Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.--Plato (Phaedrus)
Two former Republican secretaries of State -- James Baker and George Shultz -- led the U.S. delegation to the Thatcher funeral but no representatives from the current administration attended.
Two former Republican secretaries of State -- James Baker and George Shultz -- led the U.S. delegation to the Thatcher funeral but no representatives from the current administration attended.
The Greek battles at Troy and Thermopylae are both relatively well known events; much less is known about the Battle of Leuktra, in which the Thebans — led by Epaminondas — defeated the Spartans in what was perhaps one of the most stunning military victories of all time. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote of the battle in The Soul of Battle. He has a new book--fiction--about the event. The Thebans were an agrarian people falling somewhere closer to Athens than Sparta in governmental structure and further away from Sparta in militarism.
The sabermetric community contends Pirates lefty Jeff Locke cannot sustain his performance to date. After seven shutout innings against the Astros on Sunday, Locke has lowered his ERA to 2.73. But, according to Fangraphs.com, Locke continues to strike out too few batters and walk too many. Worse, he’s throwing the same three-pitch mix as in prior years and the same three-pitch percentages as he did last year when he struggled. His ERA is a terrific 2.73 but FIP – a metric of fielding-independent run prevention – suggests his ERA should be 4.47. His FIP last year was 4.43. The advanced stats think he’s the same pitcher he was last year. But why is last year the standard and this year the outlier? Why can't it be the other way? Is it just strikeouts and walks?
The fifth edition of the “bible” of mental illness, formally known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will include new disorders, and has changed how some conditions - like ADHD and autism - are diagnosed. According to the new definitions, some experts say almost 50 percent of Americans could be diagnosed as mentally ill in their lifetimes.
Following the theories of Philadelphia engineer and businessman Frederick Winslow Taylor, one of the nation's first specialists in shop-floor management whose book The Principles of Scientific Management was the best-selling business book of the first half of the twentieth century, Henry Ford broke his auto assembly system down to simple, short, repetitive tasks. It was brutally boring and "dehumanizing." Ford's daily absentee rate was 10 percent, while annual turnover exceeded 350 percent. To reduce turnover, which was costly to the company, Ford doubled the daily wages of his most valued employees. That retained workers and began to build a working middle class.
If you want 3% GDP growth in a country whose population is shrinking by 1%, do you need about 4% productivity growth?
In a survey of three hundred thousand contractors, two-thirds said they had no direct employees, meaning that they did not need to pay workers’-compensation insurance or payroll taxes. In other words, for lots of people off-the-books work is the only job available.
It was the Aztecs who first used graphite as a marker. The modern pencil was invented in 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Conte, a scientist serving in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Initially it was believed to be a form of lead and was called 'plumbago' or black lead--after the Latin word for lead(hence the 'plumbers' who work on lead water-carrying pipes) and that error persists in our use of pencil 'lead'.
A recent analysis in The New Yorker investigates cash in the American economy. Contrary to the widely cited figure that 65 percent of U.S. currency is abroad, direct evidence supports the notion that overseas holdings amount to less than 25 percent. And the underground economy (called by the economist Edgar Feige "The Unreported Economy) totals about $2 trillion a year in the US. And the "lost" tax revenue is in the neighborhood of $400 billion a year. Feige points to the growing distrust of government as one important factor. The desire to avoid licensing regulations, which force people to jump through elaborate hoops just to get a job, is another. He thinks this explains some of the disparities in the economy. Lack of concern/respect for law is a dangerous lesson to teach.
In 1410 Prince Henry the Navigator, the second son of Portuguese King John I, founded a school for navigators at Ponta de Sagres. He had extraordinary students including Vasco da Gama, who made the first voyage from Europe to India, and Magellan, whose expedition first circumnavigated the globe. Their aim was to develop direct trading routes to Europe and bypass the expensive Muslim middlemen on the Silk Road.
Who was....Tawana Brawley?
The U.S. economy: jobless claims rose sharply last week while ground-breaking at home construction sites dropped in April. The total number of people on welfare is about 4,300,000. The total number of people getting food stamps (the SNAP program) is 46,700,000.
Stratfor is sometimes insightful, sometimes rehash. This is a quote from one of its writers, George Friedman, that is quite disturbing as he searches for some balance in society's search for "comfort and transcendence": "I am not talking here of the economic crisis that is gripping Europe, leaving Portugal with 17 percent unemployment and Spain with 26 percent. These are agonizing realities for those living through them. But Europeans have lived through more and worse. Instead, I am speaking of a crisis in the European soul, the death of hubris and of risk-taking. Yes, these resulted in the Europeans trying to convert the world to Christianity and commerce, in Russia trying to create a new man and in Germany becoming willing to annihilate what it thought of as inferior men. The Europeans are content to put all that behind them. Their great search for the holy grail is now reduced to finding a way to resume the comforts of the unexceptional. There is something to be said for the unexceptional life. But it cannot be all there is."
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur is an incomplete epic poem on King Arthur. It has been edited for publication by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and has just been released. Started in the 1930's it was abandoned for The Hobbit and never resumed. It is written in Old English alliterative verse (the meter of Beowulf). It begins: "Arthur eastward in arms purposed/ his war to wage on the wild marches, / over seas sailing to Saxon lands, / from the Roman realm ruin defending." There are a lot of notes, drafts and experiments in the manuscript which might put off Tolkien fans in the book.
A company with:
-revenues of 15 million dollars is in the top 1.7% of U.S. companies
-employees of over 100 is in the top 1.8% of U.S. companies.
The Nikkei Stock Average suffered one of its worst single-day declines in decades, a 7.3% drop. Japanese stocks are up more than 60% since late November, when Shinzo Abe, now Japan's prime minister, hinted that his administration would sharply increase the money supply in a bid to restart a sputtering economy.
Illicit drug use in the workforce involved an estimated 14.1% of employed adults (17.7 million workers). Illicit drug use in the workplace involved an estimated 3.1% of employed adults (3.9 million workers). The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says that, of the 20.3 million adults in the U.S. classified as having substance use disorders in 2008 -- the latest year for which figures are available --15.8 million were employed either full or part-time.
"President Obama Wishes American Citizens Well"--Headline which should be from the Onion but I made it up instead.
The IRS employees have a union, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). Representing 150,000 members from 31 federal agencies and departments including the Internal Revenue Service, the NTEU says it is the nation’s largest independent federal union. In 2012 the NTEU contributed $580,412 to federal candidates—94% of which were Democrats.They would like a waver to get out of Obamacare.
If currency is linked to gold, any Fed management of the money supply impossible. From what we have seen over the last two centuries, is that reasonable?
More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.
Golden Oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-are-people-for-wendell-berry-book.html
The Bank of Japan is engaging in almost as much quantitative easing as the US Federal Reserve but in a country 1/3 the size of the US. And the yen is falling in response. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the main Japanese business newspaper, has reported that every one-yen fall in the yen/dollar rate will translate into a $2.7 BILLION increase in profits for the 30 largest Japanese exporters. Those profits come from sales, sales that are in large part due to better terms of trade and lower costs. Those profits are from sales that might have gone to other companies based in other countries, which is why there are some objections to Japan's decision in other nations. Most fear that, in order to fight their own deflation, the Japanese are exporting it.
AAAAANNNNNNDDDDdddddddd..........a picture: (a Hong Kong apartment)
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