The puzzle of poverty.

...it is a world where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead, where more money doesn't necessarily translate into more food, and where making rice cheaper can sometimes even lead people to buy less rice.

More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World

Oucha Mbarbk lives in Morocco without enough work, money, or food, but with a television, DVD player, and cellphone.
We asked Oucha Mbarbk what he would do if he had more money. He said he would buy more food. Then we asked him what he would do if he had even more money. He said he would buy better-tasting food. We were starting to feel very bad for him and his family, when we noticed the TV, satellite dish and other high-tech gadgets. Why had he bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat? He laughed, and said, "Oh, but television is more important than food!"

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!

DON'T BE BLUE

Have you lost your Marbles?

The Marble Game
In marriages (and other relationships), there is often a "Marble Game" going on.

At the beginning, each person is perceived to have roughly the same number of marbles. However, as the relationship progresses, and one spouse clearly emerges as being weaker in decision-making, natural intelligence, and/or "walking around smarts," then "Marbles" are lost by that person, and the other spouse gains marbles.

In one case about a dad blaming a mom for a child being waitlisted for school admission, the "husband" lost a whole bunch of marbles when he foolishly invested their money. The "wife" gained a whole bunch of marbles with her decisions to allow the child to be waitlisted instead of pulling him off the list and then finding a way to pay for school. This created a huge imbalance of marbles because of the long-lasting implications of that one mistake. This mistake wasn't something that just caused a minor ripple in the family, such as denting a car or bouncing a check. This "husband" has to live with the fact that not only did he make a very serious mistake, but his "wife's" decisions were not only better, but they saved the family from absolute disaster.

Once you have one spouse with lots of marbles (in this case, the wife) and you have another spouse who perceives himself as having fewer marbles, then you have a situation where the "husband" is going to - lash out - and criticize any imaginable, thing in a way to try to take away some of the other's marble stash.
So, even when other rational people would say that the "husband" has no reason to criticize the wife about the waitlist situation, the "husband" just sees it as an opportunity to say, - "see, everything YOU do doesn't work out perfectly either".

Also...since such a person perceives himself as having fewer marbles, it may take him a LONG time (maybe never) to admit that he was wrong to criticize (because that means losing MORE marbles).


This theory may help to explain why a whole lot of situations began to make sense (situations with unreasonable relatives, nutty teachers, stubborn children, etc).

Men may have a harder time dealing with an imbalance of marbles when they perceive themselves as having less because of their culture's perception that men are supposed to be the (gag) more logical, smarter sex. It's also not about who makes more money. When men feel that they don't have more marbles, they can feel emasculated....so he will just be petty...and some will more seriously lash out.

This theory seems to help a lot of people understand weird conflicts that are going on in their lives.... with spouses, kids, co-workers, relatives, siblings, in-laws, parents, etc. (oh yes, with parents!) Parents of adult children do not want to admit that their adult children may have more marbles than they do. It can also occur when one spouse has an addiction (drinking, gambling, etc) or infidelity issues that has had negative affects on the marriage/family, so that a spouse viciously nitpicks the other spouse so as to say..."you're not perfect either...you make mistakes, too" (even though those mistakes/flaws are far more minor and have insignificant negative affects on the family).

How does the partner with the most marbles stop being the constant brunt of attack from the marble-short partner? I think the day you stop keeping a record of the marbles, the problem will end, but it is in our human nature to keep score. We have long term memory, all but sometimes very selective. This is a psychological problem to begin with. If you try to have the upper hand in marriage - you'll loose the relationship.

Make better decisions and you will get more marbles, or attain a balance of marble stacks. I understand keeping score with casual acquaintances and business associates, just because you may need to limit interactions or find a new way to communicate, if it becomes too imbalanced? Keeping score with "family" never leads to anything good. You need to give some marbles back, to keep the stacks balanced, or at least give the appearance of being balanced.

You have to make the other person feel that his/her opinions are valued, listened to, and not immediately dismissed. This can be hard to do if the person is seriously lacking in common-sense, but be very cautious not to be the type who can't "suffer fools gladly." Each person in a valued relationship has to have some worth-while redeeming value.

Hasn't each of us been frustrated when we tell a parent/child to do something and they dismiss it, yet when someone ELSE tells them to do the SAME thing, the parent/child acts like that's the smartest idea they've ever heard!!!???  

That's the Marble Game Theory going on. The parent/child doesn't have that "marble-conflict" going on with that "other person." So, the parent/child feels that he/she isn't giving up any marbles (showing weakness) by following that "other person's advice. (and, we all just shake our heads and wonder.)

FYI:

I get alerts about "game theory" every day, this was one of the better ones from;

mom2collegekids

Senior Member

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1112882-touched-sore-point-marble-game-theory.html



DON'T BE BLUE

Wonder Why Your New Year's Resolution Is Already Behind You?

U.S. was always a bit pound-foolish
By Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press
Posted: 01/24/2011 07:43:02 PM PST

WASHINGTON - Before there was Dr. Atkins, there was William Banting. He invented the low-carb diet of 1863. Even then Americans were trying out advice that urged fish, mutton or "any meat except pork" for breakfast, lunch and dinner - hold the potatoes, please.

It turns out our obsession with weight and how to lose it dates back at least 150 years. And while now we say "overweight" instead of "corpulent" - and now that obesity has become epidemic - a look back at dieting history shows what hasn't changed is the quest for an easy fix.

"We grossly, grossly underestimate" the difficulty of changing behaviors that fuel obesity, says Clemson University sociologist Ellen Granberg, who examined archives at the Library of Congress. She believes it's important to show "we're not dealing with some brand-new, scary phenomenon we've never dealt with before."

Indeed, the aging documents are eerily familiar.

Consider Englishman William Banting's account of losing almost 50 pounds in a year. He did it by shunning "bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer and potatoes, which had been the main (and I thought innocent) elements of my existence" in favor of loads of meat.

His pamphlet, "Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public," quickly crossed the Atlantic and become so popular here that "banting" became slang for dieting, Granberg says.

While obesity has rapidly surged in the last few decades, we first changed from a nation where being
plump was desirable into a nation of on-again, off-again dieters around the end of the 19th century, Granberg says.

Before then, people figured a little extra weight might help withstand infectious diseases that vaccines and antibiotics later would tame. It also was a sign of prosperity.

But just as doctors today bemoan a high-tech, immobile society, the emergence of trolleys, cars and other machinery in the late 19th century scaled back the sheer number of calories people once burned, Granberg explains. Increasing prosperity meant easier access to food.

"An excess of flesh is to be looked upon as one of the most objectionable forms of disease," the Philadelphia Cookbook declared in 1900. Low-cal cookbooks hadn't arrived yet; the calorie wasn't quite in vogue.

By 1903, La Parle obesity soap that "never fails to reduce flesh" was selling at a pricey $1 a bar. The Luisenbad Reduction Salt pledged to "wash away your fat." Soon came an exercise machine, the Graybar Stimulator to jiggle the pounds. Bile Beans promoted a laxative approach.

As the government prepares to update U.S. dietary guidelines next week, February 2011, the Library of Congress culled its archives and, with Weight Watchers International, gathered experts recently to discuss this country's history of weight loss.

Granberg recounted how real nutrition science was born.

The government's first advice to balance proteins, carbohydrates and fat came in 1894. A few years later, life insurance companies reported that being overweight raised the risk of death. In 1916, the Department of Agriculture came up with the five food groups. Around World War II, charts showing ideal weight- for-height emerged, surprisingly close to what today is considered a healthy body mass index.

Diet foods quickly followed, as did weight loss support groups like Overeaters Anonymous and Weight Watchers - putting today's diet infrastructure in place by 1970, Granberg says.

Yet fast-forward and two- thirds of Americans today are either overweight or obese, and childhood obesity has tripled in the past three decades. Weight-loss surgery is skyrocketing. Diet pills have been pulled from the market for deadly side effects, with only a few possible new ones in the pipeline.

More and more, specialists question how our society and culture fuel overeating.

"Should it be socially desirable to walk down the street with a 30-ounce Big Gulp?" asks Patrick O'Neill, president- elect of The Obesity Society and weight-management director at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Negotiating a weight-loss menu for a family with different food preferences is a minefield that affects how people feel about themselves and their relationships with loved ones, adds Clemson's Granberg, who began studying the sociology of obesity after losing 120 pounds herself.

"If what you need is a nutritionally sound, healthful weight- loss plan, you can get (hundreds) of them," she says. "That, we have figured out in the last 100 years. It's how to do all this other stuff that I think is the real challenge."

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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-modern-way-to-get-a-better-body-2186891.html

Boot camps
Outdoor military training sessions have been growing in prominence during the past few years, but are set to soar in 2011. At the end of 2010, the American College of Sports Medicine, the largest sports medicine and exercise science organisation in the world, announced its projected top 20 fitness trends worldwide for the coming year. It predicted the growing popularity of boot camp workouts, modelled after military-style training that includes cardiovascular, strength, endurance, and flexibility exercises.

"I expect more and more people will be going to boot camps," Miller says. "We're not quite sure why men haven't latched on to it so much. I suppose women like someone authoritative telling them what to do and they like to be instructed; they like to be shouted at (and men, not so much, they're more like loners). It's a quick workout, you go there, you're put through your paces and then you're out of there. It's outdoors as well and you're working with the natural elements. You can have a laugh with everyone else there: you all tend to support each other because you're all in it together." (maybe a couple of sexist statements)

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Interesting that Weight Watchers is now counting carbohydrates higher in points and looking more like Atkins.

It's still ~ BURN more calories than you take in ~ exercise ~ exercise ~ exercise ~~~ OR ~~

 GO WORK ON A FARM

DON'T BE BLUE

The Story of Halloween

Halloween's origins date back to "the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain",which means summer's end.  Roughly 2,000 years ago, a people known as the Celts lived in the area now divided among three modern-day countries: the United Kingdom, Northern France, and Ireland. The Celts began their new year on November 1, meaning October 31 was their New Year's Eve, and the time, they believed, when the dead came back to roam the earth. Evil spirits were warded off by lighting bonfires and wearing costumes to hide from them. According the History Channel, "the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred" that night. Turnips carved with faces got placed in windows to scare off the unwelcome undead. People would go "a-souling," and in exchange for food and drink, pray for a household's dead relatives. In Scotland, spirits were impersonated by men wearing all white with veiled faces. Bonfires and animal sacrifices were common, as were costumes "typically consisting of animal heads and skins." Eventually, the Romans conquered the Celts, and Samhain was combined with other holidays. Later, as Christianity became more powerful, Pope Boniface IV put a new tilt on the event. He designated November 1 "All Saints' Day" -- a day when followers could honor saints and martyrs.

The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas, also called "All-Hallows". period of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and the Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children's holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in the winter season.

These days, Halloween is mostly known as a day when kids throw dental hygiene out the window and go hog-wild with candy. The origin of trick-or-treating is somewhat disputed. In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.
(History Channel) http://www.history.com/topics/halloween

The First Jack O'Lantern
The Irish carved Turnips and put coals or small candles inside. They were placed outside their homes on All Hallow's Eve to ward off evil spirits. They were also known to use potatoes and Rutabagas. When Irish Immigrants came to America, they quickly discovered that Jack O'Lanterns were much easier to carve out and began using them. This truly neat tradition quickly spread to the general population in America and elsewhere. Others believe that the first Jack O'Lanterns came from the Story of Stingy Jack. http://www.history.com/topics/jack-olantern-history

Dia De Los Muertos
In English, this holiday translates to "The Day of the Dead". It is an important Mexican holiday. Where Americans shy away from the topic of death, Mexicans embrace it. On this day, they celebrate it in a big way. Asian cultures are also known to honor the dead in October.

DON'T BE BLUE

The Legend of Stingy Jack

People have been making "Jack O'Lanterns" at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O'Lantern."

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o'lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect Jack O'Lanterns.

DON'T BE BLUE

Our First Real Cruise

We went with our friends on a cruise to Mexico on Holland America, on the cruise ship “Oosterdam”, from San Diego; Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary along with the 30th wedding anniversary of our friends. We really enjoyed the trip, which exceeded our expectations. One of the first things to consider about this trip, is that parking is expensive, $15 a day, next to the cruise terminal, or $10 a day a little farther away. Embarkation was easier than anticipated, still had to have our luggage screened and go through the metal detectors, but it was easier than going through the airport. Anything that would normally be non-lethal or prohibited, was held for you until the end of the cruise. Outside of that, the cruise was fantastic.

We were not sure what our days would be like and if there was much of anything to do that would not become uninteresting after the first day. There was a lot to do, every day. You get a daily itinerary of activities to attend or sign up for and some hours had more than one activity at the same time. The activities started early, before 7am in some cases and ended late, after midnight, so there was a lot to choose from. There were all kinds of shows and acts every night and they have a small casino, with an electronic poker table for poker tournaments, I won the first three, and regular poker games. (Cruise Poker)

We went dancing every night and they had several dancing areas. They had spas and sports and fitness areas also, and a couple of pool areas. Many people took the time to take a walk around the ship or just sit out in deck chairs and watch the ocean go by or the sun go down or sit inside and read and/or listen to the string quartet or watch sports in the bars. It was as relaxing or strenuous as you wanted.

We were unsure of how the meals and drinking actually worked. Being a poker player, there is a quote, “The person who invented Poker was smart, the person who invented the Chip, was a genius”. The same principle applies to money on the cruise as you really don’t need to carry any. Everything is charged to a cruise card, which you get when you check-in. Everything you would need to use money for is taken care of with the card and you can easily lose track of how much you are spending for drinks, tips, shopping, etc. The meals are, for the most part, free. They have a buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if you don’t want to eat in the dining room for dinner. I liked the dress code for the dinning room, shirt with collar and slacks, except on the “formal” nights, where you could go the buffet if you didn't bring a coat and tie.

This Mexican Riviera Cruise was probably easier on the pocket book for excursions than some of the ones I had heard about for other cruises. Most of the excursions were short, up to 4 or 5 hours at the most and reasonably priced. You don’t really get much time to experience any real flavor of the port or city. Fortunately we also have a timeshare, which lets you stay in one location for a later vacation to any of the ports we stopped in. We usually prefer Mazatlan, but Puerto Vallarta had changed so much from the last time we were there that it will be a future vacation for us. Cabo also changed a lot also, but we like the water temperature better in Mazatlan, it’s like a warm bath, and Mazatlan has the record for the largest ocean fish caught. Cabo and Mazatlan have an annual contest for sports fishing. The limited time for being in port has a side benefit. It allows you to take more cruises to the same destinations and use different excursions.

Tipping, is not necessary, except for the bar items, drinks, etc. and they included $11 per day per person for all the tips for the cruise, which makes it painless. You can tip your cabin stewards extra if you want. Disembarkation was also painless. You were assigned a color and number for your luggage, which also coincided with the time you were likely to disembark. Everyone was off the ship by 10:30 am.

DON'T BE BLUE

Shame on our own national news media! CBS NBC ABC

2010

With all the news that's not fit to print or broadcast, why is the significance of Cordoba not getting out to the people?

"I was watching the news the other day and noticed a familiar occurrence."

A reporter was talking about new parking meters in Los Angeles and that there would be tens of thousands of them going up in the next few months. His emphasis was on the technology; card readers in the machines, you don't even need cash or coins anymore and there is a sensor that will send a signal out to a central processor when the time expires that will get a parking enforcement officer over to write up a ticket.

What he failed to mention at any time was that right on the meter there was a big label, "$3 for each 15 minutes"! Nowhere in the story was there any mention about the cost to park. Luckily I don't need to go to Los Angeles and fight for parking. I don't really know how much it costs today or if the $3 per each 15 minutes is a new increase. It wasn't reported.

It's what isn't mentioned in the news that is getting my attention more and more, especially when part of the story is right there in the background or foreground or hanging around in the ether. Not that some stories are not getting aired, but the stories are incomplete. 

I don't know if it's a carryover from the Dan Rather debacle where the news was being manipulated, as well as outright fabricated, by the news organization or that there is still too much political correctness going on and they are just afraid to bring out the whole story. Most of the news on TV and in the newspapers is so skewed to the left, mostly, or at least leaning that way or over the top to the right, occasionally, that there are hardly any newscasts or newspapers worth watching or reading. The news should be balanced and fair, or maybe justified, but certainly not steered. That's mainly why I don't watch the national news broadcast on CBS, NBC, or ABC. They are not interested in both sides of the story. It's also why I don't read the Los Angeles Times or New York Times or any of the big newspapers. All of the current national newscasts and newspapers are blatantly biased. Those big stories will get out somehow, on the internet, where you can decide how much to read, but most of the real story on any national news broadcasts will be lost in the bias.

It's kind of ironic that when an event happens that will impact not only the local region but broad reaching enough to tug at the heartstrings of America and possibly the world, the national news stations will broadcast those stories all day, every day for a week or more, until the next "big headline news event" comes up. Even news stories like the oil spill in the gulf, airplane disasters, the kidnapping of a child or finding the kidnapped child, trapped coal miners, devastating storms and the downing of the World Trade Center in New York City, are "sold" to the audience in how they are told, or not told. Questions go unanswered by both the news media and the government. It's so very interesting that with all the competition for the audience of viewers and readers that the news media is trying to attract, they don't even understand how to make shock media work for them. They certainly know how to make it work against them. How many times do you see the nauseating effort the media takes to make you see someone cry on national TV or invading someone's privacy with an army of reporters and news vehicles camped at a victim's or suspected criminal's house, yet alone someone convicted of a crime.

Just think how more time could be given to real news stories if all that was said was "there was a drive-by shooting in Los Angels or New York or Detroit today, but no one died", read about it on our web site", or some other quick 3 second blurb, and then get to real important news. 

No one cares about the celebrities and superstars on again off again escapades or lack of social grace. It belongs in its own news show or program. Olbermann, Stewart, Beck, Limbagh, and O'Reilly aren't news people, they're news entertainment pundits disguised as political news activists, but that’s where people are forced to go if they want the rest of the story that started on national news and was left unfinished on local news. We shouldn't be relegated to getting our national news from CNN or Fox News and no one watches MSNBC anyway. Although Olbermann, Levine and Savage may be in the basement of the political pundit tower, the elevator isn't going anywhere worth stopping. if you are looking for the real story behind those "breaking headline news" stories. There isn't one local or national newscast about bad things that happen to good people that should be longer than 30 seconds, or better yet if each event was cut to one sentence. Then you could get to the news that actually impacts the city, state, nation or world, from the national news programs (ABC, NBC, ABC) that both the left and the right should be watching.

Where's the GOOD NEWS being reported by the news media?

If the National news really wanted viewers to flock to their broadcast, they would let the news happen, give a short summary and then ask the question everyone wants to know, and then go looking for the answers. There are far too many news stories about drive-by shootings and minor crimes that are allowed way too much airtime. We glorify gangsters and criminals, even overpaid unappreciative super stars, by making them the headline in the news, so much so, that 80% of the news is either negative or driven by entertainment gossip. In fact, victims should, BY LAW, be given 3 times more airtime than criminals, and the story should never be more than 6 seconds long. If there needs to be more time, they should be directed to a 'special' news program.

News stations and newspapers will see a resurgence of listeners and readers, if they took a more proactive, but unbiased, approach to the real news. News stories should be politically unbiased, as well as editorially unbiased. Most news organizations are politically bent, they all need to straighten up, or at least announce they are the voice of the left, or right, and see how their audience responds. That way we could have some fantastic news media battles that may actually get the whole story out and let the audience decide, or at least let them be informed enough to decide if they care enough to watch or read tomorrow's news.

Ask a politician a question, and the last thing that will come out will be the answer, which won't be understood by anyone anyway. Politicians always ignore the question. Their main objective is to get THEIR message out first, because air time is so short and costly to them. Usually the question never gets answered and the news reporter on the scene or the interviewer in the studio, also short on time, lets them off the hook. The first sound a politician should make when asked a question, must be about the answer. Give them 3 seconds to start the answer or cut them off. You could then have a standard disclaimer, "another long-winded politician that can't get to the answer". The politicians will be screaming, but it should be, answer first - stump second. Everyone knows the news anchor is just really an overpriced news reader anyway; give them something they can sink their teeth into. Congress is currently trying to silence the news that everyone wants, under the guise of "equal air time", anyway, let the battle begin. Politicians would then get more air time than they would probably want, if they had to answer the question first, then stump, because there would always be questions that need answering.

The news media could easily put the challenge on politicians, government officials, superstars or the Corporate CEO, and drive up interest in viewing or reading their news. All they have to do is say, "We invited so and so to come on and answer these perplexing questions, but they have declined our offer", and keep repeating it every day. When they do come on, then it's, one question - one answer, stump later, if there is time. There would always be some important news going on in-between the hard hitting world and national catastrophes that occur. The news stories wouldn't have to be dragging on ad nauseam until the next "breaking news" happens.

So with all the news that's apparently not fit to print in our fine national newspapers or broadcast on our upstanding national news broadcasts, why is the significance of Cordoba not getting out to the people?                                         

Watch and Learn!

And it took a non-American to point it out!
Shame on our own national news media! 
Shame on CBS, NBC, and ABC.

APR. 30, 2014

Developer Sharif El-Gamal says he has downsized his plans for the $100 million, 15-story Muslim Community Center near the World Trade Center site that became a lightning rod amid the national controversy; he says he will now build a smaller, three-story museum dedicated to Islam, and has commissioned French architect Jean Nouvel to design the building and make the plan more attractive to neighbors. NOW CALLED PARK 51

Sharif El-Gamal is an American real estate developer. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Soho Properties, a Manhattan-based real estate company.