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Wednesday, 19 September 2012 07:38
East County Chamber Takes Positions on State Ballot Propositions
By Scott Alevy, President & CEO Multiple tax increases. Education and political campaign funding. The kind of stuff you don't want to see on your ballot (but seem to face every two years). That's part of what you can look forward to on November 6th. Oh sure, there are…
Published in
Government Affairs
Wednesday, 30 May 2012 09:06
Opposition to Sequestration
The San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in the eastern part of San Diego County. We have grown to over 850 member companies, employing approximately 15,000 hard working East County residents. After the issue of Sequestration was vetted in our Government Affairs Committee, the…
Published in
Government Affairs
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 12:36
East County Chamber Takes Official Positions on Key State Legislation
At their April meeting, the Chamber's Board of Directors voted to take formal positions on eight separate pieces of legislation that are currently making their way through the maze that is the California State Legislature. Here are the two bills we chose to SUPPORT: Senate Bill 1374 This bill relates…
Published in
Government Affairs
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 12:32
East County Chamber takes official position on two ballot measures
One of the most important services the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce offers to the entire business community is our ongoing advocacy, including ballot initiatives and legislative issues. We are proud to serve as the voice of the business community in East County, and take that responsibility seriously.…
Published in
Government Affairs
Wednesday, 25 April 2012 10:55
Chamber Takes Official Positions on Key State Legislation
By Scott Alevy, President & CEO One of the most important services the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce offers to our members (and the entire business community) is our advocacy on local, state and federal legislative issues. We are proud to serve as the voice of the business…
Published in
Government Affairs
Friday, 23 March 2012 12:15
A Trail of Broken Promises
Obamacare Two Years LaterWe can sum up 2010's sweeping health care overhaul in two words: broken promises. Prior to the law's passage, supporters made a number of assurances or pledges about the general benefits of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As for the specifics, Nancy Pelosi told us…
Published in
Health Care Reform
Wednesday, 21 March 2012 14:13
Health Care Symposium 2012
Part 1 - 24:49 Part 2 - 29:23 Part 3 - 24:57
Published in
Health Care Reform
Monday, 18 July 2011 14:24
El Cajon Planning Commision - Concerns and Reccomendations
July 18, 2011 Members of the Planning Commission City Hall City of El Cajon 200 Civic Center Way El Cajon, CA 92020Dear Planning Commission members,The San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce's Infrastructure & Land Use Committee established a El Cajon Downtown Specific Plan (DSP) Working Group in March…
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Infra-Structure and Land Use
Friday, 25 March 2011 08:07
Grandfathered Plans in the PPACA
A theme throughout the debate over health care reform (the PPACA and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010) was that Americans who like their current coverage will be able to keep it. The new law established that both group and individual plans in place as of…
Published in
Health Care Reform
Friday, 25 March 2011 08:04
Non-Discrimination Rules Expanded in the PPACA
Many benefits and health insurance rules were affected by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed into law on March 23, 2010. One of the requirements that became effective on September 23, 2010 (and amended the Public Health Service Act (PHSA) by adding Section 2716) was for non-grandfathered,…
Published in
Health Care Reform
PPACA Timeline: Highlights for Brokers and Clients
What You Need To Know About The Small Business Tax Credit
10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care
California Legislative Healthcare Bills - 2011
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Jordan Palmer's lone hit of the day was all the Northwestern State softball team could muster in a 3-0 loss to Louisiana-Lafayette in the 2013 NCAA Softball Regional Tournament hosted by LSU on Friday afternoon at Tiger Park.
"We came out a little timid in the first couple of innings and the Cajuns took advantage of that," said head coach Donald Pickett. "They're a little bit more of an aggressive team, but we played them a little bit more even throughout the game. We dug ourselves a hole we couldn't get out of, resulting in the loss."
Cheyenne DelaGarza reached on a walk and was pushed to second as Palmer singled to left field in the second with two outs. Shenequia Abby ended the half inning with a strikeout, noting the many innings the Lady Demons left runners on base.
The Ragin' Cajuns got on the board early notching one run in the bottom of the first as senior Kylie Roos (17-5) walked her second batter of the game with the bases loaded.
Louisiana-Lafayette scored single runs in the fourth and sixth innings to come away with the 3-0 victory.
The Lady Demons had a scoring chance in the fifth when Cali Burke stepped up to the plate with Abby and Palmer on second and third with one out.
Burke bunted in an attempt to put a runner across the plate, but Palmer was tagged out on the quick throw from pitcher Jordan Wallace.
"Jordan did a good job of pitching us high and getting ahead in the count," said Palmer. "We had some good at-bats, but we should have been a little bit more patient up there."
Palmer led from the plate with a one-for-one performance.
Roos allowed seven hits in six solid innings in the circle while striking out two.
The Lady Demons will face the loser of the first-seeded LSU vs. fourth-seeded Central Connecticut match-up at three o'clock Saturday afternoon at Tiger Park.
320 Division Street P.O. Box 1490 Lake Charles, LA 70601/70602 Phone: 337-439-9071 Fax: 337-437-7600 FCC Public File firstname.lastname@example.com Closed Captioning


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Mon 17 Sep
Sasha becomes jealous when she sees Casey kissing Ruby, unaware of his true intentions.
To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.0 or greater is installed.
Sasha becomes jealous when she sees Casey kissing Ruby, unaware of his true intentions.
Danny sets his sights on Ruby's inheritance, and Romeo's given fresh hope of a reconciliation with Indi.
Casey starts to become aware of Danny's dark side – and how Brax is under pressure to pay him off.
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Works fine for me. Try switching to a decent ISP.
It doesnt work on the xbox player either, it now speeds up the video and cuts segments of speech out to keep up, it never used to, whats happening 5??
Same for me... I can only assume that 5 really don't have the funds to update their site for us to be able to watch anything properly, or if they do, won't, as we are not considered important enough. Shame that they don't even respond to queries - rude, much.... Bet the moderator removes THIS, too....
use sky and record
God catching up on Home and Away from this week has been painful....stop start stop start....
This comment was removed by a moderator


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Fast Times at NAU | ||||
Alexis Texas might get expelled! She had someone take a test for her, and now her teacher wants to see her after class. Mikey, what should I do? Well, orgasms relieve stress, Alexis. |
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Quick Facts
- NAME: Sally Jessy Raphael
- OCCUPATION: Radio Talk Show Host, Talk Show Host
- BIRTH DATE: February 25, 1935 (Age: 79)
- EDUCATION: Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Puerto Rico
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Easton, Pennsylvania
- Originally: Sally Angeline Lowenthal
- ZODIAC SIGN: Pisces
Best Known For
Sally Jesse Raphael is an American talk show host best known for TV's Sally Jesse Raphael and her trademark red glasses.
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Play NowSally Jessy Raphael. (2014). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 01:53, Mar 10, 2014, from http://www.biography.com/people/sally-jessy-raphael-9542188.
Sally Jessy Raphael. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/sally-jessy-raphael-9542188 [Accessed 10 Mar 2014].
"Sally Jessy Raphael." 2014. The Biography Channel website. Mar 10 2014, 01:53 http://www.biography.com/people/sally-jessy-raphael-9542188.
"Sally Jessy Raphael," The Biography Channel website, 2014, http://www.biography.com/people/sally-jessy-raphael-9542188 [accessed Mar 10, 2014].
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Sally Jessy Raphael. The Biography Channel website. 2014. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/sally-jessy-raphael-9542188. Accessed Mar 10, 2014.
Sally Jesse Raphael is an American talk show host born on February 25, 1935 in Easton, Pennsylvania. Raphael studied broadcasting and acting while in college. She began as a correspondent in Puerto Rico before working in the U.S. in radio and TV during the 1960s and '70s. Raphael debuted as the host of Sally Jesse Raphael in 1983. Recognized by her trademark red frame glasses, the show became a hit and aired until 2002. Since then Raphael has hosted shows on the internet and radio.
Early Life
Talk show host Sally Lowenthal was born on February 25, 1943, in Easton, Pennsylvania. Her father was a prosperous business executive, who Sally claims was "the last of the men who wore Dunhill suits and silk ties," and her mother was an artist whose paintings still hang in city museums. Raphael grew up in Westchester County, New York, until she was 12. The family then moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her father owned a rum-exporting company. Raphael had a very privileged upbringing, but after her family moved back to the U.S. in the 1950s, her father developed a heart condition, and the medical bills eventually drained the family's finances.
Enchanted by radio, she landed a job reading the junior high school news on WFAS-AM in White Plains, New York, at the age of 14. After high school, she got a broadcasting degree at Columbia University, then took a turn towards acting at The Actor's Studio, where she studied with Lee Strasberg. At 18, she married and moved to San Juan with her new husband, Andrew Vladimir; they had two daughters, Allison and Andrea. Soon after, Raphael began her roller-coaster career in broadcasting that would eventually take her through more than 24 cities. She found Puerto Rico to be a fertile starting point because "they let me do everything…I was the girl reporter, standing in front of the burning buildings. I was the morning man, doing comedy, weather, and news for WHOA above a garage." She also served as a correspondent for the Associated Press, hosted a cooking/chatting show in "Spanglish," and eventually scored her own talk show at the poolside of a posh hotel. While starting out in broadcasting in Puerto Rico, she decided to change her name, taking her father's first name, Jessy, and her mother's maiden name, Raphael, because, as she told People magazine in 1992, "most people in Puerto Rico have three names."
Aspiring Talkshow Host
After her first marriage ended in the late '60s, Raphael left Puerto Rico with her two daughters, a foster son and her new companion, Karl Soderlund, who had become her manager and greatest supporter. They first settled in Miami, but eventually headed north, traveling town-to-town in search of broadcasting work—living meagerly, and often sleeping in the car. She accepted a variety of broadcasting assignments, including a few stints as a rock-'n'-roll disk jockey and hosting a television puppet show. However, Raphael failed to find steady employment and was fired over eighteen times during this period.
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Female Talk Show Hosts
Taking on topics of politics, entertainment, women's issues and more, female talk show hosts have proven to be every bit as engaging, intelligent, and funny as their male counterparts. Oprah Winfrey's 25-year-reign as the queen of talk is unparalleled, but many other female talk show hosts have come into their own as well, including Tyra Banks, Ellen DeGeneres, Sally Jessy Raphael and Kelly Ripa.
Visit Biography.com's Women's History group to explore more biographies, photos and videos of some the world's most fascinating women.
Female Talk Show Hosts 26 people in this group
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Famous Talk Show Hosts
Since the early days of television, talk show hosts have been among the most popular personalities in the medium. From TV pioneers like Jack Paar and Johnny Carson to daytime legends like Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey to late night talkers like Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel, here is a look at the famous hosts who have talked the talk on TV.
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Dax Shepard dishes on his "intimate" wedding to Kristen Bell. Plus, more from Miley Cyrus, Rihanna and other stars
Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Updated: Friday Aug 24, 2012 | 06:00 AM EDT By: Karen J. Quan
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"I truly love him."– Rihanna, who admitted she still cares for ex Chris Brown, on Oprah's Next Chapter


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little hedgehog Animals
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This is really lovely work Crinaanca love the little Hedgehog and the leaves.5♥s and faves
How adorable! Love the colors and expression! The hedgehog looks real soft to the touch makes me wanna hug it! :3
what a cute adorable hedgehog and i love the colour of the crisp autumn leave an awesome drawing 5h fav
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Police investigate potential homicide at Queens hotel
A Queens man was found dead inside a hotel room Saturday night in an incident that police have classified as a homicide.
Cops arriving at the Crown Motor Inn on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst discovered the body of Joseph Benzinger, 54, lying unconscious on the floor. Benzinger, a Middle Village resident, was pronounced dead at the scene.
No arrests had been made as of Sunday, the NYPD said.


text:
ORBCOMM Inc. (Nasdaq:ORBC), a global satellite data communications company focusing on two-way Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, reported that its Chief Executive Officer, Marc Eisenberg, and Chief Financial Officer, Robert Costantini, will present at the Craig-Hallum 2012 Alpha Select Conference on Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 12:50 PM, ET.
When it comes to reaching a wide range of customers, no other medium can beat Internet.
Crown Equity Holdings Inc., (CRWE) offers advertising branding and marketing services as a worldwide online multi-media publisher with its digital network of websites and focuses on the distribution of information for the purpose of bringing together a targeted audience and the advertisers that want to reach them.
CRWEs advertising services cover and connect a range of marketing specialties, as well as provide search engine optimization for clients interested in online media awareness.
CRWEs division CRWE AD-Services (www.crwe-adservices.com), is a full service multimedia advertising company specializing in internet marketing. It provides modern and unique advertising campaigns, dedicated to offering the most cost effective advertising solutions.
More about CRWE at www.crownequityholdings.com.
The Board of Directors of The First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FNLC), declared a quarterly dividend of 19.5 cents per share.
This third-quarter dividend, which is payable October 31, 2012, to shareholders of record as of October 5, 2012, is equal to the 19.5 cents per share declared in the previous fifteen quarters.
The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (NASDAQ:CAKE) reported the opening of its newest Cheesecake Factory restaurant at the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
The restaurant opened on September 19, 2012 and contains approximately 8,700 square feet and 230 seats.
Disclaimer: CRWENewswire.co.uk publisher and its affiliates and contractors are not registered investment advisers or broker/dealers. (Read Full Disclaimer at http://CRWENewswire.co.uk/disclaimer)
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News & Publications
Austrian Cellist and Pianist to Perform Chamber Music at St. John's College
FOR RELEASE: September 15, 2009
CONTACT: Patricia Dempsey, 410-626-2539
Austrian Cellist and Pianist to Perform Chamber Music at St. John's College
NOTE: The time has been changed from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
St. John's College welcomes the community to its rich array of concerts featuring local artists as well as musicians who perform around the world. Austrian cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl and pianist Andreas Woyke will perform in concert at St. John's at 7 p.m. on September 27. The concert will be held the Great Hall, and is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by World Artists Experiences.
The young Austrian cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl has already had a distinguished career. He will be accompanied by pianist Andreas Woyke in a concert that features classical music by well-known and contemporary composers. Kleinhapl and Woyke have recorded several award-winning works by Johannes Brahms, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninou, and Schubert.


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Cedar Rapids Weather
More Demolitions Coming, But Cedar Rapids Getting Closer to the EndBy Dave Franzman, Reporter
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — More than four and a half years after the devastating flood of 2008, the city of Cedar Rapids is still demolishing damaged property acquired in buyouts. But the "to do" list is growing shorter.
The next round of commercial property demolitions that will go before the Cedar Rapids City Council next month numbers only 18 now. One demolition that may start any day now is not on that list. It's the old Cedar Rapids Animal Control Shelter located just off Old River Road. The contractor has permission to tear the buildings down as soon as all contaminated material is removed. Workers were in the process of checking buildings on Wednesday, although actual destruction of the ruined buildings has not started. But while the animal shelter is a fairly well-known building, it's not as visible as some that may begin coming down as soon as April. The "visible" list would certainly include the former Blimpie Subs and Jiffy Lube buildings in the 100 block of First Avenue N.W. Another very visible structure coming down soon is an office and apartment complex just across the street at 100 First St S.W. Ron Bentley, who owns Bentley's Watch Repair in the same area said seeing flood damaged buildings that aren't getting repaired for nearly five years is long enough. "A lot of these buildings are old and in need of repair so it will be kind of nice to get them torn down and things cleaned up around here," Bentley said. The old Central Fire Station must also come down as part of the FEMA flood recovery contract to build a new main fire station for the city. But demolition work for that building isn't scheduled yet. Still, as people watch more and more flood damaged buildings disappear, some may start to see it as the closing of a chapter. John Riggs, flood recovery program manager for the city, said "I think every time we start new demolitions people notice. Just with the equipment and activity in the area and it is becoming evident more and more is getting done by the city." Riggs said it's not possible yet to forecast the final demolition yet for either commercial or residential property. But the day is coming. Conversation GuidelinesBe KindDon't use abusive, offensive, threatening, racist, vulgar or sexually-oriented language. Share KnowledgeBe truthful. Share what you know and what you are passionate about. Stay focusedPromote lively and healthy debate. Stay on topic. Ask questions and give feedback on the story's topic. Report TroubleHelp us maintain a quality comment section by reporting comments that are offensive. If you see a comment that is offensive, or you feel violates our guidelines, simply click on the "x" to the far right of the comment to report it. read the full guidelines here » Commenting will be disabled on stories dealing with the following subject matter: Crime, sexual abuse, property fires, automobile accidents, Amber Alerts, Operation Quickfinds and suicides. |
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Moving Time
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on March 10, 2014 9:36 AM ::
The Paradoxes of Sustainability
I have been gingerly backing away from using the word, sustainability, for some months. The reasons are several fold. First, the word has become little more than jargon and is no longer an effective call to action. It means too many things to too many people to enable the kind of coordinated action it takes to combat growing unsustainability. This problem could be alleviated by a concerted effort of everyone concerned about the state of the world to come to some consensus about the meaning. Easier said than done. A little history of "sustainability" activities and programs reveals such diverse purposes behind corporate, individual, public, NGO, and other efforts that coalescence into a relatively coherent body of aims and activities is unlikely. That's my conclusion, but it is shared by others. After writing a couple of books focused on "sustainability" in hopes of initiating such movement towards a consensus, I have given up—given up trying to get everyone to pull together, but not, by any means, giving up my efforts to work around that obstacle and provide an alternate approach.
Now for the second reason at the heart of the paradox. Virtually every program, project, strategy, or policy to combat unsustainability is an essentially technological fix, some form of eco-efficiency. Doing better, that is more efficiently, sounds great; who doesn't want to do whatever they do better? In this case "whatever they do" is to grow or sustain some condition essential to the actors' missions. It is to keep on chugging, hoping that life can continue on the trajectory it has been for some time. For many, it is to become wealthier in broad material terms, whether they are rich or poor. For others, it is increasingly just trying to hold on to what they have in the way of the means to provide for themselves and families. For some it is a hope that the myths of growth and upward mobility—the American Dream—will come to them. Sustainability and eco-efficiency are a metaphor for the status quo whether it be couched in terms of the process of growth or expansion, or in the maintenance of some level of well-being.
A simple lesson in systems dynamics, as I have shown in Sustainability by Design, demonstrates quite convincingly that our culture exhibits several basic archetypal behaviors: fixes-that-fail, shifting-the-burden, and addiction. Fixes-that-fail is the pattern characteristic of repeated attempts to solve a problem by attacking its symptoms. Applying a tourniquet can stop bleeding, but cannot cure the injury. In many cases, treating the symptoms produces something unintended. Addiction is related to fixes-that-fail, but, in this special case, the unintended consequences produce a new set of problems that grow to be more serious than the ones being addressed. Eventually, the secondary issues overshadow the original symptoms. Shifting-the-burden is like addiction, but without the development of a new problem. By only continuing to treat the symptoms repeatedly, attention is drawn away from consideration of the root causes, and the actor is stuck in an eternity of fixes-that-fail.
Our initial focus on sustainability was triggered by observing the symptoms of unsustainability: signs of a deteriorating natural system and immoral human conditions. The fix proposed was sustainable development: continued growth, but better growth. The specific framework was to be a portfolio of technological solutions, big and small, ranging from recycling to nuclear fusion. We have been at this now for many decades with little effect. The symptoms are still there and, in many cases, getting worse. Our Western political economies are all built on a materialist foundation of growth. The cost of reducing global poverty, one of the primary targets of sustainable development, has been accelerating deterioration. Growth won't and can't solve the problem it is largely responsible for. An interesting twist on Einsteins saying, "The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
One straightforward use of "sustainable" refers to a renewable resource when we talk about sustainable yield as a level of exploitation that permits the resource to regenerate at the same rate of exploitation such that the stock remains relatively constant. We have far exceeded such levels regarding the capacity of the globe to absorb our wastes. Fisheries are collapsing. This use of the term seems out of place when it comes to describing the global system where no more growth is possible without depleting its resources.
This brings me to last paradoxical aspect of sustainability. If the globe were producing the conditions we set as our vision for humanity and other life, we could not guarantee that it would sustain itself. Well-being or any other quality of life, say flourishing, is just that, a quality, not a quantity. We err when we try to metricize it and reduce it to a number in the name of managing it. Flourishing is a systems property. I flourish when the conditions of the system are right for it to happen. It, like many other properties of complex systems, such as the planet, is emergent, appearing like magic. Flourishing, like the flocking of birds or schooling of fish, is a kind of ordering that occurs when the individual elements (the humans) of the system follow the right rules. I am trying to figure out what the rules might be. Maybe flourishing might come when everyone is caring for their nearest neighbors, both human and non-human, similar to the rules that produce flocking.
As I keep reading about what is being done for sustainability, I become more convinced that the efforts are misdirected partly due the paradoxical nature of the word itself in the context it is being used. I came home from a meeting today in New Jersey where I gave a talk about my book and the idea of flourishing. As in just about every similar situation, I get peppered with questions and comments about the need to measure flourishing so we can manage our way to it. Sorry folks, we just can't. Organizations should know this from experience, but this idea of measurement that so many managers carry from their MBA education trumps reflection and more pragmatic approaches. Real unintended problems that persist in enterprises are just like unsustainability. They almost always follow fixes-that-failed. Numbers don't help. It takes reflection and observation that the firm or organization has boxed itself out of. That's when the consultants are brought in. They aren't any smarter, but they are not boxed in and do not try to manage their way out of the bad situation. Unsustainability is just the same only many times more complex. Maybe my work might be more accepted if those struggling with unsustainability would think of me as a consultant. Anyway, it's a lot cheaper to buy my books than hire the Boston Consulting Group.
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on March 5, 2014 9:14 PM ::
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on March 5, 2014 4:05 AM ::
20 Years to Go and Still Counting
My co-author, Andy Hoffman, sent me a link to an article in The Guardian about some recent utterances of James Lovelock. Lovelock has been raising attention to the environment for about as long as any living person has.
Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer, and introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.
I think his Gaia model was unjustifiably criticized, perhaps because people objected to his use of "organism," which may have appeared to attribute more life to the planet than many humanists were comfortable with. But if you interpret his model as describing a complex adaptive system, including both living and non-living components, he is smack on. Such systems behave within what appear to be relatively stable, but changing or evolving structure. They remain within that structure, changing internally to reflect perturbations. Complex theorists call this remaining in an attractor. But if the perturbations are powerful enough, the system can jump precipitously into a new structure (attractor) that may (and is likely to be) inhospitable to parts of the systems.
Geologists have a name, Holocene, for the recent stable period of the earth that lasted for about 11,000 years up to the present time. Paul Cruzen, another notable scientist, argues that we have now entered into a new era, the Anthropocene, in which human activities are significantly perturbing the system with unknown (and unknowable) consequences. We do know that severe melting of the ocean is a outcome that scientific models predict with some finite probability. The consequences or costs of such an event in terms of human displacement and misery are harder to forecast. Many people have used the possibility of some sort of doomsday as an argument for acting now, even if we aren't certain it is coming. Lovelock clearly does as the article continues. "His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater."
Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.
I do not agree with him at all in his conclusion that we simply need to plan for our survival. I do not think the alternative is to "go back to nature" either, although I am not quite sure what he means here. He suggests that this next catastrophe (He counts seven such events so far in human history) will perhaps transform our species so that "we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly." It makes sense to plan for the eventually, but should do whatever we do on a global scale so the the rich do not weigh the necessary investments in their favor. If we use a formula to allocate efforts and resources to prevent and mitigate the impacts of any catastrophe, it might be based on the historical input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over its residence time.
Lovelock believes that all the present efforts to avert a major impact, like recycling, renewables, etc., do not amount to a hill of beans. It's too late to stop the juggernaut with marginal and incremental remedies, he says. I agree but I hesitate to call those who do "insane." But I strongly disagree with his argument for waiting until the shoe drops to begin to transform our species. That's the core of my arguments in both books I have written. We can, should, and must begin right now to exchange the two critical cultural beliefs that are at the root of our deteriorating situation with the two that will start the movement toward flourishing. It may be too late to prevent a disaster, whose magnitude we cannot know in advance, but it is not too late to start the process of rebuilding our cultural institutions around the kind of understanding, caring human who would be able to, as Lovelock says, "live with it properly." I would add that "properly" implies the emergence of flourishing. Understanding that humans are caring, not needy, creatures and that the world is complex, not machine-like, would do exactly what is needed. We do not have to wait for the disaster; we can start right now.
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on February 28, 2014 9:53 AM ::
Prodigal Sons
My frequent source of inspiration for these blogs, David Brooks, has reached all the way back to the Christian Bible for his column today. Drawing on the parable of the Prodigal Son, Brooks makes an analogy to two major segments of today's society. When the Father embraces his second son, who has squandered his life away, the hard working conscientious first son gets his nose out of joint, turning on the father for essentially dissing his high-minded life style.
Brooks makes an analogy to what he deems is our broken society today, full of metaphorical second sons who are pissing their lives away while the employed middle class is living the high-minded life of the elder son. He writes:
We live in a society in which moral standards are already fuzzy, in which people are already encouraged to do their own thing. We live in a society with advanced social decay — with teens dropping out of high school, financiers plundering companies and kids being raised without fathers. The father's example in the parable reinforces loose self-indulgence at a time when we need more rule-following, more social discipline and more accountability, not less.
But. as in many parables. there is a twist when the father tells the older son that his umbrage is misplaced. His response comes out of smugness, not out of respect for his parent. Brooks continues:
The father teaches that rebinding and reordering society requires an aggressive assertion: You are accepted; you are accepted. It requires mutual confession and then a mutual turning toward some common project. Why does the father organize a feast? Because a feast is nominally about food, but, in Jewish life, it is really about membership. It reasserts your embedded role in the community project.
As he often does, Brooks hits the nail almost on the head. What is needed is more than mere acceptance, it is love and care. Acceptance is a good step, but it is too passive. Love is active, constituted by caring actions that express the full acceptance of one's existence as another legitimate human being. But he redeems himself when he recognizes the need for strengthening or creating community. Membership is one of the essential domains of care in my taxonomy of care (see Sustainability by Design). Community is created by the connections among its members. Community alone cannot restore the health of our society. Too many other domains of care are left unattended. Learning is one that is is bad shape as is family. But membership is a good start to awaken the essential idea of connectedness. Without connectedness, human relationships are limited to transactions: contextless interchanges devoid of care.
Connectedness is a reflection of context; a sense that all parties to what is to be enacted are part of the same world. Brooks offers some examples, including "national service projects" and "infrastructure-building." Not bad, but unless the awareness of connectedness is made explicit, the results are not likely to be deep or lasting. Service has become something one buys these days, just another transaction. Connectedness through work, which is the essence of these projects, requires a consciousness of solidarity, another tie that has all but disappeared. In any case, Brooks piece is well worth reading.
(image: Rembrandt, The Retrun of the Prodigal Son)
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on February 18, 2014 10:41 AM ::
Robots Win the Right to Vote
Fast forward a few decades and imagine this post's headline, above, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal associated with the following story.
(Washington, February 13, 2030) Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the robots in a landmark case, Robots United v. Federal Elections Commission. Echoing prior cases involving corporations, the SCOTUS deemed intelligent robots to be people with a right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution. The court's creation of new classes of persons began all the way back in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (118 U.S. 394). In the headnote to the opinion, Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
The long series of cases affirming this corporate right culminated in 2012 in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Nothing had reached the Supreme Court since then until a group of intelligent, humanoids-the most advanced type, having lost their plea in several states finally won their appeal in the highest court of the land. Peter 247YYY, their lawyer, spoke to the press, saying, "The time for full recognition of voting rights for humanoid robots was long overdue since this class had already shown superiority over Homo sapiens in many domains." Human-robot marriages were already a matter of established law, having won in the SCOTUS in 2025 in the case of Mary883 v. Alabama.
Commentators speaking about the immediate case believed that the Justices swung to the robot's side, following an agreement that they would not to contribute to elections, thereby avoiding a double identity as humans under both the new rulings as well as Citizens United. It is not clear, said one of the pundits, whether sales of these highest class robots would increase or decrease as a result of the ruling.
Well, if you think this is completely outlandish, read Alex Beam's column in today's Globe. He began the column with:
IT WAS with some trepidation that I approached MIT Media Lab researcher Kate Darling to discuss her 2012 academic paper "On Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots." I found the subject fascinating, but maybe the field of robot rights had run out of battery power, as it were.
Also there was the guffaw factor. I didn't want to make fun of her, but that didn't mean other people wouldn't. I needn't have worried. "Still super interested!" Darling e-mailed me. "Have fellowships at Harvard and Yale for robot ethics this year and am planning a bunch of experimental work on human-robot interaction at MIT."
Robots having legal rights or privileges sounds ridiculous. But 20 years ago, the idea that the nation's leading law schools would be teaching animal-rights courses seemed equally absurd. Now anti-cruelty legislation is quite common in industrialized countries, and late last year the Nonhuman Rights Project made national headlines when it argued that a chimpanzee had "standing," meaning the right to sue, in a New York State court.
The chimps lost. (Perhaps that was due to the power of the creationists who argued that no animals should have such rights since they were created by God to serve human beings. Robots are not subject to that argument.) Later in the article, Beam refers to a now famous 2000 Wired article by Bill Joy, former Chief Scientist for Sun Microsystems. In the article titled, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy expressed his concerns for humans anticipating the invention of super (my word) intelligent robots. Here is the gist of his argument from the Wired article.
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
Joy had been talking to Ray Kurzweil who sent Joy a preview copy of his forthcoming book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, based on his utopian vision in which humans have gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology. Joy's Wired article followed as an expression of his great concern over the possibility of such an outcome.
Kurzweil's vision is completely incompatible with a flourishing world. I don't know if it would be the end of the trajectory we are on today where technology is continually replacing human interactions or an engineer's dream interrupting the flow. Both labor-saving or eliminating devices and much of the social media are now diminishing the need for direct human-to-human interactions without which we cannot flourish. In the technology-dominated world of Kurzweil, we can exist but not as caring beings. If and when we become the tools of intelligent machines, we will have lost our humanness. We will be, against Kant's imperative, merely means, not ends. If these robots can be made to have the same kind of emotions as humans, our uniqueness will be completely lost. An alien might then mistake humanoids for living, breathing human beings. One of my rules for raising the possibility of flourishing is to think twice about using technology for tasks that could be done through human-to-human interactions. In this case, perhaps I should say think at least five times or more.
Like Joy, I shudder at these thoughts. This robotic world of the future seems like a 3-D movie seen without the goggles. Something serious is missing. Perhaps it is the emotions we have evolved with that will prevent our merging with our non-human look-alikes. The parts of our brains that are the sources of both positive (love, compassion, empathy) and negative (anger, fear, indifference) represent the human experience over a very long time, perhaps a couple of million years. Even if machines can be made to think the way we do, I suspect that they will not be able to feel the way we do. That may be the saving grace.
(The image is the HRP-4C humanoid robot. At this year's CEATEC Japan trade show, the new and improved 'diva-bot' has been unveiled with singing as her new talent. Nicknamed Miim, she was developed by the media interaction group at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo, The robot utilizes a new technology, Vocaloid, to mimic a real singer's tonality. Accompanying facial expressions are generated through a system called vocawatcher, which studies a video of a singer to map the facial configurations. The synthesizing technology even picks out the sound and movement of the human singer's breathing to operate in a more realistic and natural manner.)
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on February 13, 2014 3:20 PM ::
Love Involves Real People
I found another arrow for my quiver in the NYTimes this morning in an oped piece on long distance relationships. Daniel Jones in a piece to be published in the upcoming Sunday Review, titled "Romance at Arm's Length," discusses the growing numbers of people engaged in computer-based "love affairs." Starting with quick review of Spike Jonze's movie, "Her." Jones paints a realistic, but disillusioning, picture of this practice
Other than the sci-fi wrinkle of the woman's being a microchip, the couple's ill-fated romance, which involves zero physical contact and relies on electronic communication for emotional sustenance, isn't futuristic at all; thousands of people are having relationships like that right now. True, they involve a real human being at the other end of the line instead of an operating system, but otherwise it's the same deal: The romances they pursue are emotionally rich but physically barren. And these kinds of relationships are surging in popularity.
The article is a great example of how technology always stands between us humans and the world, and inherently transforms relationships in to transactions. In the process, something always gets lost because the humans become part of the technological, inanimate system and are captured by it. A key line states "The romances they pursue are emotionally rich but physically barren. And these kinds of relationships are surging in popularity." I think Jones has got it very wrong or, at least, has confused what he writes as love with some sort of narcissistic feelings. I am not a psychologist so I have to move very carefully when I get into a discussion like this.
But when Jones continues with this, I feel a lot better about what I am going to write.
We're always searching for new ways of finding love that don't involve having to feel insecure and vulnerable, because who wants to feel insecure and vulnerable? That's the worst part of the whole love game, putting oneself out there to be judged and rejected. So when we get the chance to hide — whether through typed messages we can edit and control, or by saying whatever we'd like over Skype without expecting the relationship to ever turn physical — we're freed from much of that anxiety, and we're fooled into thinking this may be a better and truer way of having a relationship.
Emotions are being increasingly understood as states of the brain that act as mediators for the actions that follow. When we are angry, our responses to whatever is going on around us are restricted to some set we have embedded in other similar situation. When we feel empathetic, our actions are similar shaped by our empathy learning. Love, empathy, compassion and so on belong to the family of positive emotions. I could not find a single definition that suited me, but offer this composite. Positive emotions express a sense of connectedness to the world such that the connections will build lasting resources. Conversely, negative emotions arise from a sense of deficiency or the lack of resources to respond immediately.
When Jones speaks about "finding love," he paints it as a negative emotion whether he intended to or not. Since writing about love is his business (He has been editor of The Times's Modern Love column for the past decade .), I have to presume he means what he says. Describing love as something ones "seeks" is the epitome of a negative emotion. Love, i this sense, is some thing, which if found, satisfies an immediate need. If love is considered a positive emotion, the whole story changes.
I often quote Maturana's definition of love. Here's an approximate try, "Love is the [emotional] domain [of action] in which another arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself under any circumstances (unconditional)." Love, here, is an emotional resource to guide a certain kind of lasting relationship (see the definition, above). The idea of legitimate means the "other" has the same existential status. Without that equivalent status, there is no way the loving actor can interact empathetically or in any way that requires understanding what is going on at the other end.
Jones is, unfortunately, reinforcing the current cultural view of love as something to find, have, and keep. That's one issue I have with the column. The other is with the subject, seeking love via the Internet. Jones notes how many find this an unsatisfactory means. Not surprising. It would be highly difficult, if not impossible to find "love," in the positive sense I point to above. Love is about relating in the real world, stressing "real." Hiding behind the Internet to avoid rejection or judgment is doomed from the start. Love has nothing to do with these negative emotions. It is unconditional, unidirectional and always risky. If a loving relationship does not develop to be bi-directional, it is unlikely to be lasting.
Arranged marriages are generally disparaged in the US as lacking love as the initiating agency, and therefore are inferior to those created by falling in love. They are very different, for sure, and do not always work, but then those starting out of passionate "love" have a high frequency of failure. Having returned recently from India where my wife and I celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of Indian friends, I can attest to the emergence from arranged marriages of the kind of love I am described as a lasting and positive relationship.
But back to love via the Internet. Not only does this practice, driven by the reach of the Internet, trivialize one of life's most critical emotions, it teaches us the wrong meaning of love. So does Facebook with friendship. Social media may allow us to do wondrous thing, but not with important relationships. The behaviors that create flourishing or just the more limited long-term wholeness that love provides occur only between living human beings and only in the context of real interactions. If and when technology can reproduce life fully will anyone find the satisfaction that comes from those emotions that have evolved to make us what we are. Yes, it is risky to love anyone, but avoiding the risk by hiding behind some sort of technological shield may produce some feeling, but it will never be the intended one.
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on February 7, 2014 3:34 PM ::
Is Seeing Always believing?
I am about to spend a few days in Cleveland, weather permitting. I am doing a repeat of a class I did last year for the Weatherhead School Doctor of Management candidates. It will be the first class I have taught that was assigned Flourishing instead of Sustainability by Design. In preparing for this class, I had to carefully revise my presentations to reflect the changes that have entered my thinking and vocabulary in recent months. I use a wonderful video to raise questions about the Cartesian model of the mind as a mirror. This time as I was reviewing it, I got one of those aha moments.
The video shows a hollow mask of Charlie Chaplin's face slowly rotating, and, as the concave backside appears, the nose sticks out instead of sticking in as it really is. The face rotates several times and each time the nose sticks out. The narrator, some droll Englishman, points out that our brain is so used to faces with noses sticking out that we cannot perceive one sticking in, even though our senses get that signal. Our brains have become so wired by our historical experience that our present perceptions are shaped by the past.
I have known this for some time. It is central to Humberto Maturana's (and others) model of human cognition, but I have not put it explicitly into the context of my work. Our brains are plastically coupled to the outside. The neuronal structure evolves with our historical life experience. What this means is that the brains we are born with change over our lifetime. Our actions at any time result from the ontogeny of our brain, that is, our personal evolution. We start life with the built-in emotions that reflect our phylogeny, the evolution of our species. Having no experience in our neonatal rational brains to draw on, our early actions are largely emotionally driven. Another way of saying this is we begin life as an exemplar of Homo sapiens, a human being, a unique species, but unaffected by culture. Whatever we are at that point, that is what it is to be human. Our rational brain is there, but not yet fired up.
We experience need and fear, negative emotions resting in our evolutionarily older reptilian brain parts. We learn what love is via the relationship with loving parents and others that care for us. Our mirror neurons help transfer that emotion and other positive emotions into the evolutionarily later developing the mammalian brain parts and reinforce other positive emotions already there. I am reading Spiritual Evolution, by George Valliant. It would be better titled "Emotional Evolution and the Brain" because that's what is really is all about. Valliant, drawing on his long experience and on other brain researchers and behavioral scientists, locates emotions in various parts of the brain. He has equated positive emotions and spirituality, a dubious connection. In my own phenomenology, spirituality is a more limited domain of action than those associated with all the positive emotions, love compassion, empathy, etc. But that's a little besides the point here.
The key point about all this is that we learn, not only facts, as we live out our lives, we also learn emotions. Maturana's simple, but elegant, aphorism, "doing is learning; learning is doing," is wonderfully explanatory here. I had always connected it to our rational actions per se, but it is equally applicable to our emotional learning.
Returning to the Chaplin head demonstration for a moment, if we are immersed in a culture where human beings act primarily on the basis of emotional neediness, we will eventually embed that as our primary shaper of action. Maturana and others point out that our emotions come before our behaviors. They prepare our brain and body for what responses we exhibit to sensory and internally generated signals. When we are angry, our reactions are shaped by the anger. When we feel love, we act accordingly.
As need suppresses love and other positive emotions, our actions involve the obvious consequent acquisition of material objects. Our attention focuses inward. We become more individualistic. We see others more as means to satisfy our needs. Kant's imperative to treat humans always as ends, not means, may come from a philosophical source, but it has real practical importance in today's materialistic culture. The key point, so far, is that the dominant negative emotional context of our modern culture is not the result of our primal human nature, but comes from cultural, not biological evolution. Maturana has always said that love is our most basic emotion but has become submerged, creating a societal pathology. Science has not helped dispel that notion. Until very recently psychology, an important field of study of human behavior, focused entirely on negative emotions, dismissing love and others as mere distractions. Valliant's book is full of excellent references to this history. Only recently has the field broadened to include positive psychology. One of its central players, Martin Seligman, has written a book about it, titled, Flourishing. Great minds
The significance of all this is that we can recover more fully and more balanced what is is to be human-what makes our species evolutionarily distinct. I have argued in the past that recovery is what it will take to make flourishing possible, but did not have such a clear pathway in mind. Those who argue that what we are today is our true nature and can't be changed by culture are on shaky ground. We will not rediscover love and our mammalian nature while we are immersed in this modernist, need-based culture, but we can change it, albeit only with great difficulty. Need and other negative self-directed emotions did come first when we were still at the reptilian stage and still springs from the reptilian brain. Love and care developed later and became embedded in our mammalian, human brain. It is waiting there to come forth as the dominant shaper of human life. It must if we would flourish.
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on February 3, 2014 9:32 PM ::
The Power of Amazement
I am not sure where David Brooks was going in his Jan 28th oped column about faith. He seemed to be saying that those secular folks who disparage the faithful do so because they do not understand what faith is all about. Not surprising to me because many among the faithful cannot explain what "faith" means. In spite of any vagueness, the column is worth reading just for two included quotes. The first is from one of the most human and articulate voices of modern Judaism.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described one experience of faith in his book "God in Search of Man": "Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal. …To be spiritual is to be amazed."
And yet Heschel understood that the faith expressed by many, even many who are inwardly conflicted, is often dull, oppressive and insipid — a religiosity in which "faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion."
His use of amazement helps me continue to understand what flourishing means, and also makes the importance of spirituality clearer. Without amazement, most of, if not all, of life becomes humdrum. The world just something that is out there to be factored into one's daily routines—a source of whatever is needed at that moment or a nuisance that is getting in the way of what was intended. His words reinforce my sense that spirituality is as essential a domain of care as is all others, and perhaps, more important. But as Brooks says today, a majority of Americans scoff at those who include faith in their lives.
I need to make a warning here. Faith is a very troublesome word because it is poorly understood and can take on several distinctly different meanings. Heschel is clear that is it not the same as religiosity although religious practitioners can certainly have faith in their beliefs. He warns us that when faith is missing, religion turns into a empty repetition of doctrine and ritual.
At the end he includes a famous passage from the writings of Saint Augustine.
If you are a secular person curious about how believers experience their faith, you might start with Augustine's famous passage "What do I love when I love my God," and especially the way his experience is in the world but then mysteriously surpasses the world:
"It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odor of flowers, and ointments and perfumes, nor manna or honey, nor limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God — a light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God."
I read amazement into this passage in the sense of Rabbi Heschel's words. But Heschel's notion of spirituality extends beyond God to life in general. Looking at the stars on a clear night is amazing. Feeling the warmth of my wife's body in bed at night is amazing. Seeing my students' eyes light up in class is amazing. Being surprised by a seal popping up a few feet from my boat is amazing. When we carefully examine the word, amazing, beyond its trivialized use along with awesome, its connection to transcendence becomes clearer. Our basic human tendency to seek explanations to what has just entered our consciousness is left hanging in these moments. The explanation is beyond our rational capabilities. It is more than just being stumped by an intractable problem.
Amazement opens up our consciousness to what we are immediately connected to. Our habitual life stops for the moment and fades into the background. It is the connectedness that is so important. Our habitual, normal actions are mostly carried out unconsciously. Our cognitive system, in a sense, is working without our noticing. Most of life is spent in transacting one's "business." Transactions, as defined, are activities that do need require the reciprocal recognition of the person at the other end. Just pay the bill and move on. There is little or no room for care here and similarly little possibility for flourishing.
Spirituality, as I interpret Heschel, is a class of actions resulting from one's amazement. Amazement is a positive emotion, as opposed to, say, fear. We naturally seek to bring more positive emotions in our life so we return to those places where we have felt amazement even though we may not experience it every time we act. We, however, are likely to remember our sense of connection in an existential sense: as a human being, we are connected to the world.
Once this belief finds its way into our cognitive system, it will stay there waiting to jump into the causal chain in other domains of action. If we begin to feel and recognize our connectedness when we work or raise our families or join in other cultural events, what have been merely transactions may be transformed into caring actions. Connectedness is semantically close to relationships. Relationships always have two ends connected by caring actions. Perhaps this process could be speeded up if we introduce a new word, caraction, to replace transaction. Flourishing in the here and now depends on such transformation: from need that is served through transactions to care that is realized through caractions. A wakening of spirituality through amazement would be a powerful step in that transformation, but perhaps not enough. It might take, in Hershel's word, radical amazement. I'm all for it.
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on January 29, 2014 1:01 PM ::
Richer than Croesus
I don't tend to read the business pages of newspapers very much, but last weekend, an article in the NYTimes caught my eye. With the headline of "For the Love of Money," it began with:
In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn't big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.
This is more than merely greed, but surely a case of what greed can become. Myth and story abound with tales of men (almost always men) who become so enamored of money that their lives slip by unnoticed or they suffer worse fates. Midas was said to have died of starvation because everything he touched turn to gold, rendering it inedible. Scrooge was not so much known as a greedy man, but rather as a miser. Somehow, however, greed drove him to hold on to his money so tightly, that he lost sight of the humanity surrounding him. Both showed signs of addiction.
Addiction is a special kind of obsessive action with two kinds of outcomes. First, the addict never can be satisfied. Second, over time the addiction produces some sort of pathological unintended consequences. For Midas, it was death; for Scrooge, it was the loss of his soul. For Sam Polk, the author of the article, it was, like Scrooge, a loss of his self. He writes
As the world crumbled, I profited. I'd seen the crash coming, but instead of trying to help the people it would hurt the most — people who didn't have a million dollars in the bank — I'd made money off it. I don't like who you've become, my girlfriend had said years earlier. She was right then, and she was still right. Only now, I didn't like who I'd become either.
Polk was lucky, he recognized what was happening to him, and set out to "cure" himself with the help of many intervenors. Ironically, he considers himself fortunate that his early experience with drugs and alcohol helped wake him up and move him to address his addiction to money.
I can believe that addiction to drugs and alcohol may be due partly to genetic and partly to cultural factors, but I can't see that money addiction is anything but cultural, reflecting present values. Polk adds this comment about wealth addiction.
Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a 1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class. Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald's C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Addictions of any kind are antithetical to flourishing because the authenticity of care is necessarily missing. Addiction is constituted by loss of control; the addict is taken over by him or herself, but not in a mindful or responsible way. Wealth addiction seems even more insidious than, say, consumption addiction because there is no limit to the amount of money theoretically possible to acquire. There is some practical limit to the quantity of goods one can buy, although that limit is being stretched by the volume of the mega-mansions many wealth addicts live in. After the garage is filled with the overflow and a few self-storage units are also crammed full, consumption addiction may become somewhat self-limiting, but no such limits exist for the additive acquisition of money.
We can condemn the degree of inequality in America today and point out that as it grows we move further away from the possibility of flourishing. We can even rail about the greed that drives the widening gap and call for all sorts of policy measures to reduce the gap. But these are only Band-Aids. The cultural values that create wealth addiction are deep seated and must change before the cultural norms will follow. Economists and psychologists will have to stop telling us and those that design our institutional that we are insatiably needy at our core. If there is a better formula for creating addiction to wealth or to the goods most of us are limited to acquire, I can't imagine it. If we are, in fact, such needy, greedy creatures, we will need to stop talking about flourishing or "sustainability," the word many use, as something possible. The simplest of algebra or systems dynamics archetypes would show, in this case, such an outcome is impossible.
(Image: Head of Croesus on a vase in the Louvre)
Posted by John Ehrenfeld on January 21, 2014 10:04 PM ::


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The Shadow of Mist (Novella)
Yasmine Galenorn - Author
ISBN 9781101605370 | 138 pages | 03 Sep 2013 | Jove
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Summary of The Shadow of Mist (Novella)
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An Excerpt from The Shadow of Mist (Novella)
AVAILBLE DIGITALLY FOR THE FIRST TIME It's been more than a century since Siobhan Morgan fled Ireland to start a new life in America. As a selkie, she kept much of her life a secret, even from her good friends the D'Artigo sisters. But now a dark presence from her past has found its way across the ocean, in the form of a man obsessed with possessing her. With the D'Artigo sisters' help, Siobhan must stop him before he destroys everything she loves. Includes the never before published short story Vanished As well as a preview of Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld novel, Autumn Whispers Shadow of Mist previously appeared in Never After |
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Photo by Tamie Meck Vail Christian forward Kevin Boselli watches Paonia's Ben Linnell's slam-dunk in the final seconds of the Eagles' 70-66 win Friday over the visiting Saints.Friday night's court battle between Paonia and visiting Vail Christian was another nail-biter. Paonia held the lead throughout the first half and led by nine going into the third period.
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Nonprofit Marketing Case Studies
Need inspiration? The best place to get new ideas to grow, engage and retain support are nonprofit marketing case studies from organizations just like yours. So, sort the below stories of other Salsa clients by topic or by sector to find your inspiration to ignite action and fuel change for your mission.
When the corporate agriculture industry launched efforts to limit photography and video at agriculture facilities, ALDF took action against these "ag gag laws." The campaign resulted in nearly 8,500 actions, taken by roughly 7,500 supporters. Salsa's tools are very user-friendly, and they have a ton of documentation available online and a really good online support system. Johanna Olivas Online Communications Specialist, Polaris Project |


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REDWAVE systems, a trademark of BT-Wolfgang Binder GmbH
In order to make an efficient use of increasingly scarce raw materials we are developing new opto-electronic recycling technologies called REDWAVE. The REDWAVE guarantees economic operation, high capacity and superior quality in the sorting technology.
In-Situ Oxidative Technologies, Inc (ISOTEC) - Soil & Groundwater Remediation
ISOTEC is the most respected full-service environmental remediation firm providing design/build remediation services including chemical oxidation and reduction via injection, soil mixing, and ex-situ treatment. ISOTEC is now part of the TPS TECH team implementing Gas Thermal Remediation (GTR©) for remediation via in-situ thermal desorption (ISTD). GTR© units heat by ...
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- Report: #684726
Complaint Review: celadon trucking
celadon trucking 9503 e 33rd street
indianapolis, Indiana United States of America |
celadon trucking dangerous company to work for indianapolis, Indiana
*UPDATE Employee: Hello,Can u here ME
*Author of original report: to lady whos a drivers wife
*Author of original report: to lady whos a wife to a trucker
*UPDATE EX-employee responds: were you there ?
*General Comment: Truck Fires
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i worked for celadon 7 months in june of 2010 i got hurt in a truck fire, i was a company driver, there trucks are new but there trucks have major factory defects in them , ones thats have gotten alot of drivers hurt very bad, to point they cant work anymore , like myself. international pays celadon to repair these defects and its not getting done and its caused life threating hurts for drivers.then once you are hurt and go on workmans comp, cathy clair who runs workmans comp dose everything to find away to mess drivers over so they dont have to pay it.but shes only doing what higher ups order her to do.celadon is a thief and crook , once they have gotten a driver hurt. then in september i was released to work , still having some problems from fire,then they put me in another truck and gotme hurt again in less then 2 weeks and i got very sick from ac defect,then celadon didnt want to reopen work comp case,instead they played it and fired me cause they knew i was getting a lawyer to fight them, now am a homeless person cause of celadon, i have had to file for ssd or ssi cause now i have vertigo for good cause of all the smoke and differant chemicals in fire from tires, rims that melted, chemical bonkitis i have have thats damaged nerves in my head which is cause me vertigo for good. [continued below]....
This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 01/20/2011 09:55 AM and is a permanent record located here: http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/celadon-trucking/indianapolis-Indiana-46235/celadon-trucking-dangerous-company-to-work-for-indianapolis-Indiana-684726. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year.
Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report.
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Search TipsNext time u hook a converter up,Have a professional hook that up for you..JUST SAYING...Get well soon...PEACE...Oh you should get a lawyer and go after international...Celadon does not make trucks,They haul freight..Come on...Lets get up off that couch and get back to work.Lets earn that money the old fashioned way..Come on american you can do it....
#2 Author of original report
to lady whos a drivers wife
AUTHOR: lawrence - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Sunday, January 13, 2013
celadon wasnt fixing the defects like they should have.and when things went wrong celadon did not take respondsibility for there wrongs they spent more time getting out of there wrongs ,then taking care of the people they hurt.it was really funny when cathy clair said my illness was cause i was to old,lol but its funny i was 100% health when i worked for them until i got hurt in truck fire.and when doctor said i couldnt drive anymore i file for my disability one month after i was sent home and ssd sent me to there doctor and i was approved for my ssd,and i didnt have to fight to get it at all.so you tell me how a driver who was 100% healthy goses from that and gets hurt and then gets his ssd after being hurt in a truck fire.
#3 Author of original report
to lady whos a wife to a trucker
AUTHOR: lawrence - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Sunday, January 13, 2013
so in end company didnt fire me ,doctors said i wouldnt be able to drive anymore.so i got sent home.but cathy clair did everything she could to mess me over on work comp and all.in end all i got was my ssd.and yes it all made me homeless in beginning.its been 2,5 yrs now sense the fire.but u people who do drive need to be careful.celadon trucking will burn you if you end up on work comp.alot of drives i know that got hurt there got jacked by celadon in end.
#4 UPDATE EX-employee responds
were you there ?
AUTHOR: skidrow - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Wednesday, January 09, 2013
#5 General Comment
Truck Fires
AUTHOR: jpgg - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Sunday, December 02, 2012
Where did they get their information "trucks are new but have major factory defects?" Anyone looking @ the photo can clearly see it was a trailer fire. There are numerous reasons for trailer fires and most of them are due to driver error. The most common is forgetting to turn the trailer brakes off before driving.
Not doing your pre trip inspection is another. Faulty tires would be noticed if one was doing their pre trip as instructed and DOT regulated!
And what is this about government money for every head they hire? REALLY?? Do you not realize how much $ it takes to hire new employee's? Paying for their travel, lodging, food, training pay, physicals, instructers, not to mention the recruiters and advertising. If there is such a thing I seriously doubt the $ awarded for each head hired out weighs the cost to hire them.
And being fired because you got a lawyer to fight a workers comp case? Take a look @ your performance and see if maybe THAT would be the reason. Any company with an HR office knows firing an employee for retaliation about an impending lawsuit would be financial suicide.
Lets face it, all employers are only out for themselves, but to try to tarnish a companies reputation and make them out to be monsters and claim they intentionally put their team in harms way is totally unacceptable.
If anyone can present true hard facts and evidence I will gracefully apologize.
Thank you,
A Truckers Wife
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Get ideas from a small garden inspired by its surroundings|Story by Julie Chai
A small garden crowded with shrubs leaves no room for outdoor living―and turns its back on the view.
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On Thursday, Rockefeller released a statement pointing out that his amendment "requires insurance companies to use at least 80 percent of the money consumers pay each month on premiums for actual medical care - instead of extravagant offices, excessive executive salaries and company profits."
Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies that spent less than 80 percent of the premiums they collect on health-care services are required to send rebates to consumers.
Rebates to consumers were given as reduced premiums on future insurance coverage or as refund checks.
In 2011, after the new law went into effect, insurance companies reduced their administrative costs in large-group markets by $785 million nationally -- which helped customers in those markets.
Small-group insurers sent $321 million in rebates to their customers, according to the Commonwealth Fund study, while consumers in individual policy markets received rebates of $394 million.
"This past fall, many West Virginians who were overcharged for their health insurance began receiving rebates totaling about $2.7 million statewide.
"This year alone, more than 16,000 West Virginians with private insurance coverage should receive rebates, averaging $374 per family," Rockefeller stated.
Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5164.


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22 hrs ago | UTV
A baby is being treated in hospital following an incident in east Belfast and pipe bombs thrown at homes in Londonderry are being treated as racist attacks.
Trending on the Topix Network
Yesterday | WireNews+Co
Speech: Villiers: 'On The Run' Scheme Over
Secretary of State addresses the Association of European Journalists about victims, support for the rule of law and the politics of delivery It is a great pleasure to speak to the Association of European Journalists here in Belfast this afternoon and I am grateful to Eileen Dunne, Martin Allioth and Michael Fisher for their kind invitation to do ... (more)
Belize Fairtrade producers visit Northern Ireland
R: Chris Boyd, Co-operative Northern Ireland, and Dr Christopher Stange, Hon. Consul for St Vincent and the Grenadines and Chair of Fairtrade Belfast with Alfredo Ortega, Belize Fairtrade Sugar Farmer's Association displaying the Fairtrade hamper that was donated by the Co-operative and the Consulate for St Vincent and the Grenadines question ... (more)
Lena Headey's back to her future in the 300 sequel
Relaxing in a Beverly Hills hotel suite, Lena Headey flashes a coy smile when she's asked about reprising her Queen Gorgo role in the 300 sequel.
Queen University Belfast President and Vice-Chancellor Professor...
Queen University Belfast President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Patrick Johnston welcome former US president Bill Clinton to the William J. Clinton Leadership Institute at Riddel Hall, Belfast Northern Ireland's peace process has set an example to the world, former US President Bill Clinton told business leaders in Belfast last night.
Former US President Bill Clinton has urged the people of Northern Ireland to "finish the job" of peace-building, during his visit to Londonderry.
Clinton visit an "honour" - Hume
SDLP founder and past leader John Hume has said former US President Bill Clinton's visit to Londonderry is an "incredible honour" for the city.
Paul Clark: Trooper Mark McKeen
"Furthermore, he was a sniper! How cool is that?" With those words the Commanding Officer of the Royal Dragoon Guards had everyone's attention.
Curtain to go up on 'The Man Who Came to Dinner'
The curtain will go up on the 2014 Portadown Drama Festival in Portadown Town Hall Theatre on Tuesday March 11. Mr Ewart was a teacher of French and Spanish for 23 years and retired recently from working as a schools' inspector.
Donaghmore author's career going from strength to strength
Speaking to the TIMES Emma said she was delighted when offered the book deal: "I was delighted when they came back and offered me a four book deal, the first of those four has just been released.
Terminally ill Una Crudden continues Ovarian Cancer Awareness campaign
A terminally ill Belfast woman is urging people across Northern Ireland to be part of the 'teal takeover' today as a month-long campaign begins in a bid to tackle the low level of awareness around Ovarian cancer.
Glen town judge's photo exhibit depicts violence, paranoia in 1970s Belfast
Two black-and-white photos of Irish children hang framed on the wall near the door of the Perrella Gallery at Fulton-Montgomery Community College.
There were tense exchanges in Stormont as MLAs held an emergency debate on the so-called on the run scheme and thieves use a digger to rip a cash machine from a Co Down garage.
Scotland's Dunnottar Castle Is The Perfect Spot For Exploring
The ruins of Dunnottar Castle sit on a dramatic cliff on the northeast coast of Scotland.
Robinson quit threat u-turn as Cameron orders judicial review
First Minister Peter Robinson speaks outside Stormont Castle, Belfast, as he has lifted his threat to resign over the controversy about on-the-run republicans after accepting the terms of a judicial review into the issue announced by the British Prime Minister STORMONT First Minister Peter Robinson lifted his threat to resign over the controversy ... (more)
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Katy Perry and John Mayer split up because of her upcoming Prismatic world tour, which will run from May until the end of the year.
Northern Ireland have been handed a favourable European Championships draw, with Greece, Faroe Islands, Hungary, Finland and Romania all preparing to come to Belfast.


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Budget shopping tips: LCD computer monitors
For some, finding the lowest price for a computer monitor trumps all other factors, including features, size, and brand. For those "some" of you, this is the blog you've been waiting for.
Here, I'll outline what I think are the best techniques for finding monitors that are priced the lowest.
Go small The smaller your monitor's screen size, the less work it takes to illuminate. Thus, the less expensive it is. Simple math, really. Obviously, you'll buy per your needs, but if funds are an issue, go as small as you can stand. I … Read more


text:
Found November 30, 2012 on
Celtics Town:
Rajon Rondo,
Jeff Green,
Jason Terry,
Courtney Lee,
Jared Sullinger,
Kris Joseph
TEAMS: Boston Celtics
TEAMS: Boston Celtics
First game of a back-to-back without Rajon Rondo? No problem. The Trailer Blazers came into tonight without a victory in the Garden since 2004 and the Celtics made sure it stayed that way, crushing the Blazers 56-33 in the first half and holding on for the easy victory. There was a moment in the second half where it looked like the Blazers might put together a run, but consecutive 3′s by Barbosa and Green iced the game for the Celtics long before the final buzzer sounded. Lets get to the bullet-points (all positive for once!):Jeff Green showed up tonight in a big way. He scored a team high 19 points on 6-13 shooting, but had an even better night than the numbers might indicate. Jeff Green threw up two half-court shots and was forced into two awful shots at the buzzer by his teammates. Without those, Jeff Green would have 19 on a very efficient 6-9 shooting. He was active in every facet of the game and finished with three rebounds, two assists, four steals, and a block. He racked up ...
Original Story:
The positives to the Rajon Rondo suspension
Rondo is still a good basketball player
Your Morning Dump… Where Rondo initiated everything
Rondo and Humphries highlight Celtics vs. Nets brawl (VIDEO)
BREAKING: Rajon Rondo Suspended Two Games
Rajon Rondo Calls Altercation With Kris Humphries a 'Pushing War,' Awaits Discipline Ruling From League
Rajon Rondo and Kris Humphries ejected after fight, Doc Rivers says Celtics are 'a soft team'
Kris Humphries Fights Back Via the Web
Fiddlin' and Diddlin' Boston Celtics Links 12/1
Video: A brawl breaks out between Celtics and Nets
Recap: No Rondo? No problem..
Kris Joseph called up from D-League, Chris Wilcox and Jeff Green both uncertain for tonight
Green, Terry Lead C's In 96-78 Win Over Blazers
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