August 2007

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The 100 Most Powerful Women (Friday, 8/31/07)
Forbes magazine has released its latest list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world. Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, is still seen as number 1 on their list. Oprah Winfrey is listed as 21st, while Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is listed as 23th, ahead of Senator and presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton at 25th.

But, wait a minute--Elizabeth II is considered to be the 23rd most powerful woman in the world? Isn't Britain's Queen supposed to be no more than a political figurehead?

First, until recently, she was the most wealthy woman in the U. K., although now, she appears to be second behind Harry Potter's mom, J. K. Rowling.

Also, though, the Queen, while having little formal political authority, exerts considerable influence in her country, as well as internationally, and has been advisor to twelve prime ministers.

Finally, there was a time many years ago when the British government became deadlocked. The Prime Minister went to the Queen, she decided, and that was it--the country moved on. Most of the time, she plays a symbolic role and engages in ceremonies. However, she's always there, ready to exert political influence when called upon.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Making a Million Dollars (Wednesday, 8/29/07)
This article will tell you how long it will take you to build assets of at least one million dollars, given various underlying assumptions and conditions. The reason that "your first million is your hardest," as they say, is because of a very important process called "compounding."

Incidentally, a million dollars isn't what it used to be, meaning that most people with a million dollars in net assets aren't wealthy enough to live like "millionaires," as we have understood that term. A million dollars used to be enough for that, but now it will take seven or eight million dollars.

Many people with net assets of one million dollars may be relatively comfortable, but still will have to work in order to generate sufficient income to meet living expenses. It takes a LOT of money now if you want to live off earnings from the money alone. This is particularly true when you consider that your money must first earn an increment sufficient to compensate for inflation in order to maintain the value of your assets.

Something more for physicians to worry about (Monday, 8/27/07)
If you want to see smoke come out of your physician's ears, ask what she or he thinks of all those TV commercials encouraging people to ask their doctors if a given prescription medication "is right for you." Or, you can ask how s/he feels about the modern snake oil commercials with non-medical personnel hawking some "magic elixir" that presumably is good for nearly everything, and, of course, is a "food supplement" not subject to FDA regulation.

Or, you can ask about the privatization of medical services by big corporations such as Target and Wal-Mart. The public seems to have gotten used to the rather casual use of the word "university" as a name for parasitic teaching organizations formed by for-profit companies. Now, it's medicine, and, as Julie Steenhuysen reports from Chicago, many physicians aren't all that happy about clinics in stores staffed by non-physicians.

At least, it has taken some of our minds off terrorism (Saturday, 8/25/07)
There's an old gag about how cutting off your big toe won't help your bad cold, but it will make you forget about it. Similarly, the credit crunch has pushed terrorism off many front pages and out of many people's minds as the biggest immediate threat facing the United States.

The problem is that much of American business operates on "rented" money, and many individuals live day-to-day on somebody else's money too. Anyway, Dan Seymour writes about how the credit mess threatens the entire American economy. Along related lines, Dave Carpenter and J. W. Elphinestone tell how the mortgage crisis is affecting people on Main Street and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Nancy Trejos has been looking at ads and wonders if all lenders really understand that there is a credit crunch.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Physics To Go (Tuesday, 8/21/07)
It is said that, not so many decades before the birth of many people who are still active, the young Abraham Lincoln was willing to walk many miles in order to borrow a book--ANY book. At age sixteen, he is said to have walked thirty miles simply in order to listen to a lawyer make a speech

What would a person with those kinds of intellectual appetites do today with the Internet, our tremendous public libraries with tens of thousands of books available for borrowing, hundreds of recorded lecture series, and so on?

Incidentally, many people, when asked, list Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt as America's greatest presidents, with Lincoln at the top of this short list. It's interesting to note that he was almost entirely self-educated, and that, of the three, President Roosevelt was the only one to have completed elementary school.

Is it possible to teach yourself physics? Of course. It's possible to teach yourself nearly anything, particularly now that so much information and assistance is freely available from so many sources. This fact may not be altogether comforting to academic administrators during a period of profound, historic change in higher education when thousands of institutions are competing with one another as well as with alternatives to conventional college attendance, and are scrambling to insure their survival.

Incidentally, if you want to learn physics on your own, Physics To Go can help. However, it's certainly not the only free resource available to those with strong appetites and a strong capacity for commitment.

Did we sufficiently emphasize that it's FREE? That is, you can learn these things without going tens of thousands of dollars into debt and spending most of your work life after graduation paying it off.

What are the people who constantly talk about getting into a "good college" really talking about? Is it really all about learning, or something else? Maybe a "good" college not only is one that is expensive, but also famous so that a student is more likely to useful good career connections while on campus. If this is why schools try to be ranked higher in that magazine each year and why they charge so much money, maybe they shouldn't call themselves "higher education institutions" at all, but, instead, "networking opportunities."

On the other hand, if it's really about learning itself, it shouldn't make any difference what school one attends, or whether one attends any at all.

It still seems that there are only two questions that the world asks in the long-run: "Do I really KNOW anything, and can I really DO anything?" If the answer to these questions is "yes," there aren't any other important questions. If the answer is "no," there aren't any other important questions either.

Markets around the world respond to discount rate cut (Saturday, 8/18/07)
It is widely believed--at least in the U. S.--that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. With respect to some things, this may be true. For instance, the president can order military attacks and start wars.

However, as chief executive roles go, the presidency is weak in relation to some others. For instance, the British Prime Minister may be inherently more powerful domestically. What the PM decides usually goes. Much of the time, while the American president can schedule a state dinner on command, doing what he wants done may not be easy or even possible, given the way that power is distributed in the American system.

However, there are government officials with whom the general American public is not nearly so familiar who are capable of rattling the entire world. An example is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Toby Anderson write about how stock markets around the world responded almost immediately to the Fed's decision to cut the discount rate. Here's still more from Melbourne's The Age.

Here's an aspect of "outsourcing" you may not have thought of, at least, if you're still young (Saturday, 8/18/07)
Relatively well-off retirees have been heading for Mexico in large numbers, because the climate can be nice, and money goes much further south of the U. S. border. Also, there has been talk of persuading Congress to change Medicare so that it will cover medical services below the border. Such a change might result in a tremendous number of spotless new clinics being built within a stone's throw of the United States.

Along similar lines, USA Today reports on the growing popularity among elderly Americans of nursing homes in Mexico.

More and more lawyers seem to believe that small can be beautiful (Saturday, 8/18/07)
A popular gag is that medical residents and young attorneys seem to be exempt from the 13th Amendment.

We've written that the tendency to work young physicians to the point of exhaustion may call into question the widespread rumor that medical schools are run by a bunch of smart people. How many patients really want to be treated by a physician who hasn't slept for 60 hours?

Also, for many years now, those huge law firms made up of hundreds of attorneys and occupying several floors in downtown office buildings have been attracting top law graduates by offering them big money in exchange for nearly unlimited hours of work per week and virtually no time for sleep.

For whatever reason, an increasing number of lawyers seem to be finding that being part of huge law firms isn't quite enough fun.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: A Day in Pompeii (Saturday, 8/18/07)
Italy's Mount Vesuvius has erupted dozens of times during the past two-thousand years--the latest was in 1944 during World War II--but its most famous eruption was on August 29, AD 79 when it destroyed and preserved nearby cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Pompeii had been a popular seaside resort city during Roman times, but was lost to history until its rediscovery nearly 30 years before the American Declaration of Independence. Much of what we now know about daily life in Ancient Rome comes from what we have learned at the Pompeii and Herculaneum archeological sites.

Much has been left untouched, awaiting examination by future archeologists with what no doubt will be their more sophisticated methods. For instance, it is thought that modern technology finally will enable the reading of carbonized scrolls found at Herculaneum and elsewhere. Excavation destroys an archeological site, so modern scholars are being extremely careful.

Hundreds of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum are on tour. Following their exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, A Day in Pompeii is spending two years in the United States, but at only four locations: Mobile, Alabama, St. Paul, Minnesota, San Diego, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The exhibit currently is located at the Science Museum in St. Paul, where it will remain until January 2008.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine (Friday, 8/17/07)
The general American public, at least, tends to regard Minnesota's Mayo Clinic and Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University as the top medical facilities in the United States. In actuality, there are many others as well, and it really depends on which specialties we're talking about.

At any rate, there certainly doesn't seem to be anything wrong with medicine at Johns Hopkins, and it's easy to see why the University maintains its international reputation. In addition to its being a leading treatment center, it's also known for its medical research. The Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine offers online access to information about the continuous flow of its research findings.

The global stock markets appear to be in some sort of free-fall (Thursday, 8/16/07)
Although, maybe not. The American economy still greatly influences the world economy, and the U. S. economy is still in pretty good shape. The investment risks may be more short-term than long-term, so it's probably best not to panic. In fact, after another scary ride today, the Dow recovered significantly.

As everybody thinks they know, the way to make money is to buy low and sell high, but, human nature being the way it is, people often do the opposite. Investment experts say that when stocks are low, it's a good time to buy, not get scared and sell off what you have.

The high rate of foreclosures because of so-called subprime or "junk mortgages" seems to be at base of the current credit crunch that is spooking investors over much of the world.

Not so long ago, some people felt that they could make a lot of money fast by using Bonnie and Clyde's "hit and run" method. Their own bank accounts could be enhanced if they encouraged people to take out mortgages they couldn't afford and made sure that they didn't obtain the informed consent of borrowers when it came to "adjustable rate mortgages." The fact that these usually are referred to as "ARMs" could be seen as reflecting the reality that they can end up costing borrowers, not only an arm, but an arm and a leg, and their homes, of course.

We're wondering how many of the people who were willing to write mortgages for anyone with a steady pulse also were among the speculators who bought houses that they had no intention of moving into. When home prices were skyrocketing, speculators expected that they could sell them within a few months at a big profit. In some ways, it was like the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, except that, while a stock certificate may really reach a point where it is worth no more than the paper it is printed on, a house does have intrinsic value. Its value won't decline to nothing, although it is possible for mortgage companies to get caught, as Countrywide's experience shows.

Here's more from Toby Anderson in London on slumping stock markets throughout much of the world.

For obvious reasons, the sale of existing homes is down, and, also for obvious reasons, home construction was down in July took, as Martin Crutsinger reports from Washington.

What can you do with a major in geography? Here's one thing (Wednesday, 8/15/07)
The New York Times' Barbara Whitaker tells about the boom in mapping technology and what it means for careers in geography.

Incidentally, it's a favorite question across many academic disciplines. What can you do with a major in English? What can you do with a major in psychology? What can you do with a major in anthropology?

The key thing to keep in mind is that educational institutions have as their primary purpose the creation of EDUCATED PERSONS. They are not intended to be trade schools, and they are not intended to prepare people to make more money from more impressive careers. Education for work is important, but, in the long-run, education for living and education for citizenship may be even more important to the individual as well as to society.

This seems particularly important in a society where people are taught that they have a right to express their opinions freely on any subject, whether or not they know anything about it. Currently, it seems that most people's beliefs about most things they regard as important are simply incorrect, or, at least, inadequate. Why do professional scholars go to all that trouble and spend all that time on their research projects? Because THAT''S WHAT IT TAKES.

It's very important to start with a genuine question, as if you don't know, because unless or until you do WHAT IT TAKES to know, you really DON'T know.

There's no credit crisis in the U. S., and it's not over (Tuesday, 8/14/07)
How's that again? David Berman doesn't believe that we should take that loan officer survey's results at face-value. Meanwhile, David Cho and Thomas Heath write in the Washington Post that some intended buyout deals could be put off because of what they regard as a credit crunch.

American business operates to a large extent on borrowed money. For instance, your local car dealer is likely to have a lot of vehicles on the lot from which to choose, but s/he has to pay interest on borrowed money in order to walk around them while you're deciding. What happens if auto retailers can't borrow the money they need?

Finally, Floyd Norris and Eric Dash write in the New York Times about how large mortgages can become very expensive very fast when credit tightens.

On average, Americans are living longer, but many others in the world are living longer still (Tuesday, 8/14/07)
Recent data are showing that, even though Americans are spending more per capita on healthcare than anybody else, people in 41 other countries are living longer.

How much longer can Americans continue to boast that they live in "the greatest country in the world," given those life-expectancy data, the dismal U. S. infant mortality numbers, the fact that American youth is getting most of its news from what Jon Stewart has called his "fake news program," the unpopularity of engineering and hi-tech careers relative to countries such as China and India, America's decaying infrastructure, and more?

Outsourcing in the media (Monday, 8/13/07)
Ray Lilley writes from Wellington, New Zealand that APN News & Media is outsourcing newspaper production work as of last Sunday. For instance, the New Zealand Herald has contractors doing production work about 20 minutes from the paper's editorial offices. Other media outlets around the world are watching, and we're wondering how long it will be before contractors are doing production work on other continents, rather than simply "down the street."

More evidence of humanity's irrationality? (Monday, 8/13/07)
What should the world's major northern countries do upon finding that Arctic ice is melting at a precipitous rate, leaving more open water in the far north? Probably not compete more vigorously for oil and gas under the Arctic Ocean, given that the world's heavy dependence on fossil fuels has been responsible for the warming and increasing open water in the first place.

Nonetheless, several countries, including Canada, Russia, and the United States are busy establishing claims now that the open water is making access to the vast Arctic petroleum reserves more accessible.

Michael Fitzgerald writes in the New York Times that there are some very big ideas for coping with global warming, but they all would require very big amounts of money.

Arctic oil and gas aren't the only things on the minds of Russian officials. In fact, new uses are being found for Stalin's far northern mines as well.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Agricultural Research Center (Monday, 8/13/07)
Not so long ago, most Americans thought about agriculture daily, because the majority of Americans lived in rural areas. It is just the opposite now, with only a small percentage of the American population living on farms or in villages and small towns supported by them.

Still, American farmers have enormous productive capacity, and, for many years, they fed much of the world. But, they have been victims of their own success, given that the agricultural sector mechanized early and very successfully.

However, because of abundant production combined with low farm product prices and increasing costs of doing business, it's been hard for many American farmers to produce a profit and stay in business.

In recent years, one of the arguments for continuing subsidies to some American farmers has had to do with national security, similar to widespread worries about energy--that U. S. farmers have to be kept in business because America cannot afford to allow itself to become dependent on foreign food sources.

If you haven't thought about the United States Department of Agriculture lately, here's your chance. In fact, here is the USDA's agricultural research center.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Facing Up To The Nation's Finances (Friday, 8/10/07)
Very recently, some investors were courting risk, which gave rise to the so-called subprime mortgage debacle, meaning that nearly anybody was able to get a mortgage, whether or not they could provide any evidence of being able to make the payments. Now, investors are running from risk, and the subprime mortgage crisis has caused a more general credit crisis that is spooking investors throughout the world.

At the same time, many Americans are wondering whether the U. S. really can afford to fix its aging and decaying infrastructure, or whether it can afford not to. The collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis has brought to the surface concerns being expressed by experts for years.

Is the United States really poorer than it was several decades ago when all those bridges were built in the first place? Moreover, many water systems in the U. S. are a hundred years old, which probably means that original piping is still in use. No wonder there are problems. A hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt was president, and the United States was not yet a world power. The First World War wouldn't begin for another seven years. Good grief, Charlie Brown!

A number of organizations whose members aren't often found in the same rooms together have banded to study longer-term issues having to do with the federal budget. Here's Facing Up To The Nationšs Finances.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Ultimate Star Payback (Thursday, 8/9/07)
Movie star Matt Damon has been pleasing a lot of fans, but it appears that he's been pleasing a lot of Hollywood financial people as well. Forbes magazine, like Fortune, compiles a lot of lists. This time, they have examined the "return on investment" relating to several of Hollywood's A-list stars. That is, for each dollar paid to the star, how much do the producers earn? Martt Damon tops the Forbes Ultimate Star Payback list. Does this mean that Matt is "underpaid" and can we expect him to top next year's list? We don't know either.

More mortgage seekers, but not necessarily more mortgage finders (Wednesday, 8/8/07)
Not so long ago, nearly anyone with a steady pulse whose pupils weren't dilated could get a mortgage, and that seems to be one of the reasons that the real estate market is in such miserable shape now. As a consequence, it has become much harder for even qualified borrowers to qualify for mortgages. Nonetheless, the dip in interest rates has resulted in an increase in mortgage applications, according to Julie Haviv in New York.

Meanwhile, Maya Roney reports that homeowners who are dissatisfied with their purchases have been using the Internet to spread the word and hopefully gain satisfaction.

Fat workday (Wednesday, 8/8/07)
Mardi Gras is how "Fat Tuesday" is said in French. It is one of those pre-Lenten festivals that seem to be intended to help people have something to repent. However, if you're overweight and unhealthy, you may or may not repent, but you could end up paying financially. Here's more from Jena McGregor in BusinessWeek.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count (Sunday, 8/5/07)
Many professors who have taught for universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges probably would say that it is only the rare beginning student who really needs the resources of a major university. True, major campuses do have internationally recognized scholars on their faculties, but lower-division undergraduates typically don't see them in their classrooms. In fact, many freshman and sophomore courses at large universities are taught by relatively inexperienced graduate teaching assistants.

Most students won't limit their futures at all by spending their first two years at one of America's really good community colleges before transferring in to the four-year institution of their choice. They're also likely to save thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, community colleges are well-equipped to assist persons who don't yet realize that they can succeed in higher education. The Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count site is a product of professionals who appear to believe that it isn't where you start, but where you're going that matters.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: National Transportation Safety Board (Saturday, 8/4/07)
The nation has been preoccupied with the catastrophic bridge collapse in Minneapolis shortly after 6 PM CDT Wednesday, as well as with what it means for America's aging and often crumbling infrastructure--particularly bridges, overpasses, tunnels, and water systems.

To bring everything up to date will require tens of billions of dollars of investment; but, among other things, the American economy and its ability to compete in an increasingly globalized world depend on it.

The National Transportation Safety Board is on the scene in Minneapolis and, once all of the victims of the tragedy have been identified and bodies located and removed, the NTSB intends to recover and reassemble bridge fragments in order to identify the specific processes that led to the failure.

It appears that the bridge collapse is the largest catastrophe that has occurred in Minnesota history, although loss of life appears to be far less than expected.