Tidbits - January 31, 2012

 * Quote of the Day
 * Re: Google Chief at Davos Praises Globalization, Dismisses
   Jobs Crisis (Bishop Frank Adams) 
 * Re: The State of the Union and the GOP Response - 
   Carl Davidson and Laura Flanders (Stephanie) 
 * Re: Social Networks of Ancient Humans (John Allison)

 ==========
Quote of the Day 
January 31, 2012

'Average after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation are moving
up a bit. (They increased at an annual rate of .8 percent in
the last three months of 2011 after falling 1.9 percent in
prior three-month period. For all of 2011, incomes fell .1
percent.)

'But beware averages. Shaquille O'Neal and I have an average
height of six feet. Exclude Mitt Romney's $20 million last
year - along with everyone else securely in the top 1 percent
- and the incomes of most Americans are continuing to slip.'

Economist Robert Reich 
blog 
January 31, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/75wr22y

 ==========

 * Re: Google Chief at Davos Praises Globalization, Dismisses
 Jobs Crisis

 I think that Eric Schmidt also misses the issue of education
 costs.  I got my first BS degree in 1966.  I went to a state
 school.  Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (now
 Missouri S & T).  It cost me only about $1000 per year for
 room and board, tuition, fees and books.  I was able to work
 two part-time jobs and finished with zero debt!  Today the
 students leave a very good school with excellent jobs, but
 owe about $100,000 unless their parent can afford that!
 Other people go to college and get a BA degree that pays
 less than half of what an engineering degree gets them and
 owe that much or more and can't find work.

 I have heard that the student loan debt in the US is closing
 in or has surpassed $1 trillion at least larger than the
 national credit card debt!  And many do not have jobs!

 Bishop Frank Adams

 ==========

 * Re: The State of the Union and the GOP Response - Carl
 Davidson and Laura Flanders

 I suggest Portside readers also read this response to the
 State of the Union address:

http://warcriminalswatch.org/index.php/news/40-recent-news/1180-1-25-12-killing-iraqis-makes-us-safer-and-other-lies

 Thanks.

 Stephanie

 ==========

 * Re: Social Networks of Ancient Humans

 This is a perfect example of what I am always belaboring
 with you.
 
 http://www.focushms.com/features/dawn-of-social-networks/

 She is doing sociology - social network mapping - NOT
 anthropology!

 Understanding abstract patterns and labling them according
 to some structural-functional framework in the mind of the
 researcher. She is only looking at her own mind, and how IT
 behaves when she watches these people in a different
 reality; thinking she is "understanding" them; but she is
 only elaborating her own worldview.

 John Collier would do this quite differently; asking the
 people to help him to design his efforts to understand the
 world as THEY live in it.

 Her method is the most popular one for the Human Terrain
 Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is why we fail so
 miserably with "moving the center of gravity" of public
 perception of the USNATO forces and in getting them to
 support the occupation.

 It doesn't work because we don't really use and ethnographic
 perspective; but a social tracking perspective.

 John Allison

==========

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