Most news are completely unworthy of attention.

Jokowi, DKI Jakarta's new elected Governor

I think it would be interesting to just hide from the globalization for a few years and see what's changed afterwards. I started getting into politic news in general recently and I'd recommend you do not make the same mistake. The discussions I've had with my buddies (recently Jakarta's New Governor candidates' backgrounds, plans and governing strategies) made me realize what an enormous circlejerk the whole thing is - just confirmation bias everywhere . In these discussions, most people don't ever think critically about what's being said - they just recycle the stories and infos provided by whatever ideology they subscribed to, and disregard the rest - to the extent that debate just becomes a series of reflex actions. I've caught myself a few times supporting or criticizing things I've never actually thought about.

Unless another 9/11 scale incident is happening, don't watch CNN- all you'll get from 24/7 news is random babble. Most international affairs is also fairly unimportant because you're simply not effected by these things as much as you might think nor are you capable of effecting them as well. If a war is about to start, read the papers. If a massive scandal like Indonesian Bank-Century Bank is breaking, read the papers. Other than that, just skim the headlines until you find something which actually sounds interesting. Business news is for investors, not stricly though. Science and technology news can be summed up with simply fact that science always makes breakthrough and technology is always advancing. However, you won't gain any true understand of science or technology by reading up on current research. Unless you're a researcher, just ignore most of this stuff. The only kind of news I would recommend that you keep a constant eye on is local news.

By all means, keep yourself updated with world events, but stay away from politics. Invest your time in something useful like the arts or science or anything else really. There is a moral duty to keep up with politics and related "news". Because ideally, each has to be an informed citizen. Our fate relies on the whole of us.

We're taught to think, but not how to think, or how to think well. We're told we've got to pick a side though.

People who follow the news feel like this every day

In a world of animals it's only the most ruthless who survive. It's been proven time and time again. The repercussions for those who don't fight is a hollow existence. I have read the articles about animals using simple tools to make their tasks easier. I realize that all animals have the ability to reason; at least to some degree. Humans are the only animals that can reason to such a degree; in the same way that cheetahs are the fastest runners, and that giraffes can reach higher than any other.

The sad truth is, that those of our ancestor, that weren't violent aren't really our ancestors because they were killed by the violent ones. So it's human nature (all of the animal's world actually) to kill and exploit the other guy. There's little we can do about it. My dream is to find an occupation that enables me to live away from it all and not follow the media. The only point I was trying to make is that we have developed technologies due to our incredibly superior intellectual abilities and capacities. I realize the aggression and emotional, psychological displays are observed often in other species, but no other species has the capability to understand calculus, no matter how we tried to have them understand.

Humans and animals have the same biological demands, but the difference between humans and animals is the fact that we have the capacity to demolish mountains, destroy the world by pressing a single button, bend our genetic code, alter the biological functions of our bodies originally intended by nature, and more. No other animal is capable of this. Do you see cows building guns? Do you see chimps erecting skyscrapers?

At the end of the day when I looked at things like rape or genocide up close they never lacked humanity; on the other hand, they were usually tremendously human acts that revealed the depth of the connections between people and their human agency, and no matter how much I think about it, there's nothing more meaningful than that spark of agency, that will and intent perhaps more animal than human yet something I'd throw away my humanity for in a second.

If we are, it's because people sit around pissing and moaning about how terrible things are without doing anything. The world doesn't change overnight, so don't expect to wake up one day to rainbows shooting out of people's asses. If you want to make the world a better place then find one problem that you as an individual can actually help with and apply yourself. You don't demand the world's problems be fixed, you go out and offer to help fix them.

America gone soft - Whiner with a victim complex

Bullying has gotten crazy nowadays. I saw on the news about a girl who was bullied to the point she killed herself. What did the school do? Nothing. That's stupid and teachers need to watch out for that sort of extreme bullying.

If you bully adults, it's called "harassment" or "assault and battery". Why shouldn't kids be entitled to the protection of the laws?

Bullying a great way to thin out the herd. The people who take it with a grain of salt and forget about it tend to be more successful. The ones who sit there and take it and cry like a little bitch end up in cubicals typing away. Even if those type of kids were homeschooled they would just as miserable and lonely.

Realize that some bullying isn't caused by an abusive family life and insecurity any more. It comes from overconfidence and being pampered little cunts who've lucked out in every aspect. They aren't popular because they bully, they bully because they're popular. Most school bullies are part of the "in-crowd". "In-crowd" teens are teens who come from upper-middle class families, or participate in high school sports.

Everytime we have a school shooting, things always gets worse for the people who are social outcasts of peer society. Take Columbine. Instead of dealing with the root causes of high school bullying, they gone after the potential victims of bullying: the geeks, nerds, and other people who do not fit in. This forced forced some of them to drop out of high school in favor of a GED.

I was never really bullied (seniors taking my lunch money isn't really a bully to me), and I don't understand why. I was a pretty skinny, small kid, and I acted like a total idiot throughout middle school and high school. Why would I want the respect of high school losers who'll be popping out babies the year after they graduate when I could have the respect of colleagues ten years down the line when I'm making shitloads of cash by being a doctor, lawyer, entrepreneur etc? Who gives a shit, they're losers anyway, and getting suspended for "fighting" or whatever isn't worth potentially shattering your chances at a decent future.

Overall, I think bullying is just a fact of life, and no amount of teachers or rules or anything is going to help it or stop it. If you want protection, you gotta do it yourself.

What the news didn't say is that she was new to the school and had already slept with four of the popular guys there. Four guys. So a group of girls called her a whore on Facebook, and one threw a redbull can at her. What did she expect?

What your heart and brain are doing when you're in love

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Poets, novelists and songwriters have described it in countless turns of phrase, but at the level of biology, love is all about chemicals.

Although the physiology of romantic love has not been extensively studied, scientists can trace the symptoms of deep attraction to their logical sources.

"Part of the whole attraction process is strongly linked to physiological arousal as a whole," said Timothy Loving (his real name), assistant professor of human ecology at the University of Texas, Austin. "Typically, that's going to start with things like increased heart rate, sweatiness and so on,"

When you catch sight of your beloved and your heart starts racing, that's because of an adrenaline rush, said Dr. Reginald Ho, a cardiac electrophysiologist and associate professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Here's how it works: The brain sends signals to the adrenal gland, which secretes hormones such as adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine. They flow through the blood and cause the heart to beat faster and stronger, Ho said.

The response is somewhat similar to a fast heartbeat while running on a treadmill, although exercise has other benefits, he said.

For people with serious heart problems, love could actually be dangerous, Ho said. That's because when the heart rate goes up, the heart uses more oxygen, which can be risky for an older person with blood vessel blockages or who has had a prior heart attack. But good medicines such as beta blockers help curb the adrenaline response, Ho said.

It is also likely that norepinephrine, a stress hormone that governs attention and responding actions, makes you feel weak in the knees, said Helen Fisher, professor at Rutgers University and author of the book "Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type."

Fisher's research team did brain imaging of people who said they were "madly in love" and found activity in the area of the brain that produces the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine and norepinephrine are closely related.

"What dopamine does is it gives you that focused attention, the craving, the euphoria, the energy and the motivation, in this case the motivation to win life's greatest prize," she said.

This norepinephrine response has never been precisely studied in relation to romantic love, but the system seems to be more activated in people in love, she said.

Also likely involved is the serotonin system, she said. Some data from an Italian study indicate that a drop in serotonin levels is associated with obsessive thinking.

The stress hormone cortisol has also been shown to have implications for love, Loving said. His lab showed study participants who had recently fallen in love a picture of a romantic partner or friend, and had them describe or "relive" the moment of falling in love or wanting to be friends, respectively. Those who recalled falling in love showed an increase in stress hormones such as cortisol even 30 minutes after they were asked to think about it.

Generally, there are three brain systems involved in romantic love: sex drive, love and attachment, Fisher said. The sex drive evolved to get you to look for a lot of partners, the "love" portion is for focusing mating energy on one specific person at a time, and attachment is for allowing you to tolerate the partner -- at least, long enough to have children with him or her.

These systems are often connected, but can operate separately, she said. That means you can start out with one of them -- casual sex, or an intense feeling of love, or an emotional connection -- and move on to the others. For example, what may start out as a one-night stand may feel like more because the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, released during orgasm, make you feel deeply attached to someone. You may feel in love after that, or instead feel somehow responsible for the person, because of these hormones.

Fisher's team has found that romantic love doesn't have to die -- they found the same activity in the brains of people who said they were in love after 20 years of marriage as in people who had just fallen in love. This brain area makes dopamine and sends it to other areas.

In the days of early humans, in hunting-and-gathering societies, these qualities were especially advantageous for finding a person to bear and raise children with, she said.

Why, then, do small children fall in love if they are not trying to reproduce? Fisher hypothesizes that kids -- even 4-year-olds -- practice at love and learning more about themselves before it begins to become important to them.

Love also has health benefits for people who have aged beyond their reproductive years, she said. Being in love makes people feel optimistic, energetic, focused and motivated, which were all positive for health and societal contribution in the early days of humans, she said. So, it makes sense evolutionarily that people can still fall in love after their childbearing period.

Romance also is good for you. Studies have shown that people who have frequent sex are generally healthier, with a longer life, fewer coronary events and lower blood pressure. A 1995 study in the journal Demography found that marriage adds seven years to a man's life and two years to a woman's.

Loving's team is studying how people who have recently fallen in love respond to stressful situations. They hypothesize that people for whom the love is still new will respond to the stress and recover from it quicker than those who have recently been in a breakup or have been in a relationship for a long time.

"The guess is that when individuals are falling in love, they are walking around with rose-colored glasses," he said.

[source]

I keep hearing different stories.

So what happened recently with Tiger Woods that was all over the news?

I'm not the usual type of cynical douchebag that mourns over the "incompetence in today's society" or the "bleak future of the human race", but holy fuck people - is there enough coverage on something I don't give a fuck about? Am I an anomaly or something? I see no fucking reason to care about this dude at all. We're in the worst economic downturn of the past 60-70 years, we're still in two wars and our health care and educational systems are laughable, but this is the crap we have to see on the news.

Does the 10 mistresses thing sound abit farsical to you? Also why the hell was it one girl pimping out the other girls? Doesnt this seem strange?

Consider the circumstances: Black guy is successful, in a mainly white dominated sport. Actually he is more than successful, he fucking puts golfers to shame. And he shows no sign of his skills fading. Hasn't he been doing this for at least 18 years? He has a lot of enemies in the golfing world. Also, his wife, was introduced to him by a golfer friend of his, she was his "au pair". Then suddenly she gets this carrer as a model and marrys tiger woods.

Basically, Tiger wrecks his car while leaving his house a week or so ago. Facial lacerations were noted by some, but as far as I know this was not confirmed through photographs or any released medical records. Point is that he left home in a blind panic, not really paying attention. Push comes to shove, and it's discovered that his marriage is on the rocks because he's been going out with another woman and, as it turns out, had made it fairly obvious but people didn't see it for what it was until recently. And here we are.

As for the whole scandal, the best part is that fat golfers who think they're being athletic when going to the country club might now stop touting Tiger as the greatest athlete of the decade, or whatever. At least for a while.

thinkprogress

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/10/robertson-muslim-fascist/

Health Insurance Industry

Fact Checker: Health Insurance Industry Reports
By Alec MacGillis - The Washington Post

Health insurers released two reports this week warning that the reform legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee would result in soaring premiums.
Both reports -- by PricewaterhouseCoopers for America's Health Insurance Plans and by Oliver Wyman for Blue Cross Blue Shield -- predict premium increases of $3,000 to $4,000 per year for the typical family without employer-based coverage. The finance panel's bill "would have the unintended consequence of increasing premiums and making coverage unaffordable for millions of people," the Blues' chief executive, Scott Serota, wrote in a letter to Congress attached to his group's report.
The White House and congressional Democrats have dismissed both reports as slanted, last-minute attempts to block the legislation. "How many fatally flawed insurance company 'reports' do insurance companies need before their credibility is entirely shot?" said Finance Committee spokesman Scott Mulhauser.
Here is a summary of the insurance industry claims, coupled with a vetting of them by Washington Post staff writer Alec MacGillis:

1. The Individual MandateBoth reports argue that, because the bill weakened the annual penalty for people who do not obtain health insurance, many young, healthy people would opt to pay rather than get covered. This would result in a concentration of older and sicker people without employer-based coverage buying plans, thus driving up premiums for those people.

Analysis: There is a lively debate about whether the penalty would goad healthier people to get coverage. But the reports are probably too pessimistic. Massachusetts has gotten all but 3 percent of residents into coverage with a penalty of roughly the same size. The reports also do not take into account the draw of the low-cost "young invincibles" policy included in the bill. And the Congressional Budget Office estimates coverage levels would rise to 94 percent of Americans, from 83 percent.

2. New Regulations on Insurance PlansBoth reports argue that new insurance requirements would also push up premiums. Insurers would no longer be able to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, would have to limit how much they charge based on age, and would have to meet minimum standards for the quality of the coverage offered.

Analysis: There is no question that consumers in loosely regulated states now buy bare-bones policies that would not meet the new standards. But the reports underestimate the pricing power that individuals without employer-based coverage and small businesses would enjoy as a result of being pooled together for coverage, instead of buying on their own in highly uncompetitive markets, as they do today. In addition, small businesses already enjoy protection against denial of coverage, so that rule would not represent a change for them.

3. Soaring Cost in Particular StatesThe Blues report argues that premiums for those without employer-based coverage would soar most in certain parts of the country, where states loosely regulate the kind of plans that insurers can offer different sorts of consumers. Premiums, it predicts, would increase the least in the Northeast and the most in the South, Mountain West and Southwest.

Analysis: The bill would affect some states more than others, but consumers in those states could find that, as premiums for some go up, many others' would decline. The reason: Lightly regulated states also tend to have higher rates of uninsured and underinsured people, which leads to more people going to the emergency room and higher premiums for those who are insured. Requiring insurance for all may reduce those costs, creating a downward pressure on premiums.

4. New Tax on Costly Employer-Based PlansThe AHIP report argues that a proposed tax on high-cost insurance plans -- the main new revenue source in the Finance Committee bill -- would eventually hit many more plans than expected, making more and more people subject to the tax. The report also argues that, while the tax is to be assessed on insurers and employers, it would be passed on to customers through higher premiums.

Analysis: The report overlooks the likelihood that insurers, employers and employees would shift to less costly plans to avoid the tax. This would happen to such an extent, congressional auditors predict, that much of the new tax revenue would actually come in the form of income taxes -- on the higher wages that employers would give in the place of top-shelf health benefits. The report's authors themselves note that a shift to less costly plans would likely occur, but say that they would nonetheless base their estimate on the tax being fully applied.

5. Medicare and Medicaid Cost ShiftThe AHIP report predicts that premiums would rise further as a result of proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending, which the report says hospitals and doctors would make up by passing on all of the cuts in the form of higher rates for private insurers.

Analysis: The report probably overstates the cost shift. The commission that advised Congress on Medicare reported in March that hospitals that rely most on Medicare and Medicaid report costs closer in line with Medicare payments than do hospitals with a big private payer base. That suggests the former has found ways to make do with the public program's rates. Even the Lewin Group, a consulting firm owned by an insurance company, estimates that, at most, 40 percent of underpayment by public programs is passed on to private insurers.

6. Subsidies for Buying Insurance and Cost ControlsThe AHIP report did not take into account the impact of government subsidies for buying coverage -- the heart of the legislation -- on insurance affordability, nor did it account for provisions in the bill that aim to slow the growth of health-care spending. PricewaterhouseCoopers has distanced itself from the report by saying that the AHIP had instructed the firm to focus on only some features of the bill. The Blues report also left aside the cost-control reforms, but it took the subsidies into account in cursory form, finding that they would mostly offset the predicted increase in premiums for about 15 million buying insurance but not for another 5 million.

Analysis: Even reform supporters concede that provisions in the bill to control the growth in health-care costs are limited and hard to assess. But it is dubious to predict the affordability of insurance under the bill without taking into full account the impact of subsidies, which would apply to families earning as much as $88,000. Jonathan Gruber, an MIT health-care economist who has advised the Finance Committee, has done his own estimates that take the subsidies into account. He predicts that savings would be biggest for older people and for those who qualify for subsidies -- as much as several thousands of dollars per year -- but even a young person who does not qualify for subsidies would save several hundred dollars a year.

(sauce)