First Turning "purge"

[pbrower2a]

(11-15-2018, 07:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We can say things will be purged, but actually nothing is gone forever and virtually everything gets revived in some way at some time or another, probably unfortunately.

Indeed I can predict a big, corrupt, doomed speculative boom much like those of the mid-1850s, mid-1930s, or Double-Zero decade somewhere between  2080 and 2095 culminating in a financial panic analogous to those of 1857, 1929, and 2008.  People who will have been beyond infancy in 2008 will then be largely out of public life. American political leadership of the time will be awful (basically permissiveness toward whatever the loudest shysters want, the shysters having convinced practically all politicians that they alone offer what is best for America), and the mass culture will be depraved and raucous.

No star cycle applies here; the extinction of the last prominent childhood memories of bad consequences of a  big, corrupt, speculative boom as the result of such a bubble will make such possible. Remember: blunders must first seduce.

[Eric the Green]

(11-15-2018, 10:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 07:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We can say things will be purged, but actually nothing is gone forever and virtually everything gets revived in some way at some time or another, probably unfortunately.

Indeed I can predict a big, corrupt, doomed speculative boom much like those of the mid-1850s, mid-1930s, or Double-Zero decade somewhere between  2080 and 2095 culminating in a financial panic analogous to those of 1857, 1929, and 2008.  People who will have been beyond infancy in 2008 will then be largely out of public life. American political leadership of the time will be awful (basically permissiveness toward whatever the loudest shysters want, the shysters having convinced practically all politicians that they alone offer what is best for America), and the mass culture will be depraved and raucous.

No star cycle applies  here; the extinction of the last prominent childhood memories of bad consequences of a  big, corrupt, speculative boom as the result of such a bubble will make such possible. Remember: blunders must first seduce.

That's the saeculum fer ya. 

Remember that the star cycle is the same, and for the same reason; so it applies. I first came here in 1997 to make that point. One Uranus cycle = 83-84 years = 1 saeculum. 1 Neptune cycle = 165 = two saecula. 1 Pluto cycle = 248 = 3 saecula. Remember, we are approaching the USA's first Pluto return since King George was thrown out. That indicates something for the early-mid 2020s! It's a triple-reinforced long cosmic rhythm.

[Mmorales]

is more interesting!

[Tim Randal Walker]

Yes, we can expect a speculative boom during the next 3T. The greedy won't let dusty old history get in their way. Others will be naive, and easy to con because they have no personal memories of such a period.

Michio Kaku (who's field is actually physics, not economics) described this cycle. He indicated that these speculative booms are spaced roughly a life time apart.

[Tim Randal Walker]

If television survives as a distinct medium, I expect mergers that will leave just a few channels. I expect them to survive due to sports....lots of sports. The most expensive thing that will be produced will be the news. Most everything else will be cheap to produce, such as cooking shows, talk shows, so called "Reality" shows, etc.

And tons of reruns of very old programs.

[pbrower2a]

(04-12-2019, 11:59 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: If television survives as a distinct medium, I expect mergers that  will leave just a few channels.  I expect them to survive due to sports....lots of sports.  The most expensive thing that will be  produced will be the news.  Most everything else  will be cheap to produce, such as cooking shows, talk shows, so called "Reality" shows, etc.

And tons of reruns of very old programs.

Cable television is already obsolescent as a means of distributing programming. The digital subchannels are well suited to delivering programming -- mostly reruns of 'classic' television, but I would not be surprised to see old cable material appearing on them. The only advantage that cable TV has is in its ability to absorb costs that suppliers can impose, as with sports programming. If you wonder how major league sports teams can afford the astronomical salaries that they pay, then it is because of television and not the gate.

Cable news is mostly talk shows. Think of MSNBC or (ahem!) FoX Newspeak Channel.

Don't forget infomercials and shopping -- very low uses of television, but they don't need  high ratings. Likewise religion due to the missionary desires of many sects. These might not be what people want, but they are readily available.

C-SPAN is attractive, and it seems to be inexpensively produced. Nobody has to pay Congress to broadcast its sessions.

We need remember that most people have competition for cable in their existing video collections. A great movie from the past or recent bilge? I'll take the former, thank you.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Infomercials and shopping-thanks for the reminder.

I had signed up for a so-called "bundle". I found that I pretty much preferred to be online. Seldom watched the cable channels. Didn't bother to install the land line (I already had a cell phone). When the contract expired, I cut the cable to save money.

So I expect old style television to be marginalized, if it survives. Hence, the need to be cheaply produced.

[pbrower2a]

There is far more choice on line than over the Idiot Screen. But there are some things available only through cable television. I see objects capable of undercutting cable and even dish (which are about the same).

[David Horn]

(04-12-2019, 02:28 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Infomercials and shopping-thanks for the reminder.

I had signed up for a so-called "bundle".  I found that I pretty much preferred to be online.  Seldom watched the cable channels.  Didn't bother to install the land line (I already had a cell phone).  When the contract expired, I cut the cable to save money.  

So I expect old style television to be marginalized, if it survives.  Hence, the need to be cheaply produced.

There will always be a market for so-called Premium programming.  That's what Netflix has used to get where they are, and it was and still is the lure used by the HBOs and Showtimes of the cable universe.  Any quality programming that is exclusive to a pay service will garner an audience.  Some, like Game of Thrones, will move into legendary status. Of course, sports is in the same category, since it's at its best when viewed in real-time, or close to it.  Expect more and greater diversity of that as well

I actually expect to see more not fewer high-quality scripted shows, greater sports diversity and many more inexpensive talking heads.  That's not a big change from today.  There will be a sorting, at some point, because there are only so many eyeballs t support the programming, whether ad-based or as a pay service.  We'll see how that falls-out in the next few years, but the programming will continue.

[Eric the Green]

(04-12-2019, 11:59 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: If television survives as a distinct medium, I expect mergers that  will leave just a few channels.  I expect them to survive due to sports....lots of sports.  The most expensive thing that will be  produced will be the news.  Most everything else  will be cheap to produce, such as cooking shows, talk shows, so called "Reality" shows, etc.

And tons of reruns of very old programs.

This describes broadcast TV already. I assume you think cable will follow suit, or has already. So then where are any quality programs to be found? Netflix? Streaming on the computer? Any reason to think the same trend would not happen there?

Is the failure of culture that we see, whether in our pop music, TV, internet, journalism, sensational movies, decline of reading, etc, a signal that our society has failed? Is it the inevitable failure of the extreme capitalist model that we follow? Wouldn't a better approach than total corporate control and culture made for the convenience of its owners create a better mass culture?

Today's tawdry level of culture may be unprecedented. Anywhere, or any time.

[Hintergrund]

(11-15-2018, 04:15 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 04:06 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement.

[snip]
 
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian. 

They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
 
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
 
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism". 

--- l just wish they'd purge Miz Nancy. We need fresh blood. Ain't gonna happen tho

ps, Toyz R Us is coming back

Purges have already started. We certainly can consider the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and others has having been purged in the advent of the #MeToo movement. Yes, their behavior was horrible. Pointing this out as perhaps a preview of things to come in other arenas.

This rather sounds as if the lefties/feminists were winning.

[pbrower2a]

(04-12-2019, 02:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-12-2019, 11:59 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: If television survives as a distinct medium, I expect mergers that  will leave just a few channels.  I expect them to survive due to sports....lots of sports.  The most expensive thing that will be  produced will be the news.  Most everything else  will be cheap to produce, such as cooking shows, talk shows, so called "Reality" shows, etc.

And tons of reruns of very old programs.

Cable television is already obsolescent as a means of distributing programming. The digital subchannels are well suited to delivering programming -- mostly reruns of 'classic' television, but I would not be surprised to see old cable material appearing on them. The only advantage that cable TV has is in its ability to absorb costs that suppliers can impose, as with sports programming. If you wonder how major league sports teams can afford the astronomical salaries that they pay, then it is because of television and not the gate.  

Cable news is mostly talk shows. Think of MSNBC or (ahem!) FoX Newspeak Channel.

Don't forget infomercials and shopping -- very low uses of television, but they don't need  high ratings. Likewise religion due to the missionary desires of many sects. These might not be what people want, but they are readily available.

C-SPAN is attractive, and it seems to be inexpensively produced. Nobody has to pay Congress to broadcast its sessions.

We need remember that most people have competition for cable in their existing video collections. A great movie from the past or recent bilge? I'll take the former, thank you.

Update: I have started to see cable-produced shows appearing on the 'secondary' channels of TV stations that I have little cause to watch. So, yes, cable-TV programs are likely to become grist for broadcast again, practically reversing the tendency for cablecasts such as Nickelodeon, TNT (if not sports), TBS (if not sports), and WGN America (they took off the Cubs games and Chicago-area news, which was most of what I watched on the superchannel... in southwestern Michigan)

Someday, old HBO and Showtime material originally made for subscription TV will so appear.

[pbrower2a]

(04-13-2019, 09:11 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-12-2019, 02:28 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Infomercials and shopping-thanks for the reminder.

I had signed up for a so-called "bundle".  I found that I pretty much preferred to be online.  Seldom watched the cable channels.  Didn't bother to install the land line (I already had a cell phone).  When the contract expired, I cut the cable to save money.  

So I expect old style television to be marginalized, if it survives.  Hence, the need to be cheaply produced.

There will always be a market for so-called Premium programming.  That's what Netflix has used to get where they are, and it was and still is the lure used by the HBOs and Showtimes of the cable universe.  Any quality programming that is exclusive to a pay service will garner an audience.  Some, like Game of Thrones, will move into legendary status. Of course, sports is in the same category, since it's at its best when viewed in real-time, or close to it.  Expect more and greater diversity of that as well

I actually expect to see more not fewer high-quality scripted shows, greater sports diversity and many more inexpensive talking heads.  That's not a big change from today.  There will be a sorting, at some point, because there are only so many eyeballs t support the programming, whether ad-based or as a pay service.  We'll see how that falls-out in the next few years, but the programming will continue.

Most people would seem to watch as few as ten channels of cable TV if they get cable TV. In my case (I did not get the super-premium HBO, Showtime, and the like; cable operators have essentially turned juist about anything on cable to premium cost even if it used to be very cheap, fitting the ethos of contemporary American capitalism -- just raise profit margins and stick the consumer!  Eventually people will have to decide what they will give up on. Maybe neoliberalism (reference to another thread) might as well be called the New Serfdom

I remember what I watched a lot:the local FoX Sports channel (easy to give up when the Detroit Tigers are really a minor-league team playing over its heads), CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, FX Movies, Turner Classic Movies, American Movie Classics, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Comedy Central ... C-Span... there is only so much to follow, and filling life with television is for people who want to see no problem with being spiritually empty. 

The quality of scripting will depend upon the quality of writers. The great writers have a love for learning, including reading. People write no better than the material that they read, even if they write very different material. I can't imagine writing like Dickens, Dostoevsky, or Hugo, but it is generally easy to determine what writers read and what writers instead go to the beach or the golf course. 

If we get through this Crisis we are going to discover that narrow, swift specialization for youth -- teaching them to get their first job and not concerning ourselves with their preparation to do something else after five years and whether life has meaning in free time when people are working somewhere between 25 and 32 hours a week as a norm because we easily produce everything that we need. Any more work is for developing excellence at some rarefied activity such as writing, athletics, musical composition or performance, acting, academic life... Consider this: for really happy people, time is an asset. For prisoners, time is simply something that ages them in a dangerous environment.

[pbrower2a]

(11-03-2019, 10:16 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-03-2019, 01:01 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 04:15 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 04:06 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement.

[snip]
 
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian. 

They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
 
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
 
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism". 

--- l just wish they'd purge Miz Nancy. We need fresh blood. Ain't gonna happen tho

ps, Toyz R Us is coming back

Purges have already started. We certainly can consider the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and others has having been purged in the advent of the #MeToo movement. Yes, their behavior was horrible. Pointing this out as perhaps a preview of things to come in other arenas.

This rather sounds as if the lefties/feminists were winning.

If they are telling the truth it would be a good thing. Context is king of course.

It's funny when it isn't about real people, or if (as in this comic opera) nobody is going to be beheaded for some minor infraction such as spitting on the sidewalk. This little sketch is funny in a community not murdering people by the millions as in Hitlerland or even in a community killing people by the hundreds as in Pinochet's Chile. 

I could name Donald Trump... who leaves democracy a rump... he never would be missed! I've got him on my list!
Those who use such hateful terms as "trailer trash" and "hick"... they're truly, truly sick! They never would be missed!
Fake princes of Nigeria with schemes named four-one-nine... demise would just be fine! Just add another line! 

It is tongue-in-cheek stuff, allowing people to vent about those that they find abominable or troublesome. Where the executioner is the busiest fellow in town, it isn't so funny. It would not be a comic opera in Japan during World War II. 





Ehen the tycoons, bureaucrats, and tyrants kill by millions, it won't be comic opera. It will be reality. Hitler had his huge list. 

They will kill millions with hunger if global warming inundates a big chunk of the world's most fertile farmland -- such as Bangladesh. Oh, those peasant farmers do not matter because they are 'only'peasant farmers of which we know little> That makes them no less human, and their deaths no less tragic.

If they try to impose some new form of slavery, then they can expect severe resistance. Just imagine how different the ancient world would be had Spartacus won his insurrection... maybe the Romans would have needed to develop a market economy that actually rewards work, enterprise, and innovation instead of rewarding little more than class status. Maybe the Romans would have gone quickly to the level of technological, intellectual, and economic sophisticates with Massachusetts on the brink of the American Revolution instead of wallowing in slavery, with all that that implies. Fewer deaths will come from a civil war in which the slavers end up dead than one in which those who resist enslavement get the treatment that Spartacus' defeated army got -- ;ining a Roman road on crucifixes. 

Wars for profit? If they resort to human-wave attacks that end in millions of pointless deaths, then those who profiteer from the war are no less horrible than those German tycoons who waxed fat by using forced labor that rarely survived long under the brutal conditions of the demonic Third Reich. Such human-wave attacks by Iran and Iraq against each other may have caused Henry Kissinger, no humanitarian himself, to blurt out "I wish that they could both lose", knowing that the ones who would most likely inherit what was left would have been the Soviet Union. The key difference between Bath-fascist Iraq or theocratic Iran and a fascistic America is that America has more potential cannon-fodder. 

Liberal democracy always has enemies -- anyone who wants to be a tyrant and will kill anyone who gets in his way.

[pbrower2a]

OK. Rich-and-powerful people are not getting away with what they used to. Bill Cosby has gone from being a media darling to one of the most despised people in America. Date-rape is rape. America is becoming less tolerant of abusive sexuality and spouse abuse, a clear sign of a 4T well underway/

The purge will be about behavior alleged to have precipitated the worst of the Crisis -- economic collapse that has its cause in incompetence and criminality. wars that go badly, and criminal deeds on a mass scale done under the cover of administrative secrecy. It is amazing in that context that LGBT rights have gotten legal recognition while America becomes more sexually repressive, of against behavior that I cannot accept (sex with minors, for which people got slaps on the wrist almost all the time; and sexual trafficking).

As for the rest -- many possibilities remain for this 4T in America and elsewhere. Most of the scenarios are horrible -- from a military coup that establishes a soul-crushing regime such as that of Agosto Pinochet in Chile, apocalyptic war foreign or even civil, economic collapse with a depression as severe and protracted as that of the 1930's. The worst vices and the greatest virtues can be enshrined in a Crisis, and the struggle can be a contrast between those.

Our best hope for America and elsewhere is Abraham Lincoln's metaphor of a New Birth of Freedom. We and the British Commonwealth brought that to countries that had gone under the occupation of Germany, Italy, and Japan and to Italy and Japan themselves and to about half of Germany. We did purge the Bad Guys after the fact, treating them as the gangsters that they were.

[Hintergrund]

(11-03-2019, 10:16 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-03-2019, 01:01 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 04:15 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-15-2018, 04:06 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement.

[snip]
 
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian. 

They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
 
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
 
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism". 

--- l just wish they'd purge Miz Nancy. We need fresh blood. Ain't gonna happen tho

ps, Toyz R Us is coming back

Purges have already started. We certainly can consider the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and others has having been purged in the advent of the #MeToo movement. Yes, their behavior was horrible. Pointing this out as perhaps a preview of things to come in other arenas.

This rather sounds as if the lefties/feminists were winning.

If they are telling the truth it would be a good thing. Context is king of course.

It seems the were right about some rapists. Doesn't mean that anything any feminist ever said was right.

[pbrower2a]

The alt-right has already killed. Not all are killers yet, but so it was with the Brownshirts before Hitler took power. Indeed, Hitler did not show himself as much of a killer until he started murdering the handicapped. But given the opportunity, he did.

A mere conservative tyrant such as Agosto Pinochet did more killing faster than Hitler did and then tapered off. If one did not like the 'new' Chile, which under him meant a regime in which survival was a privilege to be earned by making people already filthy-rich even more filthy rich while expressing how wonderful that dubious privilege was, then one could emigrate.

I consider Pinochet the dream for many American plutocrats... labor gets cheap and submissive while remaining productive, dissent with pure plutocracy is outlawed, the culture becomes a morgue. America run by a Pinochet-style leader would be one big happy plantation, even if the plantation is a fully-modern sweatshop. America does have a brain-drain, and the best job for an unmarried youth might be working in the tourist industry where one gets the opportunity to meet and seduce foreigners on holidays less expensive than those at home. College education might be strictly technical with some propaganda tossed in "See those mansions, castles, and [palaces going up? That is true prosperity, and if you are a patriotic American you will recognize such!"

That is just one more scary scenario that we cannot yet rule out in this Crisis. But once the Crisis is over it will either be reality -- or nonsense.

[pbrower2a]

I don't know... could nostalgia brands make a comeback? Could people miss Howard Johnson's, Steak and Ale, Perkins', and Big Boy enough tor the marquees and names could reappear?  Steak and Ale, maybe, and I sort of wish that Bill Knapp's, a middle-range Michigan restaurant chain, had not gone under. Maybe the demise of the American middle class ensures that dining out either involves the grand or the simply utilitarian (as in Chez Mac). I have seen rumors that Applebee's is in trouble... do not accept this as a stock tip.

Retailers? If you mocked Montgomery-Ward as "Monkey-Ward", you are part of the problem that Montgomery Ward had. I admit to missing the old book stores (Brentano's, Waldenbooks -- B. Dalton was merged into Barnes and Noble, itself limping along) and the former defaults for recorded music, Tower Records and The Wherehouse. But we quit buying in such places.

There is an on-line retailer that bought the brand name and style of Montgomery Ward. You can get a tote-bag for $39.99 with the old red logo "Tower Records" on a yellow surface if you get nostalgic enough... well, it wouldn't get the same dirty looks that an Enron logo would get.  No links; I do not do free advertising.

We all face the same problem -- that we can no longer get more happiness just by buying more stuff. In some cases we are paying far more in real terms (property rents, cable television, highway tolls) than we used to. Taxes? If taxes justify themselves in high-quality services, then we may not have much of a complaint. If you have a government job or get welfare or disability benefits, then you don't have much of a complaint about high taxes. Government jobs may be the 21st-century expression of Keynesian economics, perhaps in a social-market economy.

Many of us know many things that we will never miss. Poverty as a looming threat is one of them. It may be better than beatings by an employer, but we no longer need poverty as a threat. The workweek was much shorter in the 1950's than in the 1920's, and we are no worse off for that. Donald Trump is showing us that mass ignorance is a pure loss.

Overpriced housing in the Landlord's Paradise and renter's nightmare? We will probably build more affordable housing, especiall if a war of any kind destroys much of the existing housing stock. Most vulnerable will be the McMansions that will  be out of style in a short time. Classical norms of form and proportion exist for good reason; shoddy workmanship is not good for survival of buildings. McMansions are not sturdy enough to be cut up into apartments for low-income dwellers.

I expect a culling of entertainment. There is only so much entertainment that we can absorb. How many of those 200 channels of cable TV do you really watch?  I am now on minimal cable due to poverty, and where I live one needs cable to get adequate reception. I live seventy miles away from the nearest transmitter of broadcast TV, so it would take a large mast to get broadcast TV from the four main networks and PBS.

What did I watch that I do not watch now?

ESPN
FoX Sports Detroit (but the Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons are awful, so I am missing nothing)
Turner Classic Movies (I have a nice video collection, much of which I got after watching TCM)
FS1
FoX Movie Channel
MSNBC (I miss it)
CNN (I miss it for breaking news)
FoX Propaganda Channel no, I didn't. I don't like to get angry while watching news, for one thing
American Movie Classics (before they went commercial)
Discovery Channel
Animal Planet
History Channel (before they went fad)
A&E (before it dropped the "arts" part)
Travel Channel (occasionally interesting -- see what I am missing in a hick town in the Midwest)

CSPAN is on this basic cable, distributed for free.

I can understand people watching specialized channels that fit their lifestyles such as HGTV, Food Network, Do it Yourself, Outdoors, etc.
I thought that there would be specialized networks for limited audiences  such as an LGBT channel or channels directed at a specific religious group... no, there is no "Methodist Channel" or "Lutheran Channel"... or a Jewish or Islamic channel... and channels dedicated to professions such as "the Dental Channel" or "AICPA Channel" (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants".

[pbrower2a]

It might be possible to discount one allegation as "he said/she said", but a systematic pattern of accusations is a different matter.

[pbrower2a]

(04-12-2019, 11:51 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Yes, we can expect a speculative boom during the next 3T.   The greedy won't let dusty old history get in their way.  Others will be naive, and easy to con because they have no personal memories of such a period.

Michio Kaku (who's field is actually physics, not economics) described this cycle.  He indicated that these speculative booms are spaced roughly a life time apart.

Physicist? Chemists did much to turn economics into a science at the University of California at Berkeley by applying mathematical models applicable to chemistry and thermodynamics  to economics. Thermodynamics is borderline between chemistry and physics. 

If you are a clumsy lab technician in chemistry you just might find economics more to your liking.