It is good to see that Obama has drawn the line in Syria at the use of chemical weapons against the nation's civilians. There are so many more humane ways to kill defenseless populations.
A local man was found guilty of beating a girl to death and putting her body in a dumpster. His defense at sentencing plans to be, according to his attorney, that he was bullied as a child.
In 1202 Fibonacci, aka Leonardo of Pisa, published his "book of calculation". He is famous for his Fibonacci numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...where the next number is the sum of the preceding two--a sequence he observed by watching rabbits multiply but that he attributed to India and, at high levels, the highest two divided into one another approaches "the golden mean"). But his "number" is only a small part of his contribution because, in his book, he introduced "Indian Numbers" which replaced the roman numerals. This is the introduction of the base-ten numbers system. He began chapter 1 of his book with:
"The nine Indian figures are: 987654321.
With these nine figures, and with the sign 0, which the Arabs call zephyr, any number whatsoever is written."
This was the beginning of modern numbers.
The current political narrative is that Obama is dismissive of wealth, even among his own donors and supporters. In 2008,
Obama outspent John McCain by around two to one. This year Super-PACs
supportive of President Obama have spent twice as much on
anti-Romney ads as conservative PACs have spent on anti-Obama ads. The
NYT reports some analysts believe that Obama, after raising and spending
$750 million in 2008, will come close to $1 billion this year.
Microsoft has given $440,000, University of California $490,000. So he's
not above the money, just the donors?
Sci-fi idea: To save energy a crew lands its ship on an asteroid and "hitchhikes" out of the solar system.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has a position, filled, whose job description is to shoe Department horses. The Department has no horses. A consultant recently suggested the Department decrease its 257 employees by 80%.
James Taylor was a heroin addict who ended up for a while in a high end rehabilitation hospital called McLean. From "Fire and Rain" by Browne: "One day at dinner in an adjoining ward, he looked over and saw -- or thought he saw -- Ray Charles. 'I thought I was hallucinating,' he recalled. 'It scared the shit out of me.' But his eyes didn't deceive him; Charles, who'd been sent to McLean after a heroin bust, was actually there. The sight of one of his heroes in the ward haunted him for decades."
Assange, a man hiding from his own nation's justice system, holds a press conference in sanctuary, the press shows up, and he gives a moral lecture to the United States!
An interesting opinion came up recently: If the "Too Big to Fail" banks are a crazy mixture of profit and loss segments, what is to prevent a hedge fund or vulture capital group from carving them up?
According to a recent book, Tolstoy lifted many of the backgrounds and personalities of his female characters from his wife's letters and diaries.
Theodore Dalrymple writes that the Indians complete ignore the Olympics. They invest it with no ideological or nationalistic symbolism. They are, however, going to Mars.
Last week, Louis Bacon, the head of the powerful hedge fund Moore Capital Management, announced that he was returning one quarter of his largest fund, about $2 billion, to his investors. He was quoted as saying, "The political involvement is so extreme – we have not seen this since the postwar era. What they are doing is trying to thwart natural market outcomes. It is amazing how important the decision-making of one person, Angela Merkel, has become to world markets."
Bacon was saying that the political influence in Europe was so great that Europe--and the markets--had become unpredictable.
"First principle: any explanation is better than none." Friedrich Nietzsche said this in an effort to explain how people were averse to uncertainty and eager to accept any explanation to exorcise it---exactly opposite of the scientific principle demanding accuracy from information. Nietzsche's "explanation" is not information or conclusion, it is therapy.
U.S. petroleum deliveries, a measure of demand, fell by 2.7% in July from a year earlier to the lowest level in any month since September 2008, the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said Friday. Demand in the world's biggest oil consumer, at 18.062 million bopd, was the weakest for the month of July since 1995. This, despite the fact the U.S. GDP is the highest it has ever been. We are growing and using less oil.
Golden oldie (with some current application): http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/revolt-of-masses-by-ortega-y-gasset.html
Aaaaaannnnnnd....a chart, a surprising one:
No comments:
Post a Comment