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is a creation of money out of nothing. Actually, this does not violate the law of conservation, because this creation of money is at the expense of the value of |
all other money holdings. Every extra dollar created by the Fed decreases the value of the dollars you hold by a tiny amount. Most monetary reformers stop there, but that |
is not enough. The current financial instability is also caused by the real estate boom-bust cycle, since even with sound money, an economic expansion would spark a speculative boom in |
land values. In a competitive market, when produced goods rise in price, producers usually supply more, bringing the price back down or limiting the rise. But land is not produced, |
so with increased demand, the price has nowhere to go but up. Speculators drive the price of land based on expectations of even higher future prices, but at the peak |
of the boom, the price becomes too high for those who want to use the land. Real estate stops rising and then falls, and that brings the financial system down |
with it, as we have witnessed during the past year. To prevent the inflation in land prices, we need to remove the subsidy, the pumping up of land value from |
the civic benefits paid by returns on labor and capital goods. We can remove the land subsidy by tapping the land value or land rent for public revenue. Land-value tapping |
or taxation plus free-market money and banking would provide price and financial stability. Only the free market can know the right money supply. Some people think the government could just |
print money and spend it. That is what is happening in Zimbabwe, which has an inflation rate of one hundred thousand percent. Much of the population has fled the country. |
Once government can create money at will, there is really no way to limit it, and if there is some limiting rule, then the money supply becomes too rigid. Only |
free market competition and production can combine price stability with money-supply flexibility. -- Fred Foldvary Copyright 2008 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may |
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information |
storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report. Part III, The Trouble With Money and its Cure A Better Way to Pay for |
Railways? How Economic Systems Really Work Email this article Sign up for free Progress Report updates via email What are your views? Share your opinions with The Progress Report: Page |
The most romantic way I have ever heard Chaos Theory described is, “there are patterns, and even great beauty, in seemingly chaotic events.” Formally, Chaos Theory is defined as a |
sub-discipline of mathematics that studies complex, or dynamic, systems. These complex systems contain so many moving parts that it takes computers to calculate and model all of the movements of |
the system. In fact, it has been said that the emergence of this theory could not have happened without the invention and proliferation of the computer. Up until what is |
called the Quantum Mechanical Revolution, “people believed that things were directly caused by other things.” In Latin it is referred to as post hoc ergo propter hoc, or after, therefore, |
because of it. In essence, if one thing follows another, it must have been caused by it. It is the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis, “a belief that malfunctions in the |
mind are the results of traumas suffered in the past” and that Regression Therapy—pinpointing when and how these traumas occurred—would allow us to heal. It is called linear cause and |
effect. Chaos Theory, however, tells us that it is less about linear effect and more the existence and production of patterns caused by many different forces, the most important of |
which are initial conditions, popularly referred to as The Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect posits that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in South America could affect the weather in |
Texas, meaning that the smallest, seemingly inconsequential part of a system can have a huge effect on all the other parts. Simply said, “unless all factors can be accounted for, |
large systems would be impossible to predict with total accuracy because there are too many unknown variables to track.” The study of Chaos Theory has helped us understand simple, or |
everyday, phenomena such as water boiling on a stove and complex events such as how birds migrate, how vegetation spreads and the structure of stars in the night sky, but |
its origins stem from the study of weather systems. It all started in 1960 when Edward Lorentz created a weather-model on his computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lorentz’s |
weather model consisted of an extensive array of complex formulas that successfully modeled, and later helped predict, the weather and turned a large, unpredictable system into one of those everyday |
phenomena, the daily weather forecast. This month’s Quality continues in the tradition of Mr. Lorentz with Michelle Bangert’s analysis of our annual spending study, “Quality Spending Stays Strong,” and a |
roundtable discussion on the importance of the budget process titled, “The Budget Process Revealed.” Also, check out Genevieve Diesing’s feature, “A Closer Look at the Skills Gap.” Enjoy and thanks |
A world first study has found smoking prevention advertisements sponsored by tobacco companies targeted at parents do not work and may encourage teenagers to take up smoking. The study published |
online today by the American Journal of Public Health in the United States examined youth exposure to tobacco company television advertising campaigns and how that exposure influenced smoking-related beliefs and |
behaviour. The study's lead author, Professor Melanie Wakefield, from The Cancer Council Victoria and an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, began the U.S. funded research while working at the University of |
Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Professor Wakefield and her team of researchers from Bridging the Gap, a policy research program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the |
University of Michigan, found that among 16 to 18 year olds, higher youth exposure to parent-targeted ads was, on average, associated with lower perceived harm of smoking, stronger approval of |
smoking, stronger intentions to smoke in the future, and a greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days. They also found that 14 to 18 year olds were |
generally not influenced by increasing exposure to tobacco industry youth-targeted ads, which stressed that it is not cool for young people to smoke. The final sample size for the report |
was 103,172 students. "This research provides the clearest evidence to date that tobacco industry-sponsored smoking prevention ads don't work and that they are acting as a marketing smokescreen to promote |
tobacco to youth," Professor Wakefield said. "Tobacco-sponsored ads targeted at youth have no impact and those targeted at parents seem to have an adverse effect on students who are in |
their middle and later teenage years. The ads give the impression that youth should not smoke because they are too young - and that's not a good enough reason. There |
is no mention in these ads of the serious health risks of smoking," she said. Quit and VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control Director, Mr Todd Harper, said despite the tobacco |
industry's attempts at an image makeover, they remain the perennial wolf in sheep's clothing. "The tobacco industry claim to do all they can to discourage youth smoking, but these tobacco |
industry sponsored advertisements appear to be priming teens to take up a habit that will eventually kill two out of three lifetime smokers. "The tobacco industry admit they are simply |
trying to delay youth smoking as opposed to preventing uptake all together, implying young people are fair game in a deadly recruitment drive for customers. "We must not forget that |
this is an industry whose objective is to sell more products, and therefore addict more smokers and this has not changed over time, " he said. Mr Harper said the |
success of the current tobacco control campaign in Australia illustrates an advertisement doesn't need to explicitly suggest that parents talk to their kids about smoking for that discussion to take |
place. "The recent campaign in Australia, focusing on the graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, inspired discussion about the health effects of smoking within families, supporting the idea a media |
campaign does not have to be targeted at youth, to have a positive impact on youth. "An effective tobacco control message will generate conversation and debate without that specific instruction |
The Danone Fund for Nature After a 10-year partnership with Ramsar, another major environmental milestone was achieved in 2008. During the Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention in Changwon, South Korea, the Ramsar Convention, IUCN and Danone signed an agreement: the “Danone Fund for Nature”. This agreement... |
restoration of specific wetlands that make a non-negligible contribution to carbon sequestration. This restoration programme focuses on mangroves, plants with a strong potential for carbon capture and which play a vital role for biodiversity. Indeed, in addition to absorbing CO2, mangroves act as fish “nurseries”, prod... |
protection against flooding. A pilot mangrove replanting project was initiated in Senegal. Four years later, three further field projects in India and Indonesia demonstrated the success of this initiative and, in their wake, a new collaboratively developed methodology was approved by the United Nations Framework Conven... |
Livelihoods Venture: a company which includes all the operational project management, engineering, economic and sustainable development skills. It mission is to identify local programmes with strong ecological, economic and social potential, and replicability; and to implement them in collaboration with local NGOs and ... |
NGOs and experts. It also serves as a think-tank for issues touching on “Livelihoods”. Livelihoods Steering Committee: this body is made up of representatives of organizations and other personalities including Anada Tiega, Secretary General of the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Import... |
organizations that along with Danone initiated the early pilot projects. Other members of the Steering Committee include: Luc Guyau, Independent President of the Council of the FAO, Tony Simons, Director General of ICRAF, the World Agroforesty Centre (Nairobi), Michel Griffon, agronomist and researcher, President of th... |
Slavery's effects live on As of the 1860 census, the last before the American Civil War, 2.3 million slaves lived in the Lower Southern states—nearly 50 percent of the entire Lower Southern population at that time. The numbers for the Upper South didn’t fare much better, with 1.2 million slaves, |
about a third of the population. All told, Southern and Border States totaled four million slaves, or half the population of today’s New York City. These mind-boggling numbers reveal the tremendous effect of slavery on the African population in the 19th century. Slavery continues to effect today’s African American popu... |
as Dr. Patricia Newton’s presentation for African-American Heritage month on Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder will attest. Newton wants to explore the long-term effects of the chattel slavery experience on African populations. Chattel, as defined on dictionary.com, is “another form of cattle; any item of movable or immo... |
While Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder may be a new term to many of us, Newton is an expert on the topic and makes an interesting case for the correlation between the Disorder and emerging patterns in African-American life. With control groups in the Caribbean and the North American continent, Newton explores |
clinical case histories and makes comparisons between the trauma experienced by Africans forced into the United States and slavery, Jewish Holocaust victims, and veterans of the Gulf and Vietnam wars. In addition, neurological data relative to the effect of trauma on the brain, psyche, and body will also be explored. |
Identification of the problems and suggestions for healing will be discussed in an attempt to clarify the direction that African-Americans must take in the 21st century. Newton’s speech is a prestigious one during African-American Heritage Month and investigates an important and timely topic. But slavery in its many fo... |
around the world each day, and must be recognized and fought against year round. Dr. Patricia Newton will present on Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder on Tuesday, February 19 at 7pm at UVA’s Clark Hall, Room 147. The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Office |
Network With Us Join us on Facebook to get the latest news and updates. Lauren Boulden's Story Using Think-Alouds to Get Inside Langston Hughes' Head Over my past few years of teaching, there have been multiple occasions where I have |
been stumped on how to present a particular concept to my students. I've always been able to turn to ReadWriteThink.org for hands-on, engaging lessons. For example, I knew I wanted my students to develop their skills when it came to |
interacting with text, particularly with poetry. While searching through the myriad options on ReadWriteThink, I came upon "Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds." At first, I planned to use the lesson exactly as written: Read Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Variation" and |
model a think-aloud with students; then have the students try their hand at some think-alouds using other poetry. After working out all of the details, I realized I could develop some additional skills, which would fit perfectly into the scope |
and sequence of my class. After completing the think-aloud to "Dream Variation," I broke students into selected groups. Each group was given a different Langston Hughes poem and asked to complete a think-aloud. The next day, the students were put |
into a new jigsaw group where they were solely responsible for sharing what their Langston Hughes poem conveyed. Based on the meanings behind their group mates' poems, along with using the knowledge of both their poem and "Dream Variation," students |
were asked to figure out who Langston Hughes was as a man. What did he stand for? What were his beliefs? What did he want out of life? Students used clues from the various poems to fill in a head-shaped |
graphic organizer to depict their understanding of who Hughes could be. This simple lesson of working with poems and think-alouds turned into a few days of group communication, text deciphering, inferences, and even an author study! Without great lessons available |
on ReadWriteThink.org, such as "Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds," my students would never have been able to tackle so many key reading strategies in such a short amount of time. Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson |
Students learn components of think-alouds and type-of-text interactions through teacher modeling. In the process, students develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks. Lauren describes how she used ReadWriteThink in her classroom. I have been teaching |
seventh- and eighth-grade language arts in Delaware for the past five years. I grew up in Long Island, New York, but have called Delaware my home since completing my undergraduate and master’s work at the University of Delaware. Teaching and |
Last July (2012), I heard from a colleagues working at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, and from another colleague working up at the Summit. Both were independently writing |
to report the exceptional conditions they were witnessing. The first was that the bridge over the Watson river by the town of Kangerlussuaq, on the west coast of Greenland, was |
being breached by the high volumes of meltwater coming down from the ice sheet. The second was that there was a new melt layer forming at the highest point of |
the ice sheet, where it very rarely melts. A front loader being swept off a bridge into the Watson River, Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, in July 2012. Fortunately, nobody was in it |
at the time. Photo: K. Choquette I’ve been remiss in not writing about these observations until now. I’m prompted to do so by the publication in Nature today (January 23, |
2013) of another new finding about Greenland melt. This paper isn’t about the modern climate, but about the climate of the last interglacial period. It has relevance to the modern |
From Spoiled Sausage to Faces in 200 Years: Happy Birthday, Botox! Makenzie on 25 Apr 2012 at 3:30pm Botox turned 10 years old on April 15th. Or rather, the FDA approval for cosmetic use had its 10 year anniversary. However you want to look at it, this injectable, reverser-of-time has transformed the medi-beauty indust... |
jumped 67% since 2002, according to statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. And 6.4 out of 10 reviewers say it's worth a shot. In honor of this occasion, the folks over at In Your Face, a column for the Orange County Register, created an in-depth timeline of the origins of Botox. From being ... |
to inhabiting the faces of huge Hollywood stars, it has come a long way. 1820s: German doctor Justinus Kerner identifies a toxin in spoiled sausages that causes food poisoning. The paralytic illness caused by Kerner's "sausage poison" earns the name "botulism," from a Latin word ("botulus") for sausage. Kerner speculat... |
treat nerve disorders and excessive sweating. 1895: Belgian bacteriologist Emile Pierre van Ermengem discovers that Clostridium botulinum bacteria produce the botulism toxin. 1920s: Botulinum Toxin Type A is first isolated from the Clostridium botulinum bacteria in a purified form as a stable acid precipitate by Dr. He... |
American scientists explore potential use of botulinum toxin as a weapon. The U.S. produces botulinum toxin capsules for Chinese prostitutes to drop into the food of high-ranking Japanese officials. The plan is not put into effect because the military found it to be ineffective as a weapon. 1946: Researcher Edward J. S... |
into crystalline form, for the first time providing scientists with the raw material necessary to study the molecule in greater detail. 1949: Researcher Dr. Arnold Burgen and colleagues in London discover that botulinum toxin blocks communication between nerves and muscles. 1960s: Ophthalmologist Alan Scott in San Fran... |
crossed eyes. 1978: Scott wins approval from the Food and Drug Administration for extensive multi-site tests of botulinum toxin as a treatment for crossed eyes in humans. He calls the drug Oculinum and establishes Oculinum Inc. to make and sell it. |
The book of Job, especially chapter 39, implies that God created the nephesh creatures (“soulish” animals like birds and mammals) to serve and/or to please human beings. They are termed soulish because God has endowed each of them with a |
mind, a will, and the capacity to express and experience emotions. These animals are equipped and motivated to emotionally bond with and to nurture, serve, and please other members of their species and human beings. Moreover, these nephesh species were |
evidently endowed with this capacity before any human even existed, a characteristic that appears problematic for evolutionary or naturalistic scenarios. Recently, a British team of research psychologists has published a paper announcing the discovery of a new bonding feature between |
humans and nephesh creatures. Their study demonstrates for the first time that human yawns are contagious to domestic dogs. For their experiment they tested twenty-nine dogs from twenty-four different breeds spanning ages two to fifteen.1 Twenty-one of the dogs yawned |
when they observed a human do so. Some dog breeds were better at catching human yawns than others. For example, the Labrador breeds, known to form especially strong bonds with humans, seemed especially adept. Such behavior indicates that dogs possess |
the capacity for empathy towards humans. However, the yawning response may reveal more. In human-human interactions contagious yawning is known to modulate levels of arousal. Thus, in the words of the researchers, “yawn contagion [between humans and dogs] may help |
coordinate dog-human interaction and communication.” The study provides yet one more piece of scientific evidence that birds and mammals really were pre-designed before humans even existed to form emotional relationships with human beings in such a manner that they could |
enhance humanity’s well being. These animals serve and please us. More amazing still, each soulish species appears designed to serve and/or please us in a manner distinct from all others. - M. Ramiro et al., “Dogs Catch Human Yawns,” Biology |
©InfoThe British Red Cross has supported health clinics offering life-saving advice and treatment in Balochistan, northern Pakistan since 2000. These clinics, run by the Pakistan Red Crescent Society, are in areas that lack access to even the most basic health |
services. Many people live in semi-desert, rural communities where coal mines provide the main source of income. The mines offer little protection to workers, so breathing problems and injuries related to mining are common. Saving lives and changing minds The |
British Red Cross supports two mobile clinics operating from the towns of Quetta and Mastung, and two static health centres in Quetta and Nushki. In the first six months of 2012, these four clinics provided basic health care services to |
over 35,000 vulnerable people, with a special focus on helping women and children. The clinic teams include male and female doctors and health workers, as well as nurses and a pharmacist. A lot of the clinics’ work is related to |
pregnancy. In some areas, literacy levels are low and cultural values don’t encourage women to make independent decisions. Counselling sessions tackle the beliefs that stop some people using family planning services – 3,955 took place in the first six months |
of 2012. In the same period, 1,984 children were immunized against serious diseases and 7,467 people took part in health and hygiene education sessions – most of them women. What do the clinics offer? Family planning services These include advice, |
counselling and check-ups as well as access to contraceptives. Treatment for diseases People can get help for illnesses like pneumonia and malaria, and referral to other clinics and hospitals for tuberculosis treatment. Help during and after pregnancy Support includes check-ups |
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