A fellow author of this Blog, John Lewis, was chatting to me about a whole variety of items surrounding the Blog and future topics, etc. Our conversation strayed into flying and John asked if I had seen the YouTube extracts from the PBS Film about the USS Nimitz. I had not. They are gripping. Here is the first of the 10 minute videos. The second one is here.
A perishable skill? Watch and all will become clear.
Who really understood the forces of destruction building up in the global economy?
(This Post is longer than usual but doesn’t lend itself to being divided into multiple Posts – trust it is worth the read.)
Part One – How investing in the 80s was so hit and miss.
My education with respect to the sound management of one’s wealth came from a propitious mistake by a global insurance company, one of Britain’s largest insurance companies as it happens. Here’s the story.
Steve Keen – Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney.
I know didly squat about economics. I know a lot about the effect of economics in the sense of government policies, of inflation and debt, international trade and much more only in how they have impacted me over a lifetime of working, buying homes, raising a family, running a couple of businesses and now contemplating retirement. I can sum up my personal strategy – LUCK! I have been lucky. The other Post out today shows an example of that luck.
Frankly, economists haven’t figured widely in my role call of people that I admired, probably because I don’t really understand what they are talking about. (That’s why this Blog has a real live economist as part of the team, to help educate me and all the rest of the readers who come to this Blog!)
The other Post on this subject spoke of David Kauders, who clearly saw it coming. Now here’s an economist who also saw it coming, Steve Keen.
I was born in London some 6 months before the end of World War II. The echoes of that tragic event in human history rang around the torn roadways and ripped buildings of London for many years, certainly for sufficiently long that I was able to remember as a young boy, away on his bicycle, the bomb sites and and the gaps where once buildings had stood.
Sometimes, when the September weather is as it was during the Battle of Britain, it’s almost as though those echoes can still be faintly heard. Maybe all Londoners over a certain age hear them?
Richard Noble of Thrust SSC fame is at it again. This time fitting a ‘car’ with the engine from the Eurojet Typhoon fighter. The ambition is to break the 1,000 mph hour mark and up the land speed record set by Thrust SSC by more than 30%. Thrust SSC set the world land speed record in 1997 at the astounding speed of 763.035 mph (1221 km/h) or Mach 1.02.
In the middle of the BLOODHOUND SSC is the MCT V12 800 bhp race engine which doubles as our APU delivering hydraulic power as needed, starting the EJ200 and of course pumping the High Test Peroxide (HTP) through to the Falcon rocket. The pump has to move a ton of HTP through to the rocket catalyst in 22 seconds and at 1200 psi.
As someone said on the Flyer Forums, “So they’re not going for maximum mpg then…”
My guess is that most people still value the convenience and sheer pleasure of holding and reading a traditional paper book. It is difficult to think of a more pleasurable activity than browsing the shelves of a book-store or library. But the eBook also is carving out a valuable niche, it appears.
Thus it was a delight to come across a ‘store’ devoted to eBooks. Based in Paris, that virtual store is called Mobipocket. New to me but, perhaps, not to many others (I can sometimes be a little behind the new technology drag-curve!)
Nevertheless, a veritable labyrinth of virtual book shelves with prices often well below print prices. Here’s the WikiPedia background.
By Paul Handover (who has no commercial interest in promoting Mobipocket, not even a cent is earnt if you click through.)
When the original Post on Barnstorming was published on this Blog on September, 18th, we had an enormous response from viewers and the Post had one of the highest ever figures.
Anyway, the producers have just announced,
Announcing the Houston Premier of Barnstorming October 17! We will be screening the film at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum, Hobby Airport, Houston, Texas. Showtimes are 11:00 am and for the fundraising “Hobby Hangar Hop” in the evening. For more information visit the museum website!
Baseline Scenario publishes an interesting post and triggers a wise comment.
Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we greatly admire the job done by Simon Johnson, James Kwak and others over at Baseline Scenario in debating this global economic crisis.
The comments that flow in are fascinating and often deeply educational. Not surprising! Baseline Scenario has nearly 12,000 readers! But many of them show the level of anger and frustration felt by so many.
Anyway, a Post published by them on September 24th reminded me that hope is so much a more profitable emotion than anger. The Post starts like this,
John Goodwin of HSUS teams up with an unlikely partner in the battle against dogfighting.
Thanks to Trish for pointing the Blog to this article in Yahoo Sports. It concerns a surprising success.
Maybe it was one of the times John Goodwin found a more receptive audience while lobbying politicians
John Goodwin
for stricter sentencing against dogfighting.
Maybe it was one of the times a law enforcement training session was packed with police.
Maybe it was while he was riding along on what is an increasing number of raids on dogfighting operations.
Whenever it was, there was a moment over the past two years that Goodwin, the anti-dog fighting expert at the Humane Society of the United States, realized that of all the unexpected things, a silver lining had formed in the ugly clouds of the Michael Vick scandal.
Read the full article here. More on John Goodwin here.
(HTP) through to the Falcon rocket. The pump has to move a ton of HTP through to the rocket catalyst in 22 seconds and at 1200 psi.
Learning from Dogs 