Sojka's Call

Best of 2011 The items below were not necessarily new in 2011 but were what I discovered this year and came to mind first when doing this list. Best Movie (theatre) – Deathly Hallows Part II. I thought the movie was well-done and was glad the Harry Potter series came to an end. I was tired of it but also enjoyed the sense of completion. Best Movie (DVD) – Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere series. Best Book – Keith Richards autobiography. He really laid it all out there without making himself come across like some elite guy better than the rest of us. Interesting story of human failure and success on personal and work levels.

Bruce Charlton posted this over on his blog . The title is Deliberate self-mutilation is an evil . At first the message seemed self-righteous and I was prepared to dismiss it, but, the more I thought about how I really felt, the more I agreed. All forms of tatoo, piercing, plastic surgery, etc have always seemed inherently wrong to me. I could not articulate the reason and never really had a reason to think deeply about it until now. Here is part of Charlton's article.

This video caught me off guard and completely disarmed me. So, I was suspicious and did a little research and from what information is available apparently it is for real and not done by actors. The guy is Timothy Tiah Ewe Tiam, the co-founder of an ad-blogging site called Nuffnang. His Malaysian girlfriend who is a blogger and now his fiancee is Audrey Ooi Feng Ling. A nice vid to watch around the holiday season which is also a wonderful time to propose - I know because I did many, many years ago on Christmas Day.

It seems I cannot get enough of playing devil's advocate with myself. Here is one more article from the Al Fin blog that challenges us to look at our beliefs about reality. While living in a System One (fast, intuitive mind) world probably will save my life in the short-term, spending more time in my System Two (slow, logical mind) world will benefit me and humanity the most when looking at the long-term results. Our System One mind is too unreliable for making good decisions about complex subjects and is correct about those areas of study only by chance and luck. The information about how people believe they understand what someone else thinks better than that person (asymmetric insight) borders on amazing for me. Only recently had I started to become aware of this characteristic and having terminology to describe this behavior is helpful.

Check out the new post by David Brin over on his blog. It starts out being about Newt Gingrich but ends up in very interesting territory. He goes into the pros and cons of a trading transaction tax currently being proposed in the EU. I think his argument in favor of the tax is compelling and think it would help on balancing the budget and making trading fairer for the individual investor. Contrary Brin: Gingrich, Asimov, and the "Flash" Computer-Trading... : Both Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Nobel prize winning Keynsian economist Paul Krugman have a trait in common.  They grew up fervent science fiction fans, especially transfixed by the future-historical speculations of Isaac Asimov.  Gingrich wrote about this influence that helped to shape his life. “While Toynbee was impressing me with the history of civilizations, Isaac Asimov was shaping my view of the future in equally profound ways….For a high school student who loved history, Asimov...

Good video on The Tea Party that includes a Q&A with one of the original Tea Party founders that talks about how the movement was co-opted by moneyed interests. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

The majority of Americans understood this to some extent before the Iraq invasion and it was understood by W's daddy. Why couldn't Rummy and Cheney get it? I have heard the argument we had to send a statement to Al Queda and their supporter - the Saudi's and Iran, but that we couldn't tackle them so Iraq was the bow shot. A Decade Later Haviland Smith We are now getting close to the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11. Although a decade is an insufficient period for most historians to comfortably draw firm conclusions about anything, it is possible to look at our world today and see how it appears to have been affected by that disastrous event and the ensuing decade. It is critical to remember that terrorism is not designed to ...

Place your bets! What is Bernanke going to do? You can see what Aaron Task and Henry Blodget think here...... Congress and the President will show their spinelessness because as Task and Blodget say, a majority of Americans do not want to give up anything whether it is defense spending, Medicare, Social Security or any of the expensive budget busters dragging the US down. 

I thought this short video conversation from Tech Ticker was interesting in explaining oil prices.... http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/oil-endless-bid-financial-players-overrun-energy-markets-155723942.html This is also fits with many analysts views that we have plenty of oil and that the price is independent of supply of demand much of the time.

So, this is how our taxpayer dollars going to Homeland Security are used. This was a good site http://atdhe.net/ for finding links to, and watching sports events that are freely available on network TV. How were they a terrorist threat that Homeland Security had to get involved with this? Another stupid waste of government resources. Other links to this news - click here.

I took this off the Rivbike.com website.  It is a post by Grant Peterson and he might take it down.  Since many of Sojkas Call readers are in the 50+ range it seemed a good post for the new year.  I subscribe to the basic tenets of the Primal Diet theory and have seen positive effects on myself when using it diligently. Grant's post goes beyond just PD so please give this a read and let me know what you think either pro or con and whether you are just going to intellectualize it or actually do something. Good luck to all Sojkas Call readers in 2011 in whatever endeavor they pursue.   H. Pneu Year January 1, 2011 Today and only today, not any other day of the year, unless this remains up tomorrow and beyond, and then later in the blogarchives, I speak to you as Grant Petersen, AA, 1975, Diablo Valley (Junior) College in the all-encompasing field of "General Studies." It was quite an undertaking, but I wanted a broad education in a short time span. ...