"One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good." -- Gandhi
Humans are prone to herd because it is always warmer and safer in the middle of the herd. Indeed, our brains are wired to make us social animals. We feel the pain of social exclusion in the same parts of the brain where we feel real physical pain. So being a contrarian is a little bit like having your arm broken on a regular basis. -- James Montier, GMO Capital Management
I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress. -- Gandhi
Coaches are often to do whatever it takes for their players. These kids are often like the coach’s own children. They not only see the kids as athletes, but as young people who need to be mentored and pointed in all the right directions.
Sometimes, however, coaches go above and beyond what anyone would expect. Such is the story of Wake Forest Baseball coach, Tom Walter, who gave one of his players his own kidney.
Wake Forest’s slogan for the baseball team in 2011 is “What are you willing to sacrifice to help make this team better?”Head coach Tom Walter’s intent was to have his players thinking about sacrifice bunts, moving runners over, and giving up personal glory to help the Demon Deacons improve as a team.
But what Walter chose to sacrifice is greater than simply hanging in on a curve ball and taking one for the team.
Walter gave up a kidney.
In a procedure performed Monday (Feb. 7) at the Emory Transplant Center in Atlanta, Walter had one of his kidneys removed and donated to Kevin Jordan, a freshman member of the Wake Forest baseball team.
Jordan suffers from ANCA vasculitis, a type of autoimmune swelling caused by autoantibodies. The immune system produces normal antibodies to fight infection in the body. However, an autoantibody is an abnormal antibody that attacks a person’s own cells. ANCA stands for Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Autoantibody and when these autoantibodies are present in the kidneys, it causes a leaking of blood and protein into the urine and eventually results in kidney failure.
Dr. Kenneth Newell, the lead surgeon on the team that removed Walter’s kidney, was pleased with the procedures.
“Both surgeries went very well,” said Dr. Newell. “We are pleased with how each patient is progressing. We expect each will recover fully.”
Wake Forest actually took to time to find out if the donation would have been considered an NCAA violation – a gift from a Wake Forest employee. Todd Hairston, associate athletic director in charge of compliance did some research. But it looks like the NCAA is willing to bend the rules on this one Deadspin reports:
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.
The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fairly accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts).
The book relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood. Its central thesis, that a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts, draws many parallels with statistical sampling, but there is little overt discussion of statistics in the book.
What is Public Consultation?
Public consultation is a means to improve democratic governance by helping governments consult their citizenry on the key public policy issues the government faces.
Public consultations are conducted with representative samples of the citizenry. Using standard scientific methods of random sampling, a sample is chosen and subsequently weighted to reflect the population census on all major demographic variables, thus producing an accurate microcosm of the citizenry.
Standard public opinion polls using representative samples can be an effective means of consulting citizens on issues for which they have already given significant thought.
The public consultation process has the potential to go beyond the limitations of standard public opinion polls and to widen the scope of possible areas on which the public can be meaningfully questioned. This requires giving respondents key information and presenting them a wide range of arguments on the issue. The goal is for respondents to have a deliberative experience that simulates that of a policymaker.
A key feature of the public consultation process is that it is, to the extent possible, developed in conjunction with policymakers, including those representing a range of views on the issue at hand. Policymakers, as well as advocates on different sides of the issue, are invited to propose and finally approve the information and arguments that are presented to respondents.
The most common form of the consultation process is through an in-depth survey in which respondents are presented key information and the opportunity to deliberate by evaluating the full range of arguments on an issue. Finally they are asked to express their views in response to a complex menu of policy options. Ideally such a process is conducted on-line so that the respondent can take all the time they need to read and re-read the presentation of information, arguments and policy options.
In some cases respondents engage in trade-off exercises in which they are required to make graduated choices among competing priorities, just as policymakers must do. For example, respondents may be asked to construct a budget by distributing revenues among numerous spending areas and considering the option of raising or lowering the level of various types of revenue.
For especially challenging or complex issues, it may also necessary for respondents to participate in citizen assemblies in which respondents meet in person for several hours to several days. In this context they have the opportunity to be briefed in depth, to ask questions of experts, and to deliberate in discussions with other respondents before finally coming to their conclusions.
Why Public Consultation is a Good Idea
Public consultation responds to Americans' demand for greater democratic responsiveness and can help restore Americans' confidence in government.
Polls show large majorities of the public are demanding that government be more responsive to the will of the people. This is prompted by their commitment to democratic principles. It is also prompted by the growing and now widespread perception that government leaders pay little attention to the voice of the people and prioritize serving special interests over the common good. This has led to disturbingly low levels of trust in government and undermined the public's readiness to make short term sacrifices for long term goals. Symptomatic are chronic budget deficits which reflect the public's resistance to paying taxes while still demanding services, prompted by the belief that a large portion of tax money serves special interests and not the interests of the citizenry.
Public consultation is a means to give the people a stronger and clearer voice in the policy process; it is likely to increase the influence of the public and to contribute to restoring confidence in the democratic process and the decisions of government.
It may be that the public has an exaggerated belief about the role of special interests and when given the chance may actually arrive at conclusions largely similar to the ones currently being made. On the other hand, it may be that they may arrive at significantly different policy decisions. In either case, having public consultation will give the public a greater voice and will create an opportunity for a real dialogue that can move beyond the current mistrust.
Public consultation can improve policymakers' understanding of the views of their constituents.
As mentioned, government officials have limited resources for gaining information about the attitudes of their constituents as a whole. Research shows that when government officials are asked to predict how the majority of their constituents will respond to a question, they are often quite mistaken. Research also shows that policymakers tend to underestimate the willingness of the public to accept the changes necessary to address key problems. Public consultation is a means to improve policymakers' understanding of the public and is likely to help free policymakers to be more proactive in addressing challenges.
Public consultation gives policymakers a way to test new ideas.
Right now the process by which new ideas emerge is relatively slow: they must first get attention from the media and only then do they gradually gain enough currency to be adapted into proposals for public policy and then finally to be considered by the citizenry. Public consultation gives policymakers the means to quickly and easily test new ideas for addressing current challenges, giving greater efficiency to the broader creative process by which policy develops.
Public consultation is likely to be a force for greater consensus.
The world of people who are actively involved in shaping public policy tends to be highly polarized, with individuals and groups taking strong positions and fighting hard to prevail. In the world of policy advocates and also among elected officials, on a left-to-right scale, there is a u-shaped curve with clusters on the right and left and few in the middle. Among the general public, though, mapped on the same scale, you find a normal curve, with many in the middle and fewer at the extremes. Members of the public are more likely to see some validity in both sides of the issue. Thus they tend to resist choosing one value over another and try harder to find policies that balance and integrate values. In focus groups consisting of representative samples of the public, people rarely argue and spontaneously try to find common ground. Thus public consultation with representative samples is likely to be a greater force for consensus than the existing policy community. Public consultation has the potential to mediate or between the polarized forces of the policy process.
Furthermore, public consultation can help discover the potential for consensus when it is not readily apparent. For example, when an on-line survey reveals a lack of consensus, this would be a key moment for conducting an in-person meeting in which people would have the opportunity to have discussions with people holding different viewpoints. These would be conducted by facilitators trained in proven methods for finding policy consensus.
Public consultation is a way to draw on the collective intelligence and even wisdom of the society as a whole.
Research has shown that the best approach to solving problems is to integrate the views of large numbers of people who are each likely to bring unique perspectives. The integration of these perspectives effectively pools knowledge and tends to produce conclusions that reflect a greater intelligence than is found in even the smartest individual in the group. Research has also shown that when policymaking communities, often consisting of highly intelligent and informed individuals, become unresponsive to outside perspectives they can become subject to 'groupthink' which can cause them to have major blind spots and to make decisions that, in retrospect, are seen as highly unfortunate. Public consultation is likely to constantly vitalize the policy discourse by giving expression to the full spectrum of views in the population and drawing on the intelligence of the society as a whole.
Public consultation can facilitate the emergence of constructive developments in society.
Contrary to widespread assumptions, the citizenry tends to be ahead of government in responding to emerging shifts in social norms and new collective priorities. For example, historically the majority of Americans was ahead of the government in supporting racial equality. Currently most Americans believe the government is not taking enough action on climate change, with large majorities supporting all the major legislation and treaties proposed over the last decade. It appears that the distribution of forces influencing the government is more committed to the status quo than is the distribution of attitudes in the public. Public consultation, by giving the public a greater voice, is likely to be a force to promote the emergence of new constructive developments.
Public Proposes Federal Budget Dramatically Different Than House or White House
March 3, 2011
Full report(PDF)
American Public Shows How it Would Cut the Budget Deficit
An innovative study has found that when a representative sample of the American public was presented the federal budget, they proposed changes far different from those the Obama administration or the Republican-led House have proposed.
The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. However, the public also favored more spending on job training, education, and pollution control than did either the administration or the House. On average the public made a net reduction of $146 billion--far more than either the administration or the House called for.
While there were some partisan differences in the magnitude of spending changes, in two out of three cases average Republicans, Democrats and independents agreed on which items should be cut or increased.
The public also showed readiness to increase taxes by an average of $292 billion--again, far more than either the administration or the House.
"Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House are out of step with the public's values and priorities in regard to the budget," comments Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), which conducted the study. PPC is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Unlike in conventional polls, PPC consults with the public by presenting respondents with information on policy issues and a range of options to address them. In this case respondents were presented the discretionary budget, with descriptions of each program, and allowed to make changes.
On average, the public cut defense spending by 18%, reducing it by $109 billion. By contrast, the president's proposal increases defense spending by 4% and the House calls for increasing it 2%. For intelligence agencies the public cut 15%, while the administration says the agencies would grow, though at a slower pace.
The most dramatic differences were for job training and higher education. The public increased job training a whopping 130%, while the House cut it by a stark 47%. The administration nicked it 3%. For higher education, the House cut it 26%, the administration increased it 9% and the public increased it 92%.
Energy and the environment were also major areas of difference. The House bill cuts the Department of Energy's work on renewables and efficiency by 36%, while the administration increases it 44%. The public went even further, increasing it 110%. While the House cuts the EPA's budget by 39% and the administration cuts it by 13%, the public increased spending on pollution control by 17%.
The public cut the space program 17%, while neither the administration nor the House made significant changes. The administration made modest increases to science, as did the public (5%), but the House cut it by 12%.
The public cut spending for foreign aid that is meant to serve strategic purposes. Aid to countries "of strategic concern"--known as the Economic Support Fund--was cut a substantial 23% while military aid was cut 15%. The administration cut the Economic Support Fund 9% while the House cut it 6%, but neither made significant cuts to military aid.
For more altruistic forms of aid, on balance the public made little change--increasing humanitarian aid by 18%, cutting development assistance 14% and leaving spending on global health essentially unchanged. In the president's 2012 proposal, humanitarian assistance funding is cut 8%, while funding for global health gets an increase (11%) and so does development assistance (12%). In the House bill, humanitarian assistance is cut 17%, global health by 6% and development assistance by 18%.
The administration is calling for large scale increases to federal spending in highways (53%), air travel and roads (36%), and mass transit (109%). The House made a deep cut (27%) to mass transit. The public, meanwhile, makes modest cuts to highways (9%) and air travel and roads (7%), but leaves mass transit essentially unchanged.
For this analysis the changes the public made in the budget exercise were compared to the OMB projected budget for 2015, while those the administration made were in its 2012 budget proposal relative to the previous year. Changes by the House were based on the recently-passed changes to spending for 2011. (2011 spending is lower than 2015 projections but the distributions are very similar; thus comparisons of percentage changes are meaningful.)
Besides making changes to spending, respondents were presented a series of options for increasing revenue. On average respondents increased revenues by $292 billion. The largest portion was from income taxes: majorities increased taxes on incomes over $100,000 by 5% or more and increased them by 10% or more for incomes over $500,000. Majorities also increased corporate taxes and other excise taxes.
For the estate tax, a majority (77%) favored reverting at least to the 2009 levels, taxing estates over $3.5 million at a 45% rate. Only 15% of respondents supported the estate tax levels recently passed: taxing estates over $5 million at a 35% rate.
The Obama administration holds to its position that the Bush-era tax cuts for incomes above $250,000 should be allowed to expire, and now proposes this for after 2012. By 2015 this would generate $97.2 billion in revenues. The House leadership has so far not made any proposal to increase tax revenues and has favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
The public study was fielded December 18-29 with a sample of 793 respondents (margin of error plus or minus 3.5%). It was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, Knowledge Networks provides a laptop and ISP connection. More technical information is available at http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/reviewer-info.html.
Weep, you wealthy, for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches dissipate, and your garments become rage; your gold and silver are false, and their corrosion shall be a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. You pursued earthly wealth with the last days of your lives. The wages of laborers, which have been fraudulently taken by you, cry out, and these cries of injustice have been heard by the Lord." - James 5:1-5-----
"Buying physical silver is by far the greatest act of wisdom and rebellion any American can and should be doing right now. It is both a Silver Bullet to rebel against the Elite’s corrupt system and a Silver Shield to protect your family and wealth in a post- dollar world. Buying physical silver is non-violent, non-compliant resistance. Most importantly it works outside of the system and it cannot be stopped."
http://dont-tread-on.me/the-silver-bullet-and-the-silver-shield
up until the last 200 years, the Gold/Silver ratio was 16:1
- 323 B.C. the ratio was 12.5:1 upon the death of Alexander the Great
- During the Roman Empire the ratio was set at 12:1
- 12th to 17th Century the ratio was around 12:1
- end of the 19th century, the universal,fixed ratio of 15:1 ended
- end of the 19th century, the bi-metallism era ended, England demonetized silver
- 1980 the last great surge in gold and silver, the ratio stood at 17:1
- 1991 silver hit its low, the ratio peaks at 100:1
- 2003 to 2007 bull market in silver drops ratio to 45:1 from 80:1
- 2008 end of the Great Recession, the ratio rises back to 80:1
Historical Recent
Low 12:1 80:1
High 100:1 45:1
"We never had no rivalry between us. The three of us would talk among ourselves when we would all go to the All-Star Game. We used to kid each other. I would call up Mick (Mickey Mantle) and say, 'We got that little guy from Brooklyn coming over.' Mick says, 'You go up to him and find out what he's hitting, and when he tells you, I'll say, 'I don't think so, Willie.' We'd laugh. The Duke was a really nice man," -— Willie Mays on the late Duke Snider, in an interview with the Oakland Tribune.
By contrast, Williams has shown little patience as a GM, constantly borrowing from tomorrow for today.
As a result of Williams' willingness to trade prospects for veterans and the team's bungled efforts in Latin America, Chicago has one the weakest farm systems in baseball. While Williams has dealt away 53 players (and counting) who have been ranked on Baseball America's annual White Sox Top 30 Prospects lists, few have come back to bite him—though righthander Daniel Hudson did go 7-1, 1.69 in 11 starts after being shipped to the Diamondbacks for Edwin Jackson in July.
“Whoever hears these words and acts on them is like the wise man who built his house on rock. The rains came, the streams rose, and the winds blew against that house; and yet it did not fall, beacuse it had a firm foundation. But those who hear these words and do not act on them are like the foolish who build their house on sand. The rains fall, the streams rise and the winds beat against their house, and then it falls, with a great crash.” - Matthew 7:21-27
Here are the real stats of the average American man. This is either going to make you feel better or confirm you're going to have to overachieve:
The average man is 34.4 years old.
The average man is married with two children.
The average man earns $36,100 per year and has $3,100 in the bank.
The average man sleeps about 7 hours on a work night.
Age when the average guy is in the best shape of his life: 23 years
The average man is is about 5' 9" tall.
He weighs 175 pounds.
Age (yrs) 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Weight (lbs) 168 179 182 185 184
Weight (kg) 76 81.1 82.6 84 83.5
Percentage of men who consider themselves "physically fit": 69%
Percentage who actually are: 13%
Time it takes the average guy to run a mile: 8 minutes, 34 seconds
Time it takes the average American man to run 1.5 miles: 12 minutes, 45 seconds
Age (yrs) 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Time (m:s) 12:18 12:51 13:53 14:55 16:07
Pounds the average man can bench-press one time: 160
Age (yrs) 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Max. Weight (lbs) 180 158 143 128 116
Number of sit-ups he can do in 1 minute: 36
Age (yrs) 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Sit-ups 40 36 31 26 20
Number of push-ups he can do with good form in 1 minute: 27
Age (yrs) 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
Push-ups 33 27 21 15 15
Number of pull-ups he can do: 1
Resting heart rate of a fit man: 52 beats per minute
Time it takes a fit man to log 8,000,000 heartbeats: 30 years
Resting heart rate of a man who's out of shape: 72 beats per minute
Time it takes an out-of-shape man to log 8,000,000 heartbeats: 19 years
Size of the average guy's biceps: 13 inches (flexed)
Size of his chest: 40 inches (inhaled)
Size of his waist: 34 inches
Amount of muscle the average sedentary guy loses each year: 1 pound
Amount of fat he gains each year: 1.1 pounds
The part of a man's body that is the biggest turn-on for the average woman: his butt
The part the average guy spends the most time trying to develop: his chest
Percentage of men who don't belong to a gym: 88%
Average cost of a 1-year gym membership: $648
Amount the average 40-year-old man would save each year in medical costs if he exercised
regularly: $949
Time period when the typical gym is least crowded: 10:00am to 11:30am
Percentage of men who would never skip another workout if... they could build twice the muscle with half the effort: 40%
Percentage of men who would never skip another workout if... women began wearing see-through spandex: 16%
Exercise equipment the average guy is most likely to own: dumbbells
Percentage of men who use their fitness equipment as... a place to hang their clothes: 45%
Percentage of men who use their fitness equipment as... a doorstop: 13%
Number of men who would rather work out than have sex: 1 in 7
Percentage of men who think that gyms are pickup joints: 14%
The life expectancy of the average man is:
Year Born 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1997
Life Expectancy (yrs) 65.6 66.6 67.1 70.0 71.8 73.6
For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” -- Stuart Chase (Writer and Economist, 1888-1985)
