As a researcher, every once in a while you encounter something a little disconcerting.

A very disconcerting practice is documented by various sources collective punishment based upon guilt by association .

Well, it turns out and this is where things get really disconcerting it's not unique to diarrhea.

Many of these deaths were completely preventable, and this what I want to think of as the disconcerting thing, what I want to call the last mile problem.

I think it's a very disconcerting notion, this idea that our cars will be watching us, talking about us to other cars, that we'll be going down the road in a sea of gossip.

It is disconcerting to note that undue restrictions on exports to developing non nuclear weapon countries of material, equipment and technology for peaceful purposes persist through measures incompatible with the provisions of the Treaty.

As a result, Malthus s concerns about mass starvation have failed to materialize in any peaceful capitalist economy. And, despite a disconcerting fall in labor s share of income in recent decades, the long run picture still defies Marx s prediction that capitalism would prove immiserating for workers.

What is disconcerting, however, is not only the relentless financing and spread of war, but also the lack of an alternative US strategy. Obama and his top advisers have spoken regularly about the need to address the underlying sources of conflict, including poverty and unemployment.

While the government has assembled considerable firepower to limit the unwinding of a spectacular bubble, the overhang of highly leveraged speculative demand is disconcerting. Indeed, in the 12 months ending in June, margin financing of stock purchases nearly tripled as a share of tradable domestic equity market capitalization.

Far more disconcerting is the willingness of major central banks not just the Fed, but also the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan to inject massive amounts of excess liquidity into asset markets excesses that cannot be absorbed by sluggish real economies. That puts central banks in the destabilizing position of abdicating control over financial markets.

What has people outraged is the notion that Facebook is manipulating its unwitting users to advance its own agenda, with many citing the secrecy surrounding the research to illustrate the company s misconduct (though the company published the results with no apparent sense of unease). But, though Facebook s lack of transparency is certainly disconcerting as is its deafness to its users concerns these complaints miss the point.

While the realization that America is not the land of opportunity that it has long claimed to be is as disconcerting to others as it is to Americans, inequality of opportunity at the global scale is even greater. One cannot really claim that the world is flat when a typical African receives investment in his or her human capital of a few hundred dollars, while rich Americans get a gift from their parents and society in excess of a half million dollars.