News Factoids for November 2011

Due to the small crop (global warming!), U.S. peanuts tripled in price this Fall; expect the price of peanut butter to double or worse before the end of the year.

Use this free online refinance calculator to see what future interest rate will be the optimal one for refinancing your old fixed-rate mortgage:
zwicke.NBER.org/refinance

Last year, total U.S. student loan debt exceeded U.S. credit card debt for the first time ever. — Time Magazine
The cost of college has increased 538 percent over the past 30 years.
— Time Magazine

There are around 5,000 privately-owned Bengal tigers in the U.S., more than the 3,600 that are living in the wild in Asia. — Xian Science Monitor

Just 147 interlocking companies control 40 percent of the world economy; the top 25 companies include Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Vanguard Group, United Bank of Switzerland, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Walton Enterprises, Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs, T. Rowe Price Group, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. — per New Scientist Magazine, Oct 2011

Several U.S. Senators & candidates are promoting a Constitutional amendment that would declare that only humans are 'persons' under U.S. law.
'Reverse Citizens United' Constitutional Amendment

Income for the poor rose 18 percent between 1979 and 2007 (in inflation-adjusted dollars), while middle-class income rose 40 percent and the income of the top one percent rose 275 percent.
— Congressional Budget Office report, October 2011

Commercial helium gas is extracted from natural gas, mostly in Texas and China. At the present rate of consumption, we will reach peak supply in twenty years, after which the supply will drop sharply.

Movie attendance dropped to a 17-year low in Summer 2011, and more viewers chose 2-D tickets over 3-D for expected blockbusters "Pirates of The Caribbean" #4, "Harry Potter" #8, "Green Lantern", and "Kung Fu Panda 2".

Information on the Occupy Movement
Progressivism / 'Occupy Movement' at Working Minds Philosophy website

There are 65 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S.A.; 48 of them are leaking radioactive tritium.
— two federal reports, 2011

Copyright 2011 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

November 2011 Quotations

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."
~~ President Herbert Hoover [1874-1964]

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
~~ Ben Hecht [1894-1964]

"Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity/"
~~ adventurer Thor Heyerdahl [1914-2002]

"An expert is [someone] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field."
~~ physicist Niels Bohr [1885-1962]

"When dealing with people, remember [that] you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity."
~~ Dale Carnegie [1888-1965]

"Finance, like Time, devours its own children."
~~ Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]

"Story is the shortest distance between people."
~~ Jeffrey Courion

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."
~~ Antoine de St-Exupéry [1900-44]

"Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle."
~~ Igor Sikorsky [1889-1972]

"Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes."
~~ Charles A. Lindbergh [1902-74], in 'Autobiography of Values' 1978

"God gave us memories that we might have roses in December."
~~ J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~~ rock legend Jimi Hendrix [1942-70]

"Don't declare victory at halftime."
~~ Stephen Windwalker

"Why should we believe [that] the private sector will take care of poverty? It never has in our history."
~~ Gene Nichol

"Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another. ... Inequality undermines democracy."
~~ George Packer, columnist at The New Yorker Magazine

"[The United States is] a dysfunctional plutocracy serving the biggest corporations and the billionaires behind them."
~~ Dave Johnson, Campaign For America's Future blogger

"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."
~~ Julia Cameron

"Two dangers threaten the universe: order and disorder."
~~ French poet Paul Valéry [1871-1945]

"Everybody wants to save the earth. Nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes."
~~ P.J. O'Rourke

"The only true voyage of discovery would not be to visit strange lands but to behold the universe thru the eyes of another."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]

"We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The key to success isn't much good until one discovers the right lock to insert it [into]."
~~ Chinese author & lecturer Tehyi Hsieh [1884-1972]

"Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral."
~~ Rosalind Russell [1907-76]

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]

"If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Don't get it right, just get it written."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you $50,000 for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul."
~~ Marilyn Monroe [1926-32]

"The clowns have finally taken over the circus ... [The Republican Party] is now overwhelmed by its own nonsense."
~~ Timothy Egan, in The New York Times

"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"In this country, everything is possible."
~~ Shakira

"The lure of flying is the lure of beauty."
~~ Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}