Friday, January 23, 2004
Financial reality check
It’s time for my regular reality check on the world of finances. New Zealand’s Minister of Finance (Michael Cullen) is very upbeat about the economy and doesn’t know how to spend all the money the government is collecting. US Federal Reserve head, Alan Greenspan, is likewise – for him – quite bullish. So what’s the problem?
A number of key indicators show that we could be in for a bumpy ride this year. The latest Consumer Price figures for New Zealand show a higher than expected inflation. Most of it has been by a crazily spiralling housing market.
Infometrics forecasting group expects the housing market to do a major correction by the end of the year. The same goes for the US housing market.
Because of the inflation and housing situations, many economists expect the NZ Reserve Bank to up interest rates at the next review. Also, the NZ dollar is way over-valued. It reached 68 cents US a week ago, but has climbed back down significantly since. Nonethless, it is still far too high, and the exchange rate is hurting NZ exporters.
Despite the high NZ dollar, petrol prices in NZ are going up (aided by new government taxes to fund roading), because international oil prices are shooting through the roof. And electricity prices are getting savage hikes because of deficiencies in the way industry reforms were carried out a few years ago.
In the US, two of the main economic gauges used by Wall Street, banks, and in the calculation of Social Security payments have been found to contain serious problems. Analyst Dan Spillane explains in an article entitled “Black Hole found in US Economy�
Investment advisor Whitney Tilson is also concerned about trends in the investment market – he believes investors have not learnt the lessons that led to the dot.com bubble burst of 2001.
The scary thing is that you could plug New Zealand names and figures into Tilson’s article and it would still read almost exactly right for this side of the world.
To be fair, not all economic analysts are painting a gloomy picture. In fact, the majority are probably very positive, for example the Economic Cycle Research Institute, which last week said: “Every sector is now expanding at a rapid rate, the jobs picture is improving and the U.S. recovery is helping to pull the world along.�
It will be interesting to look back this time next year and see who was right.
It’s time for my regular reality check on the world of finances. New Zealand’s Minister of Finance (Michael Cullen) is very upbeat about the economy and doesn’t know how to spend all the money the government is collecting. US Federal Reserve head, Alan Greenspan, is likewise – for him – quite bullish. So what’s the problem?
A number of key indicators show that we could be in for a bumpy ride this year. The latest Consumer Price figures for New Zealand show a higher than expected inflation. Most of it has been by a crazily spiralling housing market.
Infometrics forecasting group expects the housing market to do a major correction by the end of the year. The same goes for the US housing market.
Because of the inflation and housing situations, many economists expect the NZ Reserve Bank to up interest rates at the next review. Also, the NZ dollar is way over-valued. It reached 68 cents US a week ago, but has climbed back down significantly since. Nonethless, it is still far too high, and the exchange rate is hurting NZ exporters.
Despite the high NZ dollar, petrol prices in NZ are going up (aided by new government taxes to fund roading), because international oil prices are shooting through the roof. And electricity prices are getting savage hikes because of deficiencies in the way industry reforms were carried out a few years ago.
In the US, two of the main economic gauges used by Wall Street, banks, and in the calculation of Social Security payments have been found to contain serious problems. Analyst Dan Spillane explains in an article entitled “Black Hole found in US Economy�
Investment advisor Whitney Tilson is also concerned about trends in the investment market – he believes investors have not learnt the lessons that led to the dot.com bubble burst of 2001.
The scary thing is that you could plug New Zealand names and figures into Tilson’s article and it would still read almost exactly right for this side of the world.
To be fair, not all economic analysts are painting a gloomy picture. In fact, the majority are probably very positive, for example the Economic Cycle Research Institute, which last week said: “Every sector is now expanding at a rapid rate, the jobs picture is improving and the U.S. recovery is helping to pull the world along.�
It will be interesting to look back this time next year and see who was right.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Perhaps they should put warning labels on the warning labels!
A fishing lure sporting three steel hooks and carrying the label "Harmful if swallowed" took fourth prize in the latest annual American wacky warning label contest. First prize was earned by this warning on a bottle of drain cleaner: "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product." Second prize, by a snow sled label: "Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions." And fourth prize, by a compact-disc storage rack warning, "Do not use as a ladder."
Wacky warnings show the lengths to which manufacturers will go to avoid lawsuits stemming from misuse of products, says Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which organises the annual contest. "It used to be that if someone spilled coffee in their lap, they simply called themselves clumsy. Today, too many people are calling themselves an attorney," said M-LAW president Robert Dorigo Jones. The trend was also adding to the cost of goods and services to families, he noted. (Also: check out past winners of the contest.)
My all-time favourite (not in these lists) is the reputed instruction on a Swedish chainsaw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals." (This has even made it into Websters on-line dictionary!)
A fishing lure sporting three steel hooks and carrying the label "Harmful if swallowed" took fourth prize in the latest annual American wacky warning label contest. First prize was earned by this warning on a bottle of drain cleaner: "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product." Second prize, by a snow sled label: "Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions." And fourth prize, by a compact-disc storage rack warning, "Do not use as a ladder."
Wacky warnings show the lengths to which manufacturers will go to avoid lawsuits stemming from misuse of products, says Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which organises the annual contest. "It used to be that if someone spilled coffee in their lap, they simply called themselves clumsy. Today, too many people are calling themselves an attorney," said M-LAW president Robert Dorigo Jones. The trend was also adding to the cost of goods and services to families, he noted. (Also: check out past winners of the contest.)
My all-time favourite (not in these lists) is the reputed instruction on a Swedish chainsaw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals." (This has even made it into Websters on-line dictionary!)
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Taking the cane to Christianity
A fight in the US Supreme Court over a child’s candy cane is one of the latest rounds in a growing movement to ban any form of Christian expression in public. A kindergarten pupil, Daniel Walz, had the candy canes confiscated by his teacher when he tried to give them as gifts to other kids just before Easter 1998, because they carried the message “Jesus loves the little children.� The school’s head objected to the message, and now attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have backed the family and this month have appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold Daniel’s right of religious expression.
It might seem just one of those things that could only happen in America. But some major rows have erupted in recent times that indicate that Christianity is in for a very rocky road publicly in the nation that was founded, as its Constitution says, “under God�. The most public recently was when Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama was removed from office in November because he placed a granite monument containing the 10 Commandments in his courthouse. For more background on the case, read here.
Actually, Christianity is under assault throughout the Western world, not just the US. For instance, a Canadian judge forced schools to teach homosexuality in kindergarten classes. Australian Christians were prosecuted for handing out Christian literature, even though there are no laws against doing it. In America, a Methodist bishop said that Christian evangelism is arrogant and it can lead to hate crimes. Canadian mayors have been fined up to $10,000 for not celebrating Gay Pride Week in their cities. The European Union is considering laws which might make some parts of the Bible illegal.
These are just some of the cases that Mary Ann Collins has been documenting. Her full report makes sobering reading.
A fight in the US Supreme Court over a child’s candy cane is one of the latest rounds in a growing movement to ban any form of Christian expression in public. A kindergarten pupil, Daniel Walz, had the candy canes confiscated by his teacher when he tried to give them as gifts to other kids just before Easter 1998, because they carried the message “Jesus loves the little children.� The school’s head objected to the message, and now attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have backed the family and this month have appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold Daniel’s right of religious expression.
It might seem just one of those things that could only happen in America. But some major rows have erupted in recent times that indicate that Christianity is in for a very rocky road publicly in the nation that was founded, as its Constitution says, “under God�. The most public recently was when Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama was removed from office in November because he placed a granite monument containing the 10 Commandments in his courthouse. For more background on the case, read here.
Actually, Christianity is under assault throughout the Western world, not just the US. For instance, a Canadian judge forced schools to teach homosexuality in kindergarten classes. Australian Christians were prosecuted for handing out Christian literature, even though there are no laws against doing it. In America, a Methodist bishop said that Christian evangelism is arrogant and it can lead to hate crimes. Canadian mayors have been fined up to $10,000 for not celebrating Gay Pride Week in their cities. The European Union is considering laws which might make some parts of the Bible illegal.
These are just some of the cases that Mary Ann Collins has been documenting. Her full report makes sobering reading.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
The Clone Wars
One of the showmen of the fertility business yesterday claimed to have breached another reproductive frontier by transferring the first cloned human embryo into a 35-year-old woman. Panos Zavos, a fertility specialist at the University of Kentucky, gave no details of the patient, or where she was treated.
There was no independent verification of his claim and he admitted there was only a 30 per cent chance that the embryo, grown from skin cells from the woman's husband, would implant in her womb.
Although he is not the first to claim to have cloned a human embryo - the Raelian cult said a year ago they had cloned several babies whose whereabouts and identities have never been revealed - his assertions have to be taken seriously because he has the technical expertise to achieve his ends. His announcement has been widely condemned. UK Health secretary John Reid described it as a "gross misuse of genetic science."
Wolff Reik, cloning expert at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, said even if the woman became pregnant the odds were stacked against the baby. "It could die at any time. In every single experiment, 99 per cent of clones die in the womb and the remaining 1 per cent have problems. It remains irresponsible to do it in a human."
Biological research has way outstripped ethical considerations, and the ability of the law to adjudicate. If a clone is man-made, who has the right to determine whether it lives or dies? If your body contains genetic material which is controlled by patents held by a bio-research company, who owns you? We are in hugely uncharted territory, and no-one knows the possible long-term outcomes.
Genetic engineering raises other similarly troubling possibilities, such as creating "chimeras" — organisms combining human and non-human genes. Various researchers have already succeeded in creating "transgenic" animals. Scientists have combined the DNA of monkeys and jellyfish, resulting in a hybrid that glows in the dark; others have fused DNA from spiders and goats, producing ewes whose milk contains spider-web silk. And according to the November 27th New York Times, "A group of American and Canadian biologists is debating whether to recommend stem cell experiments that would involve creating a human-mouse hybrid." Much of this work is being done by “transhumanists� – scientists who want to create a new, non-human species. William Grigg documents this in his article, The Clone Wars.
Dr. Paul Pearsall, a psycho-neuro-immunologist, has written a book entitled The Heart’s Code, in which he puts forward a theory that our heart (the physical organ) also thinks, remembers, stores information, shares energy throughout the body, and even communicates with other hearts. He presents research and anecdotes from heart patients, which he says indicates that our heart has "cellular memory" – that it is capable of storing, in its cells, memories of the life of the person in which it resides.
Pearsall relates a conversation with a psychiatrist who told him about an eight year old girl who had received a heart transplant from a ten year old girl who had been murdered. The girl’s mother sought psychological help for this girl when she began to wake up screaming because of dreams she was having about the man who murdered her heart donor. The girl said she knew who the murderer was. The little girl was able to describe the murderer, knew the place, time and weapon used in the murder, and the clothes that the murderer wore. This young heart transplant recipient helped the police find the murderer. (Editor's note: I have not been able to verify this story from any other source. I think it needs to be treated with caution, in case it turns out to be more “urban myth� than reality.)
A small but significant percentage of heart transplant recipients report changes in their personality, interests, or ways of behaving, which appear to correspond with the personality of the donors of their hearts – even though they would seem to have no way of knowing anything about those donors.
Claire Sylvia, a heart and lung transplant recipient, has written A Change of Heart (1997), in which she describes the changes in her life related to her donor’s organs. Sylvia believes she received much more than a mass of cells and heart and lung tissue from her donor. She relates surprisingly accurate dreams about her donor, changes in food tastes, and even her style of dancing, which support the idea of cellular memory.
Some of Pearsall's admirers are definitely on the New Age end of the spectrum, and most scientists are reluctant to give his theories any credibility. However, an interesting paper looking at various aspects of "sentient" human tissue from a Muslim perspective can be found here.
One of the showmen of the fertility business yesterday claimed to have breached another reproductive frontier by transferring the first cloned human embryo into a 35-year-old woman. Panos Zavos, a fertility specialist at the University of Kentucky, gave no details of the patient, or where she was treated.
There was no independent verification of his claim and he admitted there was only a 30 per cent chance that the embryo, grown from skin cells from the woman's husband, would implant in her womb.
Although he is not the first to claim to have cloned a human embryo - the Raelian cult said a year ago they had cloned several babies whose whereabouts and identities have never been revealed - his assertions have to be taken seriously because he has the technical expertise to achieve his ends. His announcement has been widely condemned. UK Health secretary John Reid described it as a "gross misuse of genetic science."
Wolff Reik, cloning expert at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, said even if the woman became pregnant the odds were stacked against the baby. "It could die at any time. In every single experiment, 99 per cent of clones die in the womb and the remaining 1 per cent have problems. It remains irresponsible to do it in a human."
Biological research has way outstripped ethical considerations, and the ability of the law to adjudicate. If a clone is man-made, who has the right to determine whether it lives or dies? If your body contains genetic material which is controlled by patents held by a bio-research company, who owns you? We are in hugely uncharted territory, and no-one knows the possible long-term outcomes.
Genetic engineering raises other similarly troubling possibilities, such as creating "chimeras" — organisms combining human and non-human genes. Various researchers have already succeeded in creating "transgenic" animals. Scientists have combined the DNA of monkeys and jellyfish, resulting in a hybrid that glows in the dark; others have fused DNA from spiders and goats, producing ewes whose milk contains spider-web silk. And according to the November 27th New York Times, "A group of American and Canadian biologists is debating whether to recommend stem cell experiments that would involve creating a human-mouse hybrid." Much of this work is being done by “transhumanists� – scientists who want to create a new, non-human species. William Grigg documents this in his article, The Clone Wars.
Dr. Paul Pearsall, a psycho-neuro-immunologist, has written a book entitled The Heart’s Code, in which he puts forward a theory that our heart (the physical organ) also thinks, remembers, stores information, shares energy throughout the body, and even communicates with other hearts. He presents research and anecdotes from heart patients, which he says indicates that our heart has "cellular memory" – that it is capable of storing, in its cells, memories of the life of the person in which it resides.
Pearsall relates a conversation with a psychiatrist who told him about an eight year old girl who had received a heart transplant from a ten year old girl who had been murdered. The girl’s mother sought psychological help for this girl when she began to wake up screaming because of dreams she was having about the man who murdered her heart donor. The girl said she knew who the murderer was. The little girl was able to describe the murderer, knew the place, time and weapon used in the murder, and the clothes that the murderer wore. This young heart transplant recipient helped the police find the murderer. (Editor's note: I have not been able to verify this story from any other source. I think it needs to be treated with caution, in case it turns out to be more “urban myth� than reality.)
A small but significant percentage of heart transplant recipients report changes in their personality, interests, or ways of behaving, which appear to correspond with the personality of the donors of their hearts – even though they would seem to have no way of knowing anything about those donors.
Claire Sylvia, a heart and lung transplant recipient, has written A Change of Heart (1997), in which she describes the changes in her life related to her donor’s organs. Sylvia believes she received much more than a mass of cells and heart and lung tissue from her donor. She relates surprisingly accurate dreams about her donor, changes in food tastes, and even her style of dancing, which support the idea of cellular memory.
Some of Pearsall's admirers are definitely on the New Age end of the spectrum, and most scientists are reluctant to give his theories any credibility. However, an interesting paper looking at various aspects of "sentient" human tissue from a Muslim perspective can be found here.
Monday, January 19, 2004
The new Gulag???
The Gulag Archipelago described by Alexsander Solzhenitsyn - in which Soviet dissidents were classed as mental patients and treated with drugs - is frighteningly close in the western world, if the implications of a joint study by the US National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation are followed through.
The NIMH-NSF effectively announced last year that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally disturbed.
Commenting on the "study" and its implications, Beverly Eakman in a just-published article says that forcing psychiatric treatment on those who don't hold to current dogma could be the next phase of political correctness, as once-mainstream thoughts are now being dismissed as abnormal, hateful and dangerous.
The Gulag Archipelago described by Alexsander Solzhenitsyn - in which Soviet dissidents were classed as mental patients and treated with drugs - is frighteningly close in the western world, if the implications of a joint study by the US National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation are followed through.
The NIMH-NSF effectively announced last year that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally disturbed.
Commenting on the "study" and its implications, Beverly Eakman in a just-published article says that forcing psychiatric treatment on those who don't hold to current dogma could be the next phase of political correctness, as once-mainstream thoughts are now being dismissed as abnormal, hateful and dangerous.
