Irrational Markets: People Reject Free Money Out of Anger

The basic rules of the Ultimatum Game are simple. One person is given a stack of cash, and told to divide it between themselves and a second party. That second party is then given the chance to accept or reject the offer; if it's rejected, neither of them get any money. Clearly, any of this free money should be better than nothing, so under assumptions of strictly rational behavior, you might expect all offers to be accepted.

They're not. Things in the neighborhood of a 50/50 split are accepted, but as the proportions shift to where the person issuing the ultimatum tries to keep seventy percent of the total, rejections increase. By the time they hit an 80/20 split, nearly 70 percent of the offers are rejected, even though that 20 percent of the total cash would leave the recipient better off than where they started.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/irrational-markets-people-reject-free-money-out-of-anger.ars

Health Care Stories for America

We don’t really have an “insurance” system, in which you pay regular premiums but when you get sick you get taken care of. We don’t really have a “savings” system in which you pay into an account that you can use to pay your bills. It’s not that it’s a hybrid, but that it’s neither. We pay regular premiums, maybe for years on end that we don’t see a dime back. And we are still subject to bankrupting bills when we get sick.

http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/187439

India to Repeal Anti-Gay Law

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6597715.ece

Health-Care Market Characterized By Consolidation, Not Competition

Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/healthcare_market_characterized_by_consolidation_n.php?ref=fpblg

Gov Sanford: King David Didn’t Resign, So Neither Will I

http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/06/29/gov-sanford-king-david-didnt-resign-so-neither-will-i

Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_12523427

Atheist 'Imagine No Religion' Billboard Goes Up in Alabama

http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m6d25-Atheist-Imagine-no-Religion-billboard-goes-up-in-Alabama

10 Stereotypes Everyone Meets in College

http://www.educationonline.net/10-stereotypes-in-college

Fox News Screenshots

http://imgur.com/ARXD4.jpg

Is the Religious Right Losing Its Grip?

Many conservatives concede that the eight-year reign of George W. Bush was one of the most disastrous in the nation’s history. Most Americans have come to believe orthodox free-marketism was a false gospel. And even growing numbers of conservative evangelicals are deeply troubled by the vast inequality and environmental degradation created by giving big business free reign.

http://www.campusprogress.org/cribsheets/4213/is-the-religious-right-losing-its-grip

Obama Kills Bush Program Using Satellites for Domestic Spying

http://eideard.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/obama-kills-bush-program-using-satellites-for-domestic-spying

Frank Schaeffer: The Real Lesson Of Iran -- Beware America's Republican Mullahs

If the far right of the Republican Party and of the Religious Right had had their way by now there would be a constitutional amendment and/or laws forcing prayer in schools, disenfranchising gay men and women, banning all abortions under penalty of death, banning gay men and women from serving in the military, launching a neoconservative led and religious right backed holy war against Islam, fixing Israel's borders permanently to incorporate all the land taken in 1967 forever into a "Greater Israel" based on the "fact" that "God gave the Jews" the land "forever," capital punishment would be used routinely to punish a variety of crimes including being gay, civil rights for blacks, women, gays, unions would be in retreat, and -- other than enforcing "morality" - George W. Bush's style of "free market" non-governance would be permanent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/the-real-lesson-of-iran_b_218359.html

At Fox, Shepard Smith Is a Study in Contrast

“I don’t know if Smith is a conservative or a liberal, but it’s been clear for a long time that he’s the only one at Fox who takes the ‘fair and balanced’ thing seriously.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22smith.html?_r=2

Only Fifty Percent Of Country Music Fans Have Internet Access

http://revivl.com/features/?p=134

15 Ways to Fix the World

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/ideas-index

Fox 8 Cleveland Does a Ridiculous Story on a Bear in a Lady's Backyard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5C2gihnEkE&feature=player_embedded

Bug Resurrected After 120,000 Years

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bug-resurrected-after-120000-years-2009-06

Top 10 Commercials Celebrities Regret Doing

http://www.hollywoodfail.com/2009/06/top-10-commercials-celebrities-regret.html

Gigapan: Ant

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=24863&window_height=570&window_width=996

The Cougar Reference Manual

http://www.madatoms.com/site/blog/cougar-graph

Eric Margolis

World War II in Europe was not won just at D-Day, as popular myth has it. Germany’s army and air force were broken on the Eastern Front’s titanic battles.

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/getting-to-the-truth-about-world-war-ii.aspx

Right-wing Media and the Fringe: A Growing History of Violence

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200906120037

Total Eclipse of the Heart - Literal Video Version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XkD5sJwwrE

The Big Hate

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=2

Glenn Beck Spins the Holocaust Museum Shooting

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/glenn-beck-spins-the-holo_b_214118.html

51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Goggle maps

http://www.focus.com/fyi/it-security/blurred-out-51-things-you-arent-allowed-see-google-maps/?tfso=3338

Iraqi Police Getting Yelled At

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pecX4ZR6ZvQ

Our Real Prison Problem

The United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. As Webb has explained it, "Either we're the most evil people on earth or we're doing something wrong." We incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents—nearly five times the world average. Approximately one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, in jail or on supervised release. Local, state and federal spending on corrections amounts to about $70 billion per year and has increased 40 percent over the past 20 years.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/200686

Sean Hannity's Complete Break with Reality

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/4/738674/-Sean-Hannitys-complete-break-with-reality

Conservative Radio Host Charged with Inciting Violence

Reactionary radio host and white supremacist Hal Turner was taken into custody Wednesday after remarks urging Catholics to "take up arms" against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official over legislation being considered in the state legislature regarding the church.

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/conservative-radio-host-cinciting-violence

Medical Bills Underlie 60% of US Bankruptcies

Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported Thursday.

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31099365

Bing Goes Live

It's no google

http://www.bing.com

Is The Fox Nation Trying To Start A Race War?

http://www.newshounds.us/2009/05/29/is_the_fox_nation_trying_to_start_a_race_war.php

Is there Anyone on Earth More Narcissistic and Deluded than Bill O'Reilly?

Or anyone more sycophantic than Juan Williams?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-there-anyone-on-earth-more.html

Bill O’Reilly’s Crusade Against 'Tiller the Baby Killer'

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/01/oreilly-tiller-opponent