Is Japan’s ‘lost decade’ a window to the future?

November 23, 2008 at 10:01 pm | Posted in Lifescape | Leave a comment
clipped from www.theglobeandmail.com
the credit and asset bubble that built up in the United States was the biggest in history. At the peak of Japan’s bubble, it needed three yen of credit to make one yen of national income. The United States needed eight dollars of credit for every dollar of income. In Japan, the bubble grew for only about five years in the high-flying late 1980s. In the United States, the credit binge has been going on for a couple of decades.
clipped from www.theglobeandmail.com
Japan had some advantages that the United States lacks.
it was (and still is) a creditor nation, with more money flowing in than out.
That is important because a deficit nation such as the United States will find it harder to finance the rising debts that it will incur to dig itself out of the current mess.
Americans entered their crisis with a savings rate of zero. In Japan, it was 16 to 17 per cent.
average U.S. household has a debt equivalent to 160 per cent of its income

Little known Fun Facts..

November 23, 2008 at 9:56 pm | Posted in Lifescape | 1 Comment
may be you know…
clipped from littleknownfactsshow.com
If the sun stopped shining suddenly, it would take eight minutes
for people on earth to be aware of the fact.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones
crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.

A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

Any month that starts on a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th
in it.

“Fortnight” is a contraction of “fourteen nights.” In the US
“two weeks” is more commonly used.

The base of the Great Pyramid of Egypt is large enough to cover
10 football fields.

The highest point of the earth, with an elevation of 29,141 feet,
is the top of Mt. Everest in Tibet.

The lowest temperature ever recorded in the world was 129 degrees
below 0 at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

The monastic hours are matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones,
vespers and compline.

There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year.
The most snow accumulation in a one-day period was 75.8 inches
at Silver Lake, Colorado, in April 1921.

Your Instant Bob Dylan Player

November 23, 2008 at 9:52 pm | Posted in Lifescape | Leave a comment
clipped from dylan-ttr-blindwilly.blogspot.com
Dylan’s Blindwilly

A place for the XML Theme Time radioshows of Bob Dylan
clipped from www.dylanradio.com

Tune in with your media player

(eg: WinAmp/iTunes/WMP/MPC)
Tune in via flash popup player

(Popups must be allowed)

Cyber-attack Hammers The Pentagon

November 23, 2008 at 9:39 pm | Posted in Lifescape, Reactions | Leave a comment
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Vice President Dic...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

All external devices are banned.
clipped from www.foxnews.com
The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of
external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVD‘s, FOX News has learned.
The attack came in the form of a global
virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks.
“We have detected a global virus for
which there has been alerts, and we have seen some of this on our networks,”�a Pentagon official told FOX News. “We are
now taking steps to mitigate the virus.”
“Daily there are millions of scans of the GIG, but for security reasons we don’t discuss the number
of actual intrusions or attempts, or discuss specific measures commanders in the field may be taking to protect and defend
our networks,” the department said in an official statement.�
“Due to the presence of commercial malware, CDR USSTRATCOM has banned the use of removable media
(thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately.”
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The weakening of Rome…similarities to the U.S. today

November 23, 2008 at 1:58 pm | Posted in Dissection, Lifescape, Lifestyle, Mindscape, People, Reactions, Reviews | Leave a comment
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comune di Roma

Image via Wikipedia

This description of the years preceeding the fall of Rome reminds me a lot of the culture of the United States these days. The pride, hard work, humility and dedication of generation’s past seems gone. We watch shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Biggest Loser, Dancing with the Stars and don’t want to be bothered by real issues, real concerns, real challenges. We drive SUVs that eat up tremendous amounts of gas, despite knowing the political and environmental side effects of doing so. And our smartest go straight to wall street to manage hedge funds that get in and out of stocks with indifference…without any output or benefit to the world other than to squeeze money out of the system (more money that actually exists it turns out). I hope that we are somehow strong and honest enough to recognize the errors of our ways and get so that we can someday get back to better days.
clipped from www.financialsense.com
What led to Rome’s weakening? In describing the city of Rome in the middle of the fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote of the vanity and materialism of his contemporaries. Rome became great through virtue, he argued, and virtue had given way to vice. Decades before the barbarians broke into the empire, causing the economy to unravel, the Romans were focused on entertainment and self-gratification. “In this state of things,” wrote Marcellinus, “the few houses which once had the reputation of being centers of serious culture are now given over to the trivial pursuits of passive idleness…
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(‘the’ is a basic word)
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The Secret to staying Madly in Love

November 23, 2008 at 1:50 pm | Posted in Dissection, Humaneness, Lifescape, Lifestyle, People, Relations, Reviews | Leave a comment
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Kiss in Sa Pa

Image via Wikipedia

It’s all in the head….
clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk
THE SECRET to staying madly in love for life is hidden at the heart of your brain – a finding that may lead to new strategies for keeping alive passionate partnerships, say New York scientists.
Researchers led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine recruited 17 men and women who still love their spouses intensely after two decades of marriage, then scanned their brains as they saw their loved ones’ photos. When they compared the results with scans of 17 people who had fallen in love in the previous year, they found that the same area of the brain, the ventral tegmental area, lit up.
One of the authors, Helen Fisher, told the Society for Neuroscience‘s annual meeting this week: “If you ask people around the world whether romantic love can last, they’ll roll their eyes and say ‘probably not’. Most textbooks say that too. We are proving them wrong.”
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God Trumps

November 23, 2008 at 1:44 pm | Posted in Lifescape | Leave a comment
In the wake of Michell Jackson metamorphosing into a Muslim, his latest antics, here is a guide to follow.
clipped from newhumanist.org.uk
Struggling to choose the top religion? Can’t decide between Bible-thumping evangelism or benign, gentle Buddhism? Make the process fun and easy with God Trumps, our cut-out-and-keep metaphysical card game for all the family. Cartoons by Martin Rowson.
Church of England card for God Trumps
Jehovah's Witness card for God Trumps
Born Again card for God Trumps
Scientologist card for God Trumps
Catholic card for God Trumps
Muslim card for God Trumps
Hindu card for God Trumps
Humanist card for God Trumps
Agnostic card for God Trumps
Buddhist card for God Trumps
Orthodox Jewish card for God Trumps
Zoroastrian card for God Trumps
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