NeuroRomancer

The Pledge

Chuck Feeney joined the ranks of billionaires who have given it (mostly) all away. The act is called The Pledge and began with Warren Buffett. In 2009, after donating billions of dollars to charity, Buffett was ranked as the second richest man in the United States with a net worth of US$37 billion with only Bill Gates ranked higher than Buffett. His net worth had risen to $58.5 billion as of September 2013. At the Pledge he has put himself down for giving away 99% of his money in the years to come. Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have done the same.

Today I learned former billionaire Chuck Feeney has given away over 99% of his 6.3 Billion dollars to help under privileged kids go to college. He is now worth $2 million dollars.

Always, everyday, live loud like love

Glenn Hefley 2014-12-28 2:50

By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout

This piece first appeared at Truthout.

For in the world in which we live it is no longer merely a question of the decay of collective memory and declining consciousness of the past, but of the aggressive [assault on] whatever memory remains, the deliberate distortion of the historical record, the invention of mythological pasts in the service of the powers of darkness.
- Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

All reification is forgetting.
- Herbert Marcuse

The current mainstream debate regarding the crisis in Iraq and Syria offers a near perfect example of both the death of historical memory and the collapse of critical thinking in the United States. It also signifies the emergence of a profoundly anti-democratic culture of manufactured ignorance and social indifference. Surely, historical memory is under assault when the dominant media give airtime to the incessant war mongering of politicians such as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham and retro pundits such as Bill Kristol, Douglas Feith, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz - not one of whom has any credibility given how they have worked to legitimate the unremitting web of lies and deceit that provided cover for the disastrous US invasion of Iraq under the Bush/Cheney administration.

History repeats itself in the recent resurgence of calls for US military interventions in Syria and Iraq. Such repetitions of history undoubtedly shift from tragedy to farce as former Vice President Dick Cheney once again becomes a leading pundit calling for military solutions to the current crises in the Middle East, in spite of his established reputation for hypocrisy, lies, corporate cronyism, defending torture and abysmal policymaking under the Bush administration. The resurrection of Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the 21st century, as a legitimate source on the current crisis in Syria and Iraq is a truly monumental display of historical amnesia and moral dissipation. As Thom Hartman observes, Cheney bears a large responsibility for the Iraq War, which “was the single biggest foreign policy disaster in recent - or maybe even all - of American history. It cost the country around $4 trillion, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, left 4,500 Americans dead, and turned what was once one of the more developed countries in the Arab World into a slaughterhouse. What room is there for historical memory in an age “when the twin presiding deities are irony and violence”?

Read The Rest on Truth Out

Word of the Day | Dec 13 2014

cer·ti·tude

ˈsərdəˌt(y)o͞od/

noun

absolute certainty or conviction that something is the case.
"the question may never be answered with certitude"
synonyms: certainty, confidence, sureness, positiveness,conviction, assurance
"the question may never be answered with certitude"
- something that someone firmly believes is true.
  plural noun: certitudes
  "his certitude that “we're number one.”"

Still a Friendly Place | Easy Excel

I was stuck on an Excel problem ... It seemed simple enough but after I got the answer I knew I would have been at it for weeks until I thought to dig in the direction the answer was.

I just wanted to have a date/time in one field, and in another the date in the first field, with 10 minutes added to the first. So when I change the first field the second will update with a bonus of 10 minutes.

Right?! Simple.

Ha!.

I found a few places that seemed to have the answer, but the answers were confusing and difficult to understand. Then I came to Easy-Excel.com Frustrated I noticed their Contant offer and wrote them an email asking for help. Not only did the answer the question, they sent me a spreadsheet with the equation formula I was looking for. On top of that, it worked~ My life got simpler by several hours a day.

So, Thanks Easy-Excel.com and I do hope you are getting what you are worth.

By Country Tell a Different Story?

I'm currently checking into how this narrows down per country. Is this equal i the US for example? It doesn't seem usable at a world level. A Metric which really says nothing. What do you think?

"Less than an estimated 20 percent of land in the world is owned by women — yet those few women who do own land are reported to see benefits."
Their children are 33 percent less likely to be severely underweight, 10 percent less likely to be sick and these women are eight times less likely to experience domestic violence. Other studies suggest women with strong property rights earn up to 3.8 percent more income and dedicate more of their budget to education.

https://www.devex.com/news/how-ngos-can-better-support-land-rights-for-women-84902

Today's Word | MoolaHoop

Despite the fact that women own 10.6 million businesses in the U.S. and represent 35 percent of startup business owners, they receive a piddling 4.2% of venture capital funding. This means women-owned companies tend to be smaller and grow more slowly than companies owned by men. MoolaHoop launched a crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs today to bridge this gap.

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Perspective and Experience | Hardlines

Perspective is a funny thing. Look forward and the path seems uncertain, the future unpredictable. Look back and all the dots seem to connect… except the dots that mark the choices you didn’t make and the risks you didn’t take.

Experience is that thing you get, roughly five seconds after you needed it. There’s no other way to acquire this powerful and effective trait. You have to do… live through…