Reading a book called 'The Fourth Turning'. It mentions that during the post WWII era, educated women stayed home and had higher birth rates than the less educated. The late 2020s to early 2040s may see a return to higher fertilities due to an improved social mood after our current malaise.

I have a Chase account, and I have ru4.com disabled in NetScript, and I can login just fine.

It seems to me that it's a two sided coin.

Peak oil stories would drive up the cost of oil because of the perceived shortage, and more buyers and speculators would buy futures that would increase the price, making more profit in the short term for the 'evil' oil companies, and probably get more money in the form of exploration funds. Of course, this will encourage investments in wind, solar, and maybe even nuclear.

On the other hand, downplaying Peak Oil concerns will keep prices somewhat lower. But if they are right, they are looking at huge decline in energy revenues due to declining commodity costs, which probably won't be great for the bottom line and stock prices.

Another issue being utilization. You need to have the shorter trains get out of the way so passengers on long haul trains can keep going, having higher numbers of trains running at a time, spreading the infrastructure cost across more passengers, so the trains will have a cost advantage over planes.

The budget being balanced wasn't planned. It was an accident caused by the internet bubble, many people selling over priced stocks, and having to pay taxes on the profit.

The housing bubble was an attempt to keep things going, and while it resulted in increased revenues, the continued increases in planned increases, plus the new drug benefit, unfunded wars kept us well in the red during the last decade.

Basically, Regan, Clinton, both Bushes and Obama have all allowed spending to remain out of control as well as all members of Congress who don't actually propose to cut the actual amount of money being spent.

If I were the president, I'd propose a strong evaluation of military spending, keep the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the EPA, and turn almost everything else over to the states. That is, the government would concern itself with international relations and matters between the states, or that spill over state borders, and leave everything else to the states to figure out, especially medicare, social security and education.

I've heard the reign will last 40 years, so either the prophecy will end up being false, or we'll all be fairly old before the actual end.

First, the infallibility isn't something that's be stowed on him like some feat in D&D. It's tied to the office, and only the current pope can teach as the pope. You know, kind of like how Bush couldn't go over Obama's head and sign laws passed by Congress if Obama had vetoed it.

Second, infallibility means that when the pope talk about official church dogma and morality, and he speaks as the head of the Church, then a teaching is infallible. Specifically, there are only a few that I am aware of since infallibility was defined at the end of the first Vatican Council (1870-71). The are the Assumption of Mary in 1950, the continued reaffirmation of various sexual teaching, like Humane Vitae's reaffirmation of no contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization, etc., and the document that John Paul put out in the 1990s saying the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests.

When a Pope assigns bishops to dioceses, makes a Sunday homily, asks the governor of Texas to commute a death penalty, or changing how the pedophilia cases are handled, he does exercise his papal office, but not in an infallible way. Also, John Paul and Benedict have weeded out 90% of the dissident bishops and Cardinals who would have considering weakening Church teaching, and the hierarchy of is much more conservative than it was in the 1960s & 70s, so you are unlikely to see any disagreements between the next pope and 99% of the bishops since they have built into their office a measure of obedience to the one the report to, even in non-infallible matters.

Or just make sure your carbohydrate intake stays around 100 g per day.

Saw an article recently that mentioned if you exclude gang killings (which don't compare with the situation in European cities), the homicide rate from guns in the US is very comparable to that in Europe despite the availability of more guns.

If you take care of the poverty issues that drive desperate young men to live a life of crime due to the break down of families in the ghettos, does the violence drop to the normal for people who who aren't impoverished?

Forgot to mention this. In one of the audio clips, they say that somebody did a creeping treatment with a 60 year old stroke patient in the 1960s. Within a year he was normal, and back in school teaching. 7 years later, he died of a heart attack hiking or climbing in the mountains (can't remember which). They did an autopsy on his brain, and the damage from the stroke was still there, but the creeping therapy rebuilt his brain around the damage. So if you know of somebody affected by stroke, you might recommend they give this a try.

Look into Brain Highways for treatment for your son's condition. Look for my other post in this discussion for my long description of what Brain Highways is.

I have a daughter (7yo) who has some symptoms (flapping hands, very large blowups if she is touched, very poor motor skills, etc). My wife has searched for treatments for years. We have found something that is making significant progress. It's called Brain Highways. They have treatment centers in California and Colorado, I think. But they run a do it yourself program, which we are doing from Kansas. They use printouts, audio, and video, and questionnaires (submitted using Adobe Reader X - yuck!!) to teach the parents, who then direct the kids. This starts out being about 3-5 hours a week, and drops to an hour a week in later weeks. The program lasts for 4 months, but the child is going to be doing the physical activities for between 100-300 hours depending on how bad their symptoms are, which means up to a year. Could also help ADHD, Tourettes, or any other condition where the person has difficulty controlling their body.

How they explain these conditions is that the lower and middle portions of the brain, which are in control of unconscious body control did not fully develop while a baby. But by imitating physical motions similar to what a baby goes through, the brain development can be completed, and the person can become a fully functioning 'normal'. As it's explained in the program, your body is trying to compensate for underdeveloped lower portions of the brain by trying to use the upper centers of the brain to do the same thing, which that part of the brain is not designed to handle.

When the program starts, there are 4 physical activities to perform. Three are simple positional movements, and lasts from 5-10 minutes per day. Then the main activity is called creeping (pulling yourself across a smooth floor on your belly). This is supposed to be for at least 30 minutes per day. Each week, there are some addition physical activities recommend that help the person master new physical abilities, and these are typically done during breaks in the middle of the creeping. After 8 weeks, if the person (adults can participate) has progressed far enough in the creeping (changing arms and leg involvement), they can begin the second portion of the program which drops one position and add a new one, adds a few yoga poses, and crawling is added to the creeping, with a total combined time of 45 minutes for the creeping and crawling. This continues until brain function is normal, with you submitting video of your child creeping so they can assure you that they are progressing normally.

I think they run 3 cycles per year, so a new program will probably be starting in about a month when we will finish our fourth month. We signed up a few days before, and didn't have any problems getting in. Each half of the program is about $550, and if you want them to analyze your second child, they'll charge a couple hundred extra for that. Adults can also participate (I'm doing my own creeping, but I'm several months behind my daughter).

My daughter's progress has been pretty good. We were warned that some of her noticeable symptoms (arm flapping) would probably get worse after we started, because the lower center would start to take control of the limiting the action, but not be ready to do it, and the upper brain apparently loses the control it's developed. This has happened, a few times a week if she gets very excited, she will start vigorously flapping, which was mostly gone before. But other than that, most of her other symptoms are much better. She is getting much stronger and more physically adept. Her hand writing and drawing are significantly better than 3 months ago, her self control when touched is better but not complete. She has started shaking hands when required, and is in general much more willing to do new things. She seems much more at ease, and given a few more months, she will probably get to the point where strangers won't even notice her differences. We hope that she will be done by mid-spring, although maybe she'll be done earlier, or maybe not until later next year.

It takes commitment and hard work, but as the found says in some of her later videos. Which is more difficult, living with these limitations for a lifetime, or taking 6 months to a year to fully engage the brain so that it can work the way it's supposed to.

Think of it like this:

In the 1980s, you bought a computer from Commodore, Apple or IBM, each with it's own operating system and different programs.
In the 1990s, IBM (OS2) and Microsoft (Windows) released operating systems that would run on interchangeable hardware that anybody could sell, with MS winning over IBM. Most people then figured they had two choices, Apple with expensive hardware and limited software options, or PC that was cheaper and nearly unlimited software options. Eventually, most retail software vendors focused on developing Windows software, thus driving most new customers to Windows PCs for the next 15 years.

The mobile device battle is the same battle all over again. Apple with it's unified hardware and software, although with a much broader software selection. On the other side, you have most of the rest of the industry running Android (Google playing Microsoft's part) on interchangeable phones from a more vendors. You also have MS reprising IBM's role (unless they win over Android, then Google is IBM and Microsoft stays Microsoft).

In both cases, you have a proprietary vendor against half a dozen companies using a single standard. The question that hasn't been figured out yet is if the developers will focus on one platform or another, or code and sell to both. I don't know much about iOS, but I assume it's a Unix-y OS like OS X, in which case maybe it's easy for most developers to release on both iOS and Android, but more difficult to go to Windows. If so, Microsoft will be in a very difficult position of trying to convince thousands of app developers to port to Windows so their OS isn't seen as being deficient in the apps/features.

I would think you're going to have a chicken and egg situation here. Users will check what apps are available. App X isn't out, so they wait or go with Android or iPhone for now. Developers check Windows sales numbers, and see they are low, and decide it's not worth the effort. Windows wilts away like OS2. Firefox OS will probably be in the Linux position of just a few percentage points market share of diehards that refuse to use a closed system. Easily portable software from Android would give it a chance because some vendors might come in and use it if there are any advantages over Android, which would remain to be seen.

What about the right of the other unemployed individuals who would be glad to have that same job at the lower wage to get started and develop a work history? Is it better to have 2 employed at $12 per hour and 1 unemployed or 3 employed at $8? Shouldn't the business owner be able to make the decision of employing fewer highly skilled/quicker and more expensive workers or more lower skilled lower paid workers? If it's inefficient because of turnover and chaos in the company, the business owner is the one shooting his business in the foot, and his competitors will figure out they can make a different decision and come out ahead.

Consider this model: 10 potential workers, each equally productive if employed. The economy has $20,000 to pay the workers. Is it better to pay 10 workers $2000 or 8 workers $2500, tax the workers the $500 and pass it to the two unemployed men so they can get along? In both scenarios, each employee has $2000, but are the two situations identical? No, if each of the workers are equally productive, and each worker can produce 1000 units of goods per month, and everybody spends all of their money, then the situation with all 10 employed is better, because the economy has 10,000 units to distribute at $2/unit. In the 8 worker situation, we get 8000 units at $2.50 a unit. In the first situation, everybody gets 1000 units of economic goods available to consume and in the second you only get 800.

Think about if you started with the second situation, and tried to move to the first by cutting wages from 2500 to 2000, eliminated unemployment, and provided the economy with a productivity boost that could drive economic expansion? People would scream bloody murder about wage cutting even though eliminating unemployment would improve everybody's overall situation.

Also, the Union v. Ownership dichotomy is the wrong way to go about getting the employees a larger cut of the revenue pie. The true way toward helping the workers out is for them to become owners. Once the business is in the hands of the employees, the union is unneeded since the employees aren't likely to exploit themselves. I'd encourage a policy of preventing the owner from selling his business to a competitor or conglomerate, but instead allowing the business owner to keep his income taxes in exchange for turning the business over to his employees, although it would take several years to transfer the entire company. This would basically be the government buying the business through reduced tax revenues, although the employees union could put their dues toward purchasing the business faster if the owner were selling. Improvements under this system: More and smaller businesses, which would provide more competition both for customers, and for workers. If you aren't happy working for X, go work for Y.

Interesting. I have been working on collecting a large number of authors and books (perhaps something the guy looking for good reading material last week might be interested in?) I had zero problem moving from Libre Office on Debian to Windows 7 Office Excel 2010 using the Microsoft .xlsx file format. Then, yesterday, I made some formatting changes on the Windows 7 machine, applying a bold font and increasing the font size on a few dozen cells for visual purposes. When I saved the file, the file size (around 10 tabs and probably around 10,000 cells total info) went from below 90K to over 1900K. That is, the file ballooned by 20 times. I took the file back to the Linux machine, and opened it there, and resaved, and the file size dropped back to the mid 80s. I haven't reversed the process to see if Microsoft will re-balloon the file, or if they are holding on to extra versions of the file inside for version control. Very interesting. If I ever run into a file that can't be saved due to size issues, or if I want to save for archive purposes, I know that I'll make a point of saving from Libre office before I consider the document final.