tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131689232024-03-23T11:19:54.220-07:00Oh Well: A CommentaryYou just have to wonder at some of the insanity that takes place in this world.Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.comBlogger2561125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-71996669829854234962014-12-13T14:33:00.000-08:002014-12-13T14:35:19.071-08:00Disney alters platinum-plated perks to a $12,000-per-year club<!--[if gte mso 9]>
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
<![endif]-->
Wow! It appears that the
ubber-rich are in an uproar against Walt Disney Corporation for rolling back
their perks and raising their admission fees Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-61085318931208816212014-10-25T13:33:00.000-07:002014-10-25T13:33:21.644-07:00Silicon Valley company busted for paying Indian workers $1.21 an hour in AmericaI found this story through the Huffington Post, with this story also showing up on the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and Yahoo News. Another source story appears to be the San Jose Mercury News.
I am going to start with the Huffington Post:
A Silicon Valley company that digitizes images said Thursday that an
"administrative error" led to it paying eight workers flown in from
Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-56499791703372412232014-09-28T16:23:00.001-07:002014-09-28T16:23:51.801-07:00Are we relying too much on apps to do our chores?This is from Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times:
Near the top of the list of tiresome tasks that the Internet has yet to solve is this one: trekking to the post office.
Enter a San Francisco start-up called Shyp,
which is expanding to New York on Monday. For a small fee, it fetches,
boxes and mails parcels for you. The other week, I had a get-well
package to mail to my cousin. I Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-55813043770536694182014-09-28T11:01:00.000-07:002014-09-28T11:13:18.911-07:00More charts showing the rich are still getting richer....again!I've seen this story making its rounds through The New York Times, Kevin Drum, Vox, and Daily Kos. The source story is through Vox, where Bard College economist Pavlina R. Tcherneva created a chart that vividly shows the distribution of income gains during economic expansion periods have increasingly gone to the rich. First, the chart:
And here is the Vox story:
Pavlina Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-53171032715923770592014-09-27T21:24:00.001-07:002014-09-27T21:24:30.539-07:00Incumbent Kansas senator claims U.S. is heading towards "National Socialism"I found this Talking Points Memo story through Kevin Drum, and even I can't believe it. From Talking Points Memo:
Incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), who is facing an unexpectedly
fierce challenge for re-election, warned Monday at a campaign stop that
the United States is heading for "national socialism."
It's not clear whether Roberts intended to make a reference to Nazism
or Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-57054685028790113682014-09-20T14:37:00.001-07:002014-09-20T14:37:17.050-07:00Ex-employees warned Home Depot for years on security breachLast week, Home Depot confirmed that its payment security systems had been hacked, impacting all of Home Depots 2,200 stores in the United States, and possibly Canada. The Home Depot computers were apparently hit by a variation of the same maleware program which breached Target's computers last year.
Today, there is this interesting story that came from the New York Times:
The Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-26989195211048982812014-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:002014-09-08T06:32:44.495-07:00One-third of American workforce working freelanceI found this Reason Magazine story through the Washington Monthly, with the final source coming from this report Freelancing in America. Starting with Reason Magazine:
A new report shows some 53 million Americans—or
34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are
now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than
an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the
Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-90136101811256374712014-09-01T11:32:00.000-07:002014-09-01T11:32:41.422-07:00More companies engaged in employee wage theftI found this New York Times story via the Huffington Post. Appropriate for Labor Day:
MIRA
LOMA, Calif. — Week after week, Guadalupe Rangel worked seven days
straight, sometimes 11 hours a day, unloading dining room sets,
trampolines, television stands and other imports from Asia that would
soon be shipped to Walmart stores.
Even
though he often clocked 70 hours a week at the Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-73934977926493193942014-08-31T13:28:00.001-07:002014-08-31T15:07:39.623-07:00The New York very rich are angry at the ubber-rich's helicopter noise pollutionThis is so ironic. I found this New York Times article through Daily Kos:
On an evening during the last stretch of summer, 385 people arrived at the studios of LTV, a cable-access programmer in Wainscott, on the East End of Long Island, for a town-hall meeting to discuss mounting aural assaults from commuter helicopters going to and from Manhattan. The issue had been igniting tempers all Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-67367536581307497262014-08-24T13:55:00.000-07:002014-08-24T13:56:44.734-07:00Two stories on net worth loss by the poor, and minimum wage loss from inflationI found a couple of stories that I wanted to comment on. The first is this story by Kevin Drum, showing a real eye-opening chart on the Great Recession's impact on the poor:
Graph showing median household net worth from 2000 -- 2011. From Kevin Drum.
If you look at the chart, Kevin shows that the net worth of the poor has dropped in a ten-year period, from zero to around -$Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-90568010027460812232014-08-17T11:32:00.003-07:002014-08-17T11:32:57.464-07:00Work scheduling software creates havoc on low wage employees' livesI found this NY Times story on both Daily Kos, and Kevin Drum:
SAN DIEGO — In a typical last-minute scramble, Jannette Navarro, a
22-year-old Starbucks barista and single mother, scraped together a plan
for surviving the month of July without setting off family or financial
disaster.
In contrast to the joyless work she had done at a Dollar Tree store
and a KFC franchise, the $9-an-hour Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-23769202180248410902014-04-26T12:51:00.000-07:002014-04-26T12:51:04.522-07:00The real Amazon dronesI found this story through the Huffington Post:
At least five days a week, Myron
Ballard races around Washington, D.C., with a cargo van full of Amazon
Prime packages. A career delivery driver with 20 years behind the wheel,
Ballard typically gets paid $1.50 for each address he visits. If he
delivers 150 Amazon boxes -- a fairly routine number -- he can pull in
$225. Not bad for a day's Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-17431934474925443762014-04-26T10:26:00.002-07:002014-04-26T10:26:41.016-07:00Saturday Morning Cartoons--Superman Meets My Little Pony I saw this browsing through YouTube, and it is just brilliant. Created by an animator named ToucanLDM, the Man of Steel is transported to My Little Pony's world, where he meets those cute, wide-eyed, talking ponies, and battles against both General Zod and evil ponies from taking over the My Little Pony kingdom.
Saturday Morning Cartoons--Superman Meets My Little Pony:
Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-78627872501870014122014-04-19T11:12:00.000-07:002014-04-19T11:12:15.945-07:00Barbie is dying! I found this Huffington Post story:
* First-qtr net loss $0.03/share vs $0.11 profit year earlier * First-qtr adjusted profit $0.01/share vs est. $0.09 * Sales fall 5 pct to $946.2 mln vs est. $952.9 mln * Shares fall as much as 3 pct (Adds details, analysts comments; updates shares)
April 17 (Reuters) - Mattel Inc, the world's largest Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-84383275278212277832014-04-19T09:31:00.003-07:002014-04-19T09:31:52.786-07:00NASA discovers first Earth-size planet inhabiting Goldilock's ZoneThis story is just totally cool:
Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the
first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the
range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the
surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms
that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars
other than our Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-80586366848766962342014-04-19T08:58:00.000-07:002014-04-19T08:58:17.093-07:00Saturday Morning Cartoons--Superman "Volcano"
For this morning's Saturday Morning Cartoons, I'm posting 1942's Superman cartoon, Volcano. From YouTube:
Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-23461804136206160192014-04-19T08:50:00.003-07:002014-04-19T08:50:59.281-07:00Chelsea Clinton is pregnantI found this story through Americablog, which reported that former president Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton is now pregnant. And it appears that the famous Clinton First Couple, Bill and Hillary, are excited about being grandparents.
Okay. Ho-hum. Congratulations to Chelsea, and all the other young women who have discovered they will be expecting a package from the Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-82730316040889510582014-04-12T10:33:00.001-07:002014-04-12T10:33:17.129-07:00Florida GOP legislature bans teen interns from floor during abortion debateI found this Gawker story through Daily Kos. Even I'm a little surprised at it. From Gawker.com:
During
discussion of controversial issues on abortion and fetuses Wednesday,
Republican leaders of Florida's Legislature sent all of the House's
teenage pages out of the chamber, and they weren't allowed back in until
debate opened on the next issue: guns.
The
unusual "precaution" Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-20492474326066629242014-04-12T09:30:00.000-07:002014-04-12T09:30:02.402-07:00Saturday Morning Cartoons: A Corny ConcertoFor this morning's Saturday Morning Cartoons, it is time to get Merrie with Merrie Melodies "A Corney Concerto." The cartoon is a parody of Walt Disney's 1940 feature film Fantasia, in which the Disney film sets eight animation sequences to classical music. Directed by Bob Clampett, and released in September, 1943, A Corney Concerto sets up two stories to Johann Strauss' waltzes, Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-50158815360748773672014-04-05T11:46:00.000-07:002014-04-05T11:49:16.382-07:00Saturday Morning Cartoons--Happy Harmonies "To Spring!" After the week of rain we had here in the Bay Area (and we probably need more rain), the sun is out and Spring is here. I found this MGM cartoon series Happy Harmonies short cartoon, To Spring! Happy Harmonies was a series of 36 cartoons, produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, from 1934 to 1938. They were distributed by Metro Goldwyn-Mayer.
Harman and Ising started Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-84160404377907647272014-04-03T15:37:00.002-07:002014-04-03T15:37:25.219-07:00UPS fires 250 workers after they protest against a long-time co-worker's firingI'm not sure how to respond to this NewYork Daily News story, via Think Progress. From the New York Daily News:
UPS has delivered a special message to 250 of its Queens drivers: You’re fired!
The Atlanta-based company is booting 250 of its unionized drivers from
its Maspeth facility because they walked off the job for 90 minutes Feb.
26 to protest the dismissal of a long-time Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-35854092148290541942014-04-03T13:55:00.000-07:002014-04-03T13:56:03.999-07:00Supreme Court kills overall limits on individual political campaign donationsThis is from the Los Angeles Times:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court struck another major blow against
long-standing restrictions on campaign money Wednesday, freeing wealthy
donors to each give a total of $3.6 million this year to the slate of
candidates running for Congress.
Rejecting the restriction
as a violation of free speech, the 5-4 ruling struck down a
Watergate-era limit that Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-28424853486321794452014-03-29T09:58:00.003-07:002014-03-29T09:58:41.577-07:00Saturday Morning Cartoons--South Park parodies Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketchI found this over at Americablog, and it is just fricking brilliant! Seems like the creators of South Park created a parody of Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch--one of the best of the series.
From YouTube:
And here is the original Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch:
I'd like to see how South Park parodies other Monty Python sketches, such as the Spanish Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-41498077803819812722014-03-26T14:09:00.001-07:002014-03-26T14:09:47.068-07:00Supreme Court hears arguments in Hobby Lobby case for corporation's religious rightsYesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc, where Hobby Lobby is challenging the Affordable Care Act's insurance coverage for birth control is violating the religious beliefs of the owners of Hobby Lobby, and that the company should be exempt from this birth control requirement. This is from CBS News.com:
Two privately-held, for-profit companiesEric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13168923.post-21700368734782536782014-03-26T11:54:00.000-07:002014-03-26T11:54:02.646-07:00Jack Daniels faces Tennessee "Whiskey Rebellion"I found this story through the Yahoo Food Section, with the source story from the Wall Street Journal. Starting with the Yahoo Food Story:
There’s a whiskey brawl going on!
Not the typical post-drink brawl, but a brouhaha that was born before
the whiskey even made it to the people. Let us elucidate the details.
Jack Daniel’s Whiskey:
Whiskey made (1) in Tennessee (2) from at least Eric A Hopphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12286876445915877724noreply@blogger.com0