Alright all my internet hipsters, you are getting the opportunity to get in on the ground level of a very interesting new online forum, the Johnson O’Connor ‘subreddit,’ “a community for 17 hours.” Newer than Google + and way more underground, you too can have a story to tell as you make posts with an ironic signature and an avatar toting lense-less frames.
If I explain much more it would be way less cool, so I am just going to copy the first revision background. Come to think of it, I probably should not have told you how to get there.
Description:
To discuss the aptitude testing battery administered by the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation…
Often, the most valuable part of your aptitude test is not the scores you receive or the careers suggested for you, but rather discussing your results with fellow JOCs.
Join the conversation.
This sub will gladly host a link to
a job opening only for an ‘ideaphoria’ elite
a flash game only beatable by those with the best ‘pitch discrimination’
a thread decoding the aptitudes of Steves Jobs
proof of the dating compatibility of ‘subjectives’ and ‘objectives’
If you post any of your results, make sure to remove any personal identifying information!
John[son O']Connor: The whole thing goes: The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.
In one episode of Family Guy, Bill Gates is flying through the air on a jetpack with Disney CEO and chairman Michael Eisner, who says “God, the people look like ants from up here”, to which Gates replies, “They are ants, Michael, they ARE ants!”
You may feel this way when listening to the following cast on public opinion surveys performed in the US.
Included:
Why is public opinion relevant?
Do Americans want free speech?
What is the median voter theory?
What makes war more popular?
Was giving women the vote a good thing?
Did propaganda make East Berliners more socialist?
What are 3 types of public spending that Americans always want more of?
What is 1 type of public spending that Americans always want less of?
Yo yo yo yo! Dis yo boi JDM bringing da fly new track! Now the first single was so tight, you knew dey gonna be droppin’ it again right here y’all! Give it up for Hayyyyyy-eksplosive and K-k-k-k-iller Keynes!
Spurred by the frustrations of a good friend trying to reach common ground with a loved one, I am providing a funderful crash course.
Not Feeling Guilty Just Because Religion Doesn’t Go Down Smooth and Always Lets You Down 101 (regardless of how many spoonfuls of sugar you take it with)
Professor Teezey: Professor works as a Biomedical Engineer and has explored the issue extensively (from scientific and psychological standpoint) during world travel with much spirited discussion as well as extensive reading and exploration into the issue during a period of being between school and jobs. Officially raised catholic, your professor was a student of “Sunday School” (which he attended on Mondays), and he had a generally good experience with the organization and the people in it. Raised by a highly conservative family in very liberal areas of coastal southern California, your professor is an extremely intelligent individual who loathes contradictions and cognitive dissonance. Essentially, he has agonized over this issue so you do not have to. The professor hopes that you will no longer feel guilty for being who you are, and that any conclusions you end up drawing are your own.
Your education begins…
1)
God bless Joe Pesci:
2)
The God Delusion, preface linked below. You do not have any choice in the matter, if there was something higher than Required Reading, this is it. If you were read chapter 2 and then go to hang out with friends downtown…they would know that your mind was elsewhere. Chapter 2 is where he called me out, it was one of those zen like reading experiences where the author was talking directly to me and me only, even though we had never met and the book was a bestseller. Essentially he said, you are on the fence, I know how you got there, and I’m going to pull you off of it.
One summertime family dinner on the patio I had this 1 v 4 debate with my parents and grandparents as the sun was setting (erstwhile my siblings looked fairly uncomfortable).
This piece of ABC programming is a good representation of the debate today: the chosen ones, i.e. zealous writers and actors, making insipid attempts to stay one step ahead of those meddling scientists.
8)
Do you fear that you are going to isolate yourself from other people? Don’t worry, not all of them:
ThoseOnboard will take your poor, your huddled masses…they just better be smoking hot though.
9)
TV Shows you can watch that will not alienate you:
Penn & Teller’s Bullshit
Derren Brown (watch anything from Derren Brown)
10)
My advice: Do not try to think of all the people in your life and then try to devise a way not to piss any of them off. Your concern is never to worry that other people feel threatened by your views. Allow yourself t come to your own understanding. Don’t forget to check the comments here, my cohorts will probably put up better links than I have. Feel free to post as well if you are new.
I am applying my background in economics to the industry I work in, hence the boldface. No expository analysis, just emphasis.
Asia’s Medtech is Inexpensive
The Star Tribuen/ Economist—January 24, 2010–Across the rich world, governments with aging populations are worried about soaring health care costs.
In Britain last week, David Cameron announced yet another reorganization of the National Health Service. But the problem is most severe in America. Medical spending per head has nearly tripled since 1990, yet most indicators of health have barely budged. And the rising cost of health care depresses wages — because many Americans receive health insurance from their employers, who therefore pay them less.
Help may be at hand. Frugal innovators in China and India are making medical devices that are cheaper — sometimes by an order of magnitude — than their Western equivalents. Companies such as China’s Mindray and India’s TRS serve home markets that include vast numbers of people for whom every yuan or rupee counts. So these companies focus relentlessly on reducing costs. They create products that are stripped to their essentials: scanners that cost $10,000 rather than $100,000; portable electrocardiographs that cost $500 instead of $5,000.
These devices are not merely cheap knockoffs of Western designs. Often they are just as effective as the gold-plated machines used in the West, yet they are rarely found in hospitals of the rich world. Their absence helps explain the massive disparity in costs between treatment in the West and the emerging world. A night in an American hospital typically costs 25 times as much as a night in an Indian, Brazilian or Chinese one. A night in a European hospital typically costs four times as much.
Western medical device firms are well aware of eastern innovation. Indeed, firms such as GE Healthcare, Philips and Medtronic are investing heavily in China and India: setting up research centers, hiring local talent and developing frugal inventions of their own, which they gleefully sell both locally and in other emerging markets. Alas, they are not rushing to market such thrifty ingenuity back in America or Europe.
Two main factors keep cheap devices out of Western markets. One is the muting of price signals. Health care is not an efficient market in the rich world because — be it in Europe, where the state typically pays the bills, or in America, where private insurance companies do — the customer does not have to shop around. Patients neither know nor care how much anything costs, so they demand the best of everything, which is wonderful for the makers of hugely expensive equipment.
A second factor — which applies more in America than in Europe — is red tape. America’s Food and Drug Administration is excessively risk-averse: It often takes twice as long to approve a new medical technology as European regulators do. America’s confusing approvals process deters upstart medical technology firms, since they typically lack the deep pockets and army of experts required to navigate it.
And for a device to succeed in America, it must be blessed not just by the FDA but also by the bureaucrats who oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the two huge government health care schemes. Obtaining that blessing can take years…
From the 1980 series, Free to Choose, the episode, Anatomy of a Crisis.
Highly relevant today, discussing the Great Depression, the role of the Fed, and perhaps most importantly, public opinion. Includes a surprisingly fair treatment of Keynes.
At 28:22 it goes to a group discussion which can be a lot to follow, however, the following can be generally understood:
Friedman was in favor a steadily increasing supply of money, given that there was a central bank controlling it. He believed that having a stable system was paramount to hoping to have the “right people” in office.
Is it bad I could best most high school curriculums just by drawing from my personal video library?
I was getting rid of some old junk lest I wind up making an all too candid appearance on A&E’s Hoarder’s and I found a puzzle piece to one of my lingering ‘big picture questions.’ It was the exact page of notes from my 2001 Summer Session Political Science class at SBCC that had me thinking that I, at one time at least, knew the answer to the question.
Does that ever happen to anyone else? There is some concept to hogtie. You smoke out a source of information. You tailor the situation to your learning style, you light fancy city folk mood candles and you figure it out, dagnabbit! Well enough to make your peace, anyhow; to put that little noodle thumper out to pasture. And then some conversation or internal monologue comes up and demanding more details and all you can say is, “aw-shucks, I’m stumped! I bes’ be hittin’ me dat der drawin’ board ag’in paw.”
Here is a carbon copy of my notes, they were branded on some live cattle:
Why “only” two parties in America?
Historical Reason – Basically it’s been that way for 200 years.
Sociological Reason – Basically the 2 party system has satisfied the needs of the dominant groups in American[…]
Legal Reason – The laws we use encourage it
Single Member District System (plurality system)
PR Proportional Representation
Psychological Reason – cooptation; to absorb the demands of another in order to gain or maintain power (appease, peace) or avoid a challenge (absorb)
Yesterday I finished J. Craig Venter’s autobiography, “A Life Decoded.” As you may have guessed from the clever title he was the first person to have his genome sequenced, an effort he led. Before that he led the charge on the first and second organism to be sequenced using his novel “EST Shotgun method.” Even if you’re not into biology or the politics of science, the book is inspiring and, taking into account all that he has been able to accomplish, it makes you want to borrow his mindset.
Intermittently he would add boxes that tie his life into what he knows about his DNA. A comment from Jaybe last weekend about his preference for serotonin pharmaceuticals as well as some trying events in my life this year incited me to share this one:
Depression
The attacks and setbacks I have experienced over the years would have plunged some people into profound depression. That is not to say I have not been down from time to time, but I have been fortunate that I have been mostly able to escape deep clinical depression. Is this because of my genes? A team led by Kay Wilhelm of Sydney’s St. Vincent’s Hospital and the University of New South Wales in Australia found that the influence of adversity on the onset of depression was significantly greater for those who inherited on chromosome 17 a short version of the serotonin transporter gene, known as 5-HTTLPR, from both parents.
The difference in length is in a part of the gene called the “activation sequence” that controls how much of the protein is made. As a result of having a shorter version, around one-fifth of the population makes less of a protein responsible for transporting the brain chemical serotonin, which plays a key role in mood and pain regulation, appetite, and sleep, and is affected by Prozac. They have an 80 percent chance of becoming clinically depressed if they experience three or more negative events in five years. Once again we have a study that undermines simpleminded genetic determinism: Brain chemistry depends on both genes and circumstances, on both biology and society.
The work also showed that those with a long version that gave them “genetic resilience” against depression had only a 30 percent chance of developing the mental illness, given similar circumstances. The remainder-about half of all people-have a mix of the two genotypes. Many other studies have linked the short version to anxiety-related personality traits including harm avoidance and neuroticism and increased experimentation with illegal drugs. Fortunately for me, I have two copies of the long form and more serotonin.
In addition to copious amounts of serotonin (which makes sense because he’s always sailing through big storms on the open ocean), I can tell by using the book as a portal into his brain and his obvious talent for research that he has tons of inductive reasoning skill. At least I think I can, whatever the case, it’s safe to say he found his calling.
JayAaroBe
Johnteezey
Melays
MaximumSpazz
