Links for 4/23

[admin]

Light field cameras don't capture an image in the same way that a conventional sensor does, instead the camera uses an array of tiny lenses to collect information about the scene in a way that isn't possible with a normal camera. This allows for the image to be manipulated on a computer later.

Lytro Illum announced as new £950 light field camera - News - Trusted Reviews

“They have to be very quick because otherwise the phone can be tracked down,” she said. “It’s mainly just to hear their voice and know that they’re okay. If they don’t call me I worry, because the situation is very tense there.”

North Korea: the new generation losing faith in the regime | World news | The Guardian

By working as a maid, Chae can make up to 2000 RMB (£192) a month; enough to feed her family for four months. Interviewees described their envy of China’s relative wealth: modern kitchen equipment; plentiful rice; the constant supply of gas and electricity. “You can just shower at home, any time, whenever you want,” marvelled Chae Young-hee, also in her 50s, who works as a carer.

North Korea: the new generation losing faith in the regime | World news | The Guardian

In 1998, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania published a study that might strike you as kind of mean. They took two people with severe amnesia, who couldn’t remember events occurring more than a minute earlier, and fed them lunch. Then a few minutes later, they offered a second lunch. The amnesic patients eagerly ate it. Then a few minutes later, they offered a third lunch, and the patients ate that, too...  This might seem like a somewhat trivial discovery, but it unveils a simple truth about why we eat. Hunger doesn’t come from our stomachs alone. It comes from our heads, too. We need our active memories to know when to begin and end a meal.

The Ways Food Tricks Our Brains - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

While scientists believe the universe began with a Big Bang, most Americans put a big question mark on the concept, an Associated Press-GfK poll found. Yet when it comes to smoking causing cancer or that a genetic code determines who we are, the doubts disappear.

RealClearScience - Majority of Americans Doubt the Big Bang

Bubbles are where prices move further and further away from their fundamental value, simply because everyone expects prices to continue to rise. One of the earliest and most famous bubbles involved tulip bulbs in the Netherlands in 1637. Yet that bubble lasted less than a year. The dot-com bubble lasted two or three years. If you think there should be some underlying constant value for the house price to income ratio, then this UK housing bubble has been going on for much longer than that. Instead of being pricked by the 2009 recession, it merely seems to have paused for breath.

mainly macro: House prices and secular stagnation

Health care expenditures in the U.S. economy were 5% of GDP in 1960, and have risen steadily to 17% of GDP... Indeed, the projections for rising health care costs are by far the largest factor that drives the projections of expanding federal budget deficits in the long run

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Behind the Long-Term Rise in U.S. Health Care Costs

The firm said there were several indications of the over-exuberance, including the rejection of conventional valuation methods; short sellers forced to cover their positions because of losses; and "huge" first-day stock appreciations after their initial public offerings.

Einhorn: Tech bubble brewing, shorting momentums

The David Moyes 'Chosen One' banner is being sold on ebay with the highest bid currently standing at £153,900 with 141 bids.

BBC Sport - Gossip column: Moyes, Pogba, Sandro, Rodgers

[admin]

Almost 60 percent of the groundwater at 4,778 sites monitored across China has been found to be of poor or extremely poor quality, contaminated with pollutants that exceed acceptable standards.

China Finds 60% of Groundwater to Be Poor or Worse - Bloomberg

"Thirty years ago, $1 million was a huge amount of money," says Haitham "Hutch" Ashoo, CEO of Pillar Wealth Management, in Walnut Creek, Calif. "Today, given today's lifestyles and costs, it isn't so much money." Why not? "It translates into $40,000 to $50,000 (annually) in sustainable revenue," says Joe Heider, regional managing principal for Rehmann Financial Group in Westlake, Ohio. "That is not that much money on an annual basis."

Why even $1M may not be enough for retirement

This, of course, is what has been occurring in media for several years. The result is a proliferation of platforms for producing, aggregating, disseminating, and consuming content. Falling entry barriers and lower access costs have significantly democratized participation, whether in production or consumption. And, as hard as they try, many traditional media outlets - especially those unable to claim quite distinctive content - find it increasingly difficult to compete. Now something somewhat similar is starting to happen in finance as well, albeit at a less frantic pace and - at least until now - in a less disruptive manner.

El-Erian: This is better than bitcoin - Yahoo Finance

In its Columbia demo, Artemis showed it is capable of delivering 4K-quality video wirelessly, despite the fact that even DSL and many cable connections can't handle it. If Dish were to offer pCell-connected devices to its television subscribers, it could leapfrog the offerings of both cellular service providers and cable companies. It would explain why Dish negotiated for the rights to stream Disney properties over the Internet: pCell could offer better video quality with fewer downsides than its satellite offerings.

Dish Network And Artemis Partnering To Make Cell Phone Internet 1,000 Times Faster Than 4G - Business Insider

For decades male rock stars have been known for an unrivaled ability to draw hordes of admiring female fans. Now researchers may have uncovered a scientific reason for their attractiveness to the opposite sex.

Here's The Scientific Reason For Why Women Are Attracted To Rock Stars - Business Insider

"I will pursue Herbalife to the end of the earth," is the threat Bill Ackman made and the hedge fund manager acknowledges spending more than $20 million in a lobbying and media campaign against the health product company. But on the heels of his non-front-running non-insider-trading transactions in the Allergan deal, details about the Herbalife whistleblower's "deal" raise more questions about ethics. Giovanni Bohorquez has now been named as Ackman's inside-man and the $3.6 million secret deal he will receive for spilling inside information about Herbalife's actions is raising significant questions about conflicts of interest. Having flatly denied being paid, "I'm not getting any benefit," during an on-camera ABC interview, ABC now reveals that Ackman agreed to the deal after Bohorquez balked at going public because he feared his disclosures could make it difficult for him to find work at an executive level. It seems $3.6 million promptly relieved any fears of not being able to get a job.

Ackman Promised Former Herbalife Employer $3.6 Million To Become Whistleblower | Zero Hedge

[admin]

There are probably a number of reasons why bank leverage (the amount of lending banks do in proportion to their capital) increased rapidly in the 00s: reduced regulation, underestimation of systemic risk as a result of the Great Moderation, a search for yield when interest rates were low, simple greed. Bank profits rose, and so did the incomes of those working for them. However the consequence of excessive leverage was inevitable: a major global financial crisis. Banks had to be bailed out using public funds. This produced a large negative demand shock which monetary policy was not able to counteract, because nominal interest rates fell to zero. In the US and UK governments undertook substantial fiscal stimulus to dampen the recession, but this, the recession and bank bailouts raised levels of public debt. As Reinhart and Rogoff show, credit booms and bust generally lead to public debt crises. In recent research Alan Taylor and co-authors go further. They show that recessions are deeper and more prolonged if they are accompanied by a financial crisis, they are deeper and longer still if that financial crisis is preceded by a credit boom, and finally “the path of recovery is worse still when a credit-fueled crisis coincides with elevated public debt levels”.

mainly macro: The Banks and Austerity: a simple story of the last ten years

Juanito, racing towards the brouhaha in Valentine's slipstream, arrived with extreme prejudice and planted his right boot on the side of the prone Matthäus's torso. He performed a balletic 360-degree turn – not bad going seeing he was already in a flat spin – bent over the screaming Bayern midfielder to issue a few words of beneficial advice, then pushed his same foot down hard on his victim's jaw, in the manner of a frustrated motorcyclist trying to kickstart a broken-down steed. It was, quite literally, a jaw-dropping assault. Most of football's famous fouls or scraps – certainly the ones that don't result in serious or lasting injury to a player – retain an element of comedy to them, often a sizable one. Cameroon's collective assault on Claudio Caniggia at Italia 90, the comic-book dukes-up nonsense at the end of the Battle of Santiago, even Graeme Souness's egregious ball-crushing rake on Steaua Bucharest's Gheorghe Rotariu: all elicit involuntary laughter at the sheer audacity of the thuggery, even if common sense or guilt kicks in a few seconds later. But Juanito's vicious stamp on Matthäus works on a different plane, provoking instant recoil and a sharp intake of breath.

Real Madrid v Bayern Munich: the night Juanito kicked Matthäus in the face | Football | theguardian.com

How is it that we now bank with managers who tell us there is a tech bubble brewing without taking into account that the bubble has been bursting for a month now? Isn't that what we are doing if we are relying on Greenlight Capital's performance letter that we just got yesterday, the one where the most salient feature should be the line showing it was down 1.5% for the quarter?

Cramer: Ignore Greenlight's Einhorn; He Just Lost Money - TheStreet

[admin]

But even without concerns over cheating, managers should be wary of using quotas to align incentives. They may end up rewarding behavior they don’t necessarily want to reward. “Journalists at The Oregonian might discover that the only way to drive traffic to their stories is if they write about sex scandals, celebrities and other forms of sensationalism,” Cobb notes. “It could become [more like] reality TV.”

Productivity Quotas: ‘You Get What You Pay For’ » Knowledge@Wharton

Humans have been making music for at least 40,000 years. The earliest known instruments are flutes made from hollow animal bones. What is less clear is why we make music. One of the most enduring theories put forward by Charles Darwin, who suggested that, as with bird song, it’s all about sex. “Musical notes and rhythm”, he wrote in The Descent of Man, “were first acquired by the male and female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.” Now evidence appearing to support Darwin’s hypothesis has come

BBC - Future - Is music really all about sex?

A stunning report published by CNN's Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin Wednesday night claims "at least 40" veterans died awaiting treatment from the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system and many of them were on a "secret waiting list." The list was allegedly designed so the Phoenix VA could hide the long wait times veterans experienced at its facilities. CNN claimed "top management" at the Phoenix VA were aware of the list and even defended its use after complaints from staffers.

Veterans Died On Arizona VA Hospital 'Secret Waiting List' - Business Insider

McDonald’s is losing customers. In the first quarter of 2014 US sales fell 1.7 percent—and that’s after a “challenging” 2013 when the company struggled to keep consumers happy and workers repeatedly walked out on strike. After decades of dominating the fast food industry, something is going wrong in the world of quick, convenient service, and not just under the golden arches.

Pay Inequality Is a Threat to McDonald's Bottom Line | Demos

[admin]

In 1980, the difference in life expectancy at age 65 between the highest and lowest socioeconomic groups was 0.3 years. By 2000, the difference had grown to 1.6 years. That increase in the gap equals more than 80 percent of the increase in overall average life expectancy at age 65 over that period.

Inequality in Well-Being | House of Debt

China's economy overtook Japan's in 2010 to become the world's second largest, but analysts told CNBC China still lags Japan in terms of the quality of its growth.

Why China's economy is still lagging Japan

That's a view that's certainly paid off. India's benchmark Sensex index is up more than 30 percent since the beginning of 2010, and it's trading around record highs after rising around 8 percent so far this year. It's a sharp contrast with the Shanghai Composite's around 37 percent swan dive since the start of 2010, with the index down around 1.6 percent so far this year.

Why India stocks may keep outperforming China

Sony has announced the Sony FMP-X5, a media streaming box that will allow European early 4K adopters to stream Ultra High Definition content to their expensive TV sets. There’s a bit of an issue with the current 4K streaming standard, HEVC (H.265). It doesn’t work on early 4K TV sets, some of which retailed for upwards of £20,000. The Sony FMP-X5 promises to fix that, for the princely sum of £350 / €399.  The device hooks up to a 4K TV over HDMI, and enables the streaming of HEVC content.

Sony FMP-X5 brings 4K streaming to early adopters - News - Trusted Reviews

“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home,” said Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg. “This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”

IMAX movies would be a “killer experience” on Oculus Rift, says Facebook exec - News - Trusted Reviews

An asteroid big enough to destroy a city strikes the Earth every 100 years. Our strategy for preventing disaster? Blind luck. This film was made by the California-based B612 Foundation, which promotes strategies to protect the Earth from asteroid strikes. It says there is evidence of 26 explosions in the upper atmosphere between the year 2000 and 2013, ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons

Planet Earth comes under fire from asteroids – video animation | Science | theguardian.com

Besides fish, his team has worked with monkeys and birds—all of which have been fairly cooperative. But when he tried the experiment with cats, he practically gave up.

Cat intelligence and cognition: Are cats smarter than dogs?

What they found suggests, as we could perhaps expect, that our lifespan might ultimately be limited by the capacity for stem cells to keep replenishing tissues day in day out. Once the stem cells reach a state of exhaustion that imposes a limit on their own lifespan, they themselves gradually die out and steadily diminish the body's capacity to keep regenerating vital tissues and cells, such as blood.

Blood of world's oldest woman hints at limits of life - health - 23 April 2014 - New Scientist

IN THE film Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a dream architect who enters sleepers' subconscious minds and manipulates their dreams. The idea of dream control quickly caught public imagination and the film became a huge hit. But that was fiction. Is it really possible to direct someone else's night-time wanderings?

Sign in to read: The dream maker: My app shaped their slumbers - life - 01 April 2014 - New Scientist

[admin]

On January 21 a text message flashed on phones held by the protesters thronging Kiev’s Independence Square. Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, was then still clinging to power and brutalizing opponents. The message—from the number 111—read: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” Widely presumed to have been sent from Yanukovych’s security apparatus to all phones in the protest zone, the message was a stark reminder of how mobile phones can be used for surveillance.

Blackphone's Ultrasecure Smartphone Adds Encryption and Plugs Data Leakage to Stop Snooping and Thwart Mass NSA Surveillance | MIT Technology Review

The Chinese Yuan weakened yet again this morning, punching through the key line of 6.25 against the dollar. It is almost back to where it was two years ago. This is the biggest story in the global currency markets. Yuan devaluation has reached 3.1pc this year. The longer this goes on, the harder it is to accept Beijing’s story that it is one-off measure to teach speculators a lesson and curb hot money inflows.

Suspicion grows that China is exporting deflation worldwide by driving down yuan – Telegraph Blogs

Concern has arisen from fans for the mental state of pop star Adam Ant following a 'bizarre' show that included incoherent rants about how he hates women. Fans were "bitterly disappointed" and "deeply worried" after the Eighties idol spent huge chunks of a gig speaking about his two divorces and his lack of trust in women.

Adam Ant's onstage rant left fans angry and confused - Telegraph

The right’s biggest fear was never really, as Cruz’s comments revealed, that Obamacare wouldn’t succeed. It was that it would. Americans, it turns out, have a compelling desire for a basic necessity of life: affordable health coverage. That’s why, despite the HealthCare.gov debacle, and campaigns in red states to discourage enrollment and defund outreach efforts, eight million Americans signed up.

Ted Cruz's Worst Nightmare Is Coming True - Richard Kirsch - POLITICO Magazine

The conventional character of Piketty’s theoretical thinking rears its head in his policy prescriptions. His neoclassical growth framework leads him to focus on taxation as the remedy. There is little attention to issues of economic institutions and structures of economic power because these are not part of the neoclassical framework.

Thomas Palley » Blog Archive » The accidental controversialist: deeper reflections on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital”

Capitalism is driving itself out of business as the marginal cost to produce just about everything inches closer to zero, Jeremy Rifkin's new book, "The Zero Marginal Cost Society," proposes.

Author Rifkin: Capitalism Is Dying by Its Own Hand

Turkish shepherds watched in horror as hundreds of their sheep followed each other over a cliff, say Turkish newspaper reports.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkish sheep die in 'mass jump'

Goldman Sachs thinks talk of financial bubbles is misguided, and the firm is encouraging its wealthy clients to keep their money in relatively expensive sectors such as U.S. technology stocks and high-yield bonds.

Goldman says there's no financial bubble in the stock market

If only the broader stock market fell a lot harder during the momentum tumble. That's the lament of strategists who say prices may still not be cheap enough to draw in new buyers or provide much more upside. The S&P 500 by April 15 had lost a total 3.8 percent from its high and was temporarily under water for the year, but a six-day rally has taken it nearly back to its high.

Was that it? Stock market strategists had hoped for more from 'correction'

imagine how Maccabi Haifa's Assaf Mendes felt during a 2012 friendly against Dynamo Kiev when he booted a clearance up the pitch and watched it sail away, only for the ball to get caught in the wind, boomerang back towards his goal and swirl over his head for one of the most glorious own-goals of all time.

The Joy of Six: extreme sporting conditions | Sport | theguardian.com

Last night, Spain sold 10 year bonds at 3.06%. That’s the lowest yield since 2005 and fast approaching a record low.

The Most Amazing Chart Of The Last 5 Years - Business Insider

[admin]

"All those lads you see going to the factory in Trafford Park, they come to watch you on Saturday," Busby told Charlton. "They have boring jobs, so you have to give them something they will enjoy."

BBC Sport - What is the Manchester United Way? An explanation.

Remember when Greenlight's David Einhorn said we're in the midst of a "second tech bubble"? Well, not everyone got the memo, particularly some large tech companies on the West Coast.

What bubble? Earnings show tech is cheap | Talking Numbers - Yahoo Finance

It is one of 13 three-star restaurants in Tokyo, and there are only 10 seats. That combination makes it especially hard to secure reservations. In early April the restaurant was already fully booked until the beginning of May. Chef Jiro Ono, 87, is considered to be one of the top sushi chefs in the world.

Obama Dreams Of Sushi At Jiro's Restaurant - Business Insider

A new study in the journal Health Affairs by Benjamin D. Sommers, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, provides fresh details on people who lost coverage on account of Obamacare, a group that may have totaled nearly 5 million Americans. But the majority of those people probably would have switched insurance anyway in 2014, even without the new law, according to the study. Most of them probably got new policies, so they're covered now. And many switchers who got a new policy through one of the healthcare exchanges set up under Obamacare probably got a better deal than they would have before the law. "An unwanted change" But there are three subsets of people whose policies were canceled and who are likely to end up as losers under Obamacare

Obamacare hurt these people the most | The Exchange - Yahoo Finance

As they peck out text on the featureless glass surface of their phone or tablet, some people still mourn the passing of the physical keyboard. Now technology is heading to mass production that can offer the best of both worlds: a featureless surface for watching video and buttons that rise out of it when you need to type.

An iPad Mini Case with Shape Shifting Buttons Will Make Typing on a Touch Screen Much Faster | MIT Technology Review

[admin]

From Neil Young’s Pono Player to sites like HDTracks where you can buy high-fidelity versions of your favorite albums, “high-res audio” is blasting its way out of audiophile circles and into the mainstream. And it just found a new amp to plug into: Sony.

Sony is going all-in on high-resolution audio | Digital Trends

I've been using what's known as two-factor authentication or two-step verification on most of my accounts for more than a year, after seeing too many mysterious attempts to reset my Facebook password by someone who isn't me. The main exception was Gmail, but I enabled that recently after the discovery of Heartbleed. I was afraid the second authentication would be a pain to use, but things are going more smoothly than I expected after the initial setup.

RealClearTechnology - How to Give Yourself a Second Layer of Protection Online

The world’s best fusion reactor, situated in the heart of the merry, Hobbit-inspiring motherland of Oxfordshire in England, will soon attempt to become the first fusion power experiment to surpass the mythical “break-even” point.

The UK will be the first to break even with fusion power, leading us towards a future of clean, infinite energy | ExtremeTech

Major organizations that carry out banking activities, but are not banks, may become so important to the financial system that they need to be regulated like traditional banks, a European Central Bank governing council member said on Saturday.

ECB's Liikanen says regulation could be extended to shadow banks - Yahoo Finance

Dhaval Joshi, economist with BCA Research, noted recently that gross domestic product had risen by 7% since the recession ended, but the UK's population had grown by 5%. There is, he says, a simple explanation why people feel no better off despite the pick up in gross domestic product: based on GDP per head, they are no better off. The second thing to note is that the UK has a twin deficit problem. Although the budget deficit has come down from the record peacetime level of 11% of GDP reached after the financial crisis, it is still more than £100bn a year – more than 5% of GDP. The current account deficit – trade plus investment income plus payments to international bodies – is of a similar size.

Booming Britain running smoothly? Don't believe the hype just yet | Business | The Guardian

The final thing to note is a point raised by Wolfgang Streeck, sociology professor at Cologne University. Streeck's new book, Buying Time, argues that ever since the 1970s, governments in the west have been "buying time" for the existing social and political order. "This they achieved by generating mass allegiance to the neoliberal social project, first through inflation of the money supply, then through an accumulation of public debt and finally through lavish credit to private households."

Booming Britain running smoothly? Don't believe the hype just yet | Business | The Guardian

Economists have begun seriously discussing the idea of banning banks. That seems ridiculous and far-fetched, but the idea might not be as crazy as it sounds.

Banning Banks - Business Insider

[admin]

Nickel climbed for a second day to a 14-month high on concern that supplies from Russia may be disrupted amid mounting tensions over Ukraine. The contract for delivery in three months on the London Metal Exchange added as much as 1.4 percent to $18,700 a metric ton, the highest level since February 2013, and was at $18,635 by 10:32 a.m. in Tokyo. The price advanced 18 percent this month, the most since March 2010.

Nickel Extends Gains to 14-Month High Amid Ukraine Crisis - Bloomberg

What if you could get a 20 percent discount on everything from beer to real estate? You can. You just have to move to Danville, Illinois.

How to Get Rich Just by Moving - Bloomberg

Recent national polls have shown majority support for the minimum wage hike and unemployment benefits, including majorities of independents, but also including sizable blocs of Republicans, too. Indeed, there is a striking breakdown in that polling between non-Tea Party Republicans (who actually side with Dems and the rest of the public on those things) and Tea Party Republicans, who are isolated in opposition to them.

Tea Party economics: A long term loser

We’ve reached peak iPad. Or, at least, that’s the current meme going around this week. Truth be told, it actually started last week, leading up to Apple’s earnings on Tuesday. A few folks read the tea leaves and guessed that Apple’s iPad sales would disappoint this quarter. And lo! They were right.

The Astonishing, Disappointing iPad — Five Hundred Words — Medium

Because they aren't used to danger from animals on solid ground, wild penguins exhibit no particular fear of human tourists.

21 Fun Facts About Penguins | Mental Floss

"Someone just threw a banana at Dani Alves," tweeted former Barcelona and England striker Gary Lineker.  "[He] picked it up, peeled it, ate it, and proceeded to take the corner. Top response."

BBC Sport - Dani Alves: Barcelona defender has banana thrown at him

Back in 2008, I wrote about a research study that suggested that the great majority of day traders lose money, but it is "not entirely a fool's game", as the largest participants demonstrated skill and success.  An update of that study finds that there is evidence of cross-sectional variation in day trading skill:  those who make money in one year are more likely to be profitable in the following year and vice versa.  Altogether, about 15% of traders studied earned meaningful returns (enough to overcome trading expenses) over the course of a year.

TraderFeed: Can Day Traders Be Successful?

Banks let them open accounts in your name. The Internal Revenue Service gives them your tax refund. They dip into databases linked to credit bureaus, snagging your bank account, routing and Social Security numbers, which are sold off like packs of gum in an ever-growing black market that generates billions of dollars. The modern con artist’s prying eyes look beyond the wallet in your back pocket to hijack your financial identity.

10 things scam artists won’t tell you - 10 things - MarketWatch

Trading breakouts is not a new game on Wall Street. This strategy has been mastered by legendary traders such as William O'Neal, Stan Weinstein and Nicolas Darvas. These pros know that once a stock starts to break out above past resistance levels and hold above those breakout prices, then it can easily trend significantly higher.

5 Stocks Poised for Breakouts - Stockpickr! Your Source for Stock Ideas

"Solar is now cheap enough that it competes with oil, kerosene, diesel and LNG in developing markets and yet is still small enough that it cannot disturb pricing for energy in any market," Bernstein Research said in a note earlier this month. With the sun accounting for only 0.17 percent of the global energy supply in 2012, any losses for global energy players are just too small to notice, but that may begin to change, Bernstein said.

Has solar power’s day in the sun arrived?

This is a point that's presumably missed by most of the population. You look at money and you think it's something created by the government or the Fed. In fact, money is for the most part created by private banks. In March, the Bank of England published an excellent, very clear paper titled Money Creation In The Modern Economy.

Where Does Money Come From? - Business Insider

[admin]

In the 20th century the planet’s population doubled twice. It will not double even once in the current century, because birth rates in much of the world have declined steeply. But the number of people over 65 is set to double within just 25 years.

Old People To Change The Global Economy - Business Insider

What if you could experience life in another person’s body? A few have done so, discovers Rose Eveleth, and they report profound emotional changes.

BBC - Future - ‘I swapped bodies with someone’

With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.

New solar reactor technology to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels

Over the past four years, private sectors gains have been partially offset by public sector job losses  resulting from budget cuts at the federal, state, and local levels. Net job losses totaled 627,000 across all  levels of government during the recovery period. Employment declines were particularly severe at the local  level, where education absorbed nearly three-quarters of the 378,000 net job losses over the past four  years.

NELP Jobs Chart - Business Insider

Contained in Exxon's new Outlook for Energy report is the following damning statistic:  Electricity generation will grow by 90% by 2040, but the amount of fuel needed to generate that electricity will only have to grow by 50%. And the projected increase in energy demand is 20% less than the demand increase seen from 1980 to 2010. The IEA has previously projected that electricity will become more affordable over time in most regions as income levels increase faster than household electricity bills. Exxon is making the case that greater efficiency is in fact the fuel of tomorrow

Here's The Statistic That Will Be Written On Peak Energy Proponents' Tombstones - Business Insider