"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,
Mothers who are over 40 at the time of a child's birth are 128% more likely to have a left-handed baby than a woman in her 20s.
A disturbing notion from Russ's essay - "Why Software Really Will Eat the World - and Whether We Should Worry:" Government does many stupid and wasteful things, but that doesn't stop creative, driven people from continuing to innovate. It doesn't stop my kids from getting a decent education. But it stops other kids who are growing up in more challenging circumstances from participating in the parts of the economy that remain dynamic. The minimum wage and our lousy public schools don't hurt my kids. But they hurt millions of others. I don't know if the digital revolution will weaken the public-school monopoly or force public schools to do a better job. But if we want a future where all people have a decent chance to flourish, introducing a little more competition into schools and labor markets would go a long way.
Fortnight: n: 1. the space of fourteen nights and days; two weeks. Fortnight is a contraction of the Old English fēowertēne niht.
The Speyer wine bottle (or 'Römerwein') is a sealed vessel - presumed to contain liquid wine - and so named because it was unearthed from a Roman tomb found near Speyer, Germany. It is the world's 'oldest bottle of wine.' The Speyer wine bottle was originally found in 1867, in what is now the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, near the town of Speyer, one of the oldest settlements in the area. The bottle has been dated between 325 and 350 AD, and is the "oldest known unopened bottle of wine" in the world.
In the 1300s, Europe's Black Plague brought death to 25 million people, by some estimates a third to a half of its population, and is one of the most famous episodes in history. But that plague had started in China just a few years earlier and killed more people in Asia -- perhaps as many as 40 million -- than in Europe. The plague was an epidemic of commerce and it followed the trade routs out of China. 60% of Iceland died and it is presumed to have destroyed the Viking Greenland colony.
AAAaaaannnnnddddd.....a map of the spread of the plague and documented outbreaks:
from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Mothers who are over 40 at the time of a child's birth are 128% more likely to have a left-handed baby than a woman in her 20s.
A disturbing notion from Russ's essay - "Why Software Really Will Eat the World - and Whether We Should Worry:" Government does many stupid and wasteful things, but that doesn't stop creative, driven people from continuing to innovate. It doesn't stop my kids from getting a decent education. But it stops other kids who are growing up in more challenging circumstances from participating in the parts of the economy that remain dynamic. The minimum wage and our lousy public schools don't hurt my kids. But they hurt millions of others. I don't know if the digital revolution will weaken the public-school monopoly or force public schools to do a better job. But if we want a future where all people have a decent chance to flourish, introducing a little more competition into schools and labor markets would go a long way.
During the Civil War, the Chicago Tribune counted
1,395 banks in the Union states, each with bills of various
denominations -- some 8,370 varieties of notes in all. They had various
backing, the notes were often refused and commerce considerably impaired
until the standardization of money.
Early
in football, teams approached the line of scrimmage and the signal
caller barked out the plays at the line of scrimmage. Nothing was hidden
from the defense. There was no huddle. When Gallaudet University in
Washington, D.C., a school for the deaf, played nondeaf clubs or
schools, they used hand signals -- American Sign Language -- to call a
play at the line of scrimmage. Hand signals against nondeaf schools gave
Gallaudet an advantage. But other deaf schools could read quarterback
Paul Hubbard's sign language. So, beginning in 1894, Hubbard came up
with a plan. He decided to conceal the signals by gathering his
offensive players in a huddle prior to the snap of the ball.
Fortnight: n: 1. the space of fourteen nights and days; two weeks. Fortnight is a contraction of the Old English fēowertēne niht.
The Speyer wine bottle (or 'Römerwein') is a sealed vessel - presumed to contain liquid wine - and so named because it was unearthed from a Roman tomb found near Speyer, Germany. It is the world's 'oldest bottle of wine.' The Speyer wine bottle was originally found in 1867, in what is now the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany, near the town of Speyer, one of the oldest settlements in the area. The bottle has been dated between 325 and 350 AD, and is the "oldest known unopened bottle of wine" in the world.
Who is...Philo T. Farnsworth?
The
anti-slave, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothings -- members of a
secret society whose main goal was to prevent 'foreigners' from gaining
political power -- demanded a 21-year residency requirement for
naturalization in the 1850s.
Freedom. According
to "Rolling Stone", a growing number of people are experimenting with
"microdoses" of psychedelics to help them work. A microdose of LSD is
around 10-15 micrograms, approximately a tenth of a "normal" dose. At
that dosage, Rolling Stone describes the drug's effects as
"subperceptual": " 'Enough, says Rick Doblin, founder and executive
director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
'to feel a little bit of energy lift, a little bit of insight, but not
so much that you are tripping.'
Every once in a while the democracy
does something really stupid experimenting on its own.
Russia has cancelled its free visa program with Turkey. Russians account for a huge portion of Turkey's tourism industry. About 3.3 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2014, the second-largest number of tourist arrivals after Germany and around 12% of total visitors, according to Reuters.
Russia has cancelled its free visa program with Turkey. Russians account for a huge portion of Turkey's tourism industry. About 3.3 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2014, the second-largest number of tourist arrivals after Germany and around 12% of total visitors, according to Reuters.
In Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation, Michael Schaller argues a more expansive reason for the Vietnam War. The
Vietnam War was justified to the American public based on the "domino
theory," -- the fear that if Vietnam fell, communism would soon reach
America's shores. However, that was not the genuine fear of many senior
U.S. officials. Instead, with the fall of China to communism in 1949,
the more immediate and realistic fear was that Japan would be next and
thus all of the Asia-Pacific region would become a communist bloc. Since
Japan's economy was still in shambles, and it had been dependent on
China for the import of raw materials, most felt it would inevitably
come under Soviet and Chinese Communist sway unless alternatives were
developed. A key U.S. policy objective thus became to develop Southeast
Asia as an alternative, non-communist supplier and trading partner for
Japan. It was the only viable alternative of consequence in the region,
and therefore, policymakers felt it imperative to keep communism out of
Vietnam.If America is so 'exceptional' why is it the world's leader in needing to 'change?'
Just days after the defeat of Argentina's Peronists who have ruled almost non-stop in the three decades since the end of military rule, the Ministry of Finance suffered a mysterious fire in its computer center which destroyed all the previous regime's files. This year there have been destructive fires in the Pink House, the Senate and the Central Bank which destroyed the central bank's records just days after a planned investigation of the banking system. These unfortunate coincidences will probably inspire unwarranted skepticism which will necessitate a government crackdown.
Just days after the defeat of Argentina's Peronists who have ruled almost non-stop in the three decades since the end of military rule, the Ministry of Finance suffered a mysterious fire in its computer center which destroyed all the previous regime's files. This year there have been destructive fires in the Pink House, the Senate and the Central Bank which destroyed the central bank's records just days after a planned investigation of the banking system. These unfortunate coincidences will probably inspire unwarranted skepticism which will necessitate a government crackdown.
Golden oldie:
In 1919, at age thirteen, Phil Farnsworth invented a burglarproof ignition switch for automobiles, earning him an award from Science and Invention magazine.
At seventeen, he entered Brigham Young University, specializing in
chemistry and electronics. By age twenty, he was running his own
business. In 1920, while
tilling a potato field in a monotonous back and forth pattern with his
horse-drawn plow, Phil imagined that an electron beam might scan an
image in exactly the same way, moving across the image line-by-line. On
September 7, 1927, in
a makeshift laboratory in a San Francisco loft, Philo T. Farnsworth
transmitted the world's first electronic television image: a straight
white line scratched into a piece of black-painted glass. When the glass
slide was slowly rotated ninety degrees, so, too, did the image on the
screen. 'There you are,' Farnsworth said with typical aplomb,
'electronic television.' from Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones
East Chicago has re-elected an accused drug dealer and murderer, Mr. Robert "Coop" Battle, as councilman. Bridgeport, Connecticut residents re-elected Mayor Joseph P. Ganim - who during his last term was convicted of 16 felonies including racketeering, extortion, and bribery. Shop on.
East Chicago has re-elected an accused drug dealer and murderer, Mr. Robert "Coop" Battle, as councilman. Bridgeport, Connecticut residents re-elected Mayor Joseph P. Ganim - who during his last term was convicted of 16 felonies including racketeering, extortion, and bribery. Shop on.
In the 1300s, Europe's Black Plague brought death to 25 million people, by some estimates a third to a half of its population, and is one of the most famous episodes in history. But that plague had started in China just a few years earlier and killed more people in Asia -- perhaps as many as 40 million -- than in Europe. The plague was an epidemic of commerce and it followed the trade routs out of China. 60% of Iceland died and it is presumed to have destroyed the Viking Greenland colony.
According to Carrie Fisher, Christopher Walken almost got cast as Han Solo.
The annual average number of immigrants in the period 1821-1825 was 8,000; in 1826-1830 it was up to 20,587. In the next five years, 1831-1835, it rose to 50,498, then to 69,330 between 1836 and 1840. By 1841-1845,
the expansion had grown to an average of 86,067 per year. At that point
in history, a series of poor harvests and the failure of the potato
crop in northern Europe disrupted European society and produced the first real deluge of immigrants -- 1.4 million between 1845 and 1850, a portent of those to come. During the next seven years, there was an enormous immigration of 22 million
from Europe. Ireland and Germany together normally accounted for 65 to
75 percent of total immigration. The ordinary share of just three
countries in these years was from 79.4 to more than 90 percent. Other
northern European nations accounted for most of the remaining
immigration.
Until
the advent of refrigeration, which only came about during the last
century or so, mankind was utterly dependent on salt as a food
preservative. Therefore, cities and societies hovered around areas that
contained salt mines -- e.g., Salzburg in Austria and the many English
cities whose name ends in "wich" (salt) -- such as Middlewich, Nantwich,
Northwich and Leftwich. Salt shaped civilization -- and was so valuable
it served as currency. The word "salary" comes originally from
"salt-money, soldier's allowance for the purchase of salt."
AAAaaaannnnnddddd.....a map of the spread of the plague and documented outbreaks:
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