"A lot of people tend to assume that there will be warning signs telling us that we need to get our fiscal house in order: China will slow down its bond purchases, interest rates will gradually rise. But in fact, the lesson of fiscal crises is that the "warning signs" we're watching for often are the crisis. Unless interest rates increase (or debt buying decrease--which is really the same thing) in a very gradual, orderly fashion, then by the time your interest rates rise, it is already too late to do anything easy; your debt service burden forces you into dramatic fiscal measures, or default.
According to economist Carmen Reinhart, who has made an intensive study of crises, there's no reason to expect the change to be orderly and gradual. She says the lesson of history is pretty unequivocal: interest rates are not a good predictorof who is about to tip into a crisis. People are willing to lend at decent rates, until suddenly they're barely willing to lend at all."
What a Crisis Looks Like - The Atlantic
"The magnificent part of this whole thing is that he's putting no effort whatsoever into concealing his prank. That's what I love about the guy. He knows that no level of clownery in a field of clowns will single him out as the one clown that doesn't really mean it."
Donald Trump: Magnificent Bastard - Dilbert
"HIS is the legend of the Algar Ferrari F50.
It begins with an airline pilot with such a taste for speed that he conned his way into driving the $729,000 roadster, then stole it, leaving a stunned Main Line car salesman behind.
The legend ends years later, after the government recovered the car and an FBI agent ran it into a tree in Kentucky.
Now the wrecked 1996 Ferrari is collecting dust somewhere, object of a legal brawl between the U.S. government and the insurance company that owns the car.
In a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year, Motors Insurance Corp. is asking the feds to pony up $750,000, the amount they say the car is worth now. The insurer also wants to know why the agent and a federal prosecutor were driving the 520-horsepower car in the first place.
The answer, one car-lover said, is simple. It's probably the same reason why pilot Tom H. Baker stole the car from Algar Ferrari/Maserati of Philadelphia in the first place.
"Everybody likes fast cars," said John Nardolilli, a private investigator whom Ferrari hired to help find the F50 after it was stolen.
On Sept. 16, 2003, Baker strolled in to the Algar dealership in Rosemont with a Rolex on his wrist, no driver's license, and iced blood running through his veins.
He had his eyes on the red 1996 Ferrari F50, No. 29 of only 349 built. Baker claimed he was a tech CEO from California who had flown in from Atlanta. He had a limo waiting outside, and was willing to wire the down payment that day - after a test drive.
Soon Baker was behind the wheel of the F50, described by one auto website as "part Batmobile and part ballistic missile." Baker sped away, leaving the Algar salesman on a suburban street in Villanova.
"Everyone was dumbfounded," said Detective Charles Craig of the Lower Merion Police Department. "This guy totally played the part."
Investigators initially believed that Baker had help, with an enclosed flatbed truck waiting nearby. He didn't.
"It really was one hell of a car," Richardson said. "One hell of a car."
Lots of vroom for questions in this stolen-car case - Philly.com
"Only a Wall Street analyst could be shocked by the fact that Apple beat estimates and guided lower. I know, I know…this is every analyst’s pet rock, but when your estimate is a full 20% off the mark you have to seriously consider another line of employment. You can’t be this wrong every single quarter and claim to be “analyzing” anything. The value added here by the analyst community is worse than negative."
SURPRISE, SURPRISE…APPLE BEATS ESTIMATES… - Pragmatic Capitalist
"Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.
British researchers on Wednesday revealed that iPhones (and 3G-enabled iPads) keep track of where you go, including timestamps, on a file that is backed up on your computer and shifted onto any new iPhone or iPad you get. Apple hasn't said why the file is created or whether the tracking can be prevented."
iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go - Guardian
"Let’s consider the butterfly. One of the most taxing movements in sports, the butterfly requires greater energy than bicycling at 14 miles per hour, running a 10-minute mile, playing competitive basketball or carrying furniture upstairs. It burns more calories, demands larger doses of oxygen and elicits more fatigue than those other activities, meaning that over time it should increase a swimmer’s endurance and contribute to weight control.
So is the butterfly the best single exercise that there is? Well, no. The butterfly “would probably get my vote for the worst” exercise, said Greg Whyte, a professor of sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University in England and a past Olympian in the modern pentathlon, known for his swimming. The butterfly, he said, is “miserable, isolating, painful.” It requires a coach, a pool and ideally supplemental weight and flexibility training to reduce the high risk of injury.
Ask a dozen physiologists which exercise is best, and you’ll get a dozen wildly divergent replies.
When pressed, Martin Gibala, the chairman of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, suggested one of the foundations of old-fashioned calisthenics: the burpee, in which you drop to the ground, kick your feet out behind you, pull your feet back in and leap up as high as you can. “It builds muscles. It builds endurance.”
“I personally think that brisk walking is far and away the single best exercise,” said Michael Joyner, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a leading researcher in the field of endurance exercise.
“I nominate the squat,” said Stuart Phillips, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and an expert on the effects of resistance training on the human body. The squat “activates the body’s biggest muscles, those in the buttocks, back and legs.” It’s simple.
The squat, and weight training in general, are particularly good at combating sarcopenia, he said, or the inevitable and debilitating loss of muscle mass that accompanies advancing age. “Each of us is experiencing sarcopenia right this minute,” he said. “We just don’t realize it.” Endurance exercise, he added, unlike resistance training, does little to slow the condition.
“I think, actually, that you can make a strong case for H.I.T.,” Gibala said. High-intensity interval training, or H.I.T. as it’s familiarly known among physiologists, is essentially all-interval exercise.
The only glaring inadequacy of H.I.T. is that it builds muscular strength less effectively than, say, the squat. But even that can be partially remedied, Gibala said: “Sprinting up stairs is a power workout and interval session simultaneously.”Meaning that running up steps just might be the single best exercise of all. Great news for those of us who could never master the butterfly."
What’s the Single Best Exercise? - NYT
"In Tokyo Thursday night, the impact of the catastrophe 240 kilometers to the north was beginning to fade. True, electricity shortages dimmed the lights of Shinjuku, Akihabara, and other commercial districts; traffic moved smoothly through even the most densely populated corners of the city, reflecting concerns about gasoline distribution and generalized anxiety. There were still runs on bottled mineral water and packaged foods, and shelves stood empty in many convenience stores. Giant television screens at intersections in Shibuya continued to broadcast updates around the clock. Still, in contrast to the atmosphere of abandonment, creepiness, and fear that characterized the buffer and exclusion zones, the city was bustling, getting back to normal. And, after the initial outpouring of concern for the victims of the earthquake, darker feelings had begun to surface. One factory owner I had spoken to in the exclusion zone had told me that children evacuated from Fukushima prefecture—especially from the exclusion and buffer zones—and sent to centers in Tokyo and other cities were now being singled out for rough treatment in elementary schools. Their classmates were shunning them and taunting them as being “irradiated.” He worried that his own 2-year-old daughter would face similar problems. “These disaster victims need help not only physically but psychologically,” he told me. As Japan reckons with its latest nuclear tragedy, the suffering endured by the hibakushas still weighs heavy on the land."
Inside the Danger Zone - Newsweek
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