Kristy's Blog

MOSCOW — For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. “It’s a record,” says Prof. Panarin. “But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger.”

Wall Street Journal

Is he right? At this point, anything is possible. But this?

I also just finished reading “Eat, Pray, Love” – which is a very good read, great ideas and a good story to go along with the ideas. Have you read this? You should.

Thanks are going well here. It’s funny, my sister has an unbelievable amount of rules to follow regarding her household that I apparently already should have known. It’s tough to not argue sometimes, but I just grin and do whatever she wants. It’s her house, after all.

We went skiing in ridiculous temperatures on Saturday, minus 5 degs and windy for a wind chill factor of -31 at the top of the mountain. Basically, you can only do one run, then you must go in for a beer to warm up. I’m going again on Tuesday, but it will be about 30 deg, which is definitely more acceptable.

Drove from Phoenix to my sister’s house in Denver yesteray, and it was anything but boring. Technology is a wonderful thing. Here’s all the things I did:

1. Continued rating every song on my iPod (2700) of them. You listen to them and rate them from 1-5. Easy, and it helps you to create playlists. “My Top Rated” playlist was getting a little old with only 467 songs. Most of my songs are unrated.
2. Did some thinking about my life and where I’m going. This is actually the perfect thing to do when you have a lot of time on your hands and you are kind of stuck not being able to walk, run, move or use your hands much. I made a mental list of improvements to help myself and other people around me.
3. One of my goals for the past month has been to stop hanging on to ridiculous anger towards people in my past who really don’t deserve it. I mean, it is not helping me and they are not even aware of it. I knew I would be over it when I would happily forgive someone with my whole heart. But this is a choice – and I decided to jump off the cliff and do it. It felt wonderful.

Clear out email via my phone. Yeah, I know it isn’t safe, but you have 12 hours and you don’t have to do anything too quickly.

4. Send text messages to my sister letting her know where I am. Yes, another unsafe activity.
5. Send text messages to other people and wish them Merry Christmas. I don’t believe in the Happy Holidays thing. I’m not even religious, and I love Christmas. To me, it’s not a religious holiday, as commercial as it is. I wouldn’t be offended if some one said Happy Hanuka so whatever.
6. Enjoy the scenery. Some nice stuff along with the boring stuff.

Here’s your chance:

http://www.sockandawe.com/

Between 21% and 42% of U.S. jobs are potentially offshorable, according to research conducted by students at Harvard Business School.

The study aimed to replicate a finding by Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder, reported last year in the Journal. The students largely agreed with Blinder’s low-end estimate of 22%, but the high end of the range surpassed Blinder’s 29%.

Nearly 900 members of the MBA Class of 2009 participated in the study, which had students assess the potential offshorability of 800 occupations.

Read More.

Tom Cruise says he was “arrogant” in TV interview with Matt Lauer in 2005. Well, duh. Now that studios have mega bucks riding on Cruise’s new movie, Valkyrie, they’re trying to “soften” up his image. The cover of People Magazine this week is Tom Cruise: “The truth about my family”. I wonder what truth the movie studios are trying to spin now. It most certainly isn’t the truth.

The film is pretty pricey and UA has a lot riding on it. Per Wikipedia, “Since United Artists reported that the film cost $75 million to make and that $60 million would be spent on marketing, the studio faces high financial stakes. The film also tests the determination of its distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the mettle of Cruise as a superstar.”

Tom, I’m not buying it.

From Reuters:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush has become the talk of Iraq, hailed by marchers as a national hero but blasted by the government as a barbarian. TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi remained in detention on Monday, accused by the Iraqi government of a “barbaric act.” He would be sent for trial on charges of insulting the Iraqi state, said the prime minister’s media adviser, Yasin Majeed.

Zaidi shouted “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” at Bush in a news conference he held with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during a farewell visit to Baghdad on Sunday. The journalist then flung one shoe at Bush, forcing him to duck, followed by another, which sailed over Bush’s head and slammed into the wall behind him. Throwing shoes at someone is the worst possible insult in the Arab world.

Why wait until the New Year?

Anyway:

1. Forgive everyone.
2. Not judge anyone – what good does it do you? Accept everyone for who they are.
3. Don’t contradict anyone
4. Don’t argue.

Exceptions to 3 & 4:

a. If someone is about to get hurt
b. Racial slurs
c. If someone is walking over me.

I hope I can do this through Feb 1. That’s my plan.

Check out all the fun!

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/12/04/live-blogging-the-big-threes-bid-for-a-bailout/

OK, so Fox is the least biased? It’s my opinion that all TV news should be avoided – it is ALL biased. There are so many ways to influence how the viewer absorbs the news: the inflection in tone of the newscaster, the background music, the lead-in story, the ticker-tape of news at the bottom, the video used, the background graphics.

It’s also funny how TV/cable news brings up so many trivial stories that I never hear about because I am only reading. People are so aghast that I’ve not heard about Sarah Palin being interviewed in front of a turkey slaughter. I mean REALLY, who cares. Is that really NEWS? Or that Deepak Chopra is now some kind of authority on the India bombings because he’s Indian?

Not that my news absorption style is better than anyone else’s, but I just read the basic generic news stories coming off the AP/UP wire. There is really no bias, just a paragraph of what happened and when. No analysis of the event. It’s left to my own conclusions.

I’m probably one of the few people who never turned on the TV to learn what happened during the invasion of Iraq. I can’t stand the way the newscasters suddenly turn to each other and say, “What do you think?” when they are stuck for content. I mean who cares what the newscasters think of current events? Or the writers of the show? I certainly don’t.

👿