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How Long Can You Hold Your Breath?

"If it's the end of the world, what do you buy? Canned foods, guns and the generators," said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services. "There are a huge number of people who feel this is the end of the world." _WSJ

WSJ

Investors seem to be investing for the coming doom-bama. Let's first look at the investments that are doing well. Then we will analyse the thinking behind the investing, and the wisdom of the thinking.

Amid the market tumult, a handful of stocks have seen their share prices ratchet up to record highs in recent weeks. And many of them are connected by a curious, if disconcerting, thread: Between them, they provide an investor with essentials for any respectable fallout shelter—makers of bottled water, canned goods, dehydrated broth, gas masks and auxiliary generators.

A portfolio of the 18 companies that reached their peaks in the past month would be up about 24% this year, compared with the broader market's 4.5% decline, a sign some investors may be taking the prospects of financial Armageddon more seriously than one might think.

..."This is a very unusual economic cycle we're going through—we haven't been through anything like it in any of our lifetimes, and we don't know how it's going to play out," says Dorsey Farr, partner at Atlanta-based investment advisory French Wolf & Farr. "We don't see where this economy is going, and some of the potential outcomes are frightening."

... _WSJ

So, 18 months under the Obama - Pelosi regime, and we are looking at the end of the world. You can't blame an investor for bidding up precious metals, guns, ammunition, and disaster preparedness supplies. Investing in "bunker portfolio investments" is fine as long as the monetary system is working. What if the system collapses when your portfolio is at its peak? How do you convert your stocks to useful tradegoods and survival supplies at that point?

But what does a person do when he sees the end of the world coming? You can get some idea at Preparedness Pro and at The Prepper E-Book. The basics: stockpile food, water, medicines, fuels for heating and power generation, beef up security, have fallback and bugout plans, etc....

But almost all of those preparedness and survival plans are the equivalent of holding one's breath and ducking underwater, to avoid a temporary danger. How long can you hold your breath before coming back up. And when you do come up, what are you likely to find?

Even if you have a perfect fallback plan to a defensible location where you will be able to grow ample food and have an ample supply of potable water, what happens if you have a type 1 diabetic in your family -- or someone equally dependent upon high-tech medicines or supplies? What happens if it's your bad luck to be located one county over from a would-be Alexander the Great, neo-conqueror of the collapsed lands? Or if you get caught between blood-thirsty rival gangs each seeking to expand their territory?

More likely, you will try to tough it out in the suburbs or in an urban apartment or townhouse. Perhaps you have stored enough supplies to get through a 1 month crisis. How many others in your city will have thought to do the same? It will get very bad in the cities under such conditions, and a lot of the things that can burn, will burn.

There is strength in numbers, as long as they are the right numbers. If you decide to hole up on a University Campus with professors and staff, you will be dead before you understand where you went wrong. Your cohorts in disaster need to be competent in the real world. That leaves out intellectuals, bureaucrats, and a huge number of other drags on the productive sector -- who have only been able to survive due to the astounding productivity of the private sector market economies (until the leeches succeeded in killing the private sectors).

You had better start planning, looking around, polishing your skills, and making connections with people who have complementary skills. People can only hold their breath for a short time, but if they are on board a nuclear powered submarine or a inside a nuclear powered underwater habitat, they will not have to hold their breath at all, metaphorically speaking.

Making good investment decisions -- investing to match the mood of the markets -- can help a person to build and conserve assets. But markets do break down from time to time, when put under too much stress. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Charlène - Le Marais - Paris

Charlène
" ... I sudy to ba a Make-up Artist.
For me Fashion is a state of mind.
My look is normal. I love Make-up.
I hate insects. My message to the world:
Nothing !
I wear a tunic and cardigan by H&M
bag just bought in Châtelet ..."

Maxime - Le Marais - Paris

Maxime
" ... I am student in High-School.
For me Fashion is a social code. Today,
my look is sports wear casual. I love Lady Gaga,
I hate black chocolate. My message to the world:
God made us as we are and God cannot be wrong ..."



I wear a sweat by John Galliano
Pants by The Kooples
Sneakers by Dior
Suniies by RayBan
Bag by Lancel
Perfume: "Alien" by T.Mugler

Timothée - Le Marais - Paris

Timothée
"... I am a student in Art & Fashion.
For me Fashion is a part of culture.
It's very important in life. Today, my look
is "à l'arrache" casual street wear ...
I love Art. I hate mathematics.
My message to the world: stay yourself ..."



I wear a sweat by Franklin Marshall
shirt by Blend
Shorts by Eleven
Sneakers by Converse
Glasses by Marc Jacobs
Bag vintage

Difference Between Humans and Animals, Part X

Conservative Wesley Smith claims it is our morality and what that means for our interaction with the rest of the natural world:

Humans, Smith argues, are the only moral creatures: they have innate moral worth and their well-being always takes precedence over the well-being of animals, who are amoral creatures. Humans do indeed have a moral obligation to promote animal welfare, but they are also entitled to use animals, particularly if the use of animals alleviates human suffering.

What's the difference between humans and animals? Perhaps it the fact that we are even asking that question gives us the right to use the animal kingdom for our benefit. My next question is, in value, how many animals make one human?

Here's part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine of this series.

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Peepholes Into a Coherent World: BrainWorks Series

NewScientist

To most of us, the brain is a "black box." It creates a seemingly coherent world with which we can interact, but we have only limited understanding how it does what it does. But when focal brain damage happens to persons, neurologists and neuroscientists can begin to see how the brain puts the pieces of the puzzle together to create the world.

It's here that people with visual agnosias come in handy. Behrmann had previously studied people with integrative agnosia, who have difficulty recognising and naming complex objects as a whole, and instead seem to pay unusual attention to their individual features. One person, for example, mistook a picture of a harmonica for a computer keyboard, presumably thinking the row of air-holes in the mouthpiece were computer keys (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol 29, p 19). Others have mistaken a picture of an octopus for a spider, and a pretzel for a snake.

In 2006, Behrmann put one of her patients, known as SM, through a series of experiments alongside people with normal vision. All were shown a set of three-dimensional objects on a screen, each made from two simple geometric shapes. Afterwards, the volunteers were shown a stream of these images, with a few new objects thrown in. Their task was to report whether or not they had seen the objects before.

While those with normal vision performed with nearly 100 per cent accuracy, SM made some intriguing mistakes. He knew he hadn't seen an object before if it contained a new part, but those that had the same parts in a different configuration confused him. About half the time he mistook these for the familiar objects (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol 32, p 1169).

To Behrmann, the results suggest that our brains normally construct objects from a series of smaller building blocks, which she calls our "visual vocabulary". To recall our concept of an object, she says, we form a mental map of the way these parts fit together. It was at this stage that SM failed. "He had a good representation of the parts, but understood little of how they were combined," Behrmann says. _NewScientist

NewScientist

Advanced brain imaging is helping neuroscientists to sort between the different the different varieties of visual agnosias. This helps us understand the different functional brain modules, and to learn where they are located.

Brain scans have revealed that people with visual form agnosia tend to have damage to the ventral (lower) part of the brain's visual area. People with optic ataxia, on the other hand, have damage to the dorsal (upper) part. This led to the idea that we have two streams of visual processing. The ventral pathway is necessary for perceiving or recognising an object, while the dorsal pathway deals with an object's physical location in our visual field and, if we need to perform an action on it, guides the movement of our bodies. For this reason, scientists often refer to the two processes as the perception-action, or the what-where, streams of visual processing.

...In fact, the closer neuroscientists look, the more modular our visual systems appear. MRI scans of people with and without agnosias have suggested that within the ventral stream, separate aspects of appearance are processed independently. This year, psychologist Cristiana Cavina-Pratesi at Durham University in the UK found that shape, texture and colour are all processed in individual regions (Cerebral Cortex, DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhp298).

Yet our experience feels markedly different. When we consciously see something, all these disparate elements are stitched seamlessly together, so we know instantly that an apple is smooth, green and round. The question of how we accomplish this is central to the study of conscious perception.

...So important is the role vision plays in most people's everyday lives that most research has concentrated on visual agnosias. Now the hunt is on for similar disorders that affect the other senses. Recently, for example, neurologists found a person who could understand speech but not other sounds. Coslett, meanwhile, is investigating whether simultanagnosics also have trouble binding other sensory sensations together, such as sights and sounds.

Now you see it...

There are many visual disorders, typically caused by damage to specific parts of the brain.

• Simultanagnosia - Seeing only one object at a time, even when viewing a scene comprising many items
  
• Integrative agnosia - Inability to recognise whole objects, tending to focus instead on individual features of an object
  
• Visual form agnosia - Inability to describe the shape, size or orientation of objects, yet exhibiting no problem in manipulating them
  
• Optic ataxia - Ability to report the shape and size of an object, though attempts to manipulate it are clumsy
  
• Prosopagnosia - Failure to recognise the faces of familiar people
  
• Pure alexia (aka agnosia for words) - Inability to identify individual characters or read text, even though subjects are sometimes able to write
  
• Agnosia for scenes - Inability to recognise known landmarks or scenes
  
• Colour agnosia - Ability to perceive colours without being able to identify, name or group them according to similarity

_NewScientist

We have discussed the binding problem before, but it is important to begin to zero in on the parts of the brain which are involved in binding different aspects of reality together into a "coherent whole."

It is also important to begin to learn the actual dynamic mechanisms which are responsible for creating the actual "sensation of consciousness." Or, "The Feeling of What Happens," as Antonio Damasio expresses it.

It is only by delving deeply into these processes that we will be able to conceptualise ways in which we may profitably reverse-engineer a human brain. But that will mean letting go of the "algorithmic theory of conscious intelligence" which has waylaid so many well-meaning artificial intelligence researchers in the past.

Scientific American has a short piece on a parallel topic

Rachel - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Rachel
"I work as Brand Manager.
iN Fashion I think that aesthetic is
less important than confort. You have to
find the right middle. I love Sun, Sea and
good food like french cheese: le Chèvre is the best !
I hate disrespect and arrogance and people who don't mesure
consequences of their behaviour. My message to the world:
You make your own luck ..."



I wear a denim dress by GAP
shoes 10€ in a small shop in Paris
bag from Sidney
Sunnies by Carrera
perfume: "Romance" by Ralf Lauren

Popular Economics Blogs

One of the parts I'm most excited about in my AP Microeconomics course is getting students to read popular economics blogs and create their own personal blog. I've already discussed the numerous benefits to blogging, so here are a list of the most popular economics blogs that I've come across to get them (and maybe you) started. They are in no specific order:

• Economists View
• Dear Economist
• Paul Krugman's Blog
• Marginal Revolution
• The Economist's Free Exchange
• Becker and Posner's Blog
• Grasping Reality with Both Hands
• The Sport's Economist
• Economists Do It With Models
• New York Times' Economix
• Freakonomics Blog
• Economic Logic
• Indexed
• Newmark's Door
• Cafe Hayek
• Economist Mom
• Carpe Diem
• Greg Mankiw's Blog
• EconLog
• The Atlantic's Megan Mcardle
• The WSJ's Real Time Economics
• Also, here are some economics Twitter feeds

Are there any worthwhile economics blogs I'm missing?

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No Representation without Taxation

Less famous than the original slogan, but this one is just as true. Here is a good example:

Low taxes, and the erratic collection of them, are common features of life in most of the Middle East. Among the Arab oil producers, for example, taxation accounted for only 5% of gross domestic product in 2002, rising to 17% in the non-oil countries – which is still very low compared with Germany (39%), Italy (41%) and Britain (37%).

The main reason, of course, is that many of them are rentier economies where the government has sources of income other than taxes. Oil is the classic example but there are others: Egypt benefits in a similar way from the Suez canal and several of the poorer Arab countries receive substantial rent in the form of foreign aid. Overall, slightly less than 20% of Arab governments' revenue comes from taxes.

Taxation is an often-overlooked factor in the internal politics of the Middle East: it helps to explain why undemocratic regimes stay in power for so long. Governments that have substantial non-tax income can buy themselves out of trouble by showering largesse on the population, often keeping prices low through subsidies (as happens in Iran).

The higher the taxes, the more accountability and control the people demand. Perhaps we should make our taxation more obvious.

Thomas - Etienne Marcel - Paris

Thomas
"I work as Glass-Blower
For me Fashion is to stand out of the crowd
with my own style. Today, my look is Rock.
I love music. I hate cheese"



I wear jeans 511 by Levis
T-Shirt by H&M
Shirt by Levi's
Sneakers by Converse
Cap by All Saints
Perfume "A Man" by T.Mugler

Growing Awareness of Solar System's Population Density

DailyMail

The image above looks only at the inner solar system. If you expand the view to include the outer system and the huge cloud and belt of comets and asteroids extending far out from the planetary orbits, you may begin to appreciate some of the material resources of this one solar system.

There is a huge amount of valuable real estate swirling around our solar system, waiting to be claimed by bold explorers and prospectors. Who will be the ones to lay claim to the richness of the asteroids, the outer system, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud? Who are the brave adventurers and explorers, and who are the good-for-nothing incompetent couch potatoes?

Created by British astronomer Scott Manley, the three-minute clip – which is the equivalent of two months per second – starts with a sprinkling of white ‘dust’ around the edge of the planets....The footage shows the discovery of every new asteroid over the past three decades and charts it on an increasingly congested map of the solar system.

Over the years, and as more telescopes are added to the experiment and detection methods improve, this becomes a dense green ‘ring’ as the number of ‘minor planets’ found in the asteroid belt increases. _ImpactLab_from_DailyMail

Humans are faced with many challenges -- challenges both true and fabricated. Many of these "earth-shaking" challenges can only be taken seriously if humans are to be stuck on this one planet for the next thousand years, restricted to using technologies of the past and confined by nonsensical rules based upon phantom fears such as carbon hysteria.

If, on the other hand, we unleash the human imagination and human resourcefulness, we will begin to discover resources far beyond our ability to exploit for tens of thousands of years.

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