A 500 billion Yugoslav dinar banknote circa 1993, the largest nominal

value ever officially printed in Yugoslavia, the final result of hyperinflation

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Hyperinflation is inflation that is “out of control”, a condition in which prices increase rapidly as a currency loses its value. Formal definitions vary from a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaching 100% to “inflation exceeding 50% a month.” In informal usage the term is often applied to much lower rates. As a rule of thumb, normal inflation is reported per year, but hyperinflation is often reported for much shorter intervals, often per month.

The definition used by most economists is “an inflationary cycle without any tendency toward equilibrium.” A vicious circle is created in which more and more inflation is created with each iteration of the cycle. Although there is a great deal of debate about the root causes of hyperinflation, it becomes visible when there is an unchecked increase in the money supply or drastic debasement of coinage, and is often associated with wars (or their aftermath), economic depressions, and political or social upheavals.

The main cause of hyperinflation is a massive and rapid increase in the amount of money, which is not supported by growth in the output of goods and services. This results in an imbalance between the supply and demand for the money (including currency and bank deposits), accompanied by a complete loss of confidence in the money, similar to a bank run. Enactment of legal tender laws and price controls to prevent discounting the value of paper money relative to gold, silver, hard currency, or commodities, fails to force acceptance of a paper money which lacks intrinsic value. If the entity responsible for printing a currency promotes excessive money printing, with other factors contributing a reinforcing effect, hyperinflation usually continues. Often the body responsible for printing the currency cannot physically print paper currency faster than the rate at which it is devaluing, thus neutralising their attempts to stimulate the economy.

Hyperinflation is generally associated with paper money because this can easily be used to increase the money supply: add more zeros to the plates and print, or even stamp old notes with new numbers. Historically there have been numerous episodes of hyperinflation in various countries, followed by a return to “hard money”. Older economies would revert to hard currency and barter when the circulating medium became excessively devalued, generally following a “run” on the store of value.

Hyperinflation effectively wipes out the purchasing power of private and public savings, distorts the economy in favor of extreme consumption and hoarding of real assets, causes the monetary base, whether specie or hard currency, to flee the country, and makes the afflicted area anathema to investment. Hyperinflation is met with drastic remedies, such as imposing the shock therapy of slashing government expenditures or altering the currency basis. An example of the latter occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2005, when the central bank was only allowed to print as much money as it had in foreign currency reserves. Another example was the dollarization in Ecuador, initiated in September 2000 in response to a massive 75% loss of value of the Sucre currency in early January 2000. Dollarization is the use of a foreign currency (not necessarily the U.S. dollar) as a national unit of currency.

The aftermath of hyperinflation is equally complex. As hyperinflation has always been a traumatic experience for the area which suffers it, the next policy regime almost always enacts policies to prevent its recurrence. Often this means making the central bank very aggressive about maintaining price stability, as is the case with the German Bundesbank, or moving to some hard basis of currency such as a currency board. Many governments have enacted extremely stiff wage and price controls in the wake of hyperinflation, which is, in effect, a form of forced savings.

Because it allows them to hide their spending and avoid an obvious tax increase, governments have frequently resorted to printing money to meet their expenses. However, during hyperinflation, the monetary authorities fail to fund government expenses from taxes or by other means, because:

(1) during the time between recording or levying taxable transactions and collecting the taxes due, the value of the taxes collected falls in real value to a small fraction of the original taxes receivable;
(2) government debt issues fail to find buyers except at very deep discounts

Theories of hyperinflation generally look for a relationship between seigniorage and the inflation tax. In both Cagan’s model and the neo-classical models, a crucial point is when the increase in money supply or the drop in basic money stock makes it impossible for a government to improve its financial position. Thus when fiat money is printed, government obligations that are not denominated in money increase in cost by more than the value of the money created.

From this, it might be wondered why any rational government would engage in actions that cause or continue hyperinflation. One reason for such actions is that often the alternative to hyperinflation is either depression or military defeat. In late 2001, the Argentine peso collapsed in value. Rather than printing sufficient cash for the public to carry, which they feared would start a run on the banks, the government took the peso off its dollar peg. Many international economists predicted that they would have to get a new loan from the IMF and impose shock therapy in order to avoid hyperinflation. Currency controls were imposed, tariffs were instituted, and the economy was allowed to fall into a severe recession during which unemployment hit 25%, homelessness and crime spiralled upwards, and the poverty rate peaked at over 50%.

The root cause is a matter of more dispute. In both classical economics and monetarism, it is always the result of the monetary authority irresponsibly borrowing money to pay all its expenses. These models focus on the unrestrained seigniorage of the monetary authority, and the gains from the inflation tax. In Neoliberalism, hyperinflation is considered to be the result of a crisis of confidence. The monetary base of the country flees, producing widespread fear that individuals will not be able to convert local currency to some more transportable form, such as gold or an internationally recognized hard currency. This is a quantity theory of hyperinflation.

In neo-classical economic theory, hyperinflation is rooted in a deterioration of the monetary base, that is the confidence that there is a store of value which the currency will be able to command later. In this model, the perceived risk of holding currency rises dramatically, and sellers demand increasingly high premiums to accept the currency. This in turn leads to a greater fear that the currency will collapse, causing even higher premiums. One example of this is during periods of warfare, civil war, or intense internal conflict of other kinds: governments need to do whatever is necessary to continue fighting, since the alternative is defeat. Expenses cannot be cut significantly since the main outlay is armaments. Further, a civil war may make it difficult to raise taxes or to collect existing taxes. While in peacetime the deficit is financed by selling bonds, during a war it is typically difficult and expensive to borrow, especially if the war is going poorly for the government in question. The banking authorities, whether central or not, “monetize” the deficit, printing money to pay for the government’s efforts to survive. The hyperinflation under the Chinese Nationalists from 1939-1945 is a classic example of a government printing money to pay civil war costs. By the end, currency was flown in over the Himalaya, and then old currency was flown out to be destroyed.

Hyperinflation is regarded as a complex phenomenon and one explanation may not be applicable to all cases. However, in both of these models, whether loss of confidence comes first, or central bank seigniorage, the other phase is ignited. In the case of rapid expansion of the money supply, prices rise rapidly in response to the increased supply of money relative to the supply of goods and services, and in the case of loss of confidence, the monetary authority responds to the risk premiums it has to pay by “running the printing presses.”

In the United States of America, hyperinflation was seen during the Revolutionary War and during the Civil War, especially on the Confederate side. Many other cases of extreme social conflict encouraging hyperinflation can be seen, as in Germany after World War I, Hungary at the end of World War II and in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s just before break up of the country.

Less commonly, inflation may occur when there is debasement of the coinage — wherein coins are consistently shaved of some of their silver and gold, increasing the circulating medium and reducing the value of the currency. The “shaved” specie is then often restruck into coins with lower weight of gold or silver. Historical examples include Ancient Rome, China during the Song Dynasty, and the United States beginning in 1933. When “token” coins begin circulating, it is possible for the minting authority to engage in fiat creation of currency.

As noted, in countries experiencing hyperinflation, the central bank often prints money in larger and larger denominations as the smaller denomination notes become worthless. This can result in the production of some interesting banknotes, including those denominated in amounts of 1,000,000,000 or more.

* By late 1923, the Weimar Republic of Germany was issuing fifty-million Mark banknotes and postage stamps with a face value of fifty billion Mark. The highest value banknote issued by the Weimar government’s Reichsbank had a face value of 100 trillion Mark (100,000,000,000,000; 100 billion on the long scale).One of the firms printing these notes submitted an invoice for the work to the Reichsbank for 32,776,899,763,734,490,417.05 (3.28×1019, or 33 quintillion) Marks.

* The largest denomination banknote ever officially issued for circulation was in 1946 by the Hungarian National Bank for the amount of 100 quintillion pengő (100,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1020; 100 trillion on the long scale). image (There was even a banknote worth 10 times more, i.e. 1021 pengő, printed, but not issued image.) The banknotes however didn’t depict the number, making the 500,000,000,000 Yugoslav dinar banknote the world’s leader when it comes to depicted zeros on banknotes.

* The Z$100 billion agro cheque, issued in Zimbabwe on July 21, 2008, shares the record for depicted zeroes (11) with the 500 billion Yugoslav dinar banknote.

* The Post-WWII hyperinflation of Hungary holds the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate ever — 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 1016%) for July, 1946, amounting to prices doubling every fifteen hours.

One way to avoid the use of large numbers is by declaring a new unit of currency (an example being, instead of 10,000,000,000 Dollars, a bank might set 1 new dollar = 1,000,000,000 old dollars, so the new note would read “10 new dollars”.) An example of this would be Turkey’s revaluation of the Lira on January 1, 2005, when the old Turkish lira (TRL) was converted to the New Turkish lira (YTL) at a rate of 1,000,000 old to 1 new Turkish Lira. While this does not lessen the actual value of a currency, it is called redenomination or revaluation and also happens over time in countries with standard inflation levels. During hyperinflation, currency inflation happens so quickly that bills reach large numbers before revaluation.

Some banknotes were stamped to indicate changes of denomination. This is because it would take too long to print new notes. By time the new notes would be printed, they would be obsolete (that is, they would be of too low a denomination to be useful).

Metallic coins were rapid casualties of hyperinflation, as the scrap value of metal enormously exceeded the face value. Massive amounts of coinage were melted down, usually illicitly, and exported for hard currency.

Governments will often try to disguise the true rate of inflation through a variety of techniques. These can include the following:

* Outright lying in official statistics such as money supply, inflation or reserves.
* Suppression of publication of money supply statistics, or inflation indices.
* Price and wage controls.
* Forced savings schemes, designed to suck up excess liquidity. These savings schemes may be described as pensions schemes, emergency funds, war funds, or something similar.
* Adjusting the components of the Consumer price index, to remove those items whose prices are rising the fastest.

None of these actions address the root causes of inflation, and in fact, if discovered, tend to further undermine trust in the currency, causing further increases in inflation. Price controls will generally result in hoarding and extremely high demand for the controlled goods, resulting in shortages and disruptions of the supply chain. Products available to consumers may diminish or disappear as businesses no longer find it sufficiently profitable (or may be operating at a loss) to continue producing and/or distributing such goods, further exacerbating the problem.

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1923 Weimar Republic inflation: A German woman feeding a stove with Papiermarks,

which burned longer than the amount of firewood people could buy with them.

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German children playing with worthless banknotes in 1923

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After the hyperinflation in Hungary

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References:

http://econlib.org/library/Enc/Hyperinflation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

http://shadowstats.com/article/292

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‘Drink at least two litres a day and you will soon see the difference – glowing skin, weight loss, less cellulite, better immunity and a huge boost to your energy levels’

Water is one of the most basic things on Earth and essential to good health, yet we thoughtlessly throw away gallons every day. Used properly, water can revolutionise our lives.

We need the liquid for day-to-day survival, yet we often ignore our body’s cries for more water, at a grave cost to health and well-being.

It is estimated that 90 per cent of us are chronically dehydrated. Drink just five glasses of water per day and you will cut your risk of developing breast cancer by 79 per cent. The same amount of water will make you 45 per cent less likely to develop cancer of the colon.

Many of the common complaints which plague most people’s lives, such as tiredness, headaches, dry skin, low immunity, cellulite, indigestion and weight gain, are caused by day-to-day dehydration.

If you suffer from one or more of these conditions, you may change the quality of your life immeasurably simply by ensuring you drink two litres of water a day.

Being properly hydrated will help to keep you in peak health. Our bodies are 75 per cent water, but if this level drops by just 2 per cent then we become dehydrated. As soon as this happens, our bodies slow down and begin to operate less efficiently.

A detox give the body a chance to rest so it can cleanse itself. In just 18 days on the Water Detox programme, your body can effectively start again with a clean slate, feeling fabulous.

The Water Detox will help you to tackle health problems – from niggling persistent tiredness or wrinkled skin to more long-term concerns such as weight gain and high blood pressure.

The secret of the detox is simply in the quantity of water you consume. As well as drinking two litres a day, you get an additional litre from food on a nutritional plan which contains at least 50 per cent water.

Once you begin to drink the correct amount of water, you will soon notice improved levels of energy, glowing skin, weight loss, reduction in cellulite and an improved immune system.

It does not matter whether you drink bottle or tap water, but bottle flavoured waters are not permitted on the Water Detox because they almost certainly will be full of sugar and artificial flavours.

It should take you only two or three days to get used to drinking the correct amount of water. To get the best results, you will need to follow a few simple rules:

· Drink at least two litres of water a day.
· On a hot day, increase the daily amount by at least half a litre. Make sure at least one-and-a-half litres of the water is still (not sparkling) water.
· The water should be fresh and, ideally at room temperature.
· Spread your water intake over a day, ideally drinking a glass an hour.
· When you exercise, drink throughout the workout and afterwards. This extra water is in addition to your two daily litres.
· Coffee, tea, alcohol and fruit cordials do not count as water.
· As soon as you get up, drink a glass of water to rehydrate you from the night before.
· Drink a glass of water before lunch and supper to dampen your appetite and to stop you from drinking water with your food, which decreases the absorption of nutrients.
· Make sure you have had at least 1½ litres of water before 6pm.

The 18-day Water Detox Programme

It is vital to drink enough water and to eat the right foods to get the most benefit from the detox.

Certain food types contain up to 50 per cent water, and in some cases up to 95 per cent. Concentrating on these foods will lead to the best nutrition and hydration, though you still need to drink at least two litres of water a day.

You should not eat anything that is not on the programme because this may slow the process or even reverse it. You should particularly avoid diuretics, as they could cause you to lose the same volume of water and more. These include alcohol and drinks containing caffeine, such as colas, coffee and tea.

Exercise is important because it speeds up the cleansing process – but drink throughout your workout and consume at least an extra litre of water per hour of exercise.

When we sleep, we lose water through sweating and the normal metabolic processes. So start the day with a large glass of water, followed by a breakfast which is high in water content. Yoghurt and fruit are excellent. Make the first meal of the day ‘high hydration’.

It is also advisable to exclude certain herbs, such as juniper, dandelions and nettle teas, which encourage the body to expel fluids.

Also avoid foods such as curries and spices which increase body heat and use more fluids than normal.

During the 18-day water detox, you can eat oily fish, oils, yoghurts, potatoes, beans and pulses, vegetables, fruits, rice and salads.

For each of the 18 days, you should drink at least two litres of plain water and eat at least three full meals or five small meals a day. You must eat at least five portions of fruit, five portions of fish, beans or pulses, one portion of rice, and one portion of oil or cheese per day.

You can eat as much as you like of any food which is permitted, but this is the minimum that you should consume.

The cheeses and oils do not always have a 50 per cent water content, but I have included them to ensure that you get a balanced diet. I recommend sheep’s and goat’s products rather than those made from cow’s milk because they are much more easily digested by the human body and much easier to tolerate.

Eating raw foods will maintain fluid levels and help to preserve the nutrients. Aim to eat half of your foods each day raw.

To keep food succulent and with the right level of water, you must use the right cooking methods. Always try to use any of the juices, essences or fluids that come out of the foods for dressings, sauces or gravy to pour back over them. Steaming will also leave your food moist and juicy.

The best way to ensure you don’t lose fluids during cooking is to add them. Choose stews, soups, smoothes and long drinks. Select the foods which you like best and find easier to prepare.

Eat your main meal during the day and not late in the evening. It is better to have four or five light meals a day than to have a huge plate of food three times a day, which can cause big surges and drops in energy and blood sugar.

If you are tempted to snack, remember that 75 per cent of hunger pangs are requests from our bodies for water. Each time you feel hungry, have a glass of water. If, after 20 minutes, you are still peckish, then eat something, as long as your snack is one of the food allowed. Yoghurt, hummus and crudités are a good idea.
The Water Detox diet is not a diet, but a healthy way to cleanse your body. It will also help you to lose any excess weight.
Extracted from Water Detox: Total Health and Beauty in 8 Easy Steps by Jane Scrivener

THE FACTS ABOUT H20

· 75 per cent of our hunger pangs are signals of thirst
· Our brain is 75 per cent water
· Blood is 92 per cent water
· Bones are 22 per cent water
· Muscles are 75 per cent water
· Brain cells are 82 per cent water
· Moderate dehydration can cause headaches and even dizziness
· On hot days, sweating can cause you to lose up to 16 glasses of water a day
· The body loses as much water when asleep as when awake
· Mild dehydration slows the metabolism by as much as 3 per cent
· A 2 per cent drop in hydration can slow mental recall

HOW IT CAN EFFECT YOUR BODY

Drinking water improves the efficiency of all major body organs. The liver, lungs, skin, kidneys and intestines all use water as a vehicle for cleansing. Inadequate quantities of water slow the system down and can causes you to suffer from constipation, grey skin, infections and swollen glands.

Dehydration
Simple day-to-day dehydration can cause tiredness, bad circulation, high blood pressure, headaches, dizziness, aching joints, dry skin, urinary infections, slow metabolism, low immunity, stress, cellulite, weight gain and indigestion.

The Liver
The largest internal organ, the liver works to detoxify the body by taking in ‘poisons’ such as additives and alcohol. A severely overtaxed liver can lead to lethargy and, in extreme cases, jaundice.

The Kidneys
The kidneys cleanse the blood and regulate potassium and sodium levels. Overworked kidneys can cause tiredness, or, more seriously, kidney infections and kidney stones.

The Intestines
Food passes through the stomach into the intestines. The goodness is absorbed and waste eliminated. Digestion takes about eight hours from consumption to elimination in a healthy body, but more than 24 in a dehydrated one.

The Lymph System
Lymph, absorbs dead cells, excess fluids and other waste products and takes them to the lymph nodes, which are under your armpits and in the areas of your groin and knees. Here, the waste is filtered and eventually fed to the eliminatory organs – skin, liver or kidneys – to be passed out.

The Lungs
The lungs filter pollution and toxins, including cigarette fumes and chemicals from the air we breathe. The lungs are full of little air sacs which fill with inhaled air. The lungs then expel carbon dioxide and waste water.

The Skin
The skin sweats out waste products such as salt, uric acid, ammonia and urea. Its condition is an excellent indicator of the condition of internal organs. Spots and a pale skin can be one of the first signs that we have not been taking care of ourselves.

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Reference:http://campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/170402/healingpowerofwater.htm

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By Robert S. Boyd|McClatchy Newspapers

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WASHINGTON — When the huge subatomic-particle smasher under the Swiss-French border starts running, it’s supposed to reveal what happened the instant after the big bang, the theoretical beginning of our universe 13.7 billion years ago.

The Large Hadron Collider, which suffered a temporary setback last week, might find some answers. But it will leave other questions on many people’s minds, such as what happened BEFORE the big bang, and even whether there was a “before.”

A scientific mini-industry has popped up as deep-thinking physicists and cosmologists bat around various guesses as to what may have happened in a “pre-big bang.”

Some of the top minds in this field gathered at Columbia University earlier this month to debate these questions.

“What banged? Where did it come from?” was the question raised by Laura Mersini-Houghton, a cosmologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Is ours the only universe? If so, how did it come to exist?” asked Paul Davies, a cosmologist and authority on science and religion at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Respected scientists have proposed a flock of theories to describe what might have happened before the birth of our familiar universe of space and time.

The concepts have fanciful names such as “the big bounce,” “the multiverse,” “the cyclic theory,” “parallel worlds,” even “soap bubbles.” Some propose the existence of multiple universes. Others hold that there’s one universe that recycles itself endlessly, rather as Buddhists believe. Judeo-Christian theologians may have difficulty accepting any of these notions.

Most of the hypotheses are variations on an older idea that the universe has no beginning and no end, contrary to the big bang theory, which says that our universe originated at a specific point and will end sometime in the distant future.

“Neither time nor the universe has a beginning or an end,” two leading cosmologists, Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Oxford University, wrote in their 2007 book, “Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang.”

“The evolution of the universe is cyclic, with big bangs occurring once every trillion years or so, each one accompanied by the creation of new matter and radiation that forms new galaxies, stars, planets and presumably life,” they wrote. “Ours is only the most recent cycle.”

Some scientists contend that observational evidence may be found to back up the speculation. They say that no scientific theory can be considered valid until it’s been tested.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that multiverse models grounded in modern physics can be empirically testable,” Max Tegmark, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, wrote in “Parallel Universes,” a chapter in a 2003 book “Science and Ultimate Reality.”

Some researchers hope that the Large Hadron Collider will provide evidence to support or refute these conjectures. They say the particle smasher might discover extra dimensions, beyond our familiar three spatial dimensions plus time. More dimensions are the basis of several pre-big bang theories.

Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, proposes that gravity, unlike light and matter, could travel between parallel universes and cast a “shadow” that scientists might be able to detect.

The shadow might take the form of “gravitational waves,” faint ripples in the fabric of space and time caused by violent explosions such as the big bang. Detectors in the United States and Europe are seeking such waves, and in the future satellites will watch for evidence of them in space.

Turok says his cyclic theory predicts a “distinctive pattern of gravitational waves that is very different from the one expected in the big bang theory . . . and may prove or disprove our theory within the next few years.”

Last August, ground and satellite observations revealed what appeared to be an enormous “hole in the universe,” a mostly empty region of the sky, 900 million light-years wide — about 5 billion trillion miles — in the constellation Eridanus. Mersini-Houghton, a believer in multiple universes, interpreted the empty spot as the “footprint” of the gravitational tug of another, smaller universe parked at the edge of our own.

“It’s like someone took a giant scoop and scooped all the matter away,” she told the Columbia cosmology conference. “All these universes are interacting with each other.”

Mersini-Houghton’s interpretation of the “hole” is controversial and so far lacks independent confirmation.

The oldest and most popular of the pre-big-bang theories is the multiverse. As outlined by Martin Rees, the British astronomer royal, in his 1997 book, “Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others,” the theory declares that our universe is only one of many — perhaps an infinite number — of other worlds, each differing slightly from the others. These universes are continually forming new offspring, sprouting off from each other rather like soap bubbles.

The big bounce hypothesis — sometimes known as the big splat — contends that our universe was preceded by a twin that expanded to a certain limit, then contracted, collapsed and gave birth to our world. A leading proponent of this theory is Martin Bojowald, a theoretical physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who published it last year in the journal Nature.

In 2005, Kaku published a book titled “Parallel Worlds” in which he hypothesized that there may be millions of different, parallel universes, some that look like our own. They’re invisible to us because they lie outside our universe.

The big bang theory found favor with the Roman Catholic Church because it implied that the world has a single beginning at a definite point in time, as portrayed in Genesis. At a Vatican conference in 1951, Pope Pius XII said the big bang was consistent with church doctrine.

“Creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!” the pope declared.

The Rev. John Haught, an authority on science and religion at Georgetown University in Washington, said the idea that there might be many worlds and many beginnings, not just a single big bang, wouldn’t undermine Christian theology.

“Even if the universe, or multiverse, were around forever, this would not challenge the theological explanation of the world’s existence,” Haught said. “The biblical doctrine of creation . . . lies at a different level from scientific understanding. The world, theologians say, still gets its finite being from an infinite being.”

According to Francisca Cho, a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Georgetown, these pre-big bang cosmologies are similar to the Hindu belief in a universe that cycles endlessly through creation and destruction.

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reference:http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20081027/sc_mcclatchy/3082054_1

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By Tim Weber
Business Editor, BBC News website, in Davos

If getting rich makes us happy, then why don’t countries as a whole get happier as they grow wealthier? A workshop at the World Economic Forum in Davos tried to find out.

Are you happy? Really, truly happy?

Yes? Oh good! But why? Is it because you are rich, healthy, successful, have a family, or are you just having a good time?

So far, so easy. Even better, neuroscientists could tell me whether you are lying.

They can check whether the right parts in your brain get active when you claim to be as happy as a bunny.

And one thing they have discovered is that money tends to make us happier, says Lord Layard, professor at the London School of Economics and author of the book Happiness.

The conundrum

Now comes the hitch: when a whole society gets richer, there is no overall increase in happiness.

Instead, rich Western societies are plagued with high levels of depression and envy.

Unfortunately, it takes more than an entrepreneur, a media executive, a musician, and two economics professors to find an answer for the conundrum.

At least they gave it a try: “serial entrepreneur” Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Imax co-chief executive Richard Gelfond, Senegalese music legend Youssou N’Dour, Yale professor Robert Shiller and Lord Layard.

Pay taxes, be happy

Are you satisfied earning one million dollars if your neighbour rakes in two million?

Money may make you happier, says Lord Layard, but when you judge your wealth (and thus your happiness) you measure it against the people around you.

Even worse: Western societies make this “terrible error” of telling people they should work ever harder to compete.

What a waste, says Lord Layard (possibly tongue in check) and suggests that only higher taxes can force people to stop competing and restore a healthy, happy work-life balance.

The lesson: pay high taxes, don’t work yourself to death, and live happily ever after.

Play football, be happy

Not so, argues Stelios Haji-Ioannou, boss of Easygroup and amongst many other things founder of budget airline Easyjet.

People quickly get used to their wealth, just as they get used to their own beauty.

As a result, having tons of money won’t make you happy, and as proof there are plenty of unhappy rich kids, says Mr Haji-Ioannou (and he should know – he once was one himself).

Instead we should take a Greek lesson: never was his home country happier than after Greece won the European Football Championship and hosted the Olympics last year.

The lesson: play football, and “don’t try to fix happiness with taxes or wealth”.

Be competitive, be happy

But being an achiever and rising out of poverty surely must bring happiness, argues Richard Gelfond.

And once you are rich you can afford the “creature comforts” that make life pleasant and happy.

The lesson: “wealth plays a bigger factor in being happy than we all would like to admit.”

In surveys, people consistently give three reasons for their personal happiness: wealth, family and health.

Being richer affords you better health, and in all likelihood better relationships as well, believes Professor Robert Shiller.

The lesson: “we can use increased wealth to create happiness,” but if we aren’t happy yet, we just don’t go about it the right way.

Get grooving, play football, be happy

Forget money entirely, says Youssou N’Dour.

There is plenty of happiness in Senegal, even though its people are not wealthy at all, says Mr N’Dour.

“Just see the joy that music and entertainment can bring to the boys in the poorest parts of Dakar.”

But he concedes that one thing was even better: the moment when Senegal beat France in the 2002 Football World Cup.

The lesson: if you’re happy and you know it…

The happy factor

The audience was not convinced.

“What about values?”… “Why are deeply religious people usually so much happier?”… Are “television programmes about the rich and famous”, is the “pop culture celebrity cult” the source of all unhappiness?

Maybe happiness is like a forest that from time to time needs a fire – or suffering – to grow happily?

There was agreement on just one thing: governments will find it difficult to legislate for happiness, although they can clear some of the obstacles out of the way.

As the discussion wrapped up, Youssou N’Dour grabbed the microphone and sang us a song about happiness.

And so we went back into the bitter cold of the Davos night.

Feeling strangely serene, even happy.

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reference:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4211413.stm

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Genetic analysis of tissue specimen recently discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo leads researchers to believe the virus that causes AIDS has been present for more than a century.

“The HIV virus evolves incredibly quickly,” said geneticist Bette Korber of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who did an analysis in 2000. “Those mutations get passed on to the next individual. So we have that evolutionary pace to enable a look backward.”

Korber’s analysis compared the 1959 blood sample and modern samples. She traced their common ancestor to roughly 1931.

The new analysis, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, added lymph node tissue from a woman who died in 1960 in the Belgian Congo. The tissue specimen was one of more than 800 preserved in ice-cube-size blocks of paraffin at the University of Kinshasa.

The researchers compared that sample with modern strains to determine its mutation rate. Then they matched that rate with the 1959 sample, tracing their common ancestor to between 1884 and 1924.

“I’ve been trying to track down old samples like this for quite a few years now,” Worobey said. “As soon as you have that one other sequence from that same time period, it really snaps the whole evolutionary picture into sharp focus.”

The researchers surmised that the creation of colonial cities around the turn of the century was the catalyst that allowed the virus to take hold.

Dr. Steven M. Wolinsky, a co-author of the study, said that colonial cities meant not just more potential hosts for viruses living in closer quarters, but also prostitution and other high-risk behaviors for transmitting the virus.

“Urbanization was probably the main trigger,” said Wolinsky, an infectious diseases specialist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Jim Moore, an anthropologist at UC San Diego who was not associated with the study, said the fact that the virus could have spread unnoticed for decades is no surprise, given the mortality rates in Africa during the colonial period.

“The conditions then were horrendous in terms of how Africans were treated,” he said. “People dying of AIDS would have been part of the background.”

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reference:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation

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“Consumer Reports” finds that many cereals are more sugary than doughnuts. What to do?

A bowl of cereal can be less healthful than a doughnut, according to a new ranking of kids’ breakfast cereals published by Consumer Reports. Eleven cereals ranked by the venerable group had more sugar than a glazed Dunkin’ Donut. The culprits include Kellogg’s Honey Smacks (nee Sugar Smacks) and Post Golden Crisp, both of which get almost 60 percent of their calories from sugar. Talk about a sugar high!

What’s a parent to do? Registered dietitians know how to eat smart at breakfast—without denying your sweet tooth. This is good news not just for kids but for the many grownups who still love sugared cereal. Sarah Krieger, a registered dietitian who teaches kids how to make a wholesome breakfast at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., is among them. Right now she craves Cocoa Krispies, which she attributes to being pregnant. Otherwise, her sugary fave is Frosted Mini-Wheats. Here are nine ways to build a breakfast that’s both healthful and satisfying:

• Go for protein. Study after study has shown that eating breakfast makes for better cognitive performance through the day and less weight gain over time. To make that happen, a key ingredient is protein, which provides lasting energy. One good choice: peanut butter on a whole-grain English muffin.

• Fiber up. Consumer Reports considered fiber one of its key ranking criteria, right up there with the amount of sugar. Its winners among cereals marketed to children: Cheerios and Kix, both with 3 grams of fiber per serving, and Life and Honey Nut Cheerios, both with 2 grams. Step outside the realm of cereals marketed to kids, and there are lots of good choices, including Raisin Bran, with 5 grams of fiber per serving, Grape-Nuts, with 7 grams, or Kashi Go Lean Crunch, with 9 grams. Children need at least their age plus 5 in fiber; a 5-year-old should eat at least 10 grams of fiber a day. Adults need 25 to 35 grams, and cereal is a great way to get it.

• Sugar can help the fiber go down. Some cereals that have added sugar also have real health benefits: A serving of Frosted Mini-Wheats, for instance, has a whopping 6 grams of fiber, which dietitians say helps make up for the 12 grams of sugar per serving.

• Look for whole grains. Not only do whole grain cereals have more fiber, but they also have more natural vitamins and minerals. Finding good whole-grain cereal can take some detective work. For instance, oatmeal in the round box has more fiber than single-serving packaged oatmeal because the instant oatmeal is more highly processed. It almost always has added sugar, too. Better to microwave old-fashioned or quick oatmeal, and drizzle on honey or add dried cherries if you like it sweet.

• Be unconventional. Leftover pizza or pasta makes a great breakfast choice, according to Krieger. Add a piece of fruit and a glass of milk, and you’re good for the morning.

• Keep an eye on sodium. Consumer Reports dinged Rice Krispies, but not because it has a lot of sugar—it’s got only 4 grams per serving, which is next to nothing compared with Froot Loops, with 12 grams. Instead, Rice Krispies was faulted for being higher in sodium than is necessary, at 135 milligrams, and having almost no fiber (it’s puffed white rice). Other cereals heavily promoted to children have up to 270 mg of sodium in a serving, which is a real concern at a time when increasing numbers of children are being diagnosed with high blood pressure.

• Use sweetened cereals like a condiment. Layer a little Cap’n Crunch, with 12 grams of sugar and 1 gram of fiber, on top of shredded wheat, with no sugar and 5 grams of fiber, and you’ve got a not-so-bad bowlful. Krieger likes her Cocoa Krispies atop plain shredded wheat or Cheerios.

• Beware of sneaky sugar substitutes. Some cereal companies are replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners so they can say their product has less sugar, according to Tara Gudis, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. You wouldn’t know that unless you read the fine print in the ingredients. Eating supersweet food, even if artificially sweetened, is a bad idea, Gudis says, because once people are used to really sweet tastes, they’re less likely to eat a varied, healthful diet.

• Eat breakfast every day. Consistently eating breakfast turns up in study after study as a key part of healthful living, particularly for kids. “I like cereal,” says Gudis. “It’s a good way to get people to eat breakfast, and if you pick a high-fiber one, you can get half your fiber knocked out for the day.” Eat it with milk, and you’re getting protein, calcium, and Vitamin D, too.

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reference:http://health.usnews.com/

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By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Yahoo! Press Writer.

BEIJING – Three Chinese astronauts made a jubilant return to Earth on Sunday after successfully completing the country’s first-ever spacewalk, an event the premier said was “a stride forward” in China’s space history

The spacewalk was mainly aimed at testing China’s mastery of the technology involved. The sole task of mission commander Zhai Zhigang was to retrieve a rack attached to the outside of the orbital module. He remained outside for about 13 minutes.

“It was a glorious mission, full of challenges with a successful end,” Zhai said after the Shenzhou 7 module landed under clear skies in the grasslands of China’s northern Inner Mongolia region. “We feel proud of the motherland.”

State broadcaster CCTV showed the astronauts emerge from their capsule, which floated gently down under a giant red-and-white-striped parachute, and wave at cameras as they celebrated the end of their 68-hour mission.

Zhai, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng stayed inside for about 46 minutes to adapt to Earth’s gravity before crawling out of the narrow entrance. They were declared healthy after medical examinations inside the module.

“This mission’s success is a milestone; a stride forward,” Premier Wen Jiabao said at mission control.

Saturday’s space walk, which was broadcast live and watched by crowds gathered around outdoor television screens, further stoked national pride one month after the close of the Beijing Olympics.

“A small step by Zhai Zhigang in space is a big step in the history of the Chinese nation,” said a commentary by the official Xinhua News Agency carried Sunday by the Beijing Daily newspaper.

On most newspaper front pages were pictures of Zhai clutching a Chinese flag as he hovered in space outside the Shenzhou 7 vessel, alongside photos of Chinese President Hu Jintao on a telephone as he spoke to the astronauts.

While successful, the spacewalk wasn’t without anxious moments.

Zhai, a 41-year-old fighter pilot, appeared to struggle with the hatch and a fire alarm was triggered in the orbiter as he began the spacewalk.

Wang Zhaoyao, deputy director of manned space flight, conceded that the combined effects of weightlessness and depressurization on the hatch opening operation hadn’t been fully anticipated. He blamed a faulty sensor for the fire alarm.

The spacewalk required the astronauts to first depressurize and then repressurize the orbital module and proved the effectiveness of Zhai’s Feitian space suit, produced by China at a cost of $4.4 million. Liu wore a nearly identical Russian-made Orlan suit, according to the reports.

The spacewalk paves the way for assembling a space station from two Shenzhou orbital modules, the next major goal of China’s manned spaceflight program.

China is also pursuing lunar exploration and may attempt to land a man on the moon in the next decade — possibly ahead of NASA‘s 2020 target date for returning to the moon.

China launched its first manned mission, Shenzhou 5, in 2003, becoming only the third country after Russia and the United States to launch a man into space. That was followed by a two-man mission in 2005.

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reference:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080928/ap_on_re_as/as_china_space

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By M.J. STEPHEY -  Tue Sep 23, 6:40 PM ET

A fellow at New York City‘s Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind “out-of-body” experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project’s origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain.

What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people’s claims of “near-death” experience?

When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases – as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they’re able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn’t functioning.

How does this project relate to society’s perception of death?

People commonly perceive death as being a moment – you’re either dead or you’re alive. And that’s a social definition we have. But the clinical definition we use is when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working. When doctors shine a light into someone’s pupil, it’s to demonstrate that there is no reflex present. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that’s the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn’t work, then that means that the brain itself isn’t working. At that point, I’ll call a nurse into the room so I can certify that this patient is dead. Fifty years ago, people couldn’t survive after that.

How is technology challenging the perception that death is a moment?

Nowadays, we have technology that’s improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now – who knows if they’ll ever make it to the market – that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine you fast-forward to 10 years down the line; and you’ve given a patient, whose heart has just stopped, this amazing drug; and actually what it does is, it slows everything down so that the things that would’ve happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.

But what is happening to the individual at that time? What’s really going on? Because there is a lack of blood flow, the cells go into a kind of a frenzy to keep themselves alive. And within about 5 min. or so they start to damage or change. After an hour or so the damage is so great that even if we restart the heart again and pump blood, the person can no longer be viable, because the cells have just been changed too much. And then the cells continue to change so that within a couple of days the body actually decomposes. So it’s not a moment; it’s a process that actually begins when the heart stops and culminates in the complete loss of the body, the decompositions of all the cells. However, ultimately what matters is, What’s going on to a person’s mind? What happens to the human mind and consciousness during death? Does that cease immediately as soon as the heart stops? Does it cease activity within the first 2 sec., the first 2 min.? Because we know that cells are continuously changing at that time. Does it stop after 10 min., after half an hour, after an hour? And at this point we don’t know.

What was your first interview like with someone who had reported an out-of-body experience?

Eye-opening and very humbling. Because what you see is that, first of all, they are completely genuine people who are not looking for any kind of fame or attention. In many cases they haven’t even told anybody else about it because they’re afraid of what people will think of them. I have about 500 or so cases of people that I’ve interviewed since I first started out more than 10 years ago. It’s the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present who said these patients had told them exactly what had happened, and they couldn’t explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles – not just the patients’ side but also the doctors’ side – and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn’t told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.

Why do you think there is such resistance to studies like yours?

Because we’re pushing through the boundaries of science, working against assumptions and perceptions that have been fixed. A lot of people hold this idea that, well, when you die, you die; that’s it. Death is a moment – you know you’re either dead or alive. All these things are not scientifically valid, but they’re social perceptions. If you look back at the end of the 19th century, physicists at that time had been working with Newtonian laws of motion, and they really felt they had all the answers to everything that was out there in the universe. When we look at the world around us, Newtonian physics is perfectly sufficient. It explains most things that we deal with. But then it was discovered that actually when you look at motion at really small levels – beyond the level of the atoms – Newton’s laws no longer apply. A new physics was needed, hence, we eventually ended up with quantum physics. It caused a lot of controversy – even Einstein himself didn’t believe in it.

Now, if you look at the mind, consciousness, and the brain, the assumption that the mind and brain are the same thing is fine for most circumstances, because in 99% of circumstances we can’t separate the mind and brain; they work at the exactly the same time. But then there are certain extreme examples, like when the brain shuts down, that we see that this assumption may no longer seem to hold true. So a new science is needed in the same way that we had to have a new quantum physics. The CERN particle accelerator may take us back to our roots. It may take us back to the first moments after the Big Bang, the very beginning. With our study, for the first time, we have the technology and the means to be able to investigate this. To see what happens at the end for us. Does something continue?

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Adam Brandejs, a 24 year old Sculptor/programmer with a BFA from the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, Canada has created Genpets™.

These little creatures have been displayed in numerous Toronto galleries as well as a retail store (Iodine & Arsenic on Queen Street), and they will soon be headed to Alberta as well as over to Europe to show in Basel Switzerland. So what exactly what are these little creatures? The Genpets™ are pre-packaged, bioengineered pets. They are living, breathing genetic animals and come in 2 base configurations, a 1-year model, and 3-year model.

“We use a process called “Zygote Micro Injection” which is quickly becoming a favourable method to combine DNA, or to insert certain proteins from different species. Most notably it was used in 1997 to splice mice with bioluminescent jellyfish and has since been used to create glowing rabbits, pigs, fish, and monkeys.

Since then, human DNA has been injected into rabbits, chimpanzees, spider DNA into sheep, and now, Genpets have arrived!” (Genpets) Each Genpet™ comes with a color-coded personality (7 in total). If you want a very energetic pet then you would choose a Red Genpet™.

Their packages really set them apart from other products on the market today. Each package has a microchip that monitors that state of the Genpet while it is asleep and it comes with a fully functioning heart monitor with green LED lights and a speaker. These guys do have limited mobility and must be cared for on a constant basis.

So here’s the question then – Are we as a society responsible enough to move into the realm of bioengineering?

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reference:http://www.gushmagazine.com/article/genpets-pets-of-the-future/

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read more:

http://www.genpets.com/

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/genpets.asp

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Mrs Palin is being investigated for her
conduct as governor of Alaska

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Details of how an e-mail account of US Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was hacked have emerged.

Following the hack, screenshots of Mrs Palin’s messages, inbox, pictures and address book were posted to the Wikileaks whistle-blowing site.

It is thought the attackers exploited the password resetting system of Yahoo’s e-mail service.

Details about Mrs Palin’s life pulled from public sources reportedly helped defeat security questions.

Formal investigation

Information from Wikipedia and other online databases helped to establish Mrs Palin’s date of birth, zip code and other personal information.

Armed with this, the attackers convinced the Yahoo password re-setting system they warranted access and allowed them to re-set the password and then get at the account.

In an official statement Yahoo said: “Yahoo treats issues of security and privacy very seriously.”

It added: “To protect the privacy of our users, we are not able to comment on the details of a specific user account.”

“Generally, if Yahoo! receives reports that an account has been compromised, we investigate for suspicious activity and take appropriate action,” the company said.

The attackers broke into Mrs Palin’s gov.palin@yahoo.com e-mail account. This account and another, gov.sarah@yahoo.com, owned by Mrs Palin have now been deleted.

The FBI and the US Secret Service have now begun a formal investigation into the attack and who may have been behind it.

The hackers used the CTunnel proxy service which routes web browsing through an intermediary to obscure where the attackers were based.

However, the screenshots for the attack reveal the original web address used by the proxy which may help investigators track down the miscreants.

It has been reported that records from the CTunnel proxy service are being sought by the FBI.

The attack on the e-mail account comes as questions are being asked about whether Mrs Palin used her personal e-mail accounts to carry out state business.

US law states that all e-mails relating to the official business of government must be archived and not destroyed. However, it does allow for personal e-mails to be deleted.

Mrs Palin is being investigated in Alaska for alleged abuse of power while governor of the state.

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reference:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7624809.stm

pictures:http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008

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