Robert Reich Explains the ‘Austerity Trap’ Robert Reich Explains the ‘Austerity Trap’ Posted on May 8, 2012 “When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets? That’s insane. Because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is … the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall,” the former secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration says about the backwardness of the budget cuts being imposed by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. “If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. “Now we’re gonna come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got these sequestration cuts coming up. Reich continues on “Democracy Now! Democracy Now! New and Improved Comments If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. 10 Fun, Weird and Interesting Facts.
Untitled. A goldfish has a three-second memory right? We have all been told that before… Well in fact no they don’t, this idea was challenged by a study which found that goldfish remember to avoid an area of their tank connected with tiny electronic shocks for at least 24 hours. A goldfish is the only fish that can see infra-red and ultraviolet light. Goldfish came from China with several hundred different types developing over the years. Goldfish naturally live in freshwater ponds with a depth up to 20m, which is about 65ft and the temperature between 40 and 90°F, (4 to 40°C) goldfish do not survive long at higher temperatures than this.
They cannot be mixed with tropical fish, because the temperature would be too high. Goldfish prefer not to be mixed with other fish too. Goldfish can live up to 10 years although the average is about 5 years. Goldfish need room to swim; therefore putting them in bowls is not a good idea. Written By Luke Ward Luke Ward is the founder of The Fact Site. Animal did you knows. Contents. Xkcd. Human-Body-Facts-2-copy.jpg (JPEG Image, 620 × 8050 pixels) Inside Lascaux: A LIFE Magazine Photographer's Amazing Story, 1947. The story is so improbable, so marvelous, that it feels more like the remnant of a dream, or a half-remembered myth, rather than something that unfolded within living memory. . . . September 12, 1940. A warm afternoon in southwestern France. As two schoolboys hunt rabbits on a ridge covered with pine, oak and blackberry brambles, their dog, Robot, excitedly chases a hare down a hole in the ground beside a downed tree.
As boys will, the youngsters begin to dig, widening the hole, removing rocks — until they find themselves not merely in another world, but another time. In the cool dark beneath the known world, the boys discover “a Versailles of prehistory” — a vast series of caves, today collectively known as Lascaux, covered with wall paintings roughly 17,000 years old. “LIFE re-opened its Paris bureau after the second World War ended, in the same offices we rented before the war” Morse said. “The first sight of those paintings was simply unbelievable,” Morse said. Places. Ani – Ghost City of 1001 Churches. Ani – some call it the City of 1001 Churches, others the City of Forty Gates. Yet no one has called it home for more than three centuries. Abandoned by its once prosperous and powerful inhabitants, it is situated on the Turkish side of a militarised zone between the border of Turkey and Armenia.
The city of Ani is no stranger to death, destruction and desertion. It is a ghost city today but once its Armenian inhabitants numbered close to 200 thousand. In its heyday it was a metropolis which rivalled Constantinople, Cairo or Baghdad as a center of culture and enterprise. Although it was never on traditional trade routes its sheer size and power commanded visits by merchants from all directions. The city is the victim of a colossal and centuries old struggle for power between various factions in the region. Almost each time a faction rose to power the city was ransacked almost to the point of obliteration. A pair of quarrelling siblings would start Ani’s protracted but inexorable decline. IBM: 'We must build an Exascale computer before 2024' (video) From Big Bang to Big Data: ASTRON and IBM Collaborate to Explore Origins of the Universe - Partners to research the exascale computer systems that are needed for what will become the world's largest radio telescope - Initial 32 million EURO, five-year collaboration will materialize in Drenthe, the Netherlands at the newly established ASTRON & IBM Center for Exascale Technology - System will be targeted to investigate high performance technologies required to read, store and analyze one exabyte of raw data per day, two times the entire daily traffic on the World Wide Web Drenthe, the Netherlands and Zurich, Switzerland, DATE: ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced an initial 32 million EURO, five-year collaboration to research extremely fast, but low-power exascale computer systems targeted for the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Introducing the SKA A History of Collaboration. Ten Most Extreme Substances Known to Man | Ten Most. Interesting Trivia?! & Matt's Notes - StumbleUpon. When you’re finished reading, check out the new trivial posts: More Interesting Trivia and Even More Interesting Trivia. Mum sent me this so it has to be true – right? Here are some ‘facts’ about the 1500s: They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery…….if you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor” But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot, they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low. Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good byJune. However, since they were starting to smell . .. . brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. The floor was dirt. Like this: 100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body. The Brain The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb.
Hair and Nails While they’re not a living part of your body, most people spend a good amount of time caring for their hair and nails. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. Internal Organs Though we may not give them much thought unless they’re bothering us, our internal organs are what allow us to go on eating, breathing and walking around. Bodily Functions Senses. Amazing and Interesting Facts Generator – Mental Floss. Touchscreens: How they work. Culture Connoisseur Badge Culture Connoisseurs consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on the arts, lifestyle and entertainment.
More about badges | Request a badge Washingtologist Badge Washingtologists consistently post thought-provoking, timely comments on events, communities, and trends in the Washington area. Post Writer Badge This commenter is a Washington Post editor, reporter or producer. Post Contributor Badge This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post Recommended Washington Post reporters or editors recommend this comment or reader post. You must be logged in to report a comment. You must be logged in to recommend a comment. Most Soft Drinks Contain a Small Amount of Alcohol. Scope.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object) Infographics & Data Visualizations - Visual.ly.
15 Things You Should Know about Caffeine | HomeownersInsurance.org.
10 Amazing Facts About Our Oceans. Tesla: Master of Lightning. Paleontology. Fossils Of 500 Million Year Old Marine Predator Anomalocaris Discovered | FinestDaily. ShareShare A recent discovery in the field of paleontology reveals probably the oldest predator known to man. The fossils found on Kangaroo Island are being studied by scientists from the University of Adelaide, Australia. The fossilized eyes belonged to the 500 million-year-old Anomalocaris, a marine creature believed to be at the top of the food chain in prehistoric times.
A full story regarding this subject will be available in December’s issue of Nature. Taking into consideration the studies so far, it seems that the Anomalocaris had extremely acute vision, considered better than any other insects or crustaceans, even by today’s standards. Although this meter-long creature would make a good subject for a science fiction movie, its grasping claws, circular mouth, strange appearance and sharp serrations prove to be quite real, in perspective. These fossils make the Anomalocaris the ancestor of today’s arthropods, alongside other evolutionary implications that affect a lot of species. 5 Ways Porn Created the Modern World. Looking back at all the progress humanity has made through the last century, it's perfectly natural to feel a little bit moved by the power of human ingenuity and our thrive for constant improvement.
It's natural, but also totally wrong. Because if you really look into the history of our technological development, you'll notice that the force driving us forward all this time wasn't our need to better ourselves or seek out truth in all its forms, but rather our desire to see naked people touch each other's junk. "Oh yeah, now I can see them waaay better" Home Video Technologies Nearly the entire technological world as you know it today owes its thanks to pornography: Take VHS for example. Before CDs or DVDs came along, the videotape cassette was the hottest shit since the Human Torch got drunk and binged on Taco Bell Fire Sauce. You know who else used VCRs?
To watch porn, of course. It also saved billions in dry-cleaning bills. Masturbation is the mother of invention. This is Pietro Aretino. MIT Paper Works out Paradox; Fry may not be own Grandfather. It would appear that longstanding and tricky paradox of time travel, that one who travels backward in time could conceivably influence it to the point where the time travel couldn’t have happened is dead. All hail the longstanding and tricky paradox. This, the “grandfather paradox,” is so named because of the thought experiment used to illustrate it. A time traveler could theoretically go back in the past and murder his own grandfather, which would render the time traveler non extant, and thus would lead to the paradox of the time traveler never having been able to go back in time in the first place.
Pudding. The same holds true in a less dramatic fashion for subatomic particles like quarks and photons, which hold a much higher likelihood of ever traveling into the past, based on the strange, spooky behavior they’ve demonstrated for the people who’ve studied and been alarmed by them thus far. This little conundrum made time travel fundamentally dangerous, if not impossible. 25 Amazing Savant Minds.
7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics. The universe is full of weird substances like liquid metal and whatever preservative keeps Larry King alive. But mankind isn't happy to accept the weirdness of nature when we can create our own abominations of science that, due to the miracle of technology, spit in nature's face and call it retarded.
That's why we came up with... #7. Ferrofluids What do you get when you suspend nanoparticles of iron compounds in a colloidal solution of water, oil and a surfactant? A ferrofluid is a liquid that reacts to magnetic fields in trippy ways that make you think that science is both magical and potentially evil. Tell us that didn't look like the birth of the most sinister dildo ever. What happens is that when a magnetic field is applied to the fluid, the particles of iron compound inside align to it. What the Hell is it Used For? #6. It's not the brick in the picture up there, it's the stuff under the brick.
Every once in a while, science rules. #5. Balloon Gets Frozen In Liquid Nitrogen Video - Geeky. Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan | VICE News. Expressions & Sayings (A) Yosemite: Where a Waterfall Catches Fire. In nature's game, water beats fire -- which is why I'm dying to see a dramatic interpretation of the opposite at Horsetail Falls in Yosemite National Park. Apparently during the last two weeks of February, orange sunsets are reflected in the falls each evening, which makes the cascading water look like it's on fire. "Fire-water is falling from a cliff" is what your brain thinks. You're sitting at an El Capitan picnic table eating a sandwich, looking up at falling fire-water. What's funny is that even though nature already puts on a fantastic fire-water show at Yosemite, the park put on a similar man-made show for almost a century (as Atlas Obscura points out).
In the early 1900s, David Curry wanted to attract more campers to his Camp Curry site and he figured falling fire would do the trick. But that's OK because, like I said, the sun catches El Capitan's Horsetail Falls on fire every night for a couple of weeks in February. Here's a close-up of the environmentally friendly fire-water:
Human Thought Controls Neurons in Brain. Neuroscience research involving epileptic patients with brain electrodes surgically implanted in their medial temporal lobes shows that patients learned to consciously control individual neurons deep in the brain with thoughts. Subjects learned to control mouse cursors, play video games and alter focus of digital images with their thoughts. The patients were each using brain computer interfaces, deep brain electrodes and software designed for the research. The article below offers more detail. Controlling Individual Cortical Nerve Cells by Human Thought Five years ago, neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) , neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA, and their colleagues discovered that a single neuron in the human brain can function much like a sophisticated computer and recognize people, landmarks, and objects, suggesting that a consistent and explicit code may help transform complex visual representations into long-term and more abstract memories.
A rich club in the human brain. Wednesday, November 2, 2011 This image shows the group connectome, with the nodes and connections colored according to their rich-club participation. Green represents few connections. Red represents the most. Credit: Reprinted with permission: Van den Heuvel, et al. Just as the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought more attention to financial disparities between the haves and have-nots in American society, researchers from Indiana University and the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands are highlighting the disproportionate influence of so called "Rich Clubs" within the human brain.
Not all regions of the brain, they say, are created equal. "We've known for a while that the brain has some regions that are 'rich' in the sense of being highly connected to many other parts of the brain," said Olaf Sporns, professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in IU's College of Arts and Sciences. Indiana University: Science News. Geologic Time: Graphical Representation of Geologic Time. 10 Common Misconceptions Dispelled. Rocket stove mass heater. Space. 5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think.