MAEKES YOUR HEAD SPIN:

“Columbus forced everyone to rethink, redesign and rebuild their world view.That’s what we’re doing here," says Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astrophysics and director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative. "To put it in 15th-century terms, we’ve reached the Canary Islands. Getting to where we ultimately want to go is a slow process that involves astronomers, aeronautical engineers, biochemists, anthropologists and businessmen."

“It’s feasible that we’ll meet other sentient life forms and conduct commerce with them,” Sasselov said. “We don’t now have the technology to physically travel outside our solar system for such an exchange to take place, but we are like Columbus centuries ago, learning fast how to get somewhere few think possible.”

Sasselov believes that life is probably common in the universe. He said that he believes life is a natural “planetary phenomenon” that occurs easily on planets with the right conditions. “It takes a long time to do this,” Sasselov said at a 2011 Harvard conference. “It may be that we are the first generation in this galaxy.”

MAEKES YOUR HEAD SPIN:

“Columbus forced everyone to rethink, redesign and rebuild their world view.That’s what we’re doing here," says Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astrophysics and director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative. "To put it in 15th-century terms, we’ve reached the Canary Islands. Getting to where we ultimately want to go is a slow process that involves astronomers, aeronautical engineers, biochemists, anthropologists and businessmen."

“It’s feasible that we’ll meet other sentient life forms and conduct commerce with them,” Sasselov said. “We don’t now have the technology to physically travel outside our solar system for such an exchange to take place, but we are like Columbus centuries ago, learning fast how to get somewhere few think possible.”

Sasselov believes that life is probably common in the universe. He said that he believes life is a natural “planetary phenomenon” that occurs easily on planets with the right conditions. “It takes a long time to do this,” Sasselov said at a 2011 Harvard conference. “It may be that we are the first generation in this galaxy.”

IF YOU ARE among those who believe that Iceland “told creditors & IMF to go jump, nationalised banks, arrested the fraudsters, gave debt relief and is now growing very strongly, thanks”... then read this.

SPAIN'S HOME PRICES to fall another 30 percent as glut keeps growing:

RR de Acuña & Asociados expects home prices in Madrid, Barcelona and other major cities to fall a further 30pc in a relentless slide until 2018, but it may be even worse in sunbelt regions where 400,000 Britons either live or own homes.

Fresh losses could reach 50pc and drag on for 10 to 15 years in those places where construction ran wild during the bubble, bringing the total decline from peak to trough towards 75pc.

"The market is broken," said Fernando Rodríguez de Acuña, the group's vice-president. "We calculate that there are almost 2m properties waiting to be sold. We have made no progress at all over the past five years in clearing the stock," he said.

"There are 800,000 used homes on the market. Developers are sitting on a further 700,00 completed units. Another 300,000 have been foreclosed and 150,000 are in foreclosure proceedings, and there are another 250,000 still under construction. It's crazy."

The overhang is vast for a country with 48m inhabitants and annual demand near 200,000. It is coupled with an outflow of workers and the start of an aging population crisis.

On the other hand, not all the news are bad:

Foreign investors put more money into Spain in October than they took out, marking the second month running the country has benefited from an influx of capital.

GREAT RESOURCE: World History Atlas & Timelines since 3000 BC.

WHAT is happening in Spain’s economy and what is the outlook for 2013?

WHY EBOOKS don't destroy, but actually help, the publishing industry.

SPAIN: towards recovery via lower salaries?

Despite the economic gloom that has enshrouded it since the onset of the global financial crisis, Spain has at least one industrial bright spot: The country and its skilled, if underemployed, work force have once again become a beacon for European carmakers.

Four years of economic turmoil and the euro zone’s highest jobless rate have made the Spanish labor market so inviting — an estimated 40 percent less expensive than those of Europe’s other biggest car-making countries, Germany and France — that Ford and Renault recently announced plans to expand their production in Spain.

Even before those announcements, other carmakers had committed this year to new plants or expansion totaling as much as 2 billion euros, or $2.64 billion.

Some experts say such gains in competitiveness and investment are exactly what Spain needs for its economy to recover and to remove any doubts about whether the country can remain in the euro union.

Because Spain no longer has its own currency to devalue as a way to lower the price of its exports, it is having to find its competitive advantage in lower labor costs. Many economists have argued that societies cannot survive such painful downward adjustments.

But Spain, for now at least, seems to be defying that argument. Its trade deficit has been shrinking — down 28 percent for the first 10 months of this year, to 28 billion euros, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to newly released government data. That is the lowest level since 1972.

Although part of that trade improvement reflects lower imports, it is also a sign of better competitiveness as employers have been able to impose wage cuts without unleashing violent social unrest.

IRONY DEFINED: Michael Moore's Bodyguard Arrested on Airport Gun Charge

UPDATE. Oops, didn't realize this was from 2005. Still ironic, though.

AS A GENERAL RULE don't try this, guys: The Founder of FedEx Once Saved the Company by Taking Its Last $5,000 and Turning It Into $32,000 by Gambling in Vegas.

GOOD QUESTION: "Why is it crazy people only ever hear voices telling them to do bad things, like kill people? Why don't the voices ever tell them to do good things, like volunteer? Or does this happen, and we just assume said crazy people are normal, socially-conscious people?"

SPAIN BANKS bad loans hit new high in October

Spanish banks' bad loans rose to 11.2 percent of their outstanding portfolios in October, reaching a fresh record high, Bank of Spain data showed on Tuesday.

 

THEY WERE BOUGHT by Facebook, and it shows: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

DATA SAYS IT ALL: Charting US Debt And Deficit Since Inception

THE WEATHER FORECAST for this week. Heh:

(via)

ANTONY MUELLER: Does Europe Need a New Marshall Plan?

The beneficial effect of the Marshall Plan came not primarily from the transfer of funds, but from the conditions attached to receiving them. These conditions pushed the European towards open borders and free trade and did away with regime uncertainty. It was precisely because the Marshall program promoted the necessary structural reforms of the European countries that made the Plan effective. The proponents of a “New Marshall Plan” promote the exact opposite: they demand funds without condition in order to avoid structural reforms, to avoid the consolidation of government finances, and in order to cut welfare spending and regulation. They want to push European governments into an endless cycle of monetary and fiscal expansion and an unsustainable debt burden that will cripple these economies for decades to come. The true heirs of the Marshall Plan and promoters of prosperity are not those who call for an unconditional flow of resources from the North to the South, but those who condition such flows to structural reforms.

IT'S EXACTLY 35 years ago today of Saturday Night Fever's world premiere; probably the highest point of the popularization of disco music.

HOW REGULATIONS killed great cars.

RAVI SHANKAR couldn’t stand the hippies, as it turns out. I love this bit:

At Madison Square Garden in 1971, in the celebrated Concert for Bangladesh which had been organised by his friend George Harrison, the first plangent chords of Shankar’s sitar-playing were received with rapturous applause, obliging him to lecture the audience: “If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing even more.”

Tee hee.

IF YOU THOUGHT Roquefort cheese smelled bad: New Discovery of 7000-Year-Old Cheese Puts Your Trader Joe's Aged Gouda to Shame

SEVEN ABSURD WAYS the military wastes taxpayer dollars.

AND DEMAGOGUERY: Wave of Evictions Spurs Sympathy in Spain

AND YET another 'historical' step in the Eurozone:

Europe took its first big step towards banking union early on Thursday morning, as eurozone finance ministers agreed a plan to cede power to a common bank supervisor in Frankfurt.

After almost four months of fraught diplomacy that laid bare deep Franco-German divisions, finance ministers brokered terms for the European Central Bank to begin direct supervision of up to 200 eurozone lenders from early 2014.

The reform requires governments to surrender jealously guarded control over national banks, in the most concerted financial integration project since the creation of the single currency.

At the same time, Britain, Sweden and other non-eurozone countries outside the banking union won coveted safeguards to check the power of the ECB and maintain some influence over technical standards applying to all EU banks.

The supervision plan is the first – and probably the easiest – step towards a eurozone banking union designed to shore up confidence, resuscitate cross-border bank lending and bring down painfully high borrowing costs for banks in peripheral eurozone countries.

 

I HAD NO IDEA that computer are made this way...

(via FB)

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD: Mario Monti's Resignation Is The Only Way To Save Italy.

ASPIRIN, the 2,000-year-old wonder drug. I don't like the public-policy implications in the article, but it's still interesting to learn about its health benefits.

AL-QAEDA may have chemical weapons, Spain's counter-terror chief warns

The head of National Police counter-terrorist intelligence, Commissioner-General Enrique Baron, told a strategic security conference in Barcelona that it was believed that the self-styled Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb - AQMI - could have acquired such arms in Libya or elsewhere during the Arab Spring last year. He also warned that the group was encouraging attacks against Spain.

Addressing the conference organised by the Foundation for Techniques for Defence and Security, Commissioner Baron told his audience: "The Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb has acquired and used very powerful conventional arms and probably also has non-conventional arms, basically chemical, as a result of the loss of control of arsenals."

The most likely place where this could have happened was in Libya during the uprising which overthrew the Gaddafi regime, said Commissioner Baron.

In his position as the head of Spanish National Police intelligence the Commissioner-General works closely with MI6, the CIA and other Western European intelligence services.

He told the one-day conference that AQMI, which is now occupying the northern part of Mali along with other fundamentalist groups and local Tuareg tribesmen, posed the greatest terrorist threat against Spain.

It had frequently said that a main aim was to "recover Al Andalus" - the name given to Spain when it was under Moorish occupation in the Middle Ages.

The Telegraph uses the wrong picture, that of former EU commissioner and Socialist minister Enrique Barón. Same name, different person...

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT: Bitcoin exchange gains clearance to operate as a real bank in France.

GOOD THING it's not Bush, eh? Newly Released Drone Records Reveal Extensive Military Flights in US.

ONE MORE DOWN:

The senior al-Qaida leader known as Abu-Zaid al-Kuwaiti was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday as he ate breakfast in Pakistan, an Islamist Website said.

U.S. officials confirmed the news, NBC News reported. Experts said Sheik Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan was one of the top remaining leaders of al-Qaida following the death of Osama bin Laden and a possible successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy and successor.

71 YEARS AGO TODAY, new theories:

The “infamy” of December 7, 1941, is deeper than most Americans have ever imagined. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was almost certainly the result of a Soviet plot—“Operation Snow”—carried out by Harry Dexter White, a figure of enormous influence in the Roosevelt administration and a known Soviet spy.

Americans remember Pearl Harbor as the work of a Japanese military machine hell-bent on a war of conquest. The truth is more complicated.

Keep reading…

GOOD JOB, HUGO:

According to Transparency International (TI) annual report, Venezuela ranks 165th along with Haiti, after they both obtained 19 points in the 100-point scale. The two countries are only ahead of Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia or Iraq, which were the most corrupt nations worldwide.

RIP OSCAR NIEMEYER: here's his work in pictures.

THE BAD NEWS: women can tall a cheating man just by looking at him, according to a study. The good news: it's only other men, not theirs. You can relax now, guys...

YES!! The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like.

IF YOU'RE A SOCCER FAN you'll probably enjoy this: all the World Cup finals (full games) since 1954.

ANOTHER SMALL STEP FOR MAN and a giant leap for mankind, relatively soon:

NASA just announced the plans for the next phase of its Mars program, culminating in the arrival of humans in the Red Planet's orbit by the 2030s. "This announcement," per a NASA press release, "affirms the agency's commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation's scientific and human exploration objectives."

One of NASA's big plans for the Red Planet involves a new Mars robotic science rover -- Curiosity's cousin -- which will launch in 2020 and whose design will largely be based on the thus-far-flawless technology that the Mars Science Laboratory employs. That kind of Curiosity mimicry will minimize mission cost and risk, the thinking goes, while leveraging the learnings of previous work.

 

INTERESTING DATA: where Republicans and Democrats shop.

AMAZING NATURE: on this video, a leopard kills a baboon but, before eating it, notices she had a baby. Then the leopard protects it. Just watch:

PEAK OIL FEARS FADE:

When Daniel Lacalle, in his early 20s, took a job with Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA in 1991, friends chided him for entering a field with no future. "They all said, 'Why do you want to do that? Don't you know only 20 years of oil is left in the whole world?'" he recalls.

Two decades and four energy crises later, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 2 trillion barrels of untouched crude is still locked in the ground, enough to last more than 70 years at current rates of consumption. Technological advances enable companies to image, drill and shatter subterranean rocks with precision never dreamed of in decades past. Trillions of barrels of petroleum previously thought unreachable or nonexistent have been identified, mapped and in many cases bought and sold during the past half decade, from the boggy wastes of northern Alberta, to the arid mountain valleys of Patagonia, to Africa's Rift Valley.

"Betting against human ingenuity has been a mistake," says Lacalle, who today helps oversee $1.3 billion as a portfolio manager at Ecofin Ltd. in London. "The resource base is absolutely enormous, so much so that we will not run out of oil in my lifetime, your lifetime, our children's lifetimes or our grandchildren's lifetimes."

Keep reading.

IF you break down a human body to its raw components, it’s worth about $160.

(via)

 

 

GOOD THING it's not Katrina with Bush but Sandy with Obama, or we'd already have a David Simon series on HBO, and Spike Lee shouting from the rooftops that it was all a plot to kill as many blacks as possible, or something:

Dozens of residents are still living without heat, hot water, or electricity in condemned structures flooded by both sea and sewer water in the Gerritsen Beach community of Brooklyn after a request to FEMA for temporary housing after Hurricane Sandy was denied.

DEATH PENALTIES with no due process, cruelly executed in public. But nobody complains.

QUITE RIGHT: Why I love Twitter and barely tolerate Facebook.

ALSO ON THE WSJ: Spanish Bonds Show Strength, but the Haze Hasn't Lifted

Despite the cheer, the future is hazy for Spain, which is the crisis's next potential flash point. There is a broad consensus among investors that Spain will need to ask for aid next year, because it simply has too much debt to sell and not enough willing buyers. Betting on Spanish bonds is, in effect, betting that the future rescue will go smoothly and that Spain can generate growth to pay off what it owes.

Neither is a foregone conclusion.

 

SIMON NIXON at the WSJ: Euro's Unity Continues to Defy the Bears

The big story of 2012 has been the refusal of the euro zone to collapse, much to the frustration of those who bet heavily or staked their professional credibility on its demise.