~~ per New York Times
Hishi {seashell disk} necklaces are back in fashion, after 40 years. But the local kids that are wearing them never heard of the word 'hishi' before.
President Obama was in Albuquerque last week, meeting with Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (the next New Mexico governor!), after which she took him to Barelas Coffee House for posole.
ECONOMIC NEWS
"The 137,698 bankruptcy filings in July represent a 9 percent increase from a year earlier ... Last year, there were 1.4 million consumer bankruptcy filings in the U.S., a 32 percent increase from 2008."
~~ Bloomberg News
In response to a $28 million budget gap for 2010, the City of Colorado Springs in Colorado is turning off as many as one-third of its streetlights.
IMMIGRATION NEWS
Apprehensions of illegal immigrants are down more than 60% since 2005, to 550,000 per year; violent crime in U.S. border counties dropped more than 30% in the past two decades.
CLIMATE & ECOLOGY
In August 2010, "An island of ice 4.4 times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland, potentially threatening shipping lanes and oil platforms."
"The planet just logged the warmest decade, the warmest year, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, may & June on record."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
"Nine nations recorded their all-time high temperature records in 2010."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
In 1964, the annual global [fishing] catch totalled around 50 million tons. In the late 1980s, the total world catch peaked at around 85 million tons. [And] for the past two decades, the global catch has been steadily declining.
~~ per New Yorker Magazine
2010 ties global heat record. The Hill: "The first eight months of 2010 tied for the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since records started in 1880."
~~ per the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
NATIONAL SECURITY
"As many as 854,000 people [in the U.S.] ... hold top secret security clearances. [And] fully a quarter million holders of top secret security clearances are employees not of the government but of private, profit-making businesses."
~~ Hendrick Hertzberg
'THANK A REPUBLICAN' DEPT.
One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
As of June, the number of Americans on food stamps had set a new all-time record for each of 19 consecutive months.
Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.
More than 25 percent of all Americans now have a credit score below 599.
One out of every five children in the United States is now living in poverty.
CHANGES AT AMAZON
While spending most of the day coding new material on my websites, especially the five bookstore sites, I have lately noticed that Amazon now has long-out-of-production VHS tapes back in stock as *NEW* product, often for under $5. My only guess to account for this phenomenon is that it has to do with the economy: DVD & Blu-ray prices are too high, and-or the studios are able to make a buck without much overhead by reproducing VHS tapes; the other possibility is demand thru kiosk sales.
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