Apr 022012
Click image to take test
Apr 012012
Brave New Bank? BRICS moot dropping dollar, IMF
Apr 012012
Remember low-res video?
Mar 292012
It’s amazing how certain clothing items can say so much:
Mar 282012
From the OECD:
Humanity has witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity in the past decades, with the size of the world economy more than tripling and population increasing by over 3 billion people since 1970. This growth, however, has been accompanied by environmental pollution and natural resource depletion. The current growth model and the mismanagement of natural assets could ultimately undermine human development.
The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 asks “What will the next four decades bring?” Based on joint modelling by the OECD and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, it looks forward to the year 2050 to find out what demographic and economic trends might mean for the environment if the world does not adopt more ambitious green policies. It also looks at what policies could change that picture for the better. This Outlook focuses on four areas: climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and health impacts of pollution. These four key environmental challenges were identified by the previous Environmental Outlook to 2030 (OECD, 2008) as “Red Light” issues requiring urgent attention.
Read the full executive summary
Some shocking stats from the report:
- Global temperatures up by as much as 6 degrees Celsius
- 80% increase in energy use
- 1.4 billion people will be without basic sanitation
How to Make Wine from Grapes at Home
What could cause someone to suddenly snap like this?
(CNN) — A JetBlue flight bound for Las Vegas made an emergency landing in Texas on Tuesday after the captain acted strangely, was locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot and was wrestled to the ground by passengers, witnesses and authorities said.
The plane’s co-pilot, concerned by the “erratic” behavior, locked the door behind the captain when he left the cockpit during the flight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
h/t Alex
US President Barack Obama has threatened to punish North Korea for what he described as ‘bad behaviour’. His comments were made in the South Korean capital Seoul, ahead of a nuclear summit. Obama was referring to a planned satellite launch by Pyongyang next month – which many fear is a disguised missile test.
Mar 272012
Iran is a real country with real people. Do not take the rhetoric (on both sides) lightly.
Mar 262012
In public they spread fear. Behind closed doors, it seems like political leaders and intelligence experts agree that Iran is not an imminent threat.
From Reuters:
The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.
Documenting one man’s experiences and lessons learned during the 2001 Argentinian economic collapse.
Here are some reader reactions:
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Guest post by NBER
“The rate at which health deteriorates with age is faster in manual occupations than in non-manual occupations. For many people, work wears out their health.”
Despite the fact that women live longer than men on average, women around the world report worse health than men until age 60-65. After that, self-reported health declines more slowly for both men and women. But splitting up the population by income changes the pattern. At age 20, men in the bottom income quartile report worse health than men in the top income quartile at age 50. And, although women in the bottom income quartile initially report worse health than men, after age 50 they report better health than men.
In Broken Down by Work and Sex (NBER Working Paper No. 9821), authors Anne Case and Angus Deaton use self-reported health status from the National Health Interview Survey to describe how individual health varies by age, occupation, and sex. Case and Deaton find that for both women and men, manual laborers report a more rapid decline in health than professionals. And, much of the difference in self-reported health status across the income distribution can be explained by health-related absences from the labor force. So that while it may be true that being poor makes people sick, it is also true that being sick makes you less able to work, and lowers your income — so that much of the strong relationship between ill-health and poverty comes from poor health making you poor.
To untangle the relationship between work, earnings, health, and education, the authors examine health over the life cycle and explore the relationship between the rate at which health deteriorates at any given age, individual investments in health maintenance, and the rate at which the “stock of health” declines. Perhaps their most important finding from the data is that the rate at which health deteriorates with age is faster in manual occupations than in non-manual occupations. For many people, work wears out their health.
– Linda Gorman
Mar 252012
Dr. Robert Abele on the quest for absolute power, and more on American politics.
Dr. Robert Abele received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University, with a specialty in political philosophy. He also has a masters degree in Theology. He is the author of three books, two of them forthcoming in the fall: A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act; The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq; and Democracy Today: Three-minute Meditations on the State of Democracy in America.
h/t Alex
Mar 242012
Mar 232012
1984 (the movie based on George Orwell’s 1949 classic book) trailer:
Mar 222012
This is a shocking reminder of what is STILL going on inside North Korea – a country that has turned on itself after decades of economic isolation and energy poverty. In a peak oil world, is this our future? After all, it was the industrial revolution, first fueled by coal and then oil, that helped end slavery in the western world. Subtract the energy subsidy and you’re left with millions of people fighting for scraps. To consolidate control over resources and replace lost energy, those with power will again oppress those without.
How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp
There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee…
