Mammon category archive
Hoist on the Elmer Gantry 0
Keith Franklin, in a letter to the editor of The Roanoke Times, exposes the con.
Marketing Moments 0
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Aside:
The other day as I was driving to a local recycling center, I stumbled over our local R&B station and decided to listen a bit.
I heard a Bloomberg ad clearly directed at the expected demographic of an R&B station’s audience. I totally get (as the kids say) this cartoon; the ad was warm with smarm.
Image via Job’s Anger.
Fly the Fiendly Skies 0
NJ.com’s Jerry Schneider is reclined (figuratively) to give Delta’s CEO a lecture.
Paying the Health Care Ransom 0
In The Denver Post, Colorado Lieutenant Governor Diane Primavera explores the high cost of American health care and argues that it really doesn’t have much to do with the cost of caring for persons’ health. A snippet:
(snip)
So if all the money we spend on health care isn’t making us healthier, then where is all the money actually going?
The short answer is that it’s going to the middlemen — insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals — whose business model is to act as a tollbooth standing in between patients and caregivers like doctors and nurses.
Follow the link for her evidence.
And, in related news . . . .
Doing It Buy the Book 0
Afterthought:
Back in the olden days when I was in college, when college was affordable for normal middle class families, before the middle class started to disappear and before massive college loans became the norm, I paid $100 to $150 per semester for books. And I was a history major with usually six or seven books (one text and several additional reading) per class.
Origins Issues 0
David and Robert Larson explode the myths about the origins of Silicon Valley corporations.
The Environmental Pollution Agency 0
The gutting of environmental protections by environmental predators continues apace.
The attorneys general say the rule not only violates the Clean Air Act, but also eliminates key safety measures for such explosions, fires, and poisonous gas releases. New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin all signed on to the suit filed in U.S. District Court, as did the District of Columbia.
The New Know-Nothings 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Robert McCauley discusses a recent New York Times report about the Trump Administration’s attempt to sideline science. A snippet:
They also document a variety of ways in which the current administration has moved to discourage, if not eliminate, the application of scientific findings, standards, and methods to empirical questions pertaining to a variety of public policy issues.
Inviting Big Data into Your World 0
The EFF reports that there is a Ring of eyes recording all you do. Here’s an excerpt; follow the link for the rest (emphasis added).
The danger in sending even small bits of information is that analytics and tracking companies are able to combine these bits together to form a unique picture of the user’s device. This cohesive whole represents a fingerprint that follows the user as they interact with other apps and use their device, in essence providing trackers the ability to spy on what a user is doing in their digital lives and when they are doing it. All this takes place without meaningful user notification or consent and, in most cases, no way to mitigate the damage done.
How Far Did Wells-Fargo? 0
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Lee Schafer, pretty damn far.
Them What Has . . . . 0
Gene Nichol looks at the effect of Donald Trump’s economic it-would-be-dressing-them-up-in-Sunday-go-to-meeting-clothes-to-call-them policies. A snippet: