There cannot be another civilization on the level of this one. We have used up all the surface level metals and hydrocarbons. There couldn't be another iron or bronze age because the materials aren't available.
My money says they were bullshitting him. The chick at the end got the concept. When he forced her to play along and write down "half a cent in dollar notation" she got "$0.005" just fine.
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving upMy grandmother's "ColdSpot" refrigerator is over 45 years old and still running! Modern refrigerators are obviously built to fail within six years or so.
My parents have a Sony CD player deck from ~1991 and it still works great. I've gone through about three over the years.
The increasing IQ trend is called the "Flynn effect." But Flynn himself thought people were just getting better at taking tests and various other biases were interfering. He suspected that intelligence was actually declining at a rate of about 1% per generation because the dumbest among us have more children.
This study concludes the Flynn effect is a matter of how you tweak the numbers. It's weak enough it's not really worth talking about. Other studies have shown IQs have been declining in the West since the mid to late 90s.
The article talks only about how health has improved over the last few hundred years. This is almost entirely due to nutrition and sanitation. The article fails to mentions the much more interesting point that we are probably still less healthy than our ancestors of 2000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers are on average taller than Americans today, and there has never been a documented hunter-gatherer cancer death. Read accounts of the original Spanish explorers in the Carribean and Florida. They saw how much taller and healthier the hunter-gatherer tribes were.
The ideal human diet is high in meat and animal fat. For the last several hundred years "civilized" humans have been highly reliant on grains and short on quality fats and proteins, which has been disasterous for human health. Only in the last hundred years has meat and fat consumption risen to reasonably healthy levels in wealthy countries. The effects of increased meat and fat intake was clearly documented in post-war UK and Japan, where deliberate efforts to raise egg and dairy consumption had dramatic effects on heart disease and general health.
The stock market is highly overvalued. Stocks have only ever been a good buy at PE ratios of about 10 or less. The US market is at about 21, and profits are at record lows as a percentage of GDP. A cursory examination of the equity price cycle says now is a terrible time to buy. The typical bull market lasts about 15 years and the typical bear market lasts almost as long. Stocks went way up in the 15 years leading up to 1965. Then stocks did nothing until the early 80s. Then they shot up for 20 years. We are in a bear market now (inflation adjusted stocks are 20% below the 2000 high and still dropping). The historical pattern suggests stocks might be a good buy around 2015.
The claim of 10% historical returns from the stock market is complete garbage. Nobody invested at an "average" time. People invest over the course of a 45 year career. If you break the last 150 years down into every possible 45 year investing period and then take the median return from all those periods you get a typical return barely better than bonds. The 10% claim is also complete garbage from the get-go because it ignores taxes and fees.
If you want to buy stocks anyway, mutual funds are the worst possible way to do it. Fees and active trading will kill you. Mutual funds are obsolete now that we have ETFs. The advice someone posted elsewhere to consult with a professional is bogus. Professionals will steer you into their comission generating products like mutual funds. You have to research this on your own, and most of the popular literature is basically industry propaganda.
Someone else criticised you for even taking out student loans. They are wrong. Student loans are free money right now, assuming your income is negligible. The interest rate is way below inflation, which is understated by as much as 5%.
My money is on commodities. I think we're on the brink of a 10 fold gain in things like oil, metals, grain, gold etc. All the major currencies are being rapidly debased and an industrializing world is creating materials shortages. The case is so easy to make, while people selling stocks can only cite historical returns.
If I wanted to make a high risk play, as I might if I were in college and just playing with the money, I would short the NASDAQ.
Slashdot Mirror
There cannot be another civilization on the level of this one. We have used up all the surface level metals and hydrocarbons. There couldn't be another iron or bronze age because the materials aren't available.
Where's Perl 6?
If you believe this guy sea levels are actually falling and glaciers are growing:
1 2 3 4 5
My money says they were bullshitting him. The chick at the end got the concept. When he forced her to play along and write down "half a cent in dollar notation" she got "$0.005" just fine.
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving upMy grandmother's "ColdSpot" refrigerator is over 45 years old and still running! Modern refrigerators are obviously built to fail within six years or so. My parents have a Sony CD player deck from ~1991 and it still works great. I've gone through about three over the years.
Not very long:5 162 0061115.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/22442.html
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/2/204936/
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2006/
Unfortunately the study costs over $1000, so it will be some time before a full debunking is finished. Someone has to go buy the damn thing.
http://users.fmg.uva.nl/jwicherts/wicherts2004.pd
This study concludes the Flynn effect is a matter of how you tweak the numbers. It's weak enough it's not really worth talking about. Other studies have shown IQs have been declining in the West since the mid to late 90s.
The article talks only about how health has improved over the last few hundred years. This is almost entirely due to nutrition and sanitation. The article fails to mentions the much more interesting point that we are probably still less healthy than our ancestors of 2000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers are on average taller than Americans today, and there has never been a documented hunter-gatherer cancer death. Read accounts of the original Spanish explorers in the Carribean and Florida. They saw how much taller and healthier the hunter-gatherer tribes were.
m ondmistake.html
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/dia
http://www.paleodiet.com/lindeberg/
The ideal human diet is high in meat and animal fat. For the last several hundred years "civilized" humans have been highly reliant on grains and short on quality fats and proteins, which has been disasterous for human health. Only in the last hundred years has meat and fat consumption risen to reasonably healthy levels in wealthy countries. The effects of increased meat and fat intake was clearly documented in post-war UK and Japan, where deliberate efforts to raise egg and dairy consumption had dramatic effects on heart disease and general health.
Real estate, mutual funds, and the stock market are the worst possible investments you could make right now.
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Real estate is caught up in a speculative bubble that will probably pop in the next couple years, bringing terrible pain.
http://www.investorsinsight.com/images/otbemail/1
The stock market is highly overvalued. Stocks have only ever been a good buy at PE ratios of about 10 or less. The US market is at about 21, and profits are at record lows as a percentage of GDP. A cursory examination of the equity price cycle says now is a terrible time to buy. The typical bull market lasts about 15 years and the typical bear market lasts almost as long. Stocks went way up in the 15 years leading up to 1965. Then stocks did nothing until the early 80s. Then they shot up for 20 years. We are in a bear market now (inflation adjusted stocks are 20% below the 2000 high and still dropping). The historical pattern suggests stocks might be a good buy around 2015.
The claim of 10% historical returns from the stock market is complete garbage. Nobody invested at an "average" time. People invest over the course of a 45 year career. If you break the last 150 years down into every possible 45 year investing period and then take the median return from all those periods you get a typical return barely better than bonds. The 10% claim is also complete garbage from the get-go because it ignores taxes and fees.
If you want to buy stocks anyway, mutual funds are the worst possible way to do it. Fees and active trading will kill you. Mutual funds are obsolete now that we have ETFs. The advice someone posted elsewhere to consult with a professional is bogus. Professionals will steer you into their comission generating products like mutual funds. You have to research this on your own, and most of the popular literature is basically industry propaganda.
Someone else criticised you for even taking out student loans. They are wrong. Student loans are free money right now, assuming your income is negligible. The interest rate is way below inflation, which is understated by as much as 5%.
My money is on commodities. I think we're on the brink of a 10 fold gain in things like oil, metals, grain, gold etc. All the major currencies are being rapidly debased and an industrializing world is creating materials shortages. The case is so easy to make, while people selling stocks can only cite historical returns.
If I wanted to make a high risk play, as I might if I were in college and just playing with the money, I would short the NASDAQ.