The New York Times asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in America, based on the characteristics that most closely correlated with happiness in 2010. Men, for example, tend to be happier than women, older people are happier than middle-aged people, and so on.
Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year. A few phone calls later and …
Meet Alvin Wong.
New York Times: Discovered: The Happiest Man in America
(via Theoretick)
The article ends abruptly.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/0ZMjBFDwiUQ/
The NAACP has released a report on racism in the Tea Party movement. From a press release:
Based on exhaustive research, a new report “Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size Scope and Focus of it National Factions,” demonstrates that despite Tea Party claims that its solely concerned with budget deficits, taxes and the power of the federal government, Tea Party membership and actions are permeated with radical views about race, national identity and other so-called social issues.
What’s in it:
*The report’s website, teapartynationalism.com identifies and maps Tea Party membership, provides an interactive map, and breaks down membership of different factions state-by-state, town-by-town;
*Analyzing the work of the party factions, demonstrating how racism, bigotry and the dismantling the birthright citizenship provision of the 14th amendment dominate their agendas, far outweighing fiscal policy concerns. (can we move this up)
*Demonstrating the lack of influence of the widely-quoted and fiscally-oriented FreedomWorks faction, which is run by Dick Armey and has the second-smallest membership of the groups.
*Listing all Congressional members who are part of the Tea Party caucus, as well as those in support sponsoring of a law aimed at birthright citizenship that aims to would challenge the 14th amendment;
*Documents the long history of connections and interactions among various Tea Party factions and their connections to right-wing fringe groups such as Stormfront, David Duke and others, which are essential to understand the character of this movement;
*Showing leaders of five of the six factions subscribe to the “birther” theory that President Obama is not a natural born American
Tea Party Nationalism
I haven’t had time to read the report yet, only the press release, so I can’t speak to how convincing the data is. But they make some very interesting claims that surprise even me.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/6ZF_10eBK_o/
Jonathan Metzl, author of The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, interviewed in Psychology Today:
By the mid- to late-1960s, however, schizophrenia was a diagnosis disproportionately applied to the hospital’s growing population of African American men from urban Detroit. Perhaps the most shocking evidence I uncovered was that hospital charts “diagnosed” these men in part because of their symptoms, but also because of their connections to the civil rights movement. Many of the men were sent to Ionia after convictions for crimes that ranged from armed robbery to participation in civil-rights protests, to property destruction during periods of civil unrest, such as the Detroit riots of 1968. Charts stressed how hallucinations and delusions rendered these men as threats not only to other patients, but also to clinicians, ward attendants, and to society itself. You’d see comments like Paranoid against his doctors and the police. Or, Would be a danger to society were he not in an institution.
Psychology Today: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
Related posts:
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb: ‘We still have the same disease’
- Pot smokers who started young more likely to exhibit psychosis
- Dementia Caregivers More Likely to Also Get the Disease
From http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/06/30/the-protest-psychosis-how-schizophrenia-became-a-black-disease/
How big of a domestic threat is there from the narco-insurgency in Mexico and the growing power of Latin American gangs in America?
Very big. A threat that dwarfs anything we face in Afghanistan (a useless money pit of a war). It’s not a threat that can be solved by conventional military means, since the problem is that Mexico is a hollow state. Unlike a failed state like Somalia (utter chaos), a hollow state still retains the facade of a nation (borders, bureaucracy, etc.). However, a hollow state doesn’t exert any meaningful control over the countryside. It’s not only that the state can’t do it militarily, they don’t have anything they can offer people. So, instead, control is ceded to local groups that can provide basic levels of opt-in security, minimal services, and jobs via new connections to the global economy – think in terms of La Familia in Michoacana.
The real danger to the US is that not only will these groups expand into the US (they already have), it is that these groups will accelerate the development of similar homegrown groups in the US as our middle class evaporates.
Boing Boing: John Robb interview: Open Source Warfare & Resilience
My comment, left there:
Robb’s work continues to influence my own thinking. However, I would like to see him answer the criticism presented here: http://reason.com/archives/2008/02/18/open-source-warfare
(If he hasn’t already)
A thought: will legislation (such as that in Arizona) and anti-Latin sentiment lead to alienation that drives the process Robb’s talking about in the US?
To expand a bit: I’m not sure whether Robb’s dire prognosis for North and Latin America is exaggerated or not, but it’s not hard to imagine escalated violence between Latin “gangs” and white “militias” if Latin people are excluded from mainstream culture while the power and influence of Latin drug cartels is increases.
Related posts:
- Critique of John Robb’s ideas about open source warfare
- Characteristics of Open Source Warfare
- Justin Boland Interview at Boing Boing
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/IfCwp8X3E3k/
