Humor4u

Addicted Bankers hold world to ransom. This would be a headline if mainstream media was free to report truth. For those of us who have lived in areas where bears are commonplace, it is well known not to feed them, the reason is fairly obvious. The bears become accustomed if not addicted to free food and become a nuisance or even worse, dangerous. In many regions it is illegal to feed the bear population, for very good reasons.  Bankers and bears may have a lot in common, both become addicted to free stuff and become dangerous when the gravy train stops. Bears commence looting residences and Bankers... well... are inclined to loot anything if not continually spoon fed at the public troughs. Over the past several years the financial sector hit the scroungers jackpot when the Federal Reserve embarked upon an unprecedented "free soup kitchen" approach designed to fill the growling belly of the financial beast with all the fiat currency it could gluttonize, at the expense and pain...

Suppose you want to animate multiple properties in parallel on some target object. How would you do it? ValueAnimator? Multiple ObjectAnimators? This episode covers different ways of animating multiple properties, and specifically covers the use of the lesser-known PropertyValuesHolder class. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvCZcy3WGP4 Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/MultiPropertyAnimations.zip

If you are a disenfranchised citizen, escalating trade wars could be your salvation. The question is, will citizens realize, understand and capitalize on the opportunities of regional restoration, or will they be sucked back into the NWO clutches? Is the appeal of cheap stuff your ultimate aspiration? Or does restoration of your manufacturing base and sustainability for your children and future generations hold sway? One consequence of global economic meltdown is a phenomena known as trade wars... fought with an approach of 'protectionism." As trading nations attempt to nail down their market share in a rapidly drying up pool of opportunity the tendency to adapt "protectionism" increases. The idea is to penalize imports while encouraging domestic production and consumerism. It is a way of self-preserving regional economic opportunities by "freezing" foreign producers out of the market... usually through punitive tariff schemes. In a hollowed out global econ...

Extreme Change - this site is a situational awareness initiative. It is not history that repeats, it is the folly of humanity that does! The inspiration for this site came from an anecdotal observation that the Earth and therefore its inhabitants were becoming subject to extreme changes, this was several years ago when red flags seemed to proliferate and changing conditions were becoming tangible. It seemed appropriate to take note of said changes for the purpose of self-awareness. Being situationally aware is the most effective tool in the toolbox when personal well-being is a personal interest. Global Disaster Watch 2011 - Prophetic Ongoing Trends Surviving extreme changes is more a matter of removing oneself from the threat, rather than attempting to remove the threat. Threats of great magnitude are difficult to influence while exercising personal discretion is at least possible. At the time of initial recognition, There seemed to be several distinct categories of extreme change to ...

The 2013 Edelman global trust survey says we are more trusting of government and corporations than we were in 2012 and 2011! Released in Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting, the overall trust index rose to 57 from 51 in 2012 and 55 in 2011. "Who," I wondered... "did they survey--to get such a positive and encouraging result?"  I suppose I was trying to reconcile what is happening in the daily global news arena with the result of the trust survey. Mostly I see otherwise stable countries erupting in protest against the chronic corruption the Politico-corporate alliance routinely indulge in. This revolting behavior hardly supports the increased claimed trust factor. Survey Shows Uptick of Global Trust in Government, Business It might strike some that the public’s view of major institutions is in perpetual decline, but not so, according to one measure. Global public trust in government, media and business is actually up, according to the 2...

The mammoth has a good point. Ogg's father is making a classic error of logic. Not having found proof that something really happens, is not the same as having definitive proof that this thing cannot possibly happen. Ogg's family doesn't have the benefit of  Aristotle's explanation of deductive reasoning . But even two thousand years after Aristotle got started, we still often fall into this trap. In evidence-based medicine, a part of this problem is touched on by the saying, " absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ." A study says "there's no evidence" of a positive effect, and people jump to the conclusion - "it doesn't work." Baby Ogg gets thrown out with the bathwater. The same thing is happening when there are no statistically significant serious adverse effects reported, and people infer from that, "it's safe."  This situation is the opposite of the problem of reading too much into a finding of statistical...

Having recently returned from another summer school in Baku, Azerbaijan I reproduce here an article originally written for the British Council blog last year. After travelling to Georgia and Armenia on short-term teacher training missions last year I was looking forward to my visit to the third country of the Caucasian triangle: Azerbaijan . I’d heard that Baku , the capital of the fast growing country rich in oil and other natural resources, was a notch above the capitals of its Caucasian neighbours: Tbilisi and Yerevan . Even so, I was in for a pleasant surprise – or rather blown away – when I arrived in Baku . Unlike some grim post-Soviet capitals, Baku , which has recently hosted the Eurovision Song Contest – the fact the city takes a great pride in – was vibrant, dynamic and diverse. Perhaps it somewhat lacks the scenic beauty of charming Tbilisi but this is certainly compensated for by the amount of investment poured into it. Broad boulevards are lined with swanky boutiques and...

The social contract is of, by and for the people... In political philosophy the social contract or political contract is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Unfortunately huge walls of text have been generated by philosophers in their zeal to explain what the social contract is. It appears the idea is, an individual agrees to fit within agreed social expectations in exchange for protection from those that won't. To achieve this... the participants employ civil servants to legislate and administer the social contract laws and ensure the activity of scofflaws is prevented and curtailed. When it works it is fair and works well. As a theory this construct seems very good... because without it a society would be an unpredictable, chaotic and probably brutal affair with anarchists running amok and a person would need to deal wit...

In this episode, I tried to anticipate the question I knew would come up on my previous show about animating ListView deletion: "But how would I do this on Gingerbread?" Here's how. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeuVuoa13S8&list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc_XOgcRukSoKKjewFJZrKV0&index=1 Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/ListViewItemAnimations.zip

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, meant to deliver two dollops of good news on Wednesday: The economy is doing better, and the Fed is determined to keep it that way.  He announced that the Fed would extend one part of its stimulus campaign, suggested that it might extend another part, and offered new details about the timing. Goody, goody then... investors should be turning cartwheels over the prospect of continued low interest rates and insane amounts of fresh new money pumping endlessly into the torn leaky balloon we call the economy. Increased speculative gambling, sorry... more "investments" should surely have manifested as a result of such a reassuring commitment, but didn't.  Surprisingly, at least for Mr. Bernanke, quite the opposite happened, it was as though nerve wracked, jumpy players caught whiff of a rat, or at least suspected a trick. Rather than a buoyant, happy gaming session, much chips were cashed in right across the board and ...

Since many people rely on an energy source we know as money, it is sometimes useful to check in on the health of the energy source. If that energy source evaporates - where does that leave you? Situational Awareness can assist an individual in escaping a sticky situation... but only if cognizance of the threat event is recognized and acted upon. The focus today is... your sickening money . If you happen to have some... it may be a good time to check your reliance on its health, money the world over is beginning to pale. Over time expressions such as, "cash is king", lead us to a place of assumption and complacency, we chug along with the comforting thought that money is reliable and will remain so. However, on a cautionary note... Historical record shows that periodically money sickens and sometimes expires leaving bewildered citizens bemused that their life savings are no longer worth the paper they are printed on. One does not have to go back far for...

Continued global socioeconomic collapse race commentary.... As of this point in time the international "Race To the Bottom" is still quite close, and I for one am on the edge of my seat! Europe took the lead recently with many of its auxiliary engines missing badly as fuel flow diminished. North Africa and the Middle East optioned to take a pit stop and dismantle and rebuild their machinery, Japan decided to experiment with high octane fuel, while the USA is attempting to fuel as they race, running a fuel truck alongside their thirsty dragster. China meanwhile added additional engines, transmissions and wheels to their economic racer, deciding cost is no object... But which strategy will prevail? With many laps to go it is anyones guess as to who will completely self-destruct first. For the last few laps, business and investors have had their eyes riveted on the Federal Reserve and the European Union as they both aggressively elbowed for swiftest descent, largely ignoring the...

Have global risks changed since 2012? If anything they may have worsened, how so, one may wonder why! Today's word is DYSTOPIA. Dystopia best describes the here and now. What is a dystopian society? A dystopian society is usually described with words like unlivable, stark, dreary, repressive and not equitable. Also, notions often associated with dystopias are widespread privations and lack of personal freedoms, as well as political oppression, or systematic discrimination based on various individual attributes. A dystopian society is the opposite to a Utopian vision. When inequity, unfairness and oppression becomes the societal standard, dystopia has been achieved. Inequality can be gauged using the  Gini coefficient. For many years astute and learned organizations have committed to in-depth analysis of what portending risks are looming on our horizons, ostensibly the warnings are for the benefit of corporations and governments to consider in...