EUROCARS IN TROUBLE & OTHER GEMS

(2006) THE ECONOMIST 9/2/

55/ Euro cars are in trouble. They can't move them. It appears that America is in the same shape.

What is happening. It's Japan. Most are buying Toyotas and Hondas.VW is taking the biggest beating.

64/ Yes, we are running dry. There are and will be  water wars. However, the big solution is capturing the rain and it can be done.Ag sucks up 95% of usable water, so the capturing of rain so that it does not run off or do some other endeavor means that we need more gizmos to catch the rain. Right now about 2 billion people or one third of the world is without a lot of water.

71/ Extremely short laser pulses can illuminate electrons in motion.This could lead to benefits in medicine and computers.

73/ Cider is good for you  and your heart.

75/ On the upper quartile of a Cartesian plane, a J CURVE  exist to explain the rise of democracies. If a country is on the path democracy, it starts at one level then dips with initial chaos and then re-emerges upward forming a J CURVE. Criticisms are noted. The author opposes forcing democracies on countries because they can handle it  or punishing some authoritarian governments while not others.

(2006) U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT   9/11

32-38/ The new normal is that things are no longer normal. Do you live in a big city? Do you live in the boonies where there is a chemical plant or nuclear powered plant or perhaps a coal plant. Think again for they are great targets to blow up parts of the USA.

56/ Norm Orenstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute indicates that it is hard to throw the bums out of the house and the senate because they are fairly well protected and feel comfortable doing the same things over and over.  At the moment, the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, but that can change.

60/ Central Asia has lots of oil too. We just have to get to it.

(2006) THE WEEK, 9/15/

8/ We have a new analogy that we are fighting World War III against Islam o-fascism. It sounds great and words matter, but unfortunately, it is not necessarily true. The Shia and Sunnis have been at war with each other for 1400 years. Other scattered groups don't like or work together At the moment George Bush has united all of them, but that won't last.

15/ In America charities started in the last gilded age. Some plutocrats could not spend all their money no matter how hard they tried, and so charities began.

20/ Labor unions are dying and wages have stagnated as profits have soared.

21/ Avoid marrying a career woman. The stats show the more she works, the more likely a divorce. However, it does not take into account the male who sits in front of the telly doing nothing except making funny noises with his body as she works on the second shift. Many men love their career women and a crying all the  way to the bank.