'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, Master of Balliol. The economist was Nassau Senior, an adviser to the British government.
The U.S. Federal Reserve needs to speak more clearly and tell the world it will do "whatever it takes" to boost employment Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota told Reuters. The Fed has spoken about interest rates and economic growth but employment is a new item.
I wish they could fix my refrigerator.
"Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," says Seymour Hersh, talking about the bin Ladin murder. He has a new book to hype but still it is a lot for him to say. He is the author of "The Dark Side of Camelot" which revealed the very seamy qualities in JFK's White House.
You can always trust people to rise above their political and religious confines when presented with science questions: Prominent Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan claimed that medical studies showed how driving automobiles damaged women’s ovaries and pelvises and, if performed often enough, could result in their children being born with “clinical problems.”
The Norwegians are taking the Dreamliner out of long-haul service until its mechanical problems are fixed.
IKEA has begun selling 3.36 kilowatt solar systems for $9,200 in Britain, with plans to expand this program to other nations.
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel from France in 1066 and brought a fighting force considered the fiercest in Europe. People forget these people were Vikings. He had viciously depopulated Normandy of all opposition and would do the same in England. Interestingly, his was a mounted army, armored cavalry, and England's King Harold, the last crowned Anglo Saxon King, fought on foot. No cavalry. No chance.
Over the last several years, the airline industry has averaged $2.10 profit per passenger before taxes.
China consumes about 20% of the world's food yet has (thanks to rapid industrialization) only 9% of its farmland. Interestingly they are starting to rent large farmlands in other countries.
Who is....Tristan and Iseult?
Britain's National Health Service serves a population less than a fifth the size of America's and is the third-largest employer on the planet after the Indian National Railways and the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Over a century the age of menarche, when menstruation begins, has dropped in the Western world from about seventeen to twelve.
Iran sanctions go both ways. And it appears that our esteemed allies are a bit less committed than the U.S. is. Chris Harmer of the unlikely named The Institute for the Study of War estimates that the Boeing Company alone forfeits a minimum of $25 billion in business every year because of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran. That market that is filled by the Russians. Overall, Harmer puts the value to U.S. business of trade lost due to the economic embargo on Iran at approximately $50 billion a year. Iran imports $1.5 billion worth of cars a year from companies like Nissan, Toyota and Peugeot (when they might have been General Motors and Chrysler). Peugeot does an additional half a billion dollars’ worth of commerce with Iran just in car parts.
Golden Oldie:
Emile Zola was an accomplished writer who became the prototype for the intellectual intervening in and influencing social policy. He famously wrote an editorial "J'accuse", published on the front page of the Paris daily "L'Aurora" accusing the high level of the French Army of falsifying evidence to implicate Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer, of spying for the Germans despite the fact there was clear evidence that he did not do it, an officer named Esterhazy did, and the reason for Dreyfus' conviction was little more than he was Jewish. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning from interference with a furnace flue and, later, a Parisian roofer claimed on his deathbed to have closed the chimney for political reasons.
A neutron star is about 20 km in diameter and has the mass of about 1.4 times that of our Sun. This means that a neutron star is so dense that on Earth, one teaspoonful would weigh a billion tons, with a similar increase in gravitation and magnetic field.
The strange "shutdown:" the U.S. government shutdown will reduce the National Science Foundation's workforce from 2,000 to about 30. The work of scientists who are not federal employees but are supported by by the NSF will continue, but they won't receive any payments while the shutdown is in effect.
velleity \veh-LEE-uh-tee; vuh-\, noun: The lowest degree of desire; imperfect or incomplete volition; A slight wish or inclination. Velleity is derived from Latin velle, "to will, to be willing, to wish."
"Hybrid Icing":The hybrid-icing system allows the linesman to blow the play dead and call an automatic icing if he determines that the puck will cross the goal line and the defending player is not behind in the race to the end-zone faceoff dots in his defensive zone. The faceoff would go to the far end of the ice as it did with icings called in the previous system the NHL used.
AAAAAANNNNNNNnnnndddddddd......inexplicable stuff from the Middle Ages. Knights in combat with snails:
The Snails Attack (from the Queen Mary Psalter, England, 1310-1320 )
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