Isn’t life funny?
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 by Nestor
America Beyond Capitalism
What a “Pluralist Commonwealth” Would Look Like
Last survivor of ‘Christmas truce’ tells of his sorrow
The First World War’s horrors still move us but one man recalls his moment of peace amid the bloodshed
The New York Review of Books: On War
By Chris Hedges
“The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship.
They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war.
The vanquished know the essence of war—death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life.
All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.”
MightyCoach’s home-movie Kung-Fu Konstruction Kit
“Make your own Kung-fu movies in your backyard”
Activist artist/photographer/filmmaker/animator John Douglas’s the HOMELAND SECURITY Collection
Toilets of the World
“When you travel off the beaten path, it doesn’t take long until the question comes up. “Well, you know, how did you, well, when you had to, well, uh, what was it like?” So here are pictures that I have taken, of toilets I have encountered.”
“Use the natural squatting position safely and comfortably with Nature’s Platform”
The Debut of RoboDump 1.0
Choke on my Groundhog, YOU BASTARD ROBOTS, a freeware vidyagame
PLA-inspired erotica art
Highly controversial (and tit-tilating) art works from 53 year old Beijing-born painter Hu Ming (呼鸣). Hu’s parents were military doctors who had always hoped their daughter would some day become a great surgeon. During her days in high school when the Cultural Revolution was in full swing, Hu’s time was all spent either drawing the portrait of Chairman Mao (after her teacher found out she loved painting) or studying the Little Red Book. Finding it all very boring, Hu begged her parents to let her join the army
March 4th, 2009 at 4:44 am
I like art.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
The top 2/10th of 1% makes more on the sale of stocks and bonds in one year than everyone else combined.
No kidding. It’s math. Just recently I decided to try my hand at playing the stock market, and so far I’ve gotten roughly +10% in two weeks. That shit adds up, and theoretically speaking I could multiply my money every year, and much like the grains of rice on the chess board, I’ll eventually reach fantasy numbers. Though two weeks and two buy-sell trades could be a fluke, so I’ll have to see how easy it is to keep it up for a year or so. Over all I think 2009 might be a great year for buying and selling stock at a profit, since the economy seems to stay in the gutter, thus keeping the trend from going up or down.
While it’s easy to see why a trend down would make it difficult to buy and sell stocks at a profit, I have a feeling that a trend going up would also hamper my trading. You see, the profit lies not only in selling the stocks at a higher price, but also in buying them back at a lower price than you sold them for, or else you might as well have kept them. Hard for me to predict these things, so my current method consists of empirically expecting certain values and being patient enough to wait for them. But in a trend up or down, that wait could become much too long.
If this works out well for me, I’ll consider it crazy and insane. If I end up losing more money, I’ll give the system the benefit of the doubt, and consider myself the fool instead. But the way it looks right now, investing in stocks isn’t nearly as profitable as trading in them. Which seems counter productive – I don’t see how society benefits from me playing the stock market, so why should I be rewarded for it? Between 1987-1990 we used to have a tax on trading stocks and bonds here in Sweden – I wonder why we don’t have one today?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Well it certainly seems a time of crisis is also a time of opportunity, so good luck with that. It’s basically a form of gambling though so reward is mandated by luck, I would think.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:39 am
I think the stock market is all about foresight, but most foresight is so obtuse that it might as well all be luck.