The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. -Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004
The Industrial Revolution depended a good amount on child labor. Josiah Wedgwood, uncle to Charles Darwin and heir to his father's great pottery in Staffordshire, employed 387 people -- 13 under ten years old, 103 between ten and eighteen -- in such work as dipping ware in a glaze partly composed of lead oxide, a deadly poison.
The Industrial Revolution depended a good amount on child labor. Josiah Wedgwood, uncle to Charles Darwin and heir to his father's great pottery in Staffordshire, employed 387 people -- 13 under ten years old, 103 between ten and eighteen -- in such work as dipping ware in a glaze partly composed of lead oxide, a deadly poison.
Six months after Obama took office, Sen. Claire McCaskill on Tuesday endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Now we can have two campaigns, Obama's never-ending campaign and Hillary's. You can never be too early or late for greatness.
In The Atlantic, essayist Joseph Epstein argues that Kafka is overrated: "Kafka found [life] unbearably complicated, altogether daunting, and for the most part joyless, and so described it in his fiction. This is not, let us agree, the best outlook for a great writer. Great writers are impressed by the mysteries of life; poor Franz Kafka was crushed by them."
In "The Constitution of Liberty" (1960), Friedrich Hayek wrote that families are the primary transmitters of human capital — habits, mores, education. Hence families, much more than other social institutions or programs, are determinative of academic and vocational success. If true, the efforts of government to advance individuals or groups are always "playing catchup." And, as modernity and economic advances increase new complexity, those plans and programs by nature are behind the growth.
On the international list of the world’s best universities, 14 of the top 20 are American. Four are British. Of the top 100, 4 are French and 4 are German. America has won 338 Nobel Prizes. The U.K., 119. France, 59. It has 22 Peace Prizes, 12 for literature. (T. S. Eliot is shared with the Brits.)
Rural hospitals have always been a problem in America; they serve a large area but a small group, have difficulty with capital costs and consequently have a hard time recruiting physicians and nurses. As a result they tend to get perks and subsidies that serve as baseline expenses for the general state medical overhead. Massachusetts has only one rural hospital that wags the state's medical dog: Nantucket.
Alice Munro, the fine Canadian writer, may retire from writing because, as she says, "when you're my age, you don't wish to be alone as much as a writer has to be."
California lawmakers passed a law (Senate Bill 35) requiring that voter registration be part of the health insurance exchange.
Who was.....Thomas Newcomen?
BMW has built a car that can tap into a city's traffic light system. A dashboard display lets drivers know how long they have until that green light up ahead turns red - and the legal speed required to beat the change.
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Vhemt) is a group of individuals who have decided not to reproduce themselves so as to protect and preserve the earth. From their Q and A:
"Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning millions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom. When every human chooses to stop breeding, earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory."
So the G7 plus 1 meets in luxury in Northern Ireland to discuss the world's problems. They come out with a statement--with Syria, Libya, EU economic problems, American border problems--and declare..... what? A unified approach to tax avoidance. Heavy stuff from heavy dudes.
The US economy created about 2 million jobs in 2012, and our population rose. Despite a bigger economy, our total energy use dropped a significant 2.8%, even as the world's energy consumption increased 1.8%. This implies cheaper production costs and makes the U.S. a more attractive manufacturing country.
On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 bound from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Paris exploded 12 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers. Millions of dollars and time with myriad experts investigated the event for four years, including rebuilding the plane from parts scattered over the ocean. A new film, titled “Flight 800,’’ features investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, TWA and Air Line Pilots Association claiming the government ignored or covered up witness accounts and radar evidence of a missile hitting the plane. Eyewitnesses at the time reported seeing a streak that looked like a missile hitting the plane and causing it to explode
Tom Stalcup, the director of the documentary, and James Kallstrom, the former assistant director of the FBI who investigated Flight 800, were interviewed by Savannah Guthrie on TODAY.
“It may not (look like a cover-up) at first glance, but if you look at the details, it really does,’’ Stalcup said. “The radar evidence confirms their (eyewitness) accounts of a streak moving toward the aircraft. Consistent with the trajectory of that streak is a detonation that exploded out the right side of the aircraft. Not only does that confirm their accounts, it refutes the NTSB’s theory.”
“Nothing he just said is true,’’ Kallstrom countered. “That’s my reaction. We had a massive investigation. We spent a year-and-a-half with a thousand FBI agents, experts from the military on missiles. We took the missile theory extremely serious. We interviewed all the eyewitnesses, some numerous times, because we knew in the FBI that there were shoulder-fired missiles available, that they were stolen from armories, that they were left on battlefields in Afghanistan and other places. We did a massive investigation of all military assets in the area. It just didn’t happen.”
Most will recognize the pattern here of piles of information and experts, seemingly well-meaning, who completely disagree. Sometimes money is involved. It is exactly like the Kennedy assassination. Or NSA leaks. Trust cannot be commanded; it must be earned.
“It may not (look like a cover-up) at first glance, but if you look at the details, it really does,’’ Stalcup said. “The radar evidence confirms their (eyewitness) accounts of a streak moving toward the aircraft. Consistent with the trajectory of that streak is a detonation that exploded out the right side of the aircraft. Not only does that confirm their accounts, it refutes the NTSB’s theory.”
“Nothing he just said is true,’’ Kallstrom countered. “That’s my reaction. We had a massive investigation. We spent a year-and-a-half with a thousand FBI agents, experts from the military on missiles. We took the missile theory extremely serious. We interviewed all the eyewitnesses, some numerous times, because we knew in the FBI that there were shoulder-fired missiles available, that they were stolen from armories, that they were left on battlefields in Afghanistan and other places. We did a massive investigation of all military assets in the area. It just didn’t happen.”
Most will recognize the pattern here of piles of information and experts, seemingly well-meaning, who completely disagree. Sometimes money is involved. It is exactly like the Kennedy assassination. Or NSA leaks. Trust cannot be commanded; it must be earned.
Deism was a logical step in the Enlightenment, a rejection of the supernatural, revelation and the intervention of God in the affairs of man. Most deists agreed on the existence of a God in one form or another--indeed the complexity of creation confirmed this to them--but they rejected supernatural revelation, and Christ, in favor of reason as the only source of true religious knowledge. William Paley argued famously, if not originally, that God is like the watchmaker (or the “Primordial Architect,” in Sir Isaac Newton's terms). As the watchmaker fashions the parts and functions of the watch, God similarly put into place the machinations of the universe, and provides the energy which sets the universe in motion. God's intervention into his creation only occurs occasionally, if at all.
Ecology is the science that examines the relationship between organisms and their environment. "Environmentalism" is a concern for the environment, a point of view that advances the state of the environment, apparently even if this means sacrificing the state of the economy.
Tom Wolfe is said to be working on a book called The Kingdom of Speech. According to Publisher's Marketplace, the book is "a nonfiction account of scholarship proposing that humans are divided from animals by their power of speech."
If rates move to 5%, which seems historically reasonable, what happens to the cost of carrying a $17 trillion debt? Five % of $17 trillion is $850 billion a year and necessarily pushes deficit spending back up to well over $1 trillion a year. So, would it be to the Fed's advantage to discourage stock buying in favor of bonds? We have seen much larger and more malignant conspiracies.
When a child is born to an addicted mother, the baby suffers the same symptoms as his mother does. Moreover, as in all addicts, his brain is physiologically changed forever. Any argument over individual responsibility should begin and end with this.
Aardvark is the first word in the dictionary. What is the last? Zymurgy, the branch of chemistry dealing with fermentation, as brewing.
So the U.S. continues in Afghanistan, Libya and now starts in Syria. Can a Nobel Peace Prize be revoked? Or at least get an asterisk?
AAAaaaaaannnnnndddddd..........a story with some graphs:
The market continues to rise in the face of a number of disadvantages. We have managed one of the most impressive bull runs in history during a period where all metrics of economic health are at or near all-time worst-case scenarios. That is an incredible feat and accomplished only as a result of the most aggressive monetary and fiscal policy in history. More, the volumes have been low; the general public has not been participating. Maybe that's the reason our redistributing leaders are not trumpeting the market's success.
The Fed:
And the government:
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