Equality
The emergence of a small group of people increasing their wealth when a large group are struggling is laying the foundation for future problems.
First wealth. A recently released study says that the inequality in wealth throughout the world is extreme and growing more so. The report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University paints an informative picture of the world's wealth distribution as of 2000, the last year for which figures are available. It states that the top 1% of the world's population - about 37 million adults - had net assets (note: not income) worth at least $500,000. This constituted approximately 40% of the world's assets.
In contrast, the top 50% of the world's people owned a bit less than 99% of the wealth, and this translated into a median wealth (half the world's population having more, half less) of just over $2,000. To be in the top 10% required net assets worth about $60,000.
Remember that the new oppressed are well educated and will not accept this unfairness.
Here, the revelations of recent tribunals and the patent unfairness where the value of a house increases tax free compared with an earned income which is taxed at up to 41% is storing up trouble.
3quarksdaily
A Paulin conversion
I am suspicious...
You batter your head against the door until you begin to wonder whether it is a door at all. Suddenly it opens, and you find yourself flying through space. The superstores’ green conversion is astonishing, wonderful, disorienting. If Tesco and Walmart have become friends of the earth, are any enemies left?
These were the most arrogant of the behemoths. They have trampled their suppliers, their competitors and even their regulators. They have smashed local economies, broken the backs of the farmers, forced their contractors to drive down wages, shrugged off complaints with a superciliousness born of the knowledge that they were unchallengeable. For them, it seemed, there was no law beyond the market, no place too precious to be destroyed, no cost they could not pass to someone else.
... the leopard changing its spots.
3quarksdaily
Can I?
Can I park or can't I? I am entitled to use a disabled space but is this one or not?
I'm keen not to get clamped and John Waters recent rant in the Irish Times, (behind a paywall) but repeated by
Susan Carey, has made me very sensitive. I would like to be sure as this part of Jervis Street is a 24 hour clearway. In the end I took no chances and put the car in the Jervis car park at their exorbitant rates. I can see why the out of town centres are so popular as I only wanted to look for a book in Waterstones.
Update: The City Council wrote to me to say that they altered the parking arrangements in Jervis Street as part of the Christmas Freeflow operation (a special effort to help traffic move in the city centre during the Christmas period). They say that everything has now returned to normal. I will have a look the next time I am around that area.
Speed, Heat, Sand.
Some spectacular
photographs of the Lisbon to Dakar rally.
The dragon rejects coffee
One of the most incongruous sights of the globalised age - the Starbucks coffee shop inside Beijing's Forbidden City - could soon be a thing of the past after a furious online campaign for it to be relocated outside the palace's 600-year-old walls.
In response to this latest demonstration of “netizen” power in China, the guardians of the ancient site have announced plans to review the presence of the Seattle-based coffee chain. A decision on its future will be made within six months, the local media reported today.
...The trigger was a blog entry posted on Monday by Rui Chenggang, a TV anchorman, who called for a web campaign against the outlet that, he wrote in his blog, "tramples over over Chinese culture".
According to local media, half a million people have signed his online petition...
Guardian
The fine art of procrastination
I was putting off reading this blog but this caught my eye...
I am a moderate procrastinator. Even when I believe that I would be best served by finishing a task (say, filing this story), I will occasionally put it off in favor of some short-term reward (like a much needed caffeine fix). This tendency on my part to delay what is in my long-term interest can now be explained by a simple mathematical equation, according to industrial psychologist Piers Steel of the University of Calgary.
Steel developed the equation U = E x V / I x D, where U is the desire to complete the task; E, the expectation of success; V, the value of completion; I, the immediacy of task; and D, the personal sensitivity to delay, as a way of mathematically mapping a given individual's procrastination response. So, for example, my desire to finish this article is influenced by my relative confidence in writing it well and the prospect of a paycheck as well as a looming deadline and my inherent desire to go home at the end of the day. "You're more likely to put something off if you're a very impulsive individual," Steel says. But, "if you only work at the last minute, time on task tells."
...you can read
more at 3quarksdaily
Worms may keep multiple sclerosis at bay
As a person who has multiple sclerosis I find all related to it interesting...
Could a spoonful of worm eggs help patients to fight the crippling symptoms of a nerve disease? Perhaps, say scientists who suggest that patients with multiple sclerosis can benefit from certain types of parasitic infection.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the body's own defence cells attack protective nerve tissue. This can cause pain and problems with vision, movement, memory and thinking. But scientists in Argentina have published a study claiming that these symptoms of the disease may be lessened in people whose immune system has been affected by a parasite.
...help may come from the strangest places.
3quarksdaily
The statin/Parkinson's link
New research showing a strong link between Parkinson's disease and low levels of "bad" cholesterol are so worrying that U.S. researchers are launching a study to look into it.
The team at the University of North Carolina is planning clinical trials involving thousands of people to see whether statin drugs, which lower low density lipoprotein, or LDL, might actually cause Parkinson's in some people.
Other research has for several years suggested that people with abnormally low levels of LDL might be at higher risk of Parkinson's.
Xuemei Huang and colleagues found that patients with low levels of LDL cholesterol are at least three and a half times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease than those with higher LDL levels.
... Oh dear... I've been on them for twelve years ...pass the butter please.
ReutersHat Tip
mcarthurweb
All at sea
I was looking at an advertisement in this weeks travel magazine in the
Sunday Independent. It was for a 'Captains Special' cruise lauding their best ever offer. No I'm not taking one, thanks, or even thinking of it. After reading the ad my eye was caught by the very small print 'Prices exclude a compulsory fuel levy of €58'
It's time that the
advertising standards authority stopped the inclusion of compulsory payments in the small print.
Some thoughts on English Writing
A useful tool.
40+ Tips to improve your grammar and punctuation.I have a lot to learn. What have I been doing all these years? Sigh.
Hat tip
Bits & Pieces
Not fit for purpose
The Irish Medical Service continues as a source of controversy. The
Pat Kenny show RTE Monday at 10 55 had a very interesting interview with Dr Donal Hickey a consultant urologist at Beaumont Hospital. He is familiar with the Cuban health service and argues persuasively that there is a lot we can learn from it.
The real question seems to me to be - are the vested interests, medical and government, prepared to listen and to acknowledge there may be a better way?
Beyond argument the present system is not 'fit for purpose'.
Good things happen when you do good.
To balance the depressing news coming out of Iraq...
...50-year-old construction worker Wesley Autrey leaped onto a Manhattan subway track as a train approached to save the life of a man who had fallen after suffering a seizure. Unable to pull him up in time, Mr Autrey placed his own body over that of the other man, holding him down in the low trench between the tracks as the train carriages passed millimetres above his head.
"We're OK down here," he yelled, in true Hollywood style, as the train stopped above, onlookers' screams turning to applause.
...according to Mr Autrey, ..."Good things happen when you do good."
Guardian
I hope not
I had a lovely Christmas and hope you had.
It seems others have different hopes as this advertisement was in the Irish Times for the last few days.
Very Happy New Year to all.Update On the Marrion Finucane show
RTE Sunday this ad got very unfavorable comment. All the panel felt it was in very bad taste and hitting at people who might be in a vulnerable period.
Look forward to a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority - though as they have no teeth it doesn't really matter. Perhaps the ASA should be reviewed and made statutory?
