Globalisation Winners and losers

As you certainly have seen in the news during the last couple of years, globalisation has brought us low inflation, low pay rises for the working and middle class and very nice pay hikes and bonuses for CEOs. Many think this is unfair but it seems that it would be unreasonable to try to cap the wages of CEOs. The better idea, which would be good for all, would be to keep markets open and focus on education and welfare protection (so that one does not lose all when one is in between jobs). This is very much what is happening in Scandinavia, while the USA and EU lack one component (Cf another of my posts about social policies, here).

Have a look at the whole article here.


Posted in: _Economy , _Society

Greedy guts

Intestinal microbes seem to play a big role in defining if you are fat or thin.
It seems that thin people have an intestine flora which helps digesting the food without releasing to much nutriments into the blood, whereas for fat people these microbes help release much more energy from the food intake and also help store it as fat.
But it is a bit a chicken and egg problem because some studies show that thin people naturally have the first type of bacteria and the fat ones the second.

More info here.


Posted in: _Sciences

Earth from 4 billions miles away

You wanna see a picture of the Earth from 4 billions miles away? Go here.

But the most important is this:
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.


Thanks Nimo for the link!


Posted in: _Sciences