Tag Archives: dollars

A $1 Billion Foreign Investment in the US Happens About Once Per Day

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

We’re going to be seeing a lot of this over the next four years:

How do I know? Because Trump sounds like Dr. Evil here. ONE! BILLION! DOLLARS! For comparison, here is total foreign direct investment since the start of the century:

Every year, there are hundreds of investments of a billion dollars by foreign companies in the US. The Fiat Chrysler announcement is entirely routine.

Still, that’s hundreds of opportunities every year for Trump to blather about how he’s making America great again. Just keep in mind that it’s all nonsense. I figure trend FDI should reach about $3.9 trillion in 2017. Wake me up if Trump manages to get it significantly higher than that, but please don’t insult me by trumpeting every piddling contribution along the way as if he were raining pixie dust over the entire economy.

UPDATE: The original headline and text way overstated the flow of new FDI each year. Sorry. It’s fixed now.

Taken from: 

A $1 Billion Foreign Investment in the US Happens About Once Per Day

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A $1 Billion Foreign Investment in the US Happens About Once Per Day

The weird way that Obama’s press conference was actually, sort of, about climate change.

In his final press conference of 2016, President Obama — in his usual, staid tones — fielded question after question about Russia’s alleged election interference.

But Obama also reminded us that at the heart of Russia’s economic interests and relative power is its backward status as a petrostate.

“They are a smaller country; they are a weaker country; their economy doesn’t produce anything that anyone wants to buy except oil and gas and arms,” he said. “They don’t innovate. But, they can impact us if we lose track of who we are. They can impact us if we abandon our values.”

The Washington Post calls Trump’s relationship with Russia “the most obscure and disturbing aspect of his coming presidency.” Trump’s choice of Exxon’s Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State only underlines this: At Exxon, Tillerson had deals worth billions of dollars with Russia, some of which can only move forward if the U.S. lifts sanctions on the country.

These deals are only worth billions, though, if fossil fuels maintain their value. The idea that there is a “carbon bubble,” and fossil fuel companies are dangerously overvalued, is a threatening proposition to a petrostate. And, most likely, a Trump administration.

View post: 

The weird way that Obama’s press conference was actually, sort of, about climate change.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, GE, InsideClimate News, LG, Naka, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ringer, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The weird way that Obama’s press conference was actually, sort of, about climate change.

GOP Gov. Pat McCrory just signed a bill that limits his successor’s powers.

In his final press conference of 2016, President Obama — in his usual, staid tones — fielded question after question about Russia’s alleged election interference.

But Obama also reminded us that at the heart of Russia’s economic interests and relative power is its backward status as a petrostate.

“They are a smaller country; they are a weaker country; their economy doesn’t produce anything that anyone wants to buy except oil and gas and arms,” he said. “They don’t innovate. But, they can impact us if we lose track of who we are. They can impact us if we abandon our values.”

The Washington Post calls Trump’s relationship with Russia “the most obscure and disturbing aspect of his coming presidency.” Trump’s choice of Exxon’s Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State only underlines this: At Exxon, Tillerson had deals worth billions of dollars with Russia, some of which can only move forward if the U.S. lifts sanctions on the country.

These deals are only worth billions, though, if fossil fuels maintain their value. The idea that there is a “carbon bubble,” and fossil fuel companies are dangerously overvalued, is a threatening proposition to a petrostate. And, most likely, a Trump administration.

View the original here:  

GOP Gov. Pat McCrory just signed a bill that limits his successor’s powers.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, GE, InsideClimate News, LG, Naka, ONA, OXO, PUR, Radius, Ringer, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on GOP Gov. Pat McCrory just signed a bill that limits his successor’s powers.

Appeals Court Upholds BP Oil Spill Settlement

green4us

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Not all battles in the 41st Millennium are massed engagements between lumbering armies and towering war machines. In the shadows of these epic conflicts, squads of elite soldiers clash – their missions no less vital, their foes no less deadly. Designated as Kill Teams by the Imperium, or by a myriad of different names for their alien and daemonic counterpart […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Tyranids (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

iTunes Store
Organizing Magic – Sandra Felton

Every busy, harried woman wants to be more organized. But actually satisfying that desire is another story. Why does organization have to be so difficult? It doesn’t! Not according to The Organizer Lady™. She’s back with an all new, forty day plan that will help women achieve a well-ordered home and life. Practical and easy to apply, Organizing Mag […]

iTunes Store
Decoding Your Dog – American College of Veterinary Behaviorists

More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups. The key to training dog […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Tyranids (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

iTunes Store
How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Tyranids – Games Workshop

With wetly shining carapace and dripping fangs of bone and cartilage, Tyranid bio-creatures are birthed from the womb of the Hive Mind with a single purpose: to feed upon the galaxy until there is nothing left. Bulging venom sacks, ghastly living weapons and thick armoured hides are all distinctive features of the Tyranids, every inch of them having been gro […]

iTunes Store
Warhammer 40,000 Altar of War: Tyranids – Games Workshop

The Tyranids are a deadly race of intergalactic monstrosities, bent upon devouring the galaxy’s many worlds and leaving nothing but airless wastelands in their wake. To fight the Tyranid swarm is an experience utterly unlike any other battle a general may face, for these terrifying aliens seek not to conquer or to raid, but to consume all life in their path. […]

iTunes Store
Dataslate: Tyrannic War Veterans (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

The Tyrannic War Veterans are a legendary Space Marines formation. They are a specialist strike force led by Chaplain Ortan Cassius, the Ultramarines’ Master of Sanctity. The Tyrannic War Veterans were forged out of an infamous event in the Ultramarines’ history known as the First Tyrannic War. Comprised of hardened veterans, each of whom is highly skilled i […]

iTunes Store
Cat Sense – John Bradshaw

Cats have been popular household pets for thousands of years, and their numbers only continue to rise. Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. In Cat Sense , renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using […]

iTunes Store
What the Dog Did – Emily Yoffe

Dave Barry meets The Secret Lives of Dogs in Emily Yoffe’s funny and insightful look at all things canine. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record.

iTunes Store

View original post here – 

Appeals Court Upholds BP Oil Spill Settlement

Posted in alo, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Appeals Court Upholds BP Oil Spill Settlement

Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby

Image: Prince Roy

In 1998, Hank Eskin started a website called WheresGeorge.com, dedicated to tracking dollar bills across the United States. Members of this club are called Georgers. They stamp dollar bills with their website, then search for and track those bills as they travel across the United States.

At NPR, Stan Alcorn caught up with some of these trackers. He writes:

[T]ypical Georgers log in religiously to enter their dollars’ serial numbers and ZIP codes before they stamp and spend them. If one gets entered a second time, the Georger gets an email. That’s called a “hit.”

Robert Rothenberg was sitting at the table in Kabooz’s when he got a hit in New Jersey. He gets a lot of hits, since he’s entered nearly 100,000 bills into the website’s database.

“I have a hit streak going since July of 2010, every day since then. I’m trying to get to 1,000 days, which will be the end of the month,” Rothenberg says.

Now, what started as a quirky hobby has turned into a national bill hunt that’s useful for all sorts of people—like physicists. Dirk Brockmann, a physicist at Northwestern University, writes at his website about meeting a cabinet maker in Vermont who tipped him off to the site:

After the conference I decided to visit Dennis Derryberry, an old friend from college who lives within driving distance to Montreal in the green mountains of Vermont, where he works as a cabinet maker. After a few hours on the highway Dennis and his family welcomed me to their beautiful house in the woods. During this visit Dennis, one of the most witty individuals I have ever met, asked me one evening on his porch while we were having a beer, “So Dirk, what are you working on?” – “I’m interested in the patterns that underly human travel,” I replied, and told him about my efforts to better understand human mobility and our goal of developing more quantitative models for the spread of epidemics. “It’s just amazingly difficult to compile all this data,” I explained. Dennis paused a while and then inquired, “Do you know this website www.wheresgeorge.com?”

From there, Brockmann has used the bills to study how networks move move and change, infectious diseases and all sorts of other things. Eskin, for one, is surprised at both the popularity and the usefulness of his little project. And when Georgers get together, it still feels like a small club. Here’s NPR again:

At Kabooz’s Bar and Grill at New York’s Penn Station, Jennifer Fishinger is covering her table in stacks of ones. There are 500 $1 bills laid out.

At the next table over, David Henry has his stacks of cash in plastic bags. They’re paper-clipped $1 bills in groups of 10.

If only everyone else’s little hobbies could do the same amount for science.

More from Smithsonian.com:

To Save Money, Ask for Pretty, New Dollar Bills
On the Money

Link to article: 

Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby