Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages.
And you know what? I'm not about to disagree.
PS Of course, there is more to marriage than the pretty, which fades with age. But if her being more attractive than me helps, then I'm wholeheartedly for it! Hehehehe....
Of course, thanks to FDR and the New Deal, Keynes became the most influential economist of the 20th century and a practical rock star in a field that was then only beginning to gain recognition. It was Keynes who pioneered the idea that government can spend its way out of a Depression, and this became the standard narrative of how the Great Depression was overcome. (Never mind the fact that FDR's attempt to buy America's way out of Depression only worsened it. It was arguably WWII that brought the US out of Depression.) However, unlike FDR, the current Keynesian-in-chief has no world-spanning war to end his economic woes. (Hey, Obama's from Chicago, and University of Chicago is Keynes' home away from home. Can't blame a corrupt Chicago pol for looking close to home.)
I count myself with Hayek. No economic theory as simplistic as Keynes' could explain everything without factoring in human behavior. We are not perfectly rational, and will not, on command, throw money into an economic cycle to keep the world going 'round. (note Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner stand-ins loading up the drinks to keep Keynes hammered, lol!) In a dash of ironic backlash, the liquidity trap the Keynesians had hoped to avoid came anyway when all those billions of stimulus dollars languished in banks instead of going out to the true motor of the American economy: small to medium businesses.
The Keynes quote from General Theory ("The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.") that so many economists love to throw around (and is featured prominently in the Institute of Political Economy's bulletin board) is best refuted with a little Hayek. "The more civilized we become, the more relatively ignorant must each individual be of the facts on which the working of his civilization depends." (The Constitution of Liberty)
Keynes was like the Comte of economics: the guy who turned what should be a respectable vocation into a deified babble.
Thankfully, as with scientists, so with economists. Not everbody is a jackass.
After a thousand years of separation, the breach between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy is nearing its end, now that Eastern Patriarchs have asserted that the Pope is First among the Patriarchs. Of course, this is by no means a done deal, and there will be a lot of hard negotiating and defining to follow. But there is that hope now.
What a glorious day it would be, if Christendom both East and West re-unified again. Both fortresses will need each other in the coming assault.
Here is an excellent summation of the extremely difficult theodicy when one is cofronted with disasters like the one that befell Haiti.
So what is the meaning of Haiti, then? I am not game to venture an answer as to why the wretched of the earth have been swept away and we, the chardonney and latté set, live on to download our iPhone apps. But it has always struck me that the Christian God does not deal with souls by the gross, but one by one, tenderly, all 200,000 of them. Divine Providence does not mean that we shall never suffer, but that having suffered, we shall be loved.
I take pride in being the last person on Earth to have never seen Cameron's monstrous "Titanic".
And now, I have one more reason to hold the same record for fucking "Avatar".
EW: “Avatar” is the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool.”
JC: Good, good. I like that one. I consider that a positive review. I believe in ecoterrorism.”
Yep, from the auteur's mouth himself, "Dances with Space Smurfs" is an eco-terrorist recruiting tool.
They should release an Avatar RTS game. One where we can play the Marines and totally annihilate the blue cat people. That's probably the only bit of Avatar junk I'd buy.
Ah, I suppose this dooms me to pop irrelevance. But it's better than becoming this pathetic.
"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "
I wonder why the damn pussy won't make himself a Darwin Award recipient....
Apparently, what is "France" nowadays is simply a dessicated corpse inhabited by a bunch of cultural parasites.
According to the French "Minister of Immigration and National Identity" Eric Besson:
la France n'est ni un peuple, ni une langue, ni un territoire, ni une religion, c'est un conglomérat de peuples qui veulent vivre ensemble. Il n'y a pas de Français de souche, il n'y a qu'une France de métissage
Which translates to:
France is neither a people, nor a language, nor a territory, nor a religion, it is a conglomerate of peoples who want to live together. There is no ethnic Frenchman, there is only a France where the blood is mixed.
What this means is that there is already no such thing as the "French People". This is ironic coming from a guy who is supposed to promote a "national identity". No ethnic Frenchman means that there were no Franks. No, it was just a bunch of differing mongrels who decided to live together. No collective heritage, no culture, no people. It is as if France doesn't exist anymore other than on some civic identity card. Poor Charlemagne fought for nothing. Poor Joan of Arc died for nothing.
As for the "mixed blood", the Filipino people can certainly sympathize. But we would never go so far as to say there is no Filipino people, for we have here the Ilocano, the Tagalog, the Cebuano, etc. The Filipino people, embodied in these tribes, exist. Even if our territory was the product of Spanish unification, we would never say that there is no Philippine territory. And we cling to our religion deeply.
So, give a toast and bid goodbye to France. We hardly knew ye.
Highly mis-educated science worshipper (I don't know if he actually practices it) thinks free will is an illusion.
His current hypothesis is that what man thinks is free will is actually determined by his environment, which is an argument as old as philosophy itself. But, he reaches this conclusion by way off the phenomenon of captives cooperating with their captors, the so-called "Stockholm syndrome".
Yet their behaviour is more understandable when you consider that they suffered solitary confinement and the threat of long imprisonment or even execution. What?s clear is that the Iranian authorities knew very well the power of environment over individual behaviour and used it effectively. Armies the world over do the same. So do terrorist groups. So, in a different context, do marketing companies, political parties and religious cults.
How do you think you would behave in such a situation? The truth is, none of us knows. Or do you disagree?
Never mind the flawed concept of causality operating behind his murky assumptions. (More reason to take philosophy classes outside of critical theory....) What I find remarkable is that he ignores basic falsifiability. (As Karl Popper would say, if there is a white swan, then the statement "all swans are black" is false.) Has he never heard of John McCain? Or the French Resistance? Has he even seen Rambo II? We've made icons out of people who have successfully defied the "power of environment over individual behavior". That alone debunks his chain of causation. Free will cannot be an illusion if there are people who do exercise their free will.*
What is frightening is that morons like these will soon be in charge of making laws and policies for us.
As for the cheap rheotrical question in the end, the answer is, no, we cannot tell what we will do in the same situation. But we can choose.
*This is giving consideration to their very limited notion that free will is only evident when exercised against a predictable course of action.
