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CompareNumber of Military FirearmsThe defence forces of the United States are reported to have 3,054,5533 firearms

CompareNumber of Law Enforcement FirearmsPolice in the United States are reported to have 897,4004 firearms

In 1977 it was revealed that random American citizens were abducted & tortured for research by the CIA. Project MK Ultra was the code name for a series of covert activities in the early 1950’s.

A plan to attack American cities to justify war with Cuba was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. Rejected by President Kennedy, Operation Northwoods remained classified for 35 years.

Direct democracy (or pure democracy)[1] is a form of democracy in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives.[2] Depending on the particular system in use, it might entail passing executive decisions, making laws, directly electing or dismissing officials and conducting trials. Two leading forms of direct democracy are participatory democracy and deliberative democracy.

To train to read faster, you must first find your base rate. Your base rate is the speed that you can read a passage of text with full comprehension. We've defaulted to 300 wpm, showing one word at a time, which is about the average that works best for our users. Now, read that passage using spreeder at that base rate.

After you've finished, double that speed by going to the Settings and changing the Words Per Minute value. Reread the passage. You shouldn't expect to understand everything - in fact, more likely than not you'll only catch a couple words here and there. If you have high comprehension, that probably means that you need to set your base rate higher and rerun this test again. You should be straining to keep up with the speed of the words flashing by. This speed should be faster than your inner voice can "read".

When Pat gets old he can retire comfortably and leave his widow comfortable as well, again was this because of savings, no; Pat got a company pension (inflation adjusted) and health care for the rest of his life with right of survivorship. All of this sounds great, but it wasn’t real; it was all a result of America ability to overcharge the world for capital goods; the costs of all these benefits were passed on to the rest of the world in higher priced capital good and dollar inflation. These programs allowed people to live middle class lives they never earned and could never keep (absent the programs). In fact, by 1970 it cost an American producer more in labor cost per ton of steel than what he could get for it on the world market. The fantasy world America has built post-World War 2 has been falling apart since the 1980s and the last leg, the dollars reserve currency status, is about to go. The disappearance of the American Dream is simply America reverting back to where its populations core values and behavior patterns would naturally take it.

The American Dream is rapidly fading because it was never real or at least never genuinely earned by Americans. When I speak of the “Middle Class”, I don’t simply mean possessing a middle class income, but rather having middle class patterns of behavior and world views. To be middle class is to be future time preference oriented; to accept short term pain for long term gain; to always be looking to get ahead and to plan ahead. Simply put, to be middle class is to consume less than what you produce, reinvesting the excess to produce more in the future.

America was the only large industrial power left standing after World War 2 and because it could charge the rest of the world what it wanted for capital goods, it could extract “rents” to support the fantasy of the American Dream. Consider the 1950s, the beginning of universal White middle-classdom and take a typical Irish guy; Pat. Pat grew up in an ethnic Irish slum like his father and grandfather, but he now can afford to buy a house; is it because he diligently saved his money and stayed focused, no; it is because he can get a VA loan or an FHA loan with no money down and easy payments. Pat dropped out of school at 16 and is not too interested in expanding his skills, is he on the streets, no; because of unions he can get an assembly line job. Moreover, because the NLR act effectively unionized every major industrial company and industry, Pat can look forward to annual raises (regardless of productivity) for his entire working life. When his children are old enough, Pat can afford to send them to college, is it because he saved before each child was born and spaced his children accordingly, no; they can get government loans , grants, and go to a subsides state college. When Pats parents get old they are not a burden, is it because they learned middleclass values and started to save, no; his parents rely on social security and Medicare (after 1965).

Europe is on the verge of a complete and total economic collapse...why?...because for decades their government has used force to take money from those who work hard and then give that money to those who don't work hard.

The capitalist equivalent of a socialist revolution is a Great Depression that wipes out the value of the paper assets the wealthy had accumulated, leaving the government to reallocate the real assets more equally. We almost had this happen in 2008, but the 1 percent blackmailed the rest with fear of collateral damage.

The effect of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of doublethink, while the adjective "Orwellian" denotes "characteristic and reminiscent of George Orwell's writings" especially Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In September 2009, an album entitled The Resistance was released by English Alternative rock band Muse, which was based entirely on 1984[citation needed], including songs such as "Resistance", "Uprising" and "United States of Eurasia". The album resulted in Muse receiving a Grammy for Best Rock Album at the 53rd Grammys.

In November 2011, the United States government argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals without first seeking a warrant. In response, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned what this means for a democratic society by referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Justice Breyer asked, "If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984...."[65] In 1984, the book was made into a movie. In 2006, the movie V for Vendetta was released, which has many of the same running themes and principles.[66][67] In Nineteen Eighty-Four, John Hurt portrays Winston Smith, while in V for Vendetta he plays the Big Brother-like figure.[68][69]

Religion, although it is not the best method of determining moral norms, has often been very effective at promoting them. Religions often satisfy many of Daleiden's criteria for raising people to be conditioned egoists, especially by practicing the aforementioned elements of prosocial training. He suggests that this is what they are doing when they instill a sense of virtue and justice, right and wrong.

Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 imagine dystopian future societies that control the populace by advanced scientific techniques. Harris argues that moral scientists approaching truths does not imply an "Orwellian future" with "scientists at every door". Instead, Harris imagines data about normative moral issues being shared in the same way as other sciences (e.g. peer-reviewed journals on medicine).

Science of morality should identify basic components required for human flourishing, drawing heavily on findings from positive psychology. In a proto-scientific example, Abraham Maslow suggested a hierarchy of needs: basic physical survival, then social and self esteem needs, and lastly philosophical and self-actualization.

self-

Research looking for optimal ethical systems can draw on all the methods of science, especially those used by positive psychology. While this might include obvious methods like asking people to self-report what they think they need to flourish in life – psychology has shown that people are often surprisingly incorrect on these matters (particularly when it comes to making predictions and recollections). Some cases in point: having too many varieties of consumer goods actually creates consumer choice anxiety; when it comes to removing bandages, Dan Ariely's research suggests that "getting it over with as quickly as possible" may cause more negative memories than if one went slowly (with breaks) while being careful never to reach a 'peak' in pain; stress is not always harmful (such stress is called eustress). While very careful use of self-report can still be illuminating (e.g. bogus pipeline techniques), in the end, unconscious methods of inquiry seem to be more promising. Some unconscious methods of data collection include the Implicit Association Test and neuroimaging. In these ways, science can further our understanding of what humans need to flourish, and what ways of organizing society provide the greatest hope for flourishing.

Extensive study of cooperation has shed some light on the objective (and subjective) advantages of teamwork and empathy. The brain areas that are consistently involved when humans reason about moral issues have been investigated by a quantitative large-scale meta-analysis of the brain activity changes reported in the moral neuroscience literature.[76] In fact, the neural network underlying moral decisions overlapped with the network pertaining to representing others' intentions (i.e., theory of mind) and the network pertaining to representing others' (vicariously experienced) emotional states (i.e., empathy).

There is evidence to suggest that a risk factor for becoming victims of bullying is deficient moral development. Examples of deficient moral development may be something like neglecting an agent's intentions during an action, or blaming them for accidents. In other words, victims of bullying may be more likely to make less accurate moral assessments, for some reason. The researchers also found that, in contrast, bullies were just as morally developed as victim defenders. The difference is that bullies are more able to disengage themselves. That is, for whatever reason, bullies end up suppressing their feelings of compassion and conscience.[77]

Pollen from both environments indicates that temperatures on Antarctica reached up to 21C in summer and were warmer than 10°C even during the coldest and darkest months of the year.

Normally, when adenosine levels reach a certain point in your brain and spinal cord, your body will start nudging you toward sleep, or at least taking it easy. There are actually a few different adenosine receptors throughout the body, but the one caffeine seems to interact with most directly is the A1 receptor.

it functions as a supremely talented adenosine impersonator. It heads right for the adenosine receptors in your system and, because of its similarities to adenosine, it's accepted by your body as the real thing and gets into the receptors.

caffeine actually binds to those receptors in efficient fashion, but doesn't activate them—they're plugged up by caffeine's unique shape and chemical makeup. With those receptors blocked, the brain's own stimulants, dopamine and glutamate, can do their work more freely—"Like taking the chaperones out of a high school dance,"

caffeine very clearly doesn't press the "gas" on your brain, and that it only blocks a "primary" brake. There are other compounds and receptors that have an effect on what your energy levels feel like—GABA, for example—but caffeine is a crude way of preventing your brain from bringing things to a halt. "You can," Braun writes, "get wired only to the extent that your natural excitatory neurotransmitters support it." In other words, you can't use caffeine to completely wipe out an entire week's worth of very late nights of studying, but you can use it to make yourself feel less bogged down by sleepy feelings in the morning.

What's important to take away is that caffeine is not as simple in effect as a direct stimulant, such as amphet

amines or cocaine; its effect on your alertness is far more subtle.

The general consensus on caffeine studies shows that it can enhance work output, but mainly in certain types of work. For tired people who are doing work that's relatively straightforward, that doesn't require lots of subtle or abstract thinking, coffee has been shown to help increase output and quality. Caffeine has also been seen to improve memory creation and retention when it comes to "declarative memory," the kind students use to remember lists or answers to exam questions.

The effectiveness of caffeine varies significantly from person to person, due to genetics and other factors in play. The average half-life of caffeine—that is, how long it takes for half of an ingested dose to wear off—is about five to six hours in a human body. Women taking oral birth control require about twice as long to process caffeine. Women between the ovulation and beginning of menstruation see a similar, if less severe, extended half-life. For regular smokers, caffeine takes half as long to process—which, in some ways, explains why smokers often drink more coffee and feel more agitated and anxious, because they're unaware of how their bodies work without cigarettes.

regular caffeine use has also been shown to decrease receptors for norepinephrine, a hormone akin to adrenaline, along with serotonin, a mood enhancer. At the same time, your body can see a 65 percent increase in receptors for GABA, a compound that does many things, including regulate muscle tone and neuron firing. Some studies have also seen changes in different adenosine receptors when caffeine becomes a regular thing.

A 1995 study suggests that humans become tolerant to their daily dose of caffeine—whether a single soda or a serious espresso habit—somewhere between a week and 12 days. And that tolerance is pretty strong.

You start to feel caffeine withdrawal very quickly, anywhere from 12 to 24 hours after your last use. That's a big part of why that first cup or can in the morning is so important—it's staving off the early effects of withdrawal. The reasons for the withdrawal are the same as with any substance dependency: your brain was used to operating one way with caffeine, and now it's suddenly working under completely different circumstances, but all those receptor changes are still in place. Headaches are the nearly universal effect of cutting off caffeine, but depression, fatigue, lethargy, irritability, nausea, and vomiting can be part of your cut-off, too, along with more specific issues, like eye muscle spasms. Generally, though, you'll be over it in around 10 days—again, depending on your own physiology and other factors.

Beyond the equivalent of four cups of coffee in your system at once, caffeine isn't giving you much more boost—in fact, at around the ten-cup level, you're probably less alert than non-drinkers.

there is no "universal moral law," only the sense of responsibility (goodness, mercy, charity) that the Other, in a state of vulnerability, calls forth. The proximity of the Other is an important part of Levinas's concept: the face of the Other is what compels the response.

Appiah has implied that democracy is a pre-requisite for cosmopolitan intervention in developing nations (Kindness to Strangers 169).[17] Cosmopolitanism, in these instances, appears to be a new form of colonization: the powerful exploit the weak and the weak eventually fight back.[citation needed]

A further state of cosmopolitanism occurred after the Second World War. As a reaction to the Holocaust and the other massacres, the concept of crimes against humanity became a generally-accepted category in international law. This clearly shows the appearance and acceptance of a notion of individual responsibility that is considered to exist toward all of humankind.[8]

For Derrida, the foundation of ethics is hospitality, the readiness and the inclination to welcome the Other into one's home. Ethics, he claims, is hospitality. Pure, unconditional hospitality is a desire that underscores the conditional hospitality necessary in our relationships with others.

Some philosophers and scholars argue that the objective and subjective conditions arising in today's unique historical moment, an emerging planetary phase of civilization, creates a latent potential for the emergence of a cosmopolitan identity as global citizens and possible formation of a global citizens movement.[10]

Jesús Mosterín analyzes how the world political system should be organized in order to maximize individual freedom and individual opportunity. Rejecting as muddled the metaphysical notion of free will, he focuses on political freedom, the absence of coercion or interference by others in personal decisions. Because of the tendencies to violence and aggression that lurk in human nature, some constraint on freedom is necessary for peaceful and fruitful social interaction, but the more freedom we enjoy, the better.[18]

He proposes a world without sovereign nation-states, territorially organized in small autonomous but not-sovereign cantonal polities, complemented by strong world organizations.[19] He emphasizes the difference between international institutions, led by representatives of the national governments, and world or universal institutions, with clearly defined aims served by directors selected by their personal qualifications, independently of any national bias or proportion.

A number of philosophers, including Emmanuel Levinas, have introduced the concept of the "Other". For Levinas, the Other is given context in ethics and responsibility; we should think of the Other as anyone and everyone outside ourselves.

The formation of a global citizens movement would lead to the establishment of democratic global institutions, creating the space for global political discourse and decisions, would in turn reinforce the notion of citizenship at a global level. Nested structures of governance balancing the principles of irreducibility (i.e., the notion that certain problems can only be addressed at the global level, such as global warming) and subsidiarity (i.e., the notion that decisions should be made at as local a level possible) would thus form the basis for a cosmopolitan political order.[22]

Art Deco is a cosmopolitan modernist art form that fuses artistic themes from classical civilization, medieval civilization, and modern civilization. In architecture it represents the fusing of neoclassical architecture based on Greco-Roman classical architecture, medieval architecture including Gothic cathedrals, and futurist architecture; examples of this fusion in Art Deco architecture include the Chrysler Building in New York City.