'I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that he feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good."--Benjamin Jowett, the great Master of Balliol College, Oxford
An LED converts only about 25% of power consumed into light and 75% into heat.
Puzzle: I am able to measure any weight in 1lb increments from 1 to 40lb with only 4 weights. What are the 4 weights? Answer below
Three years of study in Patagonia have produced what researchers describe as most important paleontological findings in Chile in the last 10 years. The discovery of leaf and dinosaur fossils in South America has revealed the continent was connected to Antarctica 20 million years more recently than previously believed.
Around 600 million years ago, South America was joined to Antarctica, Australia, Africa and Asia in the supercontinent Gondwana. At that time, Antarctica was not the home of snow and ice which it is today. It was a fertile landmass which allowed the terrestrial migration of dinosaurs and plants to today’s continents.
The Mississippi and its tributaries drain 40 per cent of America, almost a million square miles spread across thirty-one states (and two Canadian provinces). In April, 1927, after a sudden rainfall of over a foot, the Mississippi swelled, broke through hastily made levees (killing the workmen) and, suddenly, an area almost the size of Scotland was under water -- and stayed for almost six months. The devastation lasted for years. By the first week of May, the flood stretched for 500 miles from southern Illinois to New Orleans, and was up to 150 miles wide in places. From the air, the Mississippi valley looked like a new Great Lake. The statistics of the Great Flood: 16,570,627 acres flooded; 203,504 buildings lost or ruined; 637,476 people made homeless. The quantities of livestock lost: 50,490 cattle, 25,325 horses and mules, 148,110 hogs, 1,276,570 chickens and other poultry.
From an obituary on Herbert Mitgang in the NYT: “Reading Mr. Mitgang,” Alfred Kazin wrote, “one remembers the forgotten pleasures of idealism.”
The Haredim is a community of ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel and is now 10 percent of its population. As orthodox men have a commitment to full-time Torah study and a fear of assimilation, only a little more than 4 in 10 of them work, less than half the rate of other Jewish men in Israel, and their average salaries are 57 percent of other Jewish men in the country. Their political clout resulted in exemption from military service (they serve through study) and subsidies for each child (they have a tremendous birthrate). As the men are philosophically inclined, the women work at the jobs they can, squeezed in with pregnancy and child rearing. It is estimated that their terrific birthrate will make them group 25% of the population in the next 30 years.
A word with an interesting background. Minacious(adjective) [mi-'ney-shês] definition: Menacing, threatening. The perfect synonym of minatory. The noun is "minacity". Ety: Latin minax, minacis "jutting out; threatening". Also minatorius "threatening" from which English borrowed "minatory". From Indo-European *men- which underlies Latin mentum "chin, beard" and English "mental", borrowed from it. The same root evolved into English "mountain" and "mouth" from Old Germanic *munthaz.
Who was...Meredith Hunter?
The wisdom of Charlie Munger: "You know what people did in the '30s? They moved into one another's houses. That's what families were for."
In November the Vatican unveiled newly restored frescoes in the Catacombs of Priscilla, known for housing the earliest known image of the Madonna with Child. The catacombs feature a tiny, delicate Madonna fresco dating from 230-240 AD, as well as scenes said by proponents of the women's ordination movement to be suggestive of women priests in the early church.
Puzzle answer: The 4 weights needed are 1lb, 3lb, 9lb, and 27lb.
To measure a 5lb object, for example, on one side you would have the object plus the 1lb and 3lb weight, and the other side the 9lb weight.
Golden oldie:
In 1900 there were 6,000 Amish in the US. In 2011 there were 250,000 with population doubling every decade since 1960. I have no idea what that means. There is also apparently no autism among the Amish. I don't know what that means either.
There is a lot of talk about the Affordable Care Act "bending the cost curve down" in health care. And the cost has slowed. But annual health-spending growth rates began to decline a decade ago. In 2002, health-care spending grew by nearly 10% in a single year. The growth rate dropped to 7.1% in 2004, 6.2% in 2007, and bottomed out at 3.9% in 2009—the worst year of the Great Recession, where it has stayed ever since. ObamaCare was enacted in 2010.
Aaaaannnnnndddd....a picture of Aurora Borealis, with great color detail:
No comments:
Post a Comment