Cab Thoughts 9/11/13

Few opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

 

 

Owners this year have announced the closing or closed a total of 5 nuclear plants--2 in California, 1 in Florida, and 1 in Wisconsin plus the recent Vermont Yankee closure. That is nearly 5% of the US nuclear fleet and it will have to be replaced by carbon.

 

There is a new book out reevaluating the famous Stanley Milgram shock experiments and questioning their statistical validity. Reviews from professionals in the field have been scornful.

 

A short section of Dodd-Frank requires that all public companies disclose the median pay of its employees and place it side-by-side with the CEO’s pay. Precious.

Golden Oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/02/divergent-physician-worlds-one-future.html

Sushmita Banerjee, an Indian woman who wrote a bestselling memoir about life under the Taliban, was reportedly dragged from her home in Afghanistan's Paktika province this week and shot dead. 
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban because she advocated for girls' education, helped open Europe's largest public library on Tuesday with a speech claiming that "pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism." The new library is in Birmingham, England where she now attends school.

 

The beautiful actress, Paulette Goddard, married Charlie Chaplin and Burgess Merideth but also Erich Maria Remarque, the author of "All's Quiet on the Western Front." She then retired from acting until he died. She inherited a fortune from him.

 

Emerging markets are half the world economy, according to IMF data. Cheap money flooded into those countries; what will happen when it floods out?

 

While Tesla accounts for 1% of Ford’s U.S. monthly sales, the electric car company already has nearly a third of Ford’s $64 billion market capitalization.

 

pittance \PIT-ns\, noun: a small amount or share; a small allowance or sum, as of money for living expenses; a scanty income or remuneration. Pittance shares its root with the word pity. It entered English in the 13th century from the Latin pietatem meaning "piety," "loyalty" and "duty."

The Indian rupee has declined 23% against the dollar in the past six months. These shifts in money are now worldwide and tsunamis can cross any sea.

 

"It's estimated there are 3 million shipwrecks in the waters of the world," said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for NOAA's office of national marine sanctuaries.

 

While the nation worries over the effects and implications of the administration's major efforts to control finance (Dodd-Frank) and health care (ACA), the government, with the bit in its teeth, plans to expand its management genius into education. A White House website titled "University of the United States (UUS)"--really unbelievable--introduces its plans with this sentence:  "Earning a postsecondary degree or credential is no longer just a pathway to opportunity for a talented few."  Some might suggest that the explosion of the educational system after the Second World War was its own revolution enabling the development of working people. But not these guys. Antagonism. Exclusion. Animosity. "The dreaded 1%." A political group with incomprehensible and inept reactions to some inarticulate resentment. Iconoclasts in search of an idol.

 

Does gay dating discriminate against straights? Does straight dating discriminate against gays? What about religious discrimination; must a Muslim consider a Baptist as a suitor?

 

Who was...Carolyn Bryant?

 

The unfortunate Karen Carpenter's brother, Richard, was said to have been a bit of a musical genius. He came upon a signature sound for the group by overdubbing their two voices to create an eight part harmony -- then tripling them in the studio to get twenty-four voices in all.  Their song "We've only just begun" was originally written by Paul Williams as an ad for The Crocker Bank:

We've only just begun to live
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we're on our way 

 

The British health care system, in an economy one sixth the size of the U.S., is projected to have a nearly $47 billion deficit in 2020.

Rush Limbaugh says that he is coming out with a childrens' book this October, to be titled Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans.

Of the 4 million public school students who entered 9th grade in the 2006-2007 school year, 78.2 percent, or 3.1 million, received high school diplomas in the 2009-2010 school year, an increase of more than two percentage points. Among racial/ethnic groups, Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest graduation rate at 93.5 percent. The rates for other groups were 83.0 percent for White students, 71.4 percent for Hispanic students, 69.1 percent for American Indian/Alaska Native students, and 66.1 percent for Black students.

 

AAANNNNDDDDDddddd....a picture of Carolyn Bryant: