Interesting Links for 2-11-2011
Nov. 2nd, 2011 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- A new phylogeny of the mammals. Nice diagram.
- Half of Britain now owns a smartphone.
- From April people in the UK will be able to opt-out from junk mail through a single website.
- Revolutions and the Internet.
- The price of Greek democracy
- India plans safer nuclear plant powered by thorium
- Google tells you why it's serving you specific ads.
- The dangers of bedtime reading
- After UNESCO Palestine vote, could US defund nuclear watchdog IAEA, too?
- Jason Segel, Unlikely Hero Behind the New Muppet Movie (I've loved him for years)
- Hormone in birth control shot linked to memory loss
Tags:
- advertising,
- biology,
- birthcontrol,
- comics,
- communication,
- democracy,
- epicfail,
- europe,
- evolution,
- finance,
- google,
- greece,
- hormones,
- india,
- internet,
- jasonsegel,
- junkmail,
- links,
- mail,
- mammals,
- memory,
- mobilephones,
- money,
- morality,
- movies,
- muppets,
- nuclear,
- nuclearweapons,
- palestine,
- philosophy,
- phylogeny,
- politics,
- power,
- revolution,
- spam,
- thorium,
- uk,
- usa
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:06 pm (UTC)But unless they do that, then no, leaving the Euro is their only option.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:31 pm (UTC)We'll see which way they vote...
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:34 pm (UTC)Would you vote to cut your own paycheck, destroy the union you belong to and ensure mass layoffs of your friends and family members?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:30 pm (UTC)So I imagine in 5 years time, Greece has a military dictatorship.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:09 pm (UTC)We appear to owe them a lot of money which they have saved for their old age. They also appear to have a whole huge economy pretty much dedicated to making things to sell to us for money we’ve borrowed from them.
I wonder what they’ll do if we turn round and say “sorry, we’ve spent all your money on iPhones and nuclear bombs and we can’t afford any more of your nice stuff thanks”.
I’m sure they’ll muddle through but I wouldn’t fancy being a factory worker in China with no pension, health care or unemployment benefits.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:51 pm (UTC)And the Chinese situation must be that times a hundred. They just can't afford for the West to go bankrupt, even though I think we technically are.
Who knew we were borrowing so much money eh.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:55 pm (UTC)That would probably help us out quite a bit on the offshoring jobs front.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 04:57 pm (UTC)I read something a while ago that said 2018 was likely to be a tipping point for the States, where lowering wages and mass unemployment in particular some of the middle states, would make 'Made In Alabama' cheaper for mega corporations, than Made In China, and thus more things would start to be made in America again.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 05:13 pm (UTC)I think the Chinese have a bit of a demographic problem after a few generations of a one child policy. At some point the bulge of old people will want to retire and spend their money on pensions and health care. This will leave the Chinese with a labour shortage (sounds crazy but there you go) and want their money back so they can swap it for goods and services both domestic and imported.
A thing to watch is the relative increases in labour rates and labour quality. A former boss of mine used to tell me about the failure of their Eastern Europe offshoring plan, in part because, the Romanian workers lower wages didn’t make up for the costs of their defective production and they couldn’t narrow the gap quickly enough.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 05:33 pm (UTC)Interesting the Romania thing didn't work out. I had wondered why more stuff wasn't getting made in Eastern Europe.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 10:17 am (UTC)Not to say that all attempts have or will fail but the difficulties seem to often errode any advantage.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 10:39 am (UTC)(Feel free to drag me to the pub some time.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:04 pm (UTC)Great to the point of impossibility.
It’s the old adage. If you owe a bank £100k you have a problem. If you owe a bank £100m they have a problem. If you owe a bank £100bn then everybody has a problem. I think the most likely outcome is for a significant Greek default followed by Greece leaving the eurozone and possibly taking a few of the flakier economies with it so they can devalue away to their heart’s content.
I’ve thought for a long long time that trying to join up a bunch of southern european sunshine economies, eastern european former communist with the more muscular economies of western europe was a big ask. I’d hoped that we’d have a bit longer for all these economies to integrate and for productivity to even out a little and competitive advangates to be found but alas, we’ve been caught mid-reconfiguration.
The Italians I think have struggled to intergrate their North and South (I always smile when I picture Victor Immanuel and Cavour so very graciously accepting from Garibaldi control of Naples and Sicily.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 03:36 pm (UTC)