The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism. --Karl Marx
Xiaomi-(pronounced SHOW-em)-is a smartphone maker, and it makes the #1 bestselling smartphone in China, even more popular than the Apple iPhone.
The Department of Labor's quarterly Employment Cost Index (ECI) is Janet Yellen's favorite wage indicator for good reason: it most accurately reflects the true cost of labor to businesses. There are two components of labor costs: (1) wages and (2) benefits like paid vacation, Social Security, workers' compensation, and health insurance. Wages are roughly 70% of ECI, and benefits make up the remaining 30%. The overall ECI was up by 0.2%, but that is only because compensation for government workers increased by +0.6%. The cost of benefits has increased by +1.7%. So is the change in ECI because health care costs are up (and wages down)?
Iran has refused to let United Nations inspectors interview key scientists and military officers to investigate allegations Tehran maintained a covert nuclear-weapons program according to the WSJ. That's a good sign. Of note, much of the inspection in the new treaty are self-inspection. Self! Psychopaths on the honor system. Only a cloud-headed bureaucrat could think of that.
Jon Hilsenrath, the chief economic correspondent for the WSJ, wrote on the conflict-of-interest question about the banks and the Fed. "Goldman is an object of particular animus among some Fed critics, who see the Wall Street bank as having an unusual hold on government. A long list of former Goldman executives have indeed cycled through the Fed, the government and global central banks more broadly. The list includes Hank Paulson, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Mario Draghi, the current head of the European Central Bank, and William Dudley, the head of the New York Fed." Well, yes. Then he wrote this: "Then there is this oft-quoted passage at the beginning of a lengthy rant against Goldman Sachs by Matt Taibbi last July in Rolling Stone: "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." This sentence, many have charged, goes beyond stereotypes about Jews and money, touches other classic anti-Semitic themes about Jews as foreign or inhuman elements poisoning humanity and society, and--to some critics-- even seems to reference the notorious "blood libel" that Jews use the blood of Christian babies to make matzoh."
These guys learn fast. Criticism of Obama is racist, thus criticism of banks must be anti-Semitic.
Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 were injured. At least another 60,000 would die by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
It was remarked by Aristotle that all men of genius have been melancholic or atrabilious. (James Sully, "Genius and Insanity," The Popular Science Monthly, August 1885) Atrabilious: adj:1. gloomy; morose; melancholy; morbid. 2. irritable; bad-tempered; splenetic. Atrabilious comes from the Latin ātra bīlis meaning "black bile." Black bile is one of the four elemental bodily humors of medieval physiology, regarded as causing melancholy. Atrabilious entered English in the mid-1600s.
Trump wants to raise import taxes. What that does is increase costs to the buyer. So people are enriched when they pay higher prices?
Who is.... Adam Worth?
As early as 1776, Adam Smith's classic The Wealth of Nations argued that the real wealth of a nation consists of its goods and services, not its gold supply.
Too many people have yet to grasp the full implications of that, even in the twenty-first century. If the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a "deficit or a "surplus" in the international balance of trade. --Sowell
Who is.... Adam Worth?
As early as 1776, Adam Smith's classic The Wealth of Nations argued that the real wealth of a nation consists of its goods and services, not its gold supply.
Too many people have yet to grasp the full implications of that, even in the twenty-first century. If the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a "deficit or a "surplus" in the international balance of trade. --Sowell
In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest in a coup attempt by Russian hard-line communists. It lasted three days and then dissolved, partly by the public resistance of Yeltsin who emerged as the new power after Gorbachev eventually stepped down.
The U.S. launched its trade embargo on Cuba in 1960 and completed it in 1962 as a response to Castro's expropriations of more than $1.8 billion in U.S. properties in the "largest uncompensated taking of U.S. property by any foreign government in history," according to a 2009 article in the Inter-American Law Review. Those claims are certified by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, a U.S. government agency. So the embargo--as cruel and ineffective as they are generally--actually was a response to something rather than simple gratuitous meanness.
Golden oldie:
In the last 10 years, the use of testosterone has increased 3.5 fold in the 18 to 45 year old age group. Testosterone in young men suppresses testicular function and causes infertility.
This is interesting. The US is extending its oversight of a body that controls part of the Internet's structure, the Department of Commerce said, postponing a possible handover of responsibilities to a private entity. I wonder if they are having second thoughts.
This is interesting. The US is extending its oversight of a body that controls part of the Internet's structure, the Department of Commerce said, postponing a possible handover of responsibilities to a private entity. I wonder if they are having second thoughts.
Senators of both parties, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), want to sell oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to pay for new roads and bridges. Meanwhile, the House passed a bill to fund $5.4 billion in medical research by selling 64 million barrels. The DRIVE Act assumes a price of $89 per barrel. The Cures act assumes a price of $84 per barrel. The current world price: Less than $45 per barrel. In other words, the government is paying for bills by wildly overestimating how much its oil is actually worth. Buying high, selling low. These guys should be buying here, not selling.
As an aside, in just seven years, the amount of oil per well in some shale plays has risen by a factor of 10! That is almost all due to new technologies that are increasingly coming online. Those technologies are reducing US production costs faster than the Saudi plan is reducing oil prices. And Chinese coal consumption fell in 2014 for the first time in 14 years and U.S. demand is down as power plants shift from coal to natural gas.
Germany, which took in 174,000 asylum seekers last year, is on schedule to take in 500,000 this year. Germany is smaller than Montana.
Gov. Bobby Jindal: "I realize that the best way to make news is to mention Donald Trump. ... So I've decided to randomly put his name into my remarks at various points, thereby ensuring that the news media will cover what I have to say."
Studies fail to find the genes or genetic variants responsible for a majority of the cases of heritable diseases or traits, including for Type 2 diabetes (only predictive in 6 percent of a population), good cholesterol (5 percent), early myocardial infarction (3 percent), and familial breast cancer (10 percent). Intelligence is a good example of missing heredity; a substantial part, perhaps 50 to 85 percent, is assumed to be inherited. But the Beijing Genomics Institute launched a huge, controversial study of 126,559 individuals in an attempt to find intelligence's missing heredity. After analyzing tens of thousands of small genetic differences that existed within this group, and looking for correlations, the study showed very minor effects from three variants within a few genes.
As always, the basics are tougher than expected.
Carbon is a light atom with six protons and usually six neutrons in its nucleus. ... In terms of all of its other properties and behavior, it is the six electrons that surround and shield the nucleus that are important. Two of these electrons are deeply embedded in an inner core near the nucleus and play no role in the atom's chemical life -- its interaction with other elements. This leaves four electrons, which form its outermost layer, that are active. It is these four electrons that make the difference between the graphite of a pencil and the diamond of an engagement ring.
The simplest thing a carbon atom can do is share each of these four electrons with another carbon atom, forming four chemical bonds. The crystal structure produced is extremely rigid. It is a diamond. Each diamond is, in fact, a single crystal. The biggest yet found is the size of a football. Extracted from the Cullinan mine in South Africa, it was eventually presented to King Edward VII in 1907 on his birthday and is now part of the crown jewels of the British monarchy.
It is said the biggest diamond yet discovered is located in the Milky Way in the constellation of Serpens Cauda, where it is orbiting a pulsar star called PSR JI719-1438. It is an entire planet five times the size of Earth.
In his "Books Alive" column in The Chicago Sunday Tribune (26 December 1943), Vincent Starrett wrote, "Worth was the original of Prof. Moriarty. This information, which isn't generally known, was revealed by Conan Doyle in conversation with Dr. Gray C. Briggs of St. Louis, Dr. Briggs once told me."
Adam Worth was German born, emigrated to America, became a bounty jumper in the Civil War, started a gang of pickpockets and robbers in New York and eventually moved to London where he stole paintings and diamonds. He had a sophisticated criminal mind and was very creative. He actually founded a diamond company that sold stolen diamonds at low prices.
In 1835, the first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appeared in the New York Sun newspaper.
Known collectively as "The Great Moon Hoax," the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The byline was Dr. Andrew Grant, described as a colleague of Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer of the day. Herschel had in fact traveled to Capetown, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new telescope. As Grant described it, Herschel had found evidence of life forms on the moon, including such fantastic animals as unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats. The articles also offered vivid description of the moon's geography, complete with massive craters, enormous amethyst crystals, rushing rivers and lush vegetation.
The articles were most likely written by Richard Adams Locke, a Sun reporter educated at Cambridge University. Intended as satire, they were designed to poke fun at earlier, serious speculations about extraterrestrial life, particularly those of Reverend Thomas Dick, a popular science writer who claimed in his bestselling books that the moon alone had 4.2 billion inhabitants.
AAAAAAAnnnnnnnnnddddd......a picture of Meteors and Milky Way over Mount Rainier: 
No comments:
Post a Comment