"We human beings always seek happiness. Now there are two ways. You can make yourself happy by making other people unhappy--I call that the logic of robbery. The other way, you make yourself happy by making other people happy--that's the logic of the market. Which way do you prefer?"-- Zhang Weiying,
A traveling trunk once owned by Agatha Christie's mother had a locked metal strongbox inside. They were bought at an auction 8 years ago by an Agatha Christy fan, Jennifer Grant, but she never opened the box. Recently she pried it open and found a diamond brooch, a diamond ring and a purse of gold coins.
The first bishop of Brazil was killed and eaten by "indigenous people" after a shipwreck.
A traveling trunk once owned by Agatha Christie's mother had a locked metal strongbox inside. They were bought at an auction 8 years ago by an Agatha Christy fan, Jennifer Grant, but she never opened the box. Recently she pried it open and found a diamond brooch, a diamond ring and a purse of gold coins.
The first bishop of Brazil was killed and eaten by "indigenous people" after a shipwreck.
Real investment comes only from surplus value created by production. It doesn't come from people taking out more loans at lower and lower interest rates. F.A. Hayek won a Nobel Prize for developing his theory of business cycles in 1974. He thought that Adam Smith ingeniously explained and predicted how the individual made monetary decisions. They were spontaneous and only locally planned. Bottom up. What went wrong with the general economy of large groups of individuals was centralized management errors. In this he would oppose Keynes. One culprit was artificially low interest rates. (See QE1, QE2, and QE3.) Artificially low interest rates not only cause investments to be artificially high, but also cause “malinvestment”—too much investment in long-term projects relative to short-term ones, so the short term gets underfunded and the economy declines.
The IMF measures GDP both in market-exchange terms and in terms of purchasing power. On the purchasing-power basis, China is overtaking the US right about now and becoming the world's biggest economy.
The IMF measures GDP both in market-exchange terms and in terms of purchasing power. On the purchasing-power basis, China is overtaking the US right about now and becoming the world's biggest economy.
Golden oldie:
An American explorer's claim to have found the long-lost Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus' flagship from his first voyage to the Americas, has been dismissed by a group of U.N. experts. In 1492 the Santa Maria accidentally ran aground off Haiti's, then Hispaniola's, coast. But bronze or copper fasteners found at the site point to shipbuilding techniques of the late 17th or 18th centuries, when ships were covered in copper. Before that, fasteners were made only of wood or iron.
3,000 copies of Bob Dylan's song lyrics will be printed, and they'll sell for $200 each at bookstores. Fifty signed copies of the book will also go for $5,000 each.
For decades, the only evidence of ancient cave art was in Spain and southern France. It led some to believe that the creative explosion that led to the art and science we know today began in Europe.
But the discovery of paintings of a similar age in Indonesia shatters this view, according to Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. The estimated age is about 39,000 years old.
But the discovery of paintings of a similar age in Indonesia shatters this view, according to Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. The estimated age is about 39,000 years old.
Virulent: adjective 1. Bitterly hostile. 2. Highly infective. 3. Extremely dangerous. From Latin virus (poison).
In the opening chapter of Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, a drunken husband sells his wife. Authors Lawrence Stone in The Family Sex and Marriage and Samuel Menefee in Wives for Sale both claim that "wife-sale" date back to 1073 in England. An Englishman sick of his wife could slip a halter around her neck, lead her to market -- the cattle market -- and sell her to the highest bidder, often with her willing participation. This informal route to divorce for the lower classes lasted until at least 1887.
In the opening chapter of Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, a drunken husband sells his wife. Authors Lawrence Stone in The Family Sex and Marriage and Samuel Menefee in Wives for Sale both claim that "wife-sale" date back to 1073 in England. An Englishman sick of his wife could slip a halter around her neck, lead her to market -- the cattle market -- and sell her to the highest bidder, often with her willing participation. This informal route to divorce for the lower classes lasted until at least 1887.
At least 331 people were reported killed by military action in the Ukraine in the month after the cease-fire was announced. Yes, after the truce.
Citing a stray rocket near the airport, the Federal Aviation Administration shut down flights to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Hamas leadership hailed the Obama administration's move as proof that their aerial barrages were shutting off Israel from the Western world. In contrast, the FAA has not yet stopped U.S. flights to and from Liberia and other West African countries, the source of the Ebola virus epidemic. Their argument is that the U.S. should not isolate these areas. Isn't that what you do with an epidemic? And which is more dangerous to Americans, the Tel Aviv Airport or the West Africa Coast?
Who is...Lucy Mercer Rutherford?
Who is...Lucy Mercer Rutherford?
Florida has gone 3,270 days without a hurricane – nearly nine years and, by far, the longest stretch on record (the next longest streak is 5 seasons from 1980-1984, in records dating back to 1851).
The first Whitewater prosecutor, Robert Fiske, has a new book. The new account by Fiske describes how he had quickly uncovered "serious crimes" in the Whitewater investigation but that his probe was cut short after conservatives falsely accused him of a "cover up." "There were indictments, there were convictions," said Fiske when asked about claims that there was "nothing" to the investigation. "People went to jail. There was never any evidence that was sufficient to link the Clintons to any of it, but there were certainly serious crimes."
Re the prostitute scandal in the Secret Service: “We were directed at the time . . . to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election,” David Nieland, the lead investigator on the Colombia case for the DHS inspector general’s office, told Senate staffers, according to three people with knowledge of his statement. Nieland added that his superiors told him “to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.”
I am neither surprised nor outraged. But what is surprising is the willingness of people to expect that the current collection of politicians is any different from any other.
AAAAAaaaaaannnnnndddddd...... contemporary French print of an English wife sale, at a cattle market:
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