Reverie

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.~Dwight Eisenhower 

 

T-rump's current tariff changes will mean higher prices for US steel and aluminum consumers.  That's cars, a steel-framed building, or  beer from aluminum cans.

It could also be a huge problem for Canada, if the president includes our northern neighbor in any tariffs and quotas. Canadian steel is highly integrated into US manufacturing.

Note, by the way, that Canada built much of its steel industry specifically to help US national security—supporting each other as allies do. To now be punished because it is allegedly threatening US national security won’t sit well with Canadians.

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"Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

The fact that the  “bourgeois culture” these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s, we argued, largely explains today’s social pathologies—and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies."

This is Wax testifying against herself as she argued that certain behaviors were better than others. That, of course, is heresy. In the world of the modern freedom warrior no way of thinking has any advantage over another; that would result in judgment, a modern cardinal sin. Not only did she mistakenly believe that thoughtfulness and honesty would be rewarded in this article she also admitted that bourgeois values might be good, an admission one should make only under torture. "Bourgeois" has not been good on campus for over one hundred and fifty years.

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“A seemingly more peaceful form of redistribution and regulation of global wealth inequality is immigration. Rather than move capital, which poses all sorts of difficulties, it is sometimes simpler to allow labor to move to places where wages are higher.” This is Piketty, in praise of immigration as a redistribution tool. He writes of it as if the immigrant is a foreign made product. So.....maybe immigration has a bit of a downside.

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Re: The excitement of Oprah as a candidate. When Trump was nominated, he suggested having Oprah as a running mate. The press felt that was a sign he was not a serious political leader.

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Prosecutors in Los Angeles have formally declined to charge fugitive director Roman Polanski in connection with an allegation he molested a woman when she was a minor in 1975, saying the statute of limitations has expired. "Guilt outruns Time:" Film at 11.

Who is...Anthony de Jasay?

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The Daily Mail, reports five half-an-hour workouts a week is the 'sweet spot' for reducing middle-aged cough potatoes' heart attack risk, new research reveals.

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Being active four-to-five times every seven days significantly improves middle-aged people's heart muscle flexibility, a study found today. Stiff, hardened muscles have previously been linked to heart attacks.

This is a classic study in modern times: The study assessed 53 people for 2 years and only 34 completed the study. Small numbers, big conclusions.

In a recent issue, The Economist observes that business is becoming more political in America. Politicized businesses do not only feel obliged to take a stand on political issues, but they often want their preferences to be, in some way, forced upon members of society who don't share them. The chairman of Starbucks, reports the magazine, "champions the idea that firms should serve both their shareholders and a broader set of interests, including staff and civil society." And, "... many bosses feel that they have little choice but to respond to their staff, who are increasingly vocal on political and on cultural issues. ... 44% of millennial American employees say they would be more loyal to their company if their boss took a public position on a societal issue."

Fascinating. Will companies begin to feign sympathy with popular causes, not hire employees who do not agree with them politically, be vulnerable to those companies who choose the cheaper and more efficient non-political track?

Switzerland’s central bank said it expects to make a record profit of $55.2 billion in 2017, citing higher global equity and bond prices as well as a weaker Swiss franc. That's more than Apple made.

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Anthony de Jasay is an economist. He has an article entitled "There are no Natural Rights." His point is, as rights are man-made, they are imperfect. He writes, "The rights that depend not on voluntariness, but on authority, which in turn depends on legitimacy is of a peculiar character, because its enforcement is provided not by the rights holders (who are directly interested in its maintenance), but by the high authority, such as the king or the republic, who alone is able to enforce the laws. I would consider that these rights alone deserve the name of rights." And, "There is not a high authority that does not depend on an even higher authority by which it became legitimate. Legitimacy ascends by an infinite regress. It is obvious that such an infinite regress is both logically and in actual practice useless."

We all must deal with the arbitrary in life, it is only the intellectual who tries to legislate it.

​Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2014/05/darpa-and-siga.html

DARPA and SIGA steeleydock.blogspot.com Several leaders of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) were in town today for some meetings. I was unable to go but would l...

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The emergence of Oprah as a serious political candidate raises the question that most think tanks grapple with: If you're going to have a national politician/celebrity, shouldn't we pick a really great looking one. I know everyone thinks that I am about to make an Angie pitch here but this kind of question is too important to be restricted. The Globes gave me pause; a consensus would be needed. If not Angie, who? Emma Stone? Jennifer Lawrence? Lindsey Vonn? I don't think Hyack or Cruz can run. Remember, we're talking about replacing Melania here.

The last thing we need in the White House is a shift from diplomacy to serial weight loss.

CNN reports that in a study, 31 male patients received either 600 milligrams of ibuprofen two times per day or a placebo. Among the participants given “ibuprofen, within 14 days, their luteinizing hormones – which are secreted by the pituitary gland and stimulate the testicles to produce testosterone – became coordinated with the level of ibuprofen circulating in their blood.” Meanwhile, “the ratio of testosterone to luteinizing hormones decreased, a sign of dysfunctional testicles.” According to CNN, “This hormonal imbalance produced compensated hypogonadism, a condition” linked to “impaired fertility, depression and increased risk for cardiovascular events, including heart failure and stroke.” The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

31 patients published in a good journal and distributed worldwide.

Prosecutors in Myanmar formally charged two Reuters reporters under archaic, colonial-era secrecy laws as criticism grew over the restriction of press freedoms and civil rights in the country under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. The WSJ wrote they "were charged with journalism."

Think about this for a minute: Wilfred M. McClay of the University of Oklahoma decries higher education's "dysfunctional devotion to meritocracy," which he says is subverting the ideal that one's life prospects should not be substantially predictable from facts about one's family. Meritocracy, "while highly democratic in its intentions, has turned out to be colossally undemocratic in its results" because of "the steep decline of opportunity for those Americans who must live outside the magic circle of meritocratic validation." Or this, written about recently by Will: In "A Theory of Justice," the 20th century's most influential American treatise on political philosophy, John Rawls argued that "inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved."

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The rising price of corn has become a campaign issue in Mexico. In 2016, about 8.3% of all spending on food in Mexico went toward tortilla purchases, and Mexicans consumed about 125 pounds of corn tortillas per person, according to the Mexican statistics agency INEGI. Mexico’s corn production is enough to satisfy only two-thirds of domestic demand, so the country relies on corn imports—almost exclusively (97%) from the United States—to fill the gap. And the gap is widening: Mexico’s corn consumption increased by 3.75%, from 37.3 million to 38.7 million tons, in the 2016-17 season. Gasoline is another issue. Mexico imports 80% of its gasoline and 73% of its diesel. Recent estimates by the Energy Ministry indicate Mexico will increase its refining capacity over the next 14 years but will remain dependent on imports until 2026. The US is by far the largest supplier of fuel to Mexico. Over half of all gasoline and diesel consumed in Mexico comes from the US, and imports continue their steady rise.

Uh oh. An anonymous, crowdsourced spreadsheet, created as part of a survey on ‘Sexual Harassment in the Academy,’ quickly grew to include about 2,000 allegations of sexual harassment at universities in the U.S., Europe and beyond. (wsj)

The joy of low interest rates:

Low interest rates have enabled the Federal government to increase their total debt by 113% since 2008, yet interest payments have risen by only 5%.

Corporations have borrowed huge amounts of debt to fund stock buybacks and increases in their dividends. Today, nonfinancial corporate debt is 79% higher than it was in 2008.

The New York Fed’s latest quarterly report on household debt showed that US households have a total of $12.96 trillion in debt outstanding. That’s $280 billion higher than the previous all-time peak in Q3 2008.

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If the Fed shrinks their balance sheet--as they say they will--liquidity will decrease and rates should rise. And with them so will the cost of borrowing.

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Those particularly annoyed with the abstract and vague hopes of modern liberalism as embodied by our former president Obama might be buoyed by the insight of our current president as he continues to talk like a coal miner into his eighth beer: At a meeting with senators pitching a bipartisan deal on immigration, President Donald Trump asked why the U.S. would admit immigrants from what he described as “shithole” countries. (wsj)

Let me see if I have this straight: The entertainment industry is on the forefront of respect for women?

No blog nominees for President. My suggestions may not have been taken seriously as they are all too young. Wait. How old is Angie?

"Mercantilism" has a definition, it is not a synonym for "businessman." It refers to the economic business practice of amassing wealth through the accumulation of money through trade. But there are other definitions of wealth; some think material wealth also exists in the receiving of goods and services. So in the latter case, money and goods are, reasonably, interchangeable and viewed similarly. The mercantilist thus thinks that selling goods for money is a positive, receiving goods for money a negative. This implies a winner and a loser in trade and such a person would oppose a negative trade balance because goods were being accumulated and cash lost. Someone with a view that saw inherent value in goods and services would not think such a trade as negative but as an equal exchange, wealth for wealth. The Library of Economics and Liberty defines it this way:

"Mercantilism is economic nationalism for the purpose of building a wealthy and powerful state. Adam Smith coined the term “mercantile system” to describe the system of political economy that sought to enrich the country by restraining imports and encouraging exports. This system dominated Western European economic thought and policies from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. The goal of these policies was, supposedly, to achieve a “favorable” balance of trade that would bring gold and silver into the country and also to maintain domestic employment. In contrast to the agricultural system of the physiocrats or the laissez-faire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mercantile system served the interests of merchants and producers such as the British East India Company, whose activities were protected or encouraged by the state."

A side question: If the accumulation of physical wealth is of inherent value, what happened to the Spanish in the 16th and 17th Centuries where they amassed huge wealth in gold and silver from stealing it from the Americas but, none the less, succumbed to their competitors?

Since 2015, the number of annual homicides in Mexico has been rising—along with armed robberies, extortion, disappeared persons and kidnappings, and sexual assaults. 2017 has been confirmed as the deadliest year in Mexico since the government started tracking homicides in 1997. (The record-high number (23,101) of murder investigations opened last year will likely grow by about another 2,000 once December figures are included.) Mexico does not track deaths specifically related to organized crime, but such crime (which includes drug trafficking) is still believed to be the main contributor to the rise in the number of homicides. Gun-related deaths are generally tied to organized crime, and such deaths made up 66% of homicides in Mexico in 2017. In addition, the states with the most homicides per month are those with the strongest presence of drug trafficking. Finally, there’s been an increase in killings of journalists and politicians.


George Gilder writes the economy is driven not by “centralized” institutions wielding rewards and punishments, but by an ever-growing pool of knowledge. The economy is merely a conduit of this knowledge. And since knowledge is innovative and new, analasis of the past does not help much. Neither do economic laws.

The Iraq-Iran War in 1984 killed more than 1 million people and it was the only modern day war which chemical and biological weapons used against troops.

About 510 million flip phones were shipped worldwide in 2016, down from 543 million the year before. Smartphone shipments were triple that number, at about 1.47 billion in 2016, up from 1.44 billion in 2015. But a lot of people are still buying flip-phones.

If the unemployment rate is so low and there is a need for skilled workers, why aren't wages rising?

Because most newly employed people weren’t on the books as “unemployed” right before starting their jobs. They went straight from “out of the labor force” to “employed,” because they were in school or military service, or otherwise neither employed nor seeking a job. 

AAAAaaaaaannnnnddddddddd......a graph: 

Chart: Bloomberg

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Scalia and Gun Control

Is it possible to define the kinds of weapons that should not be in civilian hands, and does regulating them violate the Second Amendment?

Here is Justice Antonin Scalia quoted in a NYT editorial a few years ago, writing the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court reversed a long-held position and ruled that the Second Amendment did give Americans an individual right to own firearms. The court said the District’s ban on handguns in private homes went too far, but that regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment:

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. ‘Miller’ said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U.S., at 179, 59 S.Ct. 816. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”

Justice Scalia also wrote:

“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”

This conflict is emblematic of a basic struggle in modern life: Is the individual citizen capable of self-government and is the government capable of augmenting his efforts? Put another way, Is the government immune to the bad judgment characteristic of its citizens? Is the whole somehow different from its parts?

Off-Budget

There will be over one trillion dollars in budget deficit this year but that does not include the so -called "off-budget expenditures.” 

Much of what the government spends is done out of its official budget, i.e. "off-budget." These expenditures do not affect the official deficit that is discussed in the press when the Rube-publicans are in office. They do affect the amount of cash the government needs. Where does it get that cash? It borrows it by issuing Treasury paper.

Off-budget expenditures pay for a variety of programs: Social Security, the US Postal Service, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are among the more familiar ones. But the category also includes things like disaster relief spending, some military spending, and unfunded liabilities that turn into actual costs. Federal student loan guarantees sometimes force the government to disburse cash. That is an off-budget outlay.
Off-budget outlays have risen in part because they include Social Security benefits, and the Baby Boomer generation is retiring. But the other categories mentioned above have grown as well, and they are increasingly problematic.

So the recent interest in deficit spending, a hallmark of Democrat administrations, now has revealed the truth: The Rube-publicans are no more likely to manage government costs than Democrats. And the anxiety about deficits, which appear so partisan, may actually be legitimate. Perhaps the press has always felt the Rube-publicans would take the bullet and impose unpopular but necessary discipline on the nation. Now it is clear that will not happen and we are left without a rescue.

The "off-budget" problem is only a peak into a very disorderly house which shows not only a mess but a mindset that encourages it.

Sunday/Grigson

The poet, critic and editor Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85) was also a keen naturalist and countryman in the tradition of Edward Thomas. These interests come together in his late poem “Ruskin’s View, Kirby Lonsdale”, first published in the TLS in 1980 and subsequently in his collection The Cornish Dancer (1982). Kirkby Lonsdale (to restore the correct spelling), a small market town on the edge of the Lake District, was admired by Turner who, perhaps inspired by Books VI and VII of Wordsworth’s The Excursion (“The Churchyard Amongst the Mountains”), painted a view of the River Lune from St Mary’s church, of which Ruskin owned an engraving (now in the Ashmolean Museum). “I do not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy”, Ruskin said of this spot, “a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession of true ‘Holy Land’” (Fors Clavigera, 1884).
Like Ruskin’s, Grigson’s sense of the sublime is rooted in a precise understanding of what he is looking at: Ruskin’s biographer W. G. Collingwood wrote that Ruskin knew “more about scenery than most geologists, and more about geology than most artists”, while for Anthony Thwaite it was “the passionate naturalist, archaeologist, topographer and traveller” who watches, too, from the centre of Grigson’s poems. And with the precision of Grigson’s observing eye goes an assured handling of cadence and internal rhyme. Peter Scupham suggests Grigson is ambivalent about whether, when life speaks to us most clearly, it speaks of itself or something other. But here the poet seems to be able to distinguish, beyond the heavily-mediated responses of the “be- / Sotted aesthete”, the religious impulse behind them, “A peace-be-unto-us, in cool / Matt affinities of green”. (tls)
 
Ruskin’s View, Kirby Lonsdale
So this is Mr. Ruskin’s view,This ultimacy of green;Benched beyond graves, I see
What Ruskin and Co mean.


A river draws a curve: parkedMeadows are marvellously wide;And green shelves up, then back into wild
Fells on the far side.


It is October: trees not – orSo it seems – too intentionally setIn order and disorder, display
No dead tones yet.


I see past graves what that be-Sotted aesthete and the others mean –A peace-be-unto-us, in cool
Matt affinities of green.


GEOFFREY GRIGSON (1980)

Reverie

"The problem with academics is they feel the need to be smarter than truth."--Thomas Larkin 

  

Current law prevents the International Trade Commission from considering the overall economic effects of proposed tariffs. That means that tariff consideration, by default, values the benefits to specific companies or industries more than the costs imposed on the rest of the economy.

Caplan's solution to sexual harassment:

Firms should adopt the speed dating paradigm.  Let everyone secretly record their feelings, if any, for their co-workers.  If the feelings are unrequited, no one ever finds out.  If the feelings are mutual, however, both parties receive official confirmation.  And unless they edit their recorded preferences, they waive their right to complain about (or sue over) unwanted attention from whoever they explicitly approved.
How is this better than the status quo?  Simple: It retains standard rules against unwanted attention, but gives people a safe way to take a chance on love.  Indeed, my proposal even shields everyone from the knowledge that someone has unrequited feelings for them.  Don't want to know how anyone feels about you?  Then check zero boxes, and you're safe.
The most obvious objection is that people could change their minds.  But I've already got that covered: If you decide you no longer welcome someone's attention, you edit your preferences - and they get a polite email informing them of your wishes.  Worried that they won't listen?  Then don't check them in the first place.

An interesting evaluation of Iran:

"The external pressures on Iran come from various sources but meet in one location: Syria. President Bashar al-Assad, an Iranian ally, is facing new challenges in western Syria. Turkey has invaded the northwestern Afrin region. Given the size of the Turkish force, its technological superiority, and the relatively small number of Kurdish defenders, it seems likely that Turkey will take control of it. And with that, Turkey will have essentially surrounded Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, on three sides.

Surrounding most of Aleppo with Turkish forces would present a major threat to both Assad and Iran. Iran has to consider the risks that a resurgent Turkey would pose to it and will therefore be highly motivated to keep its proxies in Syria and Iraq."

Bitcoin’s anonymous inventor(s), Satoshi Nakamoto, designed the program to allow mining of only 21 million bitcoins by the year 2140. Miners have dug up about 17 million bitcoins in total so far.

A study last year by digital forensics firm Chainalysis estimated that somewhere between 2.78 million and 3.79 million bitcoins are lost.

Some info on the GDP I learned recently: The GDP was actually invented in the late 1930s when President Roosevelt needed some way to prove that his policies were working. And at 85 years old, the old formula may be nearing time for retirement. The only way for Roosevelt to show that his policies were working was to put government spending inside the GDP number. There was vicious fighting among economists over whether he should be allowed to do so. Many economists even argued that military spending should not be included in GDP because it didn’t produce anything.

This is amazing. According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the number of Americans who subscribe to cable TV is now on par with the number who subscribe to Netflix, and it’s only a matter of time before Reed Hastings and company pull ahead of the pack. Based on a survey of 2,000 consumers, PwC found that 73% subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service, down from 76% in 2016 and 79% in 2015. Meanwhile, the percentage who said they subscribe to Netflix is also at 73%–putting it dead even with cable.

McCloskey is really mad at this student's assessment of her trilogy:

"The trouble I have with your project, so far as it claims to test my writings, is that you greatly misunderstand what the three volumes say. It is not true, not remotely, that they say "In the three Volumes of the Bourgeois ethics you show that bourgeois virtues arose, which led to the Great Enrichment." I say nothing of the kind. (And by the way the three volumes are not called "the bourgeois ethics"; they are called "the Bourgeois Era," a very significant difference.)

You believe I suppose that the bourgeois became more virtuous. I doubt it, though it is true that with social support for its activities came a little better behavior. Probably not superior to what guildsmen in the Middle Ages showed. The clearest if not the most important example is the English Quakers, doing things like introducing fixed prices instead of bargaining, which ancient practice they viewed as violating the 9th commandment. Another and more important example is the rise of business schools internationally in the late 19th century, with their attempt, successful until corrupted in the 1980s by economists claiming that all that matters is the bottom line, to make business into a profession like law or priesthood or medicine.

But the main point of all three books is that the surrounding social approval for bourgeois activity is what mainly mattered. It transformed the world. Once only. I call it the Bourgeois Revaluation. The first volume is a defense of the ethical standing of business people in any age, in any society, against the widespread belief among the clerisy that business corrupts absolutely. I did it because if it was true, neither you nor I should defend businesspeople. Defend the Devil? It would make the apologetic side of The Bourgeois Era entirely pointless. Who cares how many autos or big houses we have if we are absolutely corrupt in soul?

Take down your copy of The Bourgeois Virtues and re-read (or read for the first time?) the second-to-the last page and the very last, "You ask me to preach." Note that the virtues there named in their commercial forms are not claimed to have improved. Bourgeoisies worldwide have exhibited them---or strikingly failed to exhibit them---in all ages from the caves to Enron. The change is not in psychology, as I say repeatedly (contradicting Max Weber by name, repeatedly). It is in the politics and sociology supporting, or strikingly not supporting (thus socialism), a commercially tested betterment that made the modern world, 1800 to the present. It happened only after 1800, stretching back to faint origins in Holland in the Gouden Eeuw and later in England with a Dutch king. It happened at first only in relatively liberal societies, in their relatively liberal eras, as it still does most greatly flourish, most of all after 1800."

China’s government has turned the northwestern region into a laboratory for high-tech social controls. Citizens and visitors must run a daily gantlet of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras and machines scanning their ID cards, faces, eyeballs and sometimes entire bodies. (wsj)

The central message of behavioral genetics is that modern human beings systematically overestimate the effects of upbringing and systematically underestimate the effects of heredity.  Judith Harris famously called this bias "the nurture assumption."
 

The decision by the U.S. to recognize Jerusalem has been officially condemned by the U.N. by a vote of 128 to 9. Now I have some reservations about the U.S. decision but it takes a lot a nerve for the U.N.--which created this Middle East problem in the first place--to get pompous and try to take the high road. The only thing worse was Trump's belligerent response.

 Who is... Rebecca Reid?

Just when you thought you were settling in with the new social rules comes this little stunner: Rebecca Reid wrote in Metro UK that she once participated in a threesome because she "didn't want to be rude."

She also claims  that calling clothing “flattering” is actually “really offensive.” It comes with a fairly twisted explanation that I will not endeavor to clarify.

A summary of an analysis of different psychotherapudic approaches published in The Lancet: “Neither variability in competence nor adherence [to the principles of the therapy involved] was related to patient outcome…extent of training might also not be relevant to outcome.”




The city council in Philadelphia passed a controversial measure that would ban liquor stores and other small businesses from placing bulletproof glass inside their stores.
The “Stop and Go” bill, proposed by City Councilwoman Cindy Barr last year, will fight the “indignity” of customers having to talk to cashiers through bulletproof glass when they’re purchasing items or being served food.
The ceaseless and intense vigilance against non-problems.

In 1995 a landmark study  found that children whose families were on welfare heard 1,500 fewer words every hour—or eight million fewer per year—than children from professional backgrounds. This was viewed as a very serious observation with influence through the educational system because those same children later scored poorly on intelligence tests. This is a remarkably stupid generalization--you could turn naming the flaws of a study like this into a parlor game--but it shows how we are molded--science included--by the assumption that we at birth are tabla rasa beings of equal potential whose eventual distinctions are really distortions.

A reused SpaceX rocket carried 10 satellites into orbit from California.
Just when I think I've got my hands around Musk as a fantasy promoter he does something like this.

Over the course of the 2016 election, Facebook estimates that roughly 140 million users may have seen Russian propaganda in their News Feeds or on Instagram. Much of that content sought to sow social and political unrest around divisive issues like race, religion and LGBT rights.
Imagine, as your life's work, disseminating unhappiness and discontent. Now, imagine that as a priority of national policy.



Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2014/09/ebola-and-profit-motive.html

Ebola and The Profit Motive steeleydock.blogspot.com "Until this west African epidemic, Ebola was not a public health problem and (was) a really rare disease." So says Professor Peter Piot, d...

Although only 5-10% of autistics have gender dysphoria, up to 25%-50% of transgender people may be autistic.

Confirming that Subway has indeed peaked in its 5 decades-long business cycle, even as management desperately attempts to engineer a soft landing, a Subway representative said that another 909 locations have been closed in 2017, representing more than 3% of the chain’s 2016 U.S. stores.

The world’s largest hotel is in Saudi Arabia and hosts 10,000 guests.

An unverified, unverifiable but nonetheless wonderful story of a Chinese immigrant in the gold rush days of California: John-John the Chinese laundry man was the laughingstock of Weaverville, California. For months he washed the Anglo miners’ clothes and never charged a penny for his services. But a year later one of the miners came across John wearing fine clothes in Sacramento. He had washed enough gold dust out of pants cuffs and shirttails to set himself up for life.
Mining the miners. Sort of a government concept, plus insight and imagination.

Comcast just can not stop themselves. Comcast has been embroiled in a legal battle since 2016 regarding potentially deceptive business practices surrounding its "Service Protection Plan" -- a $6 a month program which covered almost nothing. And it may have signed people up without their permission.

Federal debt remains a problem since gross government debt recently exceeded 106% of GDP. A debt level above 90% has been shown to diminish an economy’s trend rate of growth by one-third or more. When President Reagan cut taxes in 1981 growth ensued, but the government debt was only 31% of GDP at that time.

AAAAAaaaaaannnnnnddddddd.....the latest financial results of college endowment funds based on the most recent annual study by the National Association of College University Business Officers (NACUBO) through fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017) that included 800 U.S. higher education institutional endowments. So even smart schools do worse than average?