A Relentless Widening of Disparity in Wealth What if inequality were to continue growing years or decades into the future? Say the richest 1 percent of the population amassed a quarter of the nation’s income, up from about a fifth today. What about half? To believe Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, this future is not just possible. In his bracing “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which hit bookstores on Monday, Professor Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies. His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. It is possible to slow, or even reverse, the trend, if political leaders like President Obama, who proposed that income inequality was the “defining challenge of our time,” really push. Painstakingly assembling data from tax returns, Mr. Mr. Mr. It didn’t.
Artist Show Us What Celebs Would Like If They Lived Normal Lives With the wonders of Photoshop and the subtle artistic skills of artist Danny Evans, we are now able to see what some famous Hollywood stars would look like if they had lives the hum drum life the normal “man on the street” has lived, instead of following their glamorous lifestyles. As we all know, celebs go under lots of different treatments including fancy diets, personal trainers, tooth whitening, breast enlargement, hair removal, hair transplants, you name it, they do it. The thing with all these treatments is that they require stacks of cash. Without the millions of dollars these celebrities earn they would be left to fact up to life like the rest of us. These images below are so clever in showing us how they may look without having spent all this money. Starting off, we have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Source for image
To Touch Eternity | Eruditio Abstract Has humanity’s progress been hijacked by a pervasive scientific rationalism that trades spirituality and communality for cold efficiency? If so, does this cultural meme promise anything more than sterile technological miracles that, while solving past problems, ambush our ability to imagine how we might avoid civilized society descending into the barbaric once again? As old age beckons, many things become clear. Solitude comes too – mostly unpredictably, yet always welcome. But serene empathy can also bring dissonance. The alternative story, a gentler yet compelling narrative of compassion, inspiration and amity in which diversity and difference are virtues to be nurtured, is lost to all but a few enlightened souls – individuals who refuse to consign the joy of what it means to be human to computer programs or sterile numbers. “We have nobody to blame but ourselves. We are disinclined to admit this fracture in the human story for fear of appearing weak or foolish. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Here's What a 9.2 Earthquake Can Do to a City Having just lived through 10,000 quakes and aftershocks I can tell you that you better get your shit together if you live in a quake prone area. Work out where you will meet important people as chances are the cellular system will be overloaded (and on a related note don't get rid of your landline). Have an old cell phone with good battery and topped up SIM in it as smartphones suck in emergency. Something like an old Nokia that will last for days and days without a charge. The bike is your friend in a state of emergency, cars suck... all petrol stations close, all roads get blocked and in some cases (like ours) there is crazy amounts of flooding. Bikes can go way more places. Don't have any stupid heavy stuff on your walls unless extremely well secured. Make sure you have a decent supply of booze (and other stuff like food, but booze is key!!). Get a battery powered radio, keep a torch by your bed (you won't want to suck up your phone battery, trust me). Get to know your neighbours.
John Cassidy: Is Surging Inequality Endemic to Capitalism? In the stately world of academic presses, it isn’t often that advance orders and publicity for a book prompt a publisher to push forward its publication date. But that’s what Belknap, an imprint of Harvard University Press, did for “Capital in the Twenty-first Century,” a sweeping account of rising inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Reviewing the French edition of Piketty’s book, which came out last year, Branko Milanovic, a former senior economist at the World Bank, called it “one of the watershed books in economic thinking.” Piketty, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, has spent nearly two decades studying inequality. Part of Piketty’s motivation in returning home was cultural. In Paris, he joined the French National Center for Scientific Research, and, later, the Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where some of his heroes had taught. The question is what’s driving the upward trend. To back up his arguments, he provides a trove of data.
The Walking Dead trades cheap scares for a brutal, gut-wrenching shock Re: the burned zombies, they explained it a little on Talking Dead. They said that fire represents two things the decaying vision of zombies can still register: light and movement. So them wandering into the fire kind of makes sense. Also revealed on Talking Dead: the puzzle they were putting together was one of Sophia dressed in her rainbow shirt. I actually liked that they didn't overexplain Lizzie's crazy. Because I think it was the first time in the show we saw someone who was truly just broken. I just sat there with my hands over my mouth through the last quarter of the episode.
DEMOCRACY THE most striking thing about the founders of modern democracy such as James Madison and John Stuart Mill is how hard-headed they were. They regarded democracy as a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be designed carefully, in order to harness human creativity but also to check human perversity, and then kept in good working order, constantly oiled, adjusted and worked upon. The need for hard-headedness is particularly pressing when establishing a nascent democracy. One reason why so many democratic experiments have failed recently is that they put too much emphasis on elections and too little on the other essential features of democracy. Robust constitutions not only promote long-term stability, reducing the likelihood that disgruntled minorities will take against the regime. Foreign leaders should be more willing to speak out when rulers engage in such illiberal behaviour, even if a majority supports it. Video Democracy: A view from Cairo
20 Rare Historical Photos. Number 8 Is Haunting. 1. In 1972, as part of the Apollo 16 mission to the moon, astronaut Charles Duke embarked on a mission to the explore the moon's surface in a lunar roving vehicle. While there, he shot a picture of a photo of himself, his wife, and his two sons which was enclosed in plastic on the moon's surface, where it remains to this day. 2. This is The Statue of Liberty under construction in Paris in 1884. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Share these photos by clicking below
Bitcoin price in dollars will soon be irrelevant (it should be now) | Metaquestions I am very keen on Bitcoin, I was not in the beginning as I thought it had shortfalls. I was right about that, it does, I was dead wrong about these being an issue though. The bitcoin community is growing fast, the need for systems like this are beyond question now. I constantly hear, ‘how much is it worth now?’ We are entering a new world now, not one that requires regulation to bend it back into the shape of the old world (the one with the collapsed financial system). This won’t stop, just as people became educated after the Gutenberg press, so they have as the Internet grows. When I say bitcoin, I don’t mean cyber currencies, I actually mean bitcoin (the protocol). So back to the premiss of this short piece, the price of bitcoin in dollars, or pounds or euros etc. why does it not matter? As bitcoin grows and more people enter the cost of entry seems higher, this is not the case, the point is just enter at any cost that happens to be the cost of getting away from fiat currencies.
15 Quirky Gadgets and Accessories to Buy Today (May) It’s time for us to take another look at a bunch of quirky, imaginative and downright useful gadgets and accessories that you can buy today. Which one takes your fancy the most? For more inspiration, check out our 2013 holiday gift guide, our previous collection of gadgets and accessories for geeks and 15 quirky gadgets and accessories to buy today. You can view all 15 of these gadgets and accessories listed on one page here. Nixie Epoch Clock This eye-catching clock is crafted from maple hardwood, and includes easily replaceable display tubes. Click the image for more information
Why the Dollar Endures Photo ITHACA, N.Y. — Why hasn’t the dollar plunged? Since the 2007-8 global financial crisis, the public debt of the United States government has soared to $17.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to America’s annual gross domestic product. The Federal Reserve has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy in an attempt to spur lending — and, in effect, weaken the dollar. Uncle Sam’s credit rating was downgraded, for the first time ever, in 2011. All of these circumstances would predict, under normal economic theory, a decline in both the value and the importance of the dollar. Strangely, this hasn’t occurred — instead, quite the opposite. Over the last decade, experts have variously warned that the euro — or even the Chinese renminbi — might threaten the dominance of the dollar; almost no one seriously says that anymore. Most international trade and financial deals are still transacted in dollars. However, the dollar’s position as the predominant store of value in the world is secure.
mark's blog window: Panorama This is just a run through of how I stitched my panoramic together. I saved all my sequences to individual folders. I employed this method for all of the panoramic. The steps layed out here presuppose you have some understanding of Photoshop. Step 1 Open all the images from a sequence in Photoshop, compile them into stacked and layered image. Step 2 Using the crop tool extend the background. Step 3 Create a layer on the bottom and fill it with white. Step.4 Turn off the visibility on all the layers except the bottom white layer and the top two.Turn the uppermost layer to opacity 50%. Step 5. Step 6. Step 7. Step 8. Step 9. Repeat until all layers are in place. If you need to adjust the colour, density you can insert adjustment layer acting only on that layer.
Amsterdam embraces sharing economy The City of Amsterdam has made an important step towards the emerging sharing economy. Alderperson Ossel officialy announced the city will continue to allow residents renting out their own property to city visitors through platforms like Airbnb. With this resolution, Amsterdam is simultaneously moving further towards being a ‘Sharing City.’ ‘Occasional rental of privately-owned property as an additional form of accommodation dovetails with a hospitable Amsterdam’, Alderperson Ossel states. ‘We would like to congratulate Amsterdam with this promising decision’, says Harmen van Sprang, co-founder of shareNL. Will this news put Amsterdam on the map as a global forerunner of the sharing economy? ‘We are pleasantly surprised by all the attention for the sharing economy in the Netherlands’, Harmen says. Pieter adds: ‘My research shows that in Amsterdam, 84% of its inhabitants is willing to use one or more of the sharing economy initiatives. About shareNL © picture belongs to Shutterstock