2013-11-27
Fwd: Thanksgiving
'Had today's politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries ago, Americans might celebrate "Starvation Day" this week, not Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first settled at Plymouth, they were told
"Share everything, share the work, and we'll share the harvest."
The colony's contract said their new settlement was to be a "common." Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There was to be little individual property.
That wasn't the only thing about the Plymouth Colony that sounds like it was from Karl Marx: Its labor was to be organized according to the different capabilities of the settlers. People would produce according to their abilities and consume according to their needs. That sure sounds fair.
They nearly starved and created what economists call the "tragedy of the commons."
If people can access the same stuff by working less, they will. Plymouth settlers faked illness instead of working the common property. The harvest was meager, and for two years, there was famine. But then, after the colony's governor, William Bradford, wrote that they should "set corn every man for his own particular," they dropped the commons idea. He assigned to every family a parcel of land to treat as its own.
The results were dramatic. Much more corn was planted. Instead of famine, there was plenty. Thanks to private property, they got food -- and thanks to it, we have food today.'
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/27/thankful_for_property_120794.html
2013-11-26
Direction
'Pope Francis called for renewal of the Roman Catholic Church and attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny"…
In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the "idolatry of money" and beseeching politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and healthcare".
Al Qaeda in Kentucky: US May Have Let 'Dozens' of Terrorists Into Country as Refugees - ABC News
to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to
move to the United States as war refugees,
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=20931131
2013-11-20
Fwd: 1980
'It was a case that some believe shattered part of the city's innocence.
"I think it was something that most people in Salt Lake just couldn't believe," said Salt Lake County deputy district attorney Bob Stott. "I think people almost felt like, 'Are we becoming like these big cities now? Are we having this kind of fear and this kind of violence?'
"I think it was a time when we just stopped and thought maybe life isn't as sweet or as secure as we thought it was."
On Aug. 20, 1980, David Martin, 18, and Ted Fields, 20, were shot and killed while jogging with two women in Liberty Park. The unknown assailant with a high-powered rifle sat in a vacant field, behind a hill, just outside the park boundaries.
The motive: Martin and Fields were black and the women were white.
Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, the man convicted of murdering Martin and Fields, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri just after midnight on Wednesday morning.
But late Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge granted a stay of execution. U.S. District Court Judge Nanette Laughery ruled that a lawsuit filed by Franklin and 21 other death-row inmates challenging Missouri's execution protocol must first be resolved.
Franklin, a drifter from Alabama, will be put to death for the 1977 sniper shooting of Gerald Gordon at a bar mitzvah at the Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel Congregation in suburban St. Louis. He was sentenced to death in 1997.
Although he was convicted of one murder in St. Louis, in a recent interview with CNN, Franklin admitted that he had killed about 22 people across the United States between the late 1970s and 1980. He has been given six life sentences, including two in Utah for the deaths of Martin and Fields. Franklin was also responsible for the 1978 shooting of Larry Flynt that left the Hustler magazine publisher permanently paralyzed.
Franklin's hate-filled, cross-country killing spree, which he claimed was done in an effort to start a race war, ended in what seemed at the time to be the most unlikely of places, Salt Lake City.'
Fwd: Venezuela
'Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro received authority to pass economic laws without congressional approval, a move the opposition says will increase the harassment of businesses and attacks on political rivals ahead of local elections.
The national assembly approved today the so-called enabling law by a three-fifths majority, allowing Maduro to enact laws, such as limits on profits, without the oversight of congress.
"It's my responsibility to sign this to fight against corruption and speculation," National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said from congress in comments broadcast on state television. "I sign this in Chavez's name."
Maduro acquired for the first time the same power his late predecessor Hugo Chavez relied on for a third of his 14 years in office to nationalize companies, create taxes and increase labor rights. Maduro said he will use decrees to protect the people from the "parasitic bourgeoisie," which he accuses of hoarding goods and overcharging customers. He will pass populist measures to regain support that has been eroded by the fastest inflation in the world ahead of the Dec. 8 vote, David Smilde, a sociology professor at the University of Georgia, said.'
2013-11-12
Fwd: Oil
Amazing…
'The U.S. will end 2013 as the world's largest producer of petroleum and natural gas, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia, the Energy Information Administration said Friday.
The EIA estimated combined U.S. petroleum and gas production this year will hit 50 quadrillion British thermal units, or 25 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, outproducing Russia by 5 quadrillion Btu.'
Fwd: Mexico
'Since 2008, the seven main drug cartels have emerged as an existential threat to Mexico's future. Cartels like Los Zetas, which recruit members from Mexico's Special Forces and federal police, behave like organized paramilitaries, not ordinary criminals. They generate perhaps $30 to $40 billion a year in illicit profits. And the price has been horrendous. Between 2007 and 2012, around 47,000 Mexicans were killed in the drug war. Some estimate that the true toll is over 60,000.
When we think of torture, beheadings and assassination, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia come to mind. Many Americans and Canadians would be surprised to learn that these are commonplace in Mexico, a country many associate with beaches and margaritas. Yet the situation in Mexico has deteriorated so badly that one Juarez mayor and a newspaper publisher took up residence in Texas, while one journalist took refuge in Canada.
As neighbors, we should be concerned. But there's even more to it than that: The drug cartels pose a direct threat to American and Canadian security.'
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/mexico-americas-number-one-threat-9205
Fwd: Russia
'Police detained more than 1,000 migrant workers for several hours Monday in an effort to calm simmering ethnic tension in Moscow following a weekend riot triggered by the killing of a Russian man that residents blamed on a migrant.'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304106704579135343880572238.html
Fwd: Iran
'Instead of opining on the proposed deal with Iran taking shape in Geneva, let's decode it.
From the reported outline of the proposal, we learn four things:
1) Iran remains intensely committed to achieving a nuclear weapon.
Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, promised his countrymen relief from international sanctions. Since coming into office this summer, he has made various conciliatory noises. Was he readying Iran for a real deal?
The message of Geneva is: No, no real deal.
Iran's red line at Geneva, the thing it would not trade away, was a capacity to continue and resume nuclear bomb development at any time. Iran's offer at Geneva amounted to a six-month delay of its nuclear program that will not in any way impair its ability to get back to bomb-making at any time.
Iran won't neutralize or surrender any of its fissile material; that is, material used to fuel reactors—or nuclear bombs. It won't disable any of its nuclear facilities. It will only pause. Economists use the phrase "revealed preference" to describe the way in which our actions indicate our priorities. Iran's priority remains gaining a weapon; post-Geneva, there can be no doubt about that.
2) The Iranian economy has collapsed into desperate condition.
At Geneva, Iran gained a promise of the potential release of $3 billion in frozen international reserves and the right to import potentially up to $9.5 billion of gold. For a major oil producing nation, these should be petty sums. (Iraq's oil revenues amounted to about $7 billion per month in 2013.)…
3) The Obama administration wants an Iranian nuclear deal more than Iran does.
By most reports, it was the United States that came to Geneva armed with proposals, and Iran that did most of the refusing.
As Eli Lake and Josh Rogin reported in the Daily Beast last week, the Obama administration began relaxing sanctions simply to get talks started. Iran, by contrast, has offered no such concessions to the United States….
4) America's allies are not deferring to American leadership on this one.
It's not only France that has rebelled against the outlined deal in Geneva. Israel is protesting vocally and publicly; America's Gulf Arab allies are protesting less publicly, but nearly equally vocally. On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Kerry insisted that there was "zero gap" between the United States and its regional allies. Then he immediately got on a plane to the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, presumably to try to upgrade his Sunday talk-show words into something closer to reality…'
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/11/opinion/frum-iran-deal/?hpt=hp_bn7
Fwd: 5th year approval
'OBAMA = BUSH - The latest survey from Gallup finds President Obama holds a nearly identical approval rating to former President George W. Bush at this point in his presidency. The firm's tracking poll shows Obama with a 39 percent approval rating compared to Bush's 40 percent in the fall of his fifth year in office.'
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/virginia-squeaker-sends-shivers-through-dems/
Fwd: 11/11
'Chinese shoppers spent billions of dollars online Monday, data showed, as they took advantage of discounts offered on Singles Day, a festival created by e-tailers to persuade the loveless to console themselves with retail therapy.
November 11 -- or 11.11 -- was proclaimed as "singles' day", because of the number of ones in the date, with sellers promoting discounts to the nation's singletons.'
Maybe this tradition would spread to other countries? In the U.S. it would be an excuse to party.
Fwd: History
'More than a decade later, most people remain totally unaware of the troubling issues behind "Roots" — or simply don't want to hear that this still-acclaimed work was essentially a fake.
That view is shared even by such noted African-American historians as Harvard's Henry Louis Gates, a Haley friend who conceded that it's time to "speak candidly" and admit that "it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village from whence his ancestors sprang," adding that it was not "strict historical scholarship." The late John Henrik Clarke, dean of Afrocentrist scholars, said he "cried real tears when I realized that Haley was less than authentic."
Genealogists, eager to retrace the historical steps Haley claimed he took in his 12-year search for his family heritage, discovered this early on: Documents didn't match any information Haley cited; the dates were all wrong and so was the supposed slave lineage. Elizabeth Shown Mills, editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, went so far as to denounce Haley's "subterfuge."
And the first half of the book — Kunta Kinte's life in Africa — was blatantly plagiarized from an earlier novel by anthropologist Harold Courlander, who sued Haley, accepting a $650,000 settlement after the court's expert witness concluded that the copying in the book and the movie was "clear and irrefutable . . . significant and extensive."
That deal was made after the judge hearing the case, alarmed not only by the extent of the copying but also by Haley's repeated perjury in court, pressed the sides to settle, then sealed the official file from public view. The judge later admitted (in a BBC documentary that has never run on American TV) that he "didn't want to destroy" Haley and his reputation.
Perhaps the most damning exposé of Haley's historical hoax came in a devastating 1993 Village Voice cover piece by Philip Nobile, who'd had access to Haley's personal papers before they were broken up and auctioned off. There he found compelling evidence that the non-plagiarized section of the book had been primarily written not by Haley but by his longtime editor at Playboy magazine, Murray Fisher.
Moreover, the BBC located a tape of the famous session in Gambia with the griot, or oral historian, who supposedly made the link between Haley's slave forebears and their African ancestor, Kunta Kinte. It showed the griot's story being repeatedly corrected by Gambian officials and Haley himself specifically asking for a tale that fit his predetermined narrative.'
http://nypost.com/2013/11/11/history-channel-plans-to-remake-historically-problematic-roots/
Fwd:
'France blocked the first stage of a nuclear deal with Iran that had support from the United States, Britain, Germany, most of the rest of Europe, Russia, and China.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he was preventing his allies from falling for an Iranian "con game…
Diplomats in Geneva criticized the French privately not only for objecting to some aspects of the interim deal with Iran, but also for leaking the substance of some of the discussions. One of the hallmarks of the diplomacy that led to the near-breakthrough had been the extent to which its details were kept under wraps, even as the atmospherics raised great expectations.'
Fwd: Iran
'Current Iranian President Hasan Rouhani was his country's nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, when Iran briefly suspended its civilian and military nuclear work in the teeth of intense international pressure (and American armies on its borders with Iraq and Afghanistan). That previous suspension is treated by U.S. negotiators as a model of what they might achieve now.
It's really a model of what they should beware. "Tehran showed that it was possible to exploit the gap between Europe and the United States to achieve Iranian objectives," Hossein Mousavian, Mr. Rouhani's deputy at the time, acknowledged in his memoir. "The world's understanding of 'suspension' was changed from a legally binding obligation" to "a voluntary and short-term undertaking aimed at confidence building."
Now the U.S. seems to be falling for the same ruse again. This time, however, Iran is much closer to achieving its nuclear objectives...The Saudis, who gave up on this Administration long ago, are no doubt thinking along similar lines. The BBC reported last week that the Kingdom has nuclear weapons "on order" from Pakistan.'
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579185651742048532
'Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.
While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.
Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.
Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring."
Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.
In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24823846
'We never thought we'd say this, but thank heaven for French foreign-policy exceptionalism. At least for the time being, François Hollande's Socialist government has saved the West from a deal that would all but guarantee that Iran becomes a nuclear power.
While the negotiating details still aren't fully known, the French made clear Saturday that they objected to a nuclear agreement that British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama were all too eager to sign. These two leaders remind no one, least of all the Iranians, of Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. That left the French to protect against a historic security blunder, with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declaring in an interview with French radio that while France still hopes for an agreement with Tehran, it won't accept a "sucker's deal."'
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579185651742048532
Fwd: recognizers
'The London police at Scotland Yard, like the police everywhere, use all kinds of technology to solve crimes, such as DNA evidence, modern forensics and fingerprints. However, they've also discovered that the best tool in fact may be the oldest tool: the human eyeball.
British officials have discovered that not all eyeballs are the same. They found out something they were not expecting at Scotland Yard a couple of years ago.
During the week of street rioting and looting that was the low-light of the 2011 London summer, much of the lawlessness was captured on security cameras, but unless those breaking the law could actually be identified, the images were useless as a policing tool.
Much vaunted computer facial recognition software was supposed to be able to spot the faces of known criminals in the crowd. Except, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, something else worked better.
"We had 4,000 images and we put them through the facial recognition software. It picked out one suspect," said Neville. "I've got one officer here, P.C. Gary Collins, he picked out 180 suspects. So the human is 180 times better than the magic machine."
Police Constable Gary Collins has now identified more than 600 suspects for all sorts of crimes over the years, suspects no other person or machine managed to spot. He never stops.
He told CBS News' Mark Phillips that it becomes an "addiction" and he doesn't always know what he's looking for, but he knows he's got the knack.
Collins is called a "super-recognizer" and the trick for Scotland Yard has been to identify others like him. They're working with a psychologist, Dr. Josh Davis, to try to find other police officers who are also good at it.'
2013-11-10
2013-11-09
2013-11-04
Fwd: 20% chance of Goldilocks
'Kepler space telescope finds Earth-size, potentially habitable planets are common
Roughly one in every five sunlike stars is orbited by a potentially habitable, Earth-size planet, meaning that the universe has abundant real estate that could be congenial to life, according to a new analysis of observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope.
Our Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor tens of billions of rocky worlds where water might be liquid at the surface, according to the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and discussed at a news conference in California. '
Fwd: Saudi Arabia
'The historic 15-minute phone call between President Barack Obama and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani may have cost the U.S. one of its key friends in the Middle East.
President Obama's phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani marks the first time the nations' leaders have communicated directly since 1979. What does this mean for their future relationship? NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been allies for some 80 years, with the U.S. offering military protection to the world's second-biggest oil producer.
But as relations warm between Tehran and Washington, Saudi Arabia last month signaled that it will "shift away from the U.S.," giving Secretary of State John Kerry plenty to discuss with King Abdullah when they meet on Monday.
Advertise | AdChoices
Riyadh is deeply skeptical of Iran's charm offensive and frustrated by an alleged lack of consultation over Washington's changing stance toward a country once branded as a member of the so-called "axis of evil."
Only five years ago, the Saudis urged the U.S. to strike Iran -- which is situated just across the Persian Gulf from the kingdom. The Saudi government fears that the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon would seriously threaten its national security.'
Brazil
‘Brazil’s government acknowledged on Monday that its top intelligence agency had spied on diplomatic targets from countries including the United States, Iran and Russia, putting Brazilian authorities in the uncomfortable position of defending their own surveillance practices after repeatedly criticizing American spying operations.’
2013-11-03
2013-11-01
Fwd: Roma
'heir names are as mysterious as their origins: Often called the Roma or the Romani people, they're also known as gitanos in Spain, Kale in Finland and Portugal, Manush or gitan in France and Travelers in Scandinavia.
And almost everywhere they go, they're referred to -- somewhat pejoratively -- as gypsies, a people who have migrated throughout the world over the course of several centuries.
The Roma have one of the most dramatic stories in human history, but few people know their ancient tale of travel, persecution and survival. Here are five intriguing facts about the Romani people:…'
http://news.discovery.com/human/life/5-intriguing-facts-about-the-roma-131024.htm
2013-10-31
Fwd: Dark Matter
'The former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, S.D., has a hallowed place in the history of physics as a spot where nothing happens.
It was there, in the 1970s, that Raymond Davis Jr. attempted to catch neutrinos, spooky subatomic particles emitted by the sun, in a vat of cleaning fluid a mile underground and for a long time came up empty. For revolutionizing the study of those particles, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002.
On Wednesday, an international team of physicists based in the same cavern of the former mine announced a new milestone of frustration, but also hope — this time in the search for dark matter, the mysterious, invisible ingredient that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the cosmos.
In the first three months of running the biggest, most sensitive dark matter detector yet — a vat of 368 kilograms of liquid xenon cooled to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit — the researchers said they had not seen a trace of the clouds of particles that theorists say should be wafting through space, the galaxy, the Earth and, of course, ourselves, knocking out at least one controversial class of dark matter candidates.
But the experiment has just begun and will run for all of next year. The detector, already twice as sensitive as the next best one, will gain another factor of sensitivity in the coming run.
"Just because we don't see anything in the first run doesn't mean we won't see anything in the second," said Richard Gaitskell, a professor of physics at Brown University and a spokesman for an international collaboration that operates the experiment known as LUX, for the Large Underground Xenon dark matter experiment.
As has become de rigueur for such occasions, the scientists took pride and hope in how clearly they did not see anything. "In 25 years of searching, this is the cleanest signal I've ever seen," Dr. Gaitskell said in an interview.'
2013-10-29
Maryland 20-Year-Old Dies Never Having Aged
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/maryland-20-year-dies-aged/story?id=20712718
2013-10-20
Fwd: De Blasio
'The scruffy young man who arrived in Nicaragua in 1988 stood out.
He was tall and sometimes goofy, known for his ability to mimic a goose's honk. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters.
Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.
As he seeks to become the next mayor of New York City, Mr. de Blasio, the city's public advocate, has spoken only occasionally about his time as a fresh-faced idealist…
Mr. de Blasio… grew to be an admirer of Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista party, thrusting himself into one of the most polarizing issues in American politics at the time. The Reagan administration denounced the Sandinistas as tyrannical and Communist, while their liberal backers argued that after years of dictatorship, they were building a free society with broad access to education, land and health care.'
Fwd: Iran
'An estimated 560 people have been executed in Iran this year, including as many as 250 since President Hasan Rouhani took office in August, according to human rights advocates. In the two weeks between Sept. 11 and Sept. 25, Iranian officials hanged a record 50 people, mostly for drug offenses, according to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran…
But the phone conversation is not believed to have touched on human rights violations, despite the fact that Iran's prisons are filled with journalists, bloggers, political activists, Christians and Bahai's who have been arrested and are being held for compromising national security or going against the teachings of Islam.'
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/16/iran-brutality-continues-despite-charm-offensive/
Fwd: not amused
'Yeah, there is a debt deal. But the president is not impressed. We do not know what McKayla Maroney thinks about it.'
I had no idea who the picture was of, but it reminded me of the queen Victoria thing J
Fwd: Brazil
'The largest and most organized criminal organization in Brazil has threatened to unleash a "World Cup of Terror" during the world's biggest soccer stage in the summer of 2014.
Just eight months before Brazil hosts the World Cup, Brazilian police have intercepted phone calls using wiretaps from the First Capital Command (PCC) drug cartel threatening a series of attacks during the World Cup if the government decides to transfer some of its gang members to prisons spread across the South American country, according to Brazilian newspaper Estadao.
The PCC was formed in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, and operates within the country's prison system. Using cell phones, lawyers and corrupt officials, the criminal gang has managed to grow to an estimated 11,000 members and gain control of the country's major drug trafficking routes between Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay.
The threat is being taken seriously by Brazilian police who are tracking the threats and are currently locked in a street war with the gang. The PCC murdered 106 members of the Military Police in 2012 after revenge attacks were ordered by the gang in response to the execution by police of suspected gang members.'
Fwd: debt
Fwd: Oreo
'Connecticut College students and a professor of neuroscience have found "America's favorite cookie" is just as addictive as cocaine – at least for lab rats. And just like most humans, rats go for the middle first.
In a study designed to shed light on the potential addictiveness of high-fat/ high-sugar foods, Professor Joseph Schroeder and his students found rats formed an equally strong association between the pleasurable effects of eating Oreos and a specific environment as they did between cocaine or morphine and a specific environment. They also found that eating cookies activated more neurons in the brain's "pleasure center" than exposure to drugs of abuse. '
'A recent study was picked up a lot by the media, claiming that "Oreos are as addictive as drugs". Just to get that out of the way as soon as possible, this headline, as flashy and attractive it is, is flawed. I'll explain why in this post…
The question which naturally arises after that is: If you stop eating Oreos, do you experience Oreo withdrawal? This is basically the difference between things you really like and things you're addicted to – the difference between physiological addiction (addiction to a drug) and psychological addiction.'
http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/mind-and-brain/oreo-addictive-drugs-16102013/
2013-10-18
2013-10-13
Fwd: Alzheimers
The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease has been hailed as the "turning point" in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.
More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients.
But scientists say a resulting medicine could treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other diseases.
In tests on mice, the Medical Research Council showed all brain cell death from prion disease could be prevented.
Prof Roger Morris, from King's College London, said: "This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's disease."
He told the BBC a cure for Alzheimer's was not imminent but: "I'm very excited, it's the first proof in any living animal that you can delay neurodegeneration.
"The world won't change tomorrow, but this is a landmark study."'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24462699
Best wishes,
John Coffey
http://www.entertainmentjourney.com
2013-10-11
Fwd: Debt
'Shortly before President Barack Obama was re-elected, he confided to John Podesta, an informal adviser, a vow he was making for his second term: He would never again bargain with Republicans to extend the U.S. debt limit.
The precedent, set in the agreement that ended a 2011 budget standoff, "sent a signal that this was fair game to blackmail over whether the country would default," Podesta, a onetime chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and co-chairman of Obama's 2008 presidential transition, said in an interview. "He feels like he has to end it and end it forever."
The stand Obama has taken on the latest fight over the government shutdown and borrowing limit -- refusing to tie policy conditions to raising the debt ceiling -- is an attempt to repair some of the damage that he and his aides believe he sustained by making concessions to Republicans to avert a default two years ago, according to former top administration officials and advisers.
The resolution of the showdown with House Republicans will be critical to maintaining Obama's capacity to wield his clout in Washington during the three years left in his presidency and protect the political initiatives of his first term, they say.
The outcome will probably help determine his leverage to press for new priorities such as a revamp of immigration law, expanded access to pre-kindergarten education and infrastructure funding. It may also stave off attacks on his health-care law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
If Obama makes concessions again to House Republicans over raising the $16.7 trillion debt limit, "he'll be viewed as a guy who you can hold up," said Podesta, chairman of the Center for American Progress, a Washington research group with close ties to the administration.'
Fwd: VIX
The VIX, sometimes nicknamed the market's "fear gauge," rises when investors anticipate more stock market volatility in the future.
It surged from 13.16 on Sept. 19 to 19.6 yesterday, before dropping this morning to 17 as of 12:07 p.m. That's less than half the VIX's peak of 48 reached during the 2011 debt crisis.
Along with the VIX and broad market measures, the administration is also currently closely watching near-term Treasury yields and credit default swaps on U.S. Treasury debt.
Credit-default swaps on U.S. Treasuries fell from a seven-month high, dropping three basis point to 37 basis points, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 21 basis points last month and about 65 basis points in 2011, the last time Congress played brinkmanship over the debt limit.'
2013-10-06
America's Richest (and Poorest) States
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/09/19/americas-richest-and-poorest-states/2/
Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2014
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/05/23/ten-brands-that-will-disappear-in-2014/2/
The best writing of the week, October 6
On Daniel Radcliffe
Susan Dominus profiles Daniel Radcliffe and his drive to move beyond the wizarding world.
The New York Times: Susan Dominus - Daniel Radcliffe’s Next Trick Is to Make Harry Potter Disappear
“I think there was a part in the back of my head that was going: This is all going to end. And you’re going to be left in this nice apartment. Just living here. And being reminded of what you did in your teenage years for the rest of your life.” David Thewlis, who played Professor Lupin in the Potter films, once said that even when Radcliffe was young he would “joke that he’d be in rehab by the time he was 18, and by 27 he’d be hosting a game show called ‘It’s Wizards!’ ”
On servers
Ashlee Vance takes a look at Facebook's cutting edge data centers being built near the Arctic Circle and how the company's efforts are changing the server business.
Bloomberg Businessweek: Ashlee Vance - Inside the Arctic Circle, Where Your Facebook Data Live
In the middle of a forest at the edge of town, the company in June opened its latest megasized data center, a giant building that comprises thousands of rectangular metal panels and looks like a wayward spaceship. By all public measures, it’s the most energy-efficient computing facility ever built, a colossus that helps Facebook process 350 million photographs, 4.5 billion “likes,” and 10 billion messages a day.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/6/4806068/the-best-writing-of-the-week-october-6
2013-10-05
RoboKind R50
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/bWhyExDKe4Q