Word of the day

Benison - blessing, benediction.

5/10

Only 5/10 in the NBR’s Biz Quiz.

Strength of government

Further to yesterday’s post about politics being too complicated I came across this on Facebook:

It means: the ignorance of the masses is the main strength (or power) of rulers.

Natural therapy

From Laughter Yoga

Hero in the valley

Quote of the day:

“The wheel has turned completely since the days when the hero in the valley was the farmer who chopped down as much bush and scrub as possible. Now the heroes are the farmers who are retiring native bush, fencing waterways and planting trees for shade, shelter and erosion control.”. . .

“We live in a community, so we’ve got to get it right for the people we share that community with, the markets we deal with and for ourselves. If we don’t farm sustainably, we don’t have a business.” Alistair Polson.

Taking the waiting out of wanting

Listening to pop songs in taxis led Theodore Dalrymple to an explanation for one of the causes of the global financial crisis:

. . . For is it not the case that one of those causes is that, on a gargantuan scale, we took the waiting out of wanting? Not only consumer credit but government deficit spending, largely to underwrite a standard of living that we did not go to the trouble of having earned, is at the root of our financial difficulties. . .

The protestant work ethic with which I was brought up taught me about delayed gratification.

You worked and you saved and you waited and eventually you’d get what you wanted because you’d earned it.

Easy credit changed that by taking the waiting out of wanting and now we’re all paying for it.

More social cohesion, less regulation

One of the findings from the  Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index was the inverse relationship between social cohesion and regulation:

It found countries that had low levels of social capital tend to be highly regulated and vice versa:

Social capital is one of the most important components of prosperity. The term ‘social capital’ encompasses factors  
such as social cohesion and engagement, as well as community and family networks.1 In every region of the world,  social capital correlates negatively with government regulation.

Does excessive regulation decrease social capital or do high levels of social capital lead to low levels of regulation? Research suggests that the causal relationship follows the latter example, with higher levels of social capital leading to fewer but better regulations. Indeed societies that are highly trusting—both in government institutions and in one’s fellow citizens—tend to demand fewer, less complex and less restrictive economic regulations.

It goes on to say that countries with little social cohesion have more regulation which results in result in unwanted barriers to entrepreneurial activity, innovation, and competition.

By contrast, in countries with high levels of social cohesion entrepreneurs are considered to provide societal benefits and, as a result, these countries tend to erect fewer regulatory barriers to entrepreneurial activities.

Social cohesion provides trust which necessitates less regulation which provides social and economic benefits.

 

November 4 in history

1333  The River Arno flooding caused massive damage in Florence.

1429   Joan of Arc liberated Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.

1576   Eighty Years’ War:  Spain captured Antwerp.

1677  The future Mary II of England married William, Prince of Orange.

1737   The Teatro di San Carlo was inaugurated.

1783   W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 was performed for the first time.

1791  The Western Confederacy of American Indians won a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.

1825  The Erie Canal was completed with Governor DeWitt Clinton performing the Wedding of The Waters ceremony in New York Harbour.

1839   The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.

1852  Count Camillo Benso di Cavour became the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia.

1861  The University of Washington opened in Seattle, Washington as the Territorial University.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Johnsonville – Confederate troops bombarded a Union supply base and destroyed millions of dollars in material.

1889  Menelek of Shoa obtained the allegiance of a large majority of the Ethiopian nobility, paving the way for him to be crowned emperor.

1890   London’s first deep-level tube railway opened between King William Street and Stockwell.

1916  Ruth Handler, American businesswoman and inventor of the Barbie doll, was born (d. 2002).

1918  World War I: Austria-Hungary surrendered to Italy.

1918  The German Revolution began when 40,000 sailors took over the port in Kiel.

1921 The Sturmabteilung or SA was formed by Adolf Hitler.

1921   Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi was assassinated in Tokyo.

1921  The Italian unknown soldier was buried in the Altare della Patria (Fatherland Altar) in Rome.

1922 In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men found the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun‘s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the first female governor in the United States.

1930 Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup.

1937  Loretta Swit, American actress, was born.

1939   World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.

1942   Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel led his forces on a five-month retreat.

1944  World War II: Bitola Liberation Day.

1950 Charles Frazier, American author, was born.

1952   The United States government established the National Security Agency.

1955   After being totally destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopened with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.

1956 James Honeyman-Scott, English guitarist (The Pretenders), was born (d. 1982)

1956   Soviet troops entered Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union.

1957 Tony Abbott, Australia politician, Liberal leader, was born.

1962   In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope was successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island – the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.

1966  Two-thirds of Florence was submerged as the River Arno flooded with the contemporaneous flood of the Po River which led to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.

1970  Genie, a 13-year-old feral child was found in Los Angeles, California having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.

1973   The Netherlands experienced the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis.

1979   Iran hostage crisis began: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invaded the US embassy in Tehran and took 90 hostages.

1993  A China Airlines  Boeing 747 overran Runway 13 at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International Airport while landing during a typhoon, injuring 22 people.

1994   First conference that focused exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.

1995  Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extremist Orthodox Israeli.

2002  Chinese authorities arrested cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.

2008   Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

2008  Proposition 8 passed in California, representing the first elimination of an existing right to marry for LGBT couples.

2011 – The Hellenic Parliament rejected a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou following a failed attempt to hold a referendum on a Eurozone bailout.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia