Mike addresses a comment Barack Obama made on the US Debt Situation.

{mp3}mikesgoofyjan19{/mp3}

The ban on plastic grocery bags enacted in San Francisco and several other California communities has an unexpected side effect — an increase in food-borne illnesses, emergency room visits, and even deaths.

The culprit: the reusable grocery bags that shoppers use instead, which are breeding grounds for E. coli and other harmful bacteria, according to a new report by university researchers.

…..read more HERE

There’s a funny take on the Fiscal Cliff floating around the Internet that several of our keen subscribers have passed along. 

Like most things floating around the Internet, though, the details are inaccurate. So I’ve gone back and modified the parody with accurate numbers, and a bit more plot. What follows is 100% accurate based on 2012/2013 data: 

2012 US Tax Revenue: $2,469,000,000,000 
2012 Federal budget: $3,796,000,000,000 
2012 Budget deficit: $1,327,000,000,000 
US Federal Debt as of January 18, 2013: $16,432,620,067,491 
Total interest paid on the debt in 2012: $359,796,008,919 
Budget increase/decrease between 2012 and 2013: $38,500,000,000 INCREASE 

Now… chop off eight zeros and imagine the same numbers for the Jones family: 

Annual Jones family income: $24,690 
Annual Jones family expenses: $37,960 
Annual Jones family shortfall borrowed from friends and neighbors: $ 13,270 
Total interest the Jones family paid last year: $3,598 (at practically 0% interest) 
Total Jones family debt (mortgage, auto, credit card): $164,326 
Change in Jones family spending this year: ++ $385 

Not to mention, Aunt Bertha, Uncle Ned, and Grandpa are all coming to live with the Jones family this year… which is only going to increase household spending. And little Johnny, who is about to graduate from university, has no job prospects. 

Further, the Jones family hasn’t made any substantial changes to their lives… no jobs training, no skill development, no investment in education. Yet somehow they feel confident that their income levels will rise much faster than the debt. 

Friends and neighbors who have loaned them money are starting to get nervous. But Papa Jones has put a plan together. He aims to cut the family’s annual shortfall… so that, five years from now, they’ll -only- be short $8,000 per year instead of $13,000. 
  
He also insists that, because his great-grandfather was a hardworking professional with an excellent reputation, that the neighbors should just cut him some slack. 

The extended family is also getting nervous… but Papa Jones tells them not to worry. They believe him because he is very charismatic and has a great jump shot. 

A few projections: 

1) The Jones family is obvious too ignorant to know that they’re bankrupt. This ignorance is even more dangerous than their insolvency. 

2) The kids are going to inherit all of this debt, and if they’re lucky enough to find work, will spend the rest of their lives paying interest and supporting the rest of the family. 

3) Friends and neighbors who have loaned money to the Jones family have had enough, and they are slowly beginning to reduce their exposure to this disaster. 

4) Papa Jones is going to deal with this by grounding his children, raiding their piggy banks, and sending them next door to fight the neighbor’s kids. 

When you look at it this way, it really seems absurd. Yet it’s true… a slow motion train wreck that you can see coming miles away. 

This is why the principles of international diversification are so important– you live in one country, your money lives in another, your business lives in another, you have an escape hatch in another, etc. 

This ‘multiple flags’ lifestyle is a strategy that anyone can adopt. And it’s one of the best ways to avoid ending up like the Jones kids. 

Until tomorrow, 
 
Simon Black 
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

Is the Boeing 787, heretofore known as the Dreamliner, becoming a nightmare for Boeing? The bet-the-company bird has had a difficult entry into service, with a number of early incidents such as a cracked windshield. And now, two incidents with lithium ion batteries catching fire and generating smoke have caused the FAA, Japan’s civil aviation authorities, and other aviation regulators to ground their airlines’ 787.

The New York Times describes the problem.

 Did you know that sleep may be crucial for forming long-term memory?

Here’s something so simple that you can do it while you sleep:

In a study published in the June 2011 issue of Science, University of Washington researchers worked with a special breed of fruit flies that could be induced to sleep on demand. Following a period of training, flies who then underwent 4 hours of induced sleep formed long-term memories of that training. Note that training alone was not enough to trigger memory consolidation—sleep was a necessary component. Flies who trained but did not sleep did not form long-term memories.

The University of Washington study makes fascinating observations about sleep’s power to cause memory formation. But if you’re wondering how much we can learn from fruits flies, then rest assured that many human studies also show that sleep improves memory and performance. Proper sleep is easy to incorporate into your lifestyle: consider getting a good night’s rest after you’ve studied for a test or experienced a particularly cherished event. Sleep may help these novel experiences stick with you.

Not only may sleep help your memory, but lack of sleep may also hurt your health. A 2010 study from Biological Psychiatry found that chronic insomnia may lead to loss of brain volume. Researchers used MRI scans to examine the brains of 37 human subjects with and without chronic insomnia. Insomniacs had a smaller volumes of gray matter in three brain areas—and the more serious the insomnia, the greater the loss of volume. And a preliminary 2012 study from the Washington University School of Medicine found that poor sleep may be linked to brain plaques found in people with Alzheimer’s.

Various studies make a good case for getting a good night’s sleep whenever you can. But remember that while sleep may be beneficial, it’s only part of the puzzle. Apart from nighttime memory consolidation, you can also work on improving your memory abilities by playing certain games.

Ed Note: There is a company called Luminosity that offers these type of Memory gams. Here are a few:

• Rotation Matrix.
• Spatial Speed Match (to stay alert during the day!) 
• Familiar Faces.