"Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?" "...because they have laws and rules invented by reason." --Ibrahim Muteferrika, 1731
Carved in stone above the entrance of the monumental James A. Farley Post Office in New York City are these words: 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.' Many think this is the Post Office motto, but the Post Office has no motto. It is an acknowledgement of the famous postal system created by the Persian king Darius as described by the Greek historian Herodotus: 'Nothing mortal travels so fast as these Persian messengers.These men will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to do, either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by darkness of night. The first rider delivers his dispatch to the second, and the second passes it to the third; and so it is borne from hand to hand along the whole line, like the light of the torch-race.'
Overall, there is $7 trillion of negative-yielding debt in the world, which equals 29% of the Bloomberg Global Developed Sovereign Bond Index. These are not backwater, third-world countries either—these are developed countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Denmark, and the European Central Bank.
A new investigation reveals that Bill and Hillary Clinton took in at least $100 million from Middle East leaders. The investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation has uncovered a disturbing pattern of the Clintons’ raising money for the Clinton Foundation from regimes that have checkered records on human rights and that aren’t always operating in the best interests of the U.S. By the way, the $100 million we mentioned above doesn’t appear to include another $30 million given to the Clintons by two Mideast-based foundations and four billionaire Saudis. On the other hand, the recent NYT announcement of investment money passing through the Clinton "Charity" is a little less clear than originally stated.
Who is....Lady Olga?
If you seriously want to monetize the debt, you'd have to buy back the debt held by the public, with newly issued base money. There are two data points that suggest this will lead to hyperinflation:
1. Currency in circulation is about 8% of GDP
2. Treasury debt held by the public is about 80% of GDP
1. Currency in circulation is about 8% of GDP
2. Treasury debt held by the public is about 80% of GDP
Eating Local has become more than an interesting diversion; it has become a thesis for restoring person-to-person commerce and intimacy. This would oppose the growing impersonal corporate world, a la Wendell Berry. As Robert Wuetherick asks, “What will be next? 100-mile-sourced medicines? 100-mile-sourced ideas? 100-mile-sourced economic history?”
According to Quora and Intelligence Quotient scores, the smartest human being that has ever lived is William James Sidis. His was the highest Intelligence Quotient of all times with a score of 250-300 with a normal person's IQ being around 100 and Einstein's IQ is estimated to be 160-190. At six months, the young William already started to speak, at 18 months he was reading the newspaper, and at four years old he already spoke Latin. At 16, in 1914, he graduated with honours from Harvard in Literature. Despite a degree in letters, Sidis began teaching three scientific subjects: Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, and trigonometry. In 1919 he was arrested in a workers' demonstration and sentenced to jail but his father, apparently a renowned psychiatrist, got the charges dropped and the son ended up in a psychiatric hospital for a while. He then moved away and became a clerk. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage at age 46 in 1944. It is rumoured that he could speak fluently 40 languages and was able to learn one in three days. While serving his ordinary life, Sidis continued to write but was not a contributor to the world.
Bubble tea, which is a tea-based drink that has balls of tapioca resting in the bottom, originated in Taiwan. Now that country is restoring the tea again by serving it in huge light bulbs. Light bulbs. We'll see if it catches on.
In 1845 John Snare bid £8 for a painting supposed by the auctioneer to be a Van Dyck, but Snare had his own opinion: he thought the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez might have painted it during Charles’ clandestine trip to Spain in 1623 when the proposed marriage between (then prince) Charles and Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III of Spain, was under negotiation. Years of research and legal issues ensued as Snare attempted to prove the Velázquez provenance. Snare’s enthusiasm ultimately veered into mania, causing him to lose his livelihood and very likely his family.
Golden oldie:
Sexual identity questions are not new. Nor are they terribly unusual. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty. But sometimes the problem is pretty stark.
Jane Barnell was an American bearded lady who worked in sideshow and used the stage name Lady Olga or Madame Olga. She worked all over the U.S. in various shows and ended her career in New York where she appeared in dime shows she carefully selected. She was the subject of a New Yorker article by the esteemed Joseph Mitchell, an article that made her famous for a short time. She was three time a widow, and had two children that did not survive to adulthood.
Mitchell was a subtle writer who profiled Bowery personalities and Olga was one of his best. She had a life that was excruciating: She was sold by her mother to a travelling circus as a child, and walked a line of degradation as she exploited her deformity for income.
I still can't figure out her pregnanciey.
Numinous: adj: : 1. supernatural, mysterious; 2. filled with a sense of the presence of divinity : holy. 3. appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense : spiritual. Most common as evincing the presence of a deity; "a numinous wood"; "the most numinous moment in the Mass" ety: Circa 1650, from Latin numen (“nod, divine sway, divinity”) + -ous as "from a nod from the god."
Merlot used to be California's second-most planted red wine grape variety by acreage, behind Cabernet Sauvignon. However, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, Merlot has been overtaken by Zinfandel for the number two spot for reds.
When armed thugs arrive at your door and demand your money and your car keys, you do as they demand in order to avoid being murdered, but you don’t for a moment think that the thugs’s demands are furthering the greater good. But let those thugs win the votes of a majority of your neighbors who authorize the thugs to steal your money and your car, and you – if you are like the typical person – play along agreeably, having convinced yourself of the lie that the thugs’s deepest motive is to help you and the society of which you are a member.--Bordeaux
Dyson on string theory and alternative universes: "I would say it's just very good mathematics. Mathematicians love it. It isn't clear string theory applies to the real world, it may or may not. It's quite likely it may turn out to be useful for reasons nobody today can guess.
I would say those things aren't science. They don't belong in science. But you can still have interesting speculations that may be useful in unforeseen ways – but if it's not verifiable, it's not what I would consider science.
There's no reason other universes shouldn't exist; if they are unobservable, then they don't belong to science."
I would say those things aren't science. They don't belong in science. But you can still have interesting speculations that may be useful in unforeseen ways – but if it's not verifiable, it's not what I would consider science.
There's no reason other universes shouldn't exist; if they are unobservable, then they don't belong to science."
As the economic historians Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell concluded in their 2010 study of “the reduction, almost to elimination, of absolute poverty among working households in Britain between 1904 and 1937”: “The elimination of grinding poverty among working families was almost complete by the late thirties, well before the Welfare State.”--McCloskey
And another rather surprising note, this from Chelsea German: The Washington Post ran a piece with the alarming headline, “The middle class is shrinking just about everywhere in America.” Although you wouldn’t know it from the first few paragraphs, a shrinking middle class isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As HumanProgress.org Advisory Board member Mark Perry has pointed out, America’s middle class is disappearing primarily because people are moving into higher income groups, not falling into poverty. One has to read fairly far into the Washington Post’s coverage before seeing any mention of the fact that a shrinking middle class can mean growing incomes, she continues.
The size of America's prison population is a function of our violent crime rate. The U.S. homicide rate is seven times higher than the combined rate of 21 Western nations plus Japan.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the Islamic Republic’s commitment to last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.
“At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it,’” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying during a recent Persian-language speech that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it,’” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying during a recent Persian-language speech that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
"I am willing to love all mankind except an American." So said the esteemed Samuel Johnson. Pretty harsh. But it has a context. It was said in 1778 during the American revolution against Britain when the Americans were changing Great Britain forever.
AAAaaaannnnnnddddddd .........a picture of Lady Olga:
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