate Bar" has sold nearly 25,000 copies in 60 countries and, as of this week, has raised $1 million.

http://abc7news.com/health/young-boy-raises-$1-million-to-help-research-best-friends-rare-disease/438011/

December 16, 2014

US opens new camp designed to detain women and their children, from babies to teenagers.

Looks like an internment camp we herded the Japanese into

The 50-acre center in Dilley, 85 miles northeast of Laredo, will hold up to 2,400 migrants who have illegally crossed the border and is especially designed to hold women and their children, from babies to teenagers.

Standing on a dirt road lined with cabins in a barren compound enclosed by fencing, Mr. Johnson delivered a blunt message to families without legal papers considering a trip to the United States: “It will now be more likely that you will be detained and sent back.”

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But the administration’s huge expansion of family detention has drawn similarly angry criticism from advocates, lawyers and faith leaders on the other side, who argue that prolonged confinement is inappropriate for young children and mothers who pose no security risks. Until now, the largest permanent facility for migrant families was a center in Pennsylvania with about 100 beds.

“It is inhumane to house young mothers with children in restrictive detention facilities as if they are criminals,” Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle, the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, said Monday. “Already traumatized from their journey, these families are very vulnerable and need care and support, not further emotional and psychological harm.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/homeland-security-chief-opens-largest-immigration-detention-center-in-us.html

December 16, 2014

Real vs perceived age: A matter of life and death

How old do you feel? Think carefully — the answer might help predict how much longer you'll live. That's according to British research posing that question to about 6,500 adults. Those who felt younger than their real age lived the longest over the following eight years.

Here are five key findings from the study, by researchers Isla Rippon and Andrew Steptoe at University College London. Results were published online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine:

REAL VS. PERCEIVED AGE

The average real age of those questioned was about 66 years. Most adults felt at least three years younger than their real age. Those who felt younger had the least chances of dying over about eight years after the age question was asked. Adults who felt older than their actual age had the greatest chances of dying in that period.

THE NITTY GRITTY

The researchers analyzed data from a study in England on aging that included information on deaths during a follow-up period that ended in February 2013; deaths totaled 1,030. About 14 percent of the young-feeling adults died during the follow-up, versus 19 percent of those who felt their actual age and 25 percent of those who felt older.

Feeling older was a predictor of death even when the researchers accounted for things that could affect death rates, including illnesses, wealth, education, smoking, alcohol intake and physical activity. Older-feeling adults were about 40 percent more likely to die than younger-feeling adults.

Read More: http://www.sunherald.com/2014/12/15/5970702_real-vs-perceived-age-a-matter.html