The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to
capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because
they have superior access to the political system and can use their
connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama
It has been felt that global warming would decrease ice cover of large bodies of water and encourage evaporation. Indeed, a decline in water levels in the Great Lakes last year was offered as proof of global warming. But current data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows that for the first time in 14 years, all five Great Lakes are at or above average water levels. Lake Michigan/Huron is up 18″ in the last year.
A first edition of The Federalist, from the library of Major Robert Alden (the man entrusted with the original Constitution) has come up for sale for $450,000.
Professor Robert Shiller's 'CAPE ratio' is among the most widely-used measures of whether markets are cheap or expensive, and he got the Nobel Prize for economics last year for his work on market volatility and asset prices. He says that his CAPE ratio for US stocks has reached its present level on only three times in the past 130-odd years, and that those previous occasions were 1929, 2000 and 2007, each followed by a crash.
Shiller has been outspoken in recent months about his view that US stocks, bonds and homes are all highly priced right now.
One
of the tenets of the founders of the new America was that they should
be involved in no foreign struggles. Isn't that what Obama's doing?
desiderium: n. an ardent longing, as for something lost. Desiderium comes from the Latin verb dēsīderāre meaning "to long for; require." It entered English in the early 1700s.
Only 309 newsstands are left standing in New York City, down from more than 1,500 in the 1950s, according to a recent article.
"Some of the more gullible observers think the issue is whether what some people are making now is "a living wage." This misconstrues the whole point of hiring someone to do work. Those who are being hired are paid for the value of the work they do.
If their work is really worth more than what their employer is paying them, all they have to do is quit and go work for some other employer, who will pay them what their work is really worth. If they can't find any other employer who will pay them more, then what makes them think their work is worth more?
As for a "living wage," the employer is not hiring people to acquire dependents and be their meal ticket. He's hiring them for what they produce."---From Thomas Sowell.
This
idea that work is something other than directly related to production is
an interesting development and is very hard to discuss with devotees.
A small radiologic company said they are under daily cyberattack by the Russians. No one knows what they are looking for.Clarence Madison Dally an employee of Thomas Edison at his West Orange research labs volunteered to work on the newly discovered x-rays. Using a fluoroscope, made of a fluoride gas filled light and two pieces of cardboard to focus the x-rays, Dally would expose himself to high concentrations of radiation eventually leading to radiation poisoning. After Dally’s death when Edison was asked about x-rays he would respond with “Don’t ask me about x-rays. I am afraid of them.”
It is curious that Simpson had defenders--and cheering crowds--to the end of his trial yet Rice has had only his wife, the victim, as support. Rice had more definitive evidence, but not much more.
Golden oldie:
Overall the renewable energy output from the three major nations that have committed to massive investments in Renewable Energy amounts to a nominal 31 Gigawatts out of a total installed generating capacity of 570 Gigawatts or only 5.5%, 7.9% of electrical generation in Great Britain, 15.8% of nominal electricity generation in Germany and 3.8% of electricity generation in the U.S.. One must remember that the availability of the power is variable, as the sources--sun and wind--are.
The Dutch translator Hans Bolland – who translated Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and others into Dutch — declined Russia's prestigious Pushkin medal because of his objections to President Vladimir Putin, whom he called "a big threat to freedom and peace on our planet."
Who were....The Abraham Lincoln Brigade?
Uh Oh. The conversion of forests into cropland worldwide has triggered an atmospheric change that, while seldom considered in climate models, has had a net cooling effect on global temperatures, according to a new Yale study.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on genetically modified food: "The advocates keep saying ‘lets go back to nature’, but those cows don’t exist in nature, corn doesn’t exist, those red apples you love don’t exist, we genetically engineered all of that. Don’t pretend what is going on in the laboratory is fundamentally different than what is going on in agriculture." Then, in Salon:
“What most people don’t know, but they should, is that practically every food you buy in a store — for consumption by humans — is genetically modified food,” Tyson continues. ”There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows.”
“You list all the fruit, and all the vegetables, and ask yourself, is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it’s not as large, it’s not as sweet, it’s not as juicy and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called artificial selection. So now we can do it in a lab, and all of a sudden you’re gonna complain?”
Puerto Rico's economy is struggling. It’s triply tax exempt (federal, state, and city) “general obligation bonds” are perceived as so risky that they yield about 9%. And still that may be too low. They may default.
One of the ships of the Franklin Expedition has been found. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said"I am delighted to announce that this year's Victoria Strait Expedition has solved one of Canada's greatest mysteries, with the discovery of one of the two ships belonging to the Franklin Expedition lost in 1846," he said in a statement.
Whether
the vessel is Her Majesty's Ship (HMS) Erebus or HMS Terror isn't yet
clear, Harper said. "We do have enough information to confirm its
authenticity."
Franklin
left England with two ships in 1845 in an ill-fated attempt to sail the
Northwest Passage. Stuck in the ice of the Canadian Arctic, all 129
crew members perished in 1846. Dan Simmons wrote a hair-raising
fiction/fantasy book about it called "The Terror." It is in production
for a series--like the "Walking Dead.".
AAAnnnnnndddddd....a chart suggesting the strange self-absorption of the West:
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