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vineri, 14 iunie 2013

These Two Sisters Really Love Their Moms

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These Two Sisters Really Love Their Moms

Yesterday, at the White House LGBT Pride month celebration, the President had two very special introducers.

Zea and Luna, 9 year old twins, wrote a letter to President Obama earlier this year asking him to support same-sex marriage -- explaining that they were raised by their two moms who love them dearly.

Watch them read that letter, and learn more about the steps we're taking towards equality.

We want this to be a conversation, so we made this video

Hi, all --

In the past few weeks, people from all over the country have written in to the White House to share the stories of how their families came to America. Each one we read is a reminder that many of us share a similar experience. That's certainly true for my own family -- my parents came as newlyweds from Bolivia. These are narratives that Washington needs to hear as this town debates the right way to reform our broken immigration system.

At the White House, we're no different from any other office anywhere else in America. As a team, we have a lot of stories that began outside the United States.

To help make this an actual dialogue about who we are as a country, we thought we'd share some of those stories with you.

That's why we put together this video. Watch it, then pass it along to help get a conversation going in your community about your American immigration stories.

President Obama wants the result of this debate to be legislation that reflects who we are as a country -- as much a nation of laws as we are a nation of immigrants. And he wants his White House to reflect who we are as a people -- individuals from different circumstances united by a shared set of values and a common set of goals.

This issue is personal, as much for my colleagues here as for people anywhere else. And the thing I love about this video is that these folks help to make it clear why it’s important to fix this broken system. All of them are fulfilling huge dreams, and if others get the chance to have that same opportunity, we'll all benefit as a nation.

And if more people understand that the motivation for this reform is about living up to our values as Americans, it will be easier to get this done.

So will you take a minute to watch?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/wh-immigration-stories

Thank you so much!

Cecilia

Cecilia Muñoz
Director, Domestic Policy Council
The White House

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
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How Processing Fluency Impacts Web Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 01:48 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

As marketers, we're trained to think that our audiences consider the rational inputs we display, and through them, come to rational conclusions. But what about cognitive biases that might influence processing and decision making?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand dives into how processing fluency impacts web marketing, and explains why things which are easier for us to digest are more likely to induce action.

For reference, here is a still of Rand's whiteboard.

Video Transcription

"Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to start with a conundrum. In fact, it's a conundrum from a research project that is based on a fluency bias. Fluency bias being one of the many cognitive biases in the field of psychology.
Let me start by asking you a question. Do you believe the statement, "What alcohol conceals, sobriety unmasks"? So a large number of participants in a research study were asked whether they believed this, and a second group, another group of participants in the same study were asked separately whether they believed the statement, "What alcohol conceals, sobriety reveals." What do you think were the results? Take a minute to guess.
People believed this one massively more by a shocking margin. And you would think to yourself, "Well, I am not nearly so foolish a person as to think that my belief in a statement like this would be biased by rhyme, conceals/reveals," and yet that is exactly what happened time and time again. This study can be reproduced with success. Far more people believe "What alcohol conceals, sobriety reveals," rather than the alternate use of the word "unmasks."
This is called, one of my favorite cognitive biases in the world, the "rhyme as reason" bias. Rhyme as reason. Let me give you another famous example that some of you have probably already jumped to. Do you remember Johnny Cochran in the famous O.J. Simpson trial, declaring to the jury, "If the gloves does not fit, you must acquit. If the glove does not fit, you must acquit."
So human beings, especially in the marketing and technology world, are trained, we are trained to think that people are logical, that people consider the rational outcomes, the rational inputs, and they come to a rational decision based on those inputs. And yet a cognitive bias, like rhyme as reason, would suggest that's not really the case at all. We are biased by all sorts of things.
Rhyme as reason is one of many fluency biases. The fluency bias or the fluency processing bias essentially suggests that things which are more easy for us to comprehend, which are more simple for us to digest, lots of good examples here. Attractive people on magazine covers are more likely to draw our eyes. Concepts that are simple for us to understand, phrases that we've heard many times, things that relate to things in our memory, all of these are simpler for us to understand and therefore more credible, more believable, and more likely, in the marketing world, to induce action.
Let's take this over to web marketing for a second and think about things where this happens. Page speed load time. When something loads more quickly, not only are we more likely to stay on the page, we're more likely to trust the brand more. We're more likely to recommend it to others. We're more likely to use it ourselves.
In fact, when Microsoft did a famous research study where they increased the amount of time before search results were returned by a mere 250 milliseconds, which is undetectable to the human eye, right? If you were shown a film strip and then there was a 250 millisecond cut, your eye could not detect it. Your brain would not know that you had been shown that image, and yet what they found was that abandonment rates went up. People searched less, and they searched less often, and they were less likely to return to the site.
This is fluency bias at work. The aesthetic attractiveness of a website's or a web page's layout is likely to drive us to take more action or to take less action, to recommend something, to tweet it, to share it, to link to it. No wonder, right?
The pronounceability of a brand name. One of my favorite, favorite examples is that a study looked at the pronounceability of stock market ticker symbols during their IPO, at a public market offering. And you would think to yourself, "Now, wait a minute. These are some of the smartest human beings in the world, who are working at hedge funds, who are working at large investment portfolios. There is no way that they are going to be taken in by the pronounceability of a stock ticker symbol." Why does it even matter whether a stock ticker symbol is pronounceable or not? And yet pronounceability has a high correlation with more successful IPOs in their first two weeks after offering.
Insanity. Insanity. We are all subject to this. No matter how smart you believe yourself or you audience to be, fluency biases, processing fluency, and cognitive biases as a whole are undoubtedly having an effect on your audience.
The familiarity of user experience. Some of you have seen some of the screen shots from Moz Analytics and probably maybe a few of you have gotten access to the private beta, and over the next couple of months more people will. Inside that product you'll notice that it looks very similar to another product. Right? There's sort of a, "Oh, look at that. There's the navigation on the left-hand side. There's a little graph up here, and the time frame is over here, and then there's a chart of data down here." That reminds me a lot of Google Analytics, which many people who are watching this Whiteboard Friday and might be using Moz Analytics are almost certainly familiar with. And that is no error. That familiarity of user experience, that, "Oh, yes. I have been here before. Oh, yes. I am familiar with how to use a web analytics product or a search engine or an e-commerce site."
There's a reason that these follow into patterns and why these patterns are successful when they are repeated and deviation from those patterns can actually be dangerous. The legibility of font and text in a blog post, in a piece of content can influence whether it's shared more or less.
The ease of discovery and shareability of something. If something is very easy to copy and paste inside my browser so that I can easily tweet it, or if I am sent a link by somebody in an email that just says, "Hey, if you would retweet this that would be great," and it goes directly to their tweet, wow, this is very easy. It's very easy for me to share it, and therefore I am more likely to do so. Processing fluency dictates it is thus.
I would urge you, whenever you're thinking about your marketing campaigns, whether those be in the SEO world with things like your domain name, your title, your URL. Your URL, in a study by Bing, domain name and URL, the little part in the search results that's green, actually had a significant biasing effect on where clicks went. Almost as significant, in fact, a little more significant than whether there was a rel=author profile picture, according to Google. These are separate studies, but the data should match up.
The readability of that content. Social, the sharing time. When was it shared? Was it shared at a time when I'm going to see it? Was it shared at a time when I'm likely to be on a device where I'm more likely to share? Maybe that's mobile if it's a retweet. Maybe that's desktop if it's something where I actually want someone to take action, or a laptop, or a tablet.
The length of the content. Length is very much a part of processing fluency because very long articles, depends on the subject matter, but we have a tendency not to read or to comprehend and process all of that information.
In advertising, your copy, your layout, your design, this is classic ad agency world stuff that people have been doing for decades. And in content, the style, the UX, the complexity of that content.
Again, another really good example, Moz's own search ranking factors, which are produced every two years, and this summer we're coming out with a new version. It will be first presented at MozCon and then appear on the web. But the complexity of the new UI, that we launched in 2011, made it such that engagement on those pages was far less because you had to click over to different tabs to actually see the numbers, as opposed to seeing it all on one page. It reduced the shareability, the number of links it got, as compared to when it was done in 2005, 2007, and 2009. Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
If you were investing in web marketing channels, in content marketing and SEO, in social, and advertising of any kind, I would urge you to think about the fluency of the work that you're producing and whether people can really consume it as effectively as you're hoping they can. This can have a big impact on the effectiveness of the work that you do.
All right everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'll see you again next week. Take care."

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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joi, 13 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish Buys a Basket of Miners
IRS Refunds $4 Billion Child Tax Credits Per Year to Illegal Immigrants Whose Kids Do Not Live in US (and May Not Exist at All); Earned Income Fraud Another $13 Billion
California, Illinois on Brink of Pension Crisis; New Actuarial Rules Will Force States to Admit Problems

Mish Buys a Basket of Miners

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 09:00 PM PDT

Most of my investment funds are under management at Sitka Pacific. I also have investments with GoldMoney and some other assets from my late wife Joanne.

I believe precious metal miners represent true value, but I cannot state when the market will come to the same conclusion.

Last week I bought a basket of miners with a significant amount of money. Many of these stocks are also held in various Sitka Pacific strategies.

Mish Miner Basket

Symbol	Average Price	Initial Weight	PE	Dividend	Yield
NEM	$34.08	30%	10.06	$1.40	4.10%
GG	$29.18	15%	15.70	$0.60	2.10%
ABX	$20.64	15%	NA	$0.80	4.00%
GDX	$29.60	10%	11.00	NA	1.20%
GLDX	$16.73	5%	NA	NA	6.52%
HMY	$4.08	5%	11.73	$0.10	2.30%
SBGL	$3.38	2%	NA	NA	NA
SLW	$23.72	9%	14.22	$0.48	2.00%
PAAS	$12.65	9%	42.38	$0.50	4.10%

General Comments

As you can see, most of the investment is with major mining companies that pay substantial dividends. PEs are trailing, not optimistic or unrealistic forward estimates. Price per book value is low in most cases. Each symbol is a clickable link to Yahoo!Finance statistics.

Gold Stock Comments

NEM - Newmont Mining: My best value play and weighted accordingly. Price/book is a mere 1.19 and I have no reason to believe book value is overstated. Trailing PE is 10.04 and the dividend yield is 4.10%. What's not to like?
GG - Goldcorp: A major Canadian gold miner with a respectable PE and dividend. Goldcorp trades right at book value (.99 to be precise).
ABX - Barrick Gold Corporation: Another major Canadian gold miner with a respectable dividend. Earnings were negative last quarter due to writedowns. Dividend appears solid. Price/per book is a mere .88 (less than book value).
GDX - Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF. Rather than pick too many additional stocks and following them all, I put 10% of my basket into a gold miners ETF basket.
GLDX - Global X Gold Explorers ETF. This is a speculative play on gold explorers. Some of the companies in the ETF are likely to go bust. Hopefully some will strike it big. I weighted this according to risk, with only 5% of my basket.
HMY: Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited: This is a South African mining company that stands to appreciate from its gold mining operations and also from a falling Rand.
SBGL - Sibanye Gold Limited: This is another South African miner and arguably my most speculative play. It is weighted accordingly at 2% of the basket.

Silver Stock Comments

SLW - Silver Wheaton Corp: SLW has a respectable PE and pays a reasonable dividend. It is a play on the price of silver which I expect to recover at some point.
PAAS - Pan American Silver Corp: PAAS is a major silver producer with a nice dividend yield of 4.10%. Pan American is trading at 68% of book value.

As you can see I weighted the basket 82% gold to 18% silver which reflects my belief that gold is a far safer play. None of these picks constitutes a recommendation in any way. Please do your own due diligence.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

IRS Refunds $4 Billion Child Tax Credits Per Year to Illegal Immigrants Whose Kids Do Not Live in US (and May Not Exist at All); Earned Income Fraud Another $13 Billion

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 09:39 AM PDT

Here's an interesting video that came my way yesterday from a close friend. The video highlights a news investigation by Channel 13, WTHR in Indianapolis, regarding fraudulent refunds of taxpayer money to illegal immigrants living in the US. The refunds are based on child tax credits, when the kids live in Mexico or elsewhere.

Link if video does not play: Another Massive Tax Loophole!

Typically videos like this are not remotely true, but this one is according to FactCheck.

Q: Does the IRS pay billions in tax refunds to workers who are in the U.S. illegally?

A: Yes. The Treasury Department's Inspector General determined that $4.2 billion was paid in 2010, up from less than $1 billion in 2005. Leading Democrats are resisting a bill that would stop future payments.

FULL ANSWER

This is a rare case of an Internet rumor with some substance to it. In fact, it's shaping up as a major dogfight in Congress. At issue here are the federal child tax credits that can be claimed by persons with dependent children under age 17. Some Democrats are already defending these child tax credit payments that have gone to those without a valid Social Security number, accusing Republicans who want to end them of a heartless attack on children.

Several different versions of this viral email all cite a recent investigative story by an Indianapolis television station, but WTHR-TV is far from the first to notice. The Washington Post and others reported on this last year when the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration issued a report on July 7, 2011.

The title of the report summed up the IG's [Treasury Inspector General] finding: "Individuals Who Are Not Authorized to Work in the United States Were Paid $4.2 Billion in Refundable Credits."

Problem Still Not Addressed

The WTHR video appears to be from 2012. The treasury inspector general report came out in 2011.

So Congress, the treasury, the IRS, and presumably president Obama have known about this for at least two years.

Fraudulent Bonanza for Illegals

The question I had this morning is a simple one: has anything been done yet?

It does not appear to be the case.

On April 16, 2013, The Washington Times featured an article by Edwin S. Rubenstein Collecting billions in a loophole, subtitled "Fraudulent tax refunds yield a bonanza for illegal immigrants".

As federal services from air-traffic control to White House tours are ratcheted down thanks to the budget sequestration, millions of illegal aliens are now eagerly await billions in illegitimate Treasury payments, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Two programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) provide cash payments to low-income parents who pay no income tax and fail to have a valid Social Security number.

The IRS knowingly allows illegal aliens who claim children to get Earned Income Tax Credit cash payments of up to $5,891 per household. This is one reason why these cash payments are expected to exceed $52 billion in fiscal year 2012 alone. The General Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that roughly a quarter of all Earned Income Tax Credit payments are issued improperly.

Compounding the problem is the Additional Child Tax Credit, which was added to the older Child Tax Credit program that became law in 1997. The Child Tax Credit reduces the tax low-income families pay by $1,000 for each child under 17. If the tax filer claims five children for a credit of $5,000 but owes only $2,000 in taxes, under the Additional Child Tax Credit the IRS sends the filer a check for the difference, or $3,000.

The federal tax agency makes no effort to verify the existence of children or the eligibility of the tax-credit recipients to work in the United States. Indeed, IRS managers reportedly encourage their staff to ignore questionable applications and blatant fraud for the sake of fast-tracking Individual Taxpayer Identification Number approvals.

The scandal prompted at least one congressman to act. Last year, Rep. Sam Johnson, Texas Republican, introduced the ITIN Reform Act. The legislation would require people claiming Additional Child Tax Credit refunds on tax returns filed without a Social Security number to verify their citizenship status in person at an IRS office. Currently, the IRS sends these refunds automatically, with no questions asked.

Total Illegal Immigrant Fraud Over $17 Billion Annually

General Accountability Office (GAO) estimates one-fourth of the annual $52 billion in earned income payments is fraudulent. The math here is pretty simple. One-fourth of $52 billion is $13 billion, so the total cost to taxpayers is $17 billion annually.

Democrats do not want to do a damn thing about this, nor does the IRS. Please play the video, it's a real eye opener.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

California, Illinois on Brink of Pension Crisis; New Actuarial Rules Will Force States to Admit Problems

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 01:27 AM PDT

Many states, especially California and Illinois, have had severe pension underfunding problems for many years.

However, new actuarial pension rules will finally force states to admit the problem. Thus, it should not be surprising that talk of "technical bankruptcy" and "service insolvency" is growing.

Here are some pertinent ideas from California on the Brink: Pension Crisis About to Get Worse

Moody's new credit standards for public pensions would nearly double the unfunded liabilities for state and local pension plans in California to $328.6 billion from $128.3 billion.
California has the second lowest credit rating at Standard & Poor's of all 50 states; Illinois now has the worst. Moody's new standards would drop the funded status of these plans to 64%, versus a previous estimate of 82%, the Center said.
"By standard accounting methods, some state pension funds will run out of assets within as little as five years"
New rules will lower expected rates of returns on their pension assets, instead of the often overstated returns they now use to paper over holes in their plans blown out by bad investments.
Meredith Whitney says California is papering over budget holes with gimmicks, like raising taxes retroactively, pushing state expenses onto local towns and cities that can't afford them, and underfunding their pension funds. "It's so much worse than the rosy picture that the headlines suggest," the CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory group says.
The Senate Joint Economic Committee reiterates what Whitney says. "Many states and localities have regularly skipped or underfunded contributions to pension plans," the report said. "Over the past five years, state and local governments have underpaid actuarially required pension contributions by more than $50 billion. The worst culprit of all, Illinois, has underpaid its pension contributions to the tune of $28 billion over the past 15 years."
Illinois' plan is just 44% funded, or 30% using "conventional accounting standards," the Senate committee says. Los Angeles' combined plans would fall from 77% funded to 50% funded.
San Jose's combined plans would fall from 75% to 60% funded.
San Francisco's combined plans would fall from 88% funded to 69% funded.

Trouble Will Escalate

Many California cities are in serious trouble, and that trouble will grow by leaps and bounds as soon as there is a significant stock market correction.

Pension plans typically assume 7.5% returns. That's not going to happen on a sustained basis with 10-year treasuries yielding close to 2%. Yet, any significant rise in bond yields will crush existing bondholders as well as wreak havoc in equities.

Moody's wants states to assume 5.5% returns, but even that is far too high. The stock and bond markets are now so bloated thanks to Fed bubble-blowing policies that 0-2% returns for a full decade is a distinct possibility. And not a single pension plan in the US is remotely prepared for such an event.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Damn Cool Pics

Flying Bike of Jan Tleskac [Video]
Hilarious Photobombs With Animal Bodies
Stupid Sex Tips
Chinese Man Detained for Alien Stunt
Pollen, Pollen Everywhere: Allergens in the U.S. [Infographic]

Flying Bike of Jan Tleskac [Video]

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 03:17 PM PDT

Several Czech companies have collaborated to create the first flying bicycle. With the boost of two high powered fans, the first test pilot successfully lifted the bicycle several feet in the air, and flew around a large garage.

Hilarious Photobombs With Animal Bodies

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 02:50 PM PDT

London-based ad creative Mike Whiteside 'photobombed' his fellow office workers with headless pictures of animals.

Posted on Tumblr blog 'Desk Safari', the silly pictures—created by Whiteside and submitted by others—feature people paired up with well-fitted 'animal bodies' that are funny to look at, and makes it seem as if office life is a bit 'wild'.

Stupid Sex Tips

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 10:01 AM PDT

Sex tips from Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, etc. Please forget them asap.

Chinese Man Detained for Alien Stunt

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 09:16 AM PDT

In the Bindzhou province of Shandong, China, a man named Mr Lee claims that he has seen several UFOs in the region and even saw one of these flying machines smash into the ground in March. He has posted pictures of himself standing next to fridge that contains a strange creature that he claims is an alien he pulled from the crash. Do you think this is real?

Pollen, Pollen Everywhere: Allergens in the U.S. [Infographic]

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 07:55 AM PDT

Allergies are not fun, that's for sure. But there are some simple ways you can treat them. Check out the infographic below presented by InsuranceQuotes.com to learn about allergies in the U.S. and how they can be treated.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Cures for allergies in the U.S.[Infographic]

Via: InsuranceQuotes.com

vineri, 14 iunie 2013

These Two Sisters Really Love Their Moms

We want this to be a conversation, so we made this video

How Processing Fluency Impacts Web Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

How Processing Fluency Impacts Web Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Video Transcription

joi, 13 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

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Arhivă blog

vineri, 14 iunie 2013

Video Transcription

joi, 13 iunie 2013

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