FIRED UP ? Not so much.

I've just watched the Full FOX republican presidential debate, so that you, faithful reader, don't have to endure it.

you can catch it here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSs_XFmacc&feature=player_embedded#!

Lots of tough talk, not many ideas.

In short :

Worst fucking nightmare : Rick Santorum (Hitler's spiritual grandchild)

Least horrible : Ron Paul or Mitt Romney

Best scores from the (republican) public : Herman Cain (the black guy, who's up for an all black election in '12 ?? ) with 72% positive rating, close second was Ron Paul with 70%

Worst score : Pawlenty with 20% positive rating.

Gayest candidate (in spirit only since the man has 7 kids) : Jon Huntsman heroically steals the price from Pawlenty. (If these two ever decide to get a civil union I'd support that)

Now that Rick Perry joined the race he might be worth looking at since he's good looking, always a plus in an American election. But he's too close in terms of image to George W. Bush to win the independents in '12 in my opinion so not really an issue.

Hottest candidate : Michelle Bachmann, also she's from Minnesota so she gets extra points from me and yet more points for arguing a woman should be "submissive" to her husband :)

She got asked about being "submissive" as a president and fumbled something about "submissive" really meaning respect.

Wonder why God didn't just say respect in that case... A much better answer, in case she's reading, is to separate the role of wife and president. Both come with diverse sets of obligations.

Least green candidate : Huntsman, the guy actually wants to close down the EPA. He created a cancer institute, here's an idea Jon : don't give people cancer in the first place ;-)

Newt GingRich is still kicking, the guy's best chance at being president at this point is an alien invasion... But he's a decent politician (comeback wise) I give this to him, too establishment to ever win in 2012 tough.

Overall, these no one even comes close to Barack Obama in terms of political talent, oratory skill or eloquence. But the voters will be confronted to the reality of Obama against the election promises of the Republican candidate. That on top of the fact that Obama didn't get any whiter in 4 years and that this time he has no Bush bonus and won't run again'st a half dead candidate with no money and a wacko for vice president.

Put all that together and I predict a republican victory in '12. If the elephants manage not to choose a far righter, they can take this election easily enough. Unless 15 million unemployed suddenly find a job or drop dead that is.

The pen is mightier than the sword

One of the many reasons I want a space elevator

This video is about space based solar power. SBSP is a revolutionary technology that captures electricity in space and microwaves it back to Earth.

It is enourmously efficient and all the technologies already exist today. But no one will build it because it's too much material to lift to space...

US NOW - can we rule ourselves online ?

The end of democracy is right after the elections.

- unknown

Do you every feel like the people ruling your contry could be doing a better job ? What if you had their job, you and everyone else ? What if a country had no rulers because everyone is a ruler ?

What if the internet allowed for better societies than the standard hierachical model ? What if a new football team managed exclusively by its fans, online, collaboratively won the cup ?

Are 30'000 brains really better than 1 ?

http://www.youtube.com/movie/us-now

Check it out !

The entertainer that did not want the people listening

I would like to ask you a question, when you watch a tv show or a theatre movie at the moment, how do you usualy do it ?

a) Mostly on the internet

b) on Tv or in the theatre

If you are not making a lot of money at the moment, it is probable that you choose to get your entertainment online when it comes to movies that are less than stellar. You might go the the movies from time to time but you'll mostly watch the b series and fourth remakes online. In my case, I went for Avatar, I might go again for Transformers 3. Some people might go only for their favorit Director but in any case, with today's prices you won't go see everything out of home. It's time and money consuming.

Tv shows are totaly dominated by HBO who has the best series in the world by a long shot from any competitor (Game of Thrones, True blood, The Pacific, Band of brothers, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Oz, Rome, Spartacus). These are just a few examples of the shining succes of HBO shows.

These shows are so popular that a majority of people would elect to make them part of their personal entertainment selection if they could watch for free and at a time that is convenient to them. That is a stellar result, better than almost anything in the whole history of entertainment. Over half the POPULATION wants to watch this stuff.

That's no accident either, in 2011 our social level of specialization is reaching dizzing heights in every field, including entertainment.

Yet HBO is strugguling to make money. HBO is not watched enough, can you believe that ?

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20470532_20228856,00.html

Why ? Making good shows is expensive and when you restrict who can watch based on who can pay, you limit the number of people watching.

Incredible isn't it ? PRICED OUT of your own market by your own supperior quality of product ???

Yet this is happening to HBO at the moment.

So why not make it free online world wide?

Provide 100 languages in text and twenty in sound dubing and advertise !! This way HBO should theoreticaly gain a timeshare of worldwide entertainment viewers time that would be very considerable. Based entierly on the quality of the shows. Not to mention that a deal could be found with Google to do this at no cost.

That would basicaly place them in a situation like Facebook. Have a large time share of the population's attention during the day. Making it very attractive. Furthermore this access is gained when people are relaxing, therefore most receptive to suggestion. The selfsame reason there are ads on TV at home and not on your computer at work.

Once that is gained it's easy to develop "popcorn sessions" and let people watch TV with friends and webcams open... or any other social type of stuff. That will consumate more time, you can add a chat service and a small intern mail and photo system. Basicaly the longer you keep them hooked, the more time
you have to advertise.

The some 800 million people with broadband internet access of the world could access this service (by the way, they happen to be the top 800 million in terms of wealth, neat little segmentation), even if only 10% choose to use it. Smallish value compared to how many people would choose to access HBO series for free. 80 million wealthy people is great !! The Sopranos, widely recogniszed to be the most successful show on recent TV only had 11 million viewers !!

If you make these 80 million people watch 2 adds each every day that's 160 million targetted and verified impressions of the add per day. That's 54 BILLION verified and targeted impressions per year. Even at 0.1 cent per impression that's still 5.4 billion dollars of extra revenue. With potentialy no cost.

"Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself"

- Ray Kroc (founder of McDonald's)


It is time the entertainment industy recongnized it is closer in nature to a supermarket than to an art galery and started giving people what people want, free TV and Movies. Instead the morons that run these companies have elected to fight with their own consumer base through legal means and to punish their customers for, well, consuming the product in a way they deem unfit.

MADNESS !!!!  Madness and stupidity !! Adapt you you shall survive.

Another quote to reflect on before leaving you:

The army's formation is like water.

The water's formation avoids the high and rushes to the low. So an army's formation avoids the strong and rushes to the weak. Water's formation adapts to the ground when flowing. So then an army's formation adapts to the enemy to achieve victory. Therefore, an army does not have constant force, or have constant formation.

Those who are able to adapt and change in accord with the enemy and achieve victory are called divine.

- Sun Tzu, the art of war

The Genocide of first born Canadians

I've recently stumbler upon this documentary named H2OIL. It's about the exploitation of tar sands in the region of Alberta, Canada. You will not believe what is going on out there, you will not believe your own eyes when you see the scale and enormity of the destruction and you will not believe your ears when you hear the local people's horror tales of mutated fish and deadly cancers. And you most likely won't believe the angel faced PR people of the oil industry telling you it's all normal after all.

You want to know the real price of the modern day oil addiction ? Watch this real world horror story and share it with your friends.

This is a link only video, click the link below to access it on Youtube  (Putlocker now).


http://www.putlocker.com/file/7E59E8A7395F8D93



Want to get involved try h2oildoc.com

Thanks for watching !!

FastPass TV

Anyone wondering what happened to the best video streaming website out there (FAST PASS TV) it's been taken down by the UK police. Thanks to the help of a few dedicated hackers it is now back up (less than a week after being taken down) at http://fastpasstv.ms/


If you want to watch House, Grey's anatomy, Game of thrones, The Event or any recent movie, that's the best place to find links !

Enjoy.

video test and NLP impromptu class

Hello readers,

All 7 of you so far. I'm testing the video function and I tough this was a good opportunity to learn a little bit about NLP. It's a fascinating subject that will change your life so get interested.

NPL stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. You'll see how it works.

Andy

.............................................................................................

UPDATE

I don't think 9/11 was an inside job, not if you don't count Osama bin Laden as a (now corrected) CIA mistake anyway. Still, the NLP used is real and he breaks it down perfectly. It'd disagree with the analysis at the end. To me moving your hands around a lot is mostly to grab and retain attention. You try to seize something from the air literary. We've all done it.

Daylight saving time

It occurred to me that the way we think about daylight saving time is tremendously confusing and in my modest opinion conceptually wrong.

Saying that we move the clock one hour forward at the start of spring and backwards at the start of autumn is insanely blind. Only a people as encompassed in the virtual nature of their existing social norms as Anglo Saxons and their cultural following could live under such a statement. The clock represents the passage of time. As such the present is a fixed point in time in the sense that it occurs at regularly occurring intervals displayed by the same number on the clock. In order for the same time interval to display a higher number on the clock (commonly known as moving forward), the frame of the clock itself is moved BACK relative to the regularly occurring present. Because the frame cannot move, we move the needle.

How deceptive of them to make you think you can turn time back when the change causes you to loose an hour of daylight.

Most people jump at this explanation so I've included a small diagram of what happens to daylight when we switch the clocks. Thank you Wikipedia !

As you can see, the daylight portion of the diagram appears to have been moved forward in the middle. Of course You and I know we can't move the sun forward so what really happens ? The scale moves back of course!

But that's a real pickle for our biological brain because we used to have X amount of time before sundown. Let's say 10 hours from 8 to 18. Now when standard time comes back, daylight lasts from 7 to 17 roughly. So while your brain and your body tell you that at at 17 you have 1 hour before sundown, you now have none. Not only is time supposed to have suddenly moved back by miracle. It's suddenly 17 pm while your body tells you it should be 18 pm, but you have one less hour of daylight according to the clock. confusing isn't it?

Hum... the opposite miracle occurs at the begging of daylight saving time, your body tells you it is 6 am, suddenly it is 7 am. What have you done from 6 to 7 am ? How exactly did you gain an hour ? You got marooned out of an hour in my opinion.

Does that bother people at all ? Why make a fuss about it ? Apart from the increase in the prevalence of skin cancer linked to longer sun exposure, the circadian cycles of the body, our natural clock that strangely does not switch around, is messed up. The effect is a sharp but temporary (known as the 3 day spike) rise in suicides and hearth attacks when your body thinks it is going to be 7 am and that it turns out to be 8 am in the Spring. Then in autumn the statistics spare lives in the equal amount when you think it is going to be 8 am and it turns out to be 7 am (pouf, you can sleep). Thus proving, ultimately through the beauty of statistics when time is being taken from us (killing by stress) and when it is being given back by the almighty clock (sparing lives due to reduced stress). Ahh the amazing things you see when they are billions of data points.


Why do we perpetrate this farce ? Common I'm sure you can guess that.

Money of course !

More daylight ? More time to shop !

But mostly, it was introduced by people with much the same concerns as us today, making enough electric power for everyone. In 1907 how could you make enough power plants to keep up with the light bulb frenzy ? The things were popping up everywhere using tons of current ! Not to mention the new machines and household appliances and street lighting and pumps and factories that were going electric all over the country, the radios and so on.

Edison had just finished inventing DC at the same time roughly that Tesla invented AC and suddenly everyone had use and need of this new network ! People were ready to pay any price to access current. Luxury hotels needed it, rich people wanted it, public places had to have it, and so on. So much more practical  and elegant that burning gas or wax or wood ! So the idea to push the day by an hour to save a lot of current by moving the daylight around seemed useful. So they moved it and it caused a huge and growing cost every year since, today up to 31 billion dollars in of loss in stocks and 2.5 billion of direct expense every time, and it never really saved much current. Less than 1%.

How do you feel about gaining an hour now ?

How do we fill state coffers in modern economies ?

A recurrent problem of modern societies is the tendency of democratic voters to exonerate themselves from almost any kind of tax. In modern societies with democratic governments, advanced infrastructure and efficient financial industries a large amount of tax is channeled away from government coffers into the pockets of the share holders by perfectly legal means. On average, in Europe, companies pay 1 $ of tax per 1000 $ of revenue. That is not what's on the books of course. If you look at the tax rate, it is much higher. Simple trick is not to have profits, you transfer the money around until it lands somewhere safe from tax. On the company's side it's good business practice, protecting the interest of the share holders, on the state's side, it's a way to participate in the "unofficial" international contest to lower taxes. That contest became much more violent with the advent of the internet, now, many multi billion dollar businesses are capable to operate from anywhere, liberated from the vicissitudes of the supply chain. The entire financial industry, almost any type of service, the entire internet industry, pretty soon the legal industry is going to go the same way.

On the personal side, we vote to have access to more medical care, housing help, disaster relief, armies, police, infrastructure, public schools and libraries and pools and sports centers and it goes on and on and on. The demands me make of "free society" are growing constantly. We all love it, why not after all ? If it can be done.

Another demand assailing the coffers of modern societies ? Imports. We as "advanced societies" use up more food, energy, space per person, staff per person, revenue per person, health care professionals per person, metal, oil, gas, electricity, uranium, gold, platinum, wood, coal, marble, tar, you name it, we have more. All that stuff we mostly buy from the 80% of the planet that is poor. That's probably going to get me a lot of insults but that is a simplification of an undeniable reality in 2011.

So how do we fill up the coffers ? The population cannot pay anymore taxes, the current level is choking consumption as it is now. A not too surprising result of the massive run to ownership of profitable companies by a few wealthy individuals, usually less than 1% of the population owns nearly 90% of profitable shares. If FOREX is the game of the young speculators, corporate share holders are the owners of the world.

That's where I had an idea, why not create a rule that would allow for a win - win situation ? Why not allow the shareholders to amass MORE money, their ultimate goal. And the government to gain ownership of minority stakes in all companies ?

The companies, instead of paying tax in currency, would pay tax in shares. The government, thus entrusted with a minority share would benefit from profits as any share holder does. More revenue would be channeled to the share holders, while simply making government one of them. Every individual share would become more profitable than it was before, in precise terms, EPS would rise by the value exonerated from tax. Of course certain conditions must apply for this scheme to be efficient. I imagine it would ultimately be very complex because of the need to protect governments from negative returns and the need for voluntary adherence to the scheme which combined could eventually become mutually destructive.

However I find the idea of increasing individual share value and filling state coffers at the same time very attractive, the idea of government having a stake in the success of businesses is comforting especially if it is prevented from making any choices internal to the structure of the business and allowed to ponder and legislate around it with its own interest in mind.  I realize my idea is basically a tax on the ultra rich, whether we want to face it or not, however smart me make a measure, however fair we try to be, it is confronted to the fact that wealth is a zero sum game at a moment in time. The question then becomes simply what form of organisation benefits the fastest and safest creation of wealth.

The advantage of this tax is that it is paid in money already owed, limiting at the moment of payment the pain of partition from cash to zero. It is a pleasant and simple way to pay your dues I believe that to give someone a stake in your continued success.

I'd like to know what other people think of this idea.  Please comment.

Hello this is my new blog

Hello readers,

This is my first time blogging. I've created this blog because I wanted to share with the internet some of my thoughts on the economic structure of modern society and discuss possible ways to improve your current social organisation. My hope is not to implement anything, I'm not starting a new political party, I just want to find people interested in imagining better ways to harness human ingenuity to the benefit of all.

I have many interests such as advanced physics, politics, economics, psychology and all of these topics are fair game for this blog. Anything you want to talk about is good too. I've created this blog following a specific idea that I will share in another post.

Welcome !

Andrea David Edelman