Just the balsamic and olive oil is easier yet and considerably better in my opinion. The trick is to buy very good vinegar and oil. It's okay to get the expensive stuff because it lasts forever. I'm still on the same pint of balsamic vinegar I brought back from Italy almost five years ago.

Approaching 5 million hits on YouTube. *quality



More from an interview of Ladybeard by Forbes:

Forbes: How old are you?

Ladybeard: I’m five years old. I’m a five-year-old Japanese girl mysteriously from Australia with the appearance of an older Australian man. But Ladybeard is a five-year-old.

Forbes: How the idea of Ladybaby come about?

Ladybeard: The sponsoring company, Clearstone, is a costume maker in Japan. I had been on the cover of Metropolis, which is Japan’s biggest English-language street magazine. The CEO of Clearstone was getting off a plane at the airport and saw me on the cover, flexing in a bikini. He doesn’t speak English so he can’t read the article, but he shows the magazine to his staff, and I just happen to know some people on his staff. So they told him who I was, and he said, “Get him in for a meeting!”
So we go for this meeting, we have no idea what it’s about, and he says, “I really want to do this thing with you. I’ve got these two girls, and I want to put you in a [music] group with them. It’ll be like Babymetal except you’ll be in it. And it’ll be awesome!” That’s how Ladybaby happened.

New jobs have been created in the last six years but the economy started at such a low point it has taken a long time to recover. Presidents and politicians, republican or democrat, have only limited control over local, national, and international economies.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/12/05/in-ranking-presidents-by-job-creation-obama-still-lags/

In regard to degree majors students just need to have realistic expectations of what each degree prepares them for career and earnings wise. Even though majoring in education does not return the highest income it is still valuable and important that people study it. Similarly all the majors you list are important, but they may not have a great return on investment. However of the majors you listed Animal Science, Psychology, and Hotel Management all easily transition into either real jobs or graduate work that leads to real jobs. You seem to have picked majors at random.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/whatsitworth-complete.pdf

On a more anecdotal note I am seeing more "Hiring" signs in local shops and restaurants than I have in the past five years.

Let's ignore for the moment what led to this current mess within the Eurozone. You point out, correctly, that Greece is too poor to service its debt. And yes, for the German government to do whatever is required to get back their loans is to be expected. However, Greece was incapable of servicing its debt five years ago. Yet the subsequent programs, all supported or even demanded by the German government, reduced Greece's ability to pay back at least portions of its debt. At the end of the day, goods and services are what it's all about. And by dismantling the Greek economy, nevermind the Greek society, they actively undermined what they publicly claimed to be working for: a self-reliant Greek economy, capable of financing the needs of Greece. And capable of paying back what is owed.

The question inescapably poses itself: was it done intentionally or are they blinded by ideology?

One doesn't have to be as far left as I am to see that it didn't work, doesn't work, and never could have worked. Even the likes of Krugman and Stiglitz are perfectly clear about it.

Varoufakis, as you note, has been just as clear about this at least since late 2010, when he published the first draft of his Modest Proposal with Stuart Holland. There was a very good discussion about it in Austin in 10/2013 under the topic "Can the Eurozone be saved?" Participants included Varoufakis, Tsipras, Flassbeck, Holland and Galbraith, amongst others. I submitted a short clip back then.

His argument that Germany won't see a dime when Greece is shoved off a cliff, as correct as it is, never had any bite to begin with. The German government, and large parts of parliament, are operating in a parallel universe, economically. Over here, mercantilism is the road to success. Monetarism works. Surplus good, deficit bad. Saving good, spending bad. Everyone should have a current account surplus.

It's horseshit by the gallons, and it's the official economic policy of the largest economy in the EU.

And we're not even getting into the political aspects of it. Throwing a member of the EU into debt bondage, suspending its democracy to please the gods of the market... that's a travesty and a half. Yet it's also inevitable if they insist on going down the road of neoliberalism.

Worst of all, Greece is just the canary in the coal mine, as Varoufakis likes to point out. Greece had plenty of issues before they joined the EZ, but when they chose to adapt the same currency as a much larger economy hell bent on competitiveness, which is the favorite euphemism for Germany's beggar-thy-neighbour policies, they were doomed to be crushed. The rest of the PIIGS are next in line, unless this whole mess explodes beforehand. Maybe Rajoy's Franco-esque repression techniques fail, maybe le Pen wins in 2017, who knows. Maybe Schäuble finds the 100k of bribes that he conveniently forgot about back in the '90s and chokes on them.

Last but not least, 208 billion Euros – that's the projected current account surplus of Germany this year. That's 208 billion Euros of debt foreign economies have to accumulate, so that the German public and private sector can run a combined surplus of €208b. That's the elephant in the room. Systematic undercutting of the inflation target through suppression of unit labour costs and a dysfunctional focus on exports.

It's a tricky one. On one hand it could be improved, but on the other hand I'm happy with a system that converted UKIP's (Team Purple) 13% into 0%.

Well happy with that part, less happy about being stuck with the bloody Tories for another five years.

LOL, you're so cute.
So, if you get cancer, can I walk up to you and belittle you because 'look at all them africans with the ebola! You think you have it bad? They're shitting their guts out!'? That's your argument here. 'Stop complaining, others have it worse!'
Seriously, are you really that naive? Do you really believe in the 'american dream'?
You're cute, man. From now on I'll imagine everything you say is said by a five year old, wide-eyed girl with freckles and pigtails. Makes your point so much more understandable.
You and your great country...

I haven't used toothpaste in over five years. Sometimes baking soda. Sometimes activated charcoal. Sometimes just salt. Sometimes just water. I mix it up.

Funny ... five years ago this would have been awesome. Now it's just some weird amateur stuff. Quality levels are high, even when its "only" a fan video.

As a test - just tried this on my five year old spawnlings, and they had no problems whatsoever finding the correct answer.

+ a central bank whose mandate is limited to inflation
+ the lack of a treasury
+ the lack of a harmonized tax system
+ the crippling deficits in democratic control that make it very hard to turn the will of the people into policy
+ etc

The last point is of particular interest if you look at Greece as a shock & awe induced suspension of democracy. Many nations are held in a permanent state of emergency through the war on terror, while Greece's permanent state of emergency was imposed through debt.

Previous governments did what they were told by troika officials, with parliament left aside and judicial decisions left ignored. The return of democracy into some parts of the system caused rather vicious reactions from both the press and European officials. Just look at what Martin Schulz or Jeroen Dijsselbloem said about Syriza officials in the last few days.

Debt is a tool powerful enough to suspend democracy in a heartbeat, even quicker than our famous war on/of terror.

Parliamentary decisions are superceded by transnational treaties and obligations. And if you take the thought one step further, you end up at TTIP/TTP/CETA/TISA. If Greece demonstrates that democratic decisions at a national level still overrule transnational treaties, governments lose a scapegoat for unpopular decisions ("treaty X demands it of us"). Should Syriza manage to end the state of emergency, to return control over the decision back to the elected bodies, it will become infinitely harder to impose draconian or even just highly unpopular measures.

But I digress. Twin Euro blocks (South/North) were part of the discussion, just like parallel currencies in troubled nations. A German exit is still being discussed as well, but I don't think its advocates within Germany thought it through. Switzerland just uncoupled its Swiss Francs from the Euro and it did a real number on their exports. A new DM would appreciate like a Saturn V, instantly shattering German exports. Without a massive increase in wages to compensate through domestic demand, Germany would bleed jobs left, right and center. A fullblown recession.

I'd say it would take very little to stabilise the union, even in its currently flawed configuration. Krugman had a piece this morning, calling one of Syriza's core demands reasonable. And judging by what I have read over the last five years or so, it is. He said Germany would be crazy if they demanded payment on full, no reliefs. And that's where it shows that he cannot follow the media or the political discussions in Germany to any meaningful degree, language barrier and all. Public discussion on economics in Germany stands completely separate from the rest of the world.

Ignorance, stubbornness, cultural bias, a feedback-loop of media and politics, group pressure -- we have everything. And the fact that Germany has been comparatively successful in the face of this crisis makes it practially impossible to pierce this bubble. We're doing fine, our way must be correct, everyone else is wrong.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

I thought I'd comment about this extremely old video, in reflection. It's funny how many devices around me and others I know have changed dramatically. The PC AND the MAC are no longer near "the top" or need to be near the top (granted, Windows is still the platform to beat for personal PC's, but when it comes to mobile platforms...something that BARELY registered back when we were throwing insults around when this video was shown, it's amazing; and now it IS the thing to beat). Now it is all about Android, Apple, or Windows, with a few secondary OS "foundations" (sometimes with hardware) thrown in for fun.

I have one of everything now. My phone an Android, my tablet an Apple, and my PC Windows. Though I still have the one major gripe about Windows and Apple as I did back then; for Apple it is it's need to make self-related products that "you need" to make anything work--much like Nintendo's business model. Microsoft is extremely "information grabby" and they love to lock you down into a certain setup, depending on how you buy or bought your computer (for instance, if you put it together yourself, you can get away from most of these issues--which is what I do; but, most people don't have this luxury). To be honest, I find my Android run devices (my cellphone and my Roku--and as I go forward I imagine a few more will go down that road) to be the best of both worlds, and they typically get along with "both worlds" the most.

Not that Android doesn't have it's own (the Borg) problems, especially as we move into the future. But, as these posts show us, within five years something just like Android (Google) can become a powerhouse that has to be reckoned with. I can't wait.

I still hate Macs!

Ten/five year anniversary re-*promote because why not?

Good lord, now they're showing teasers for movies that are half a decade out?

Makes me wonder how many people are whimsically thinking to themselves "I wish I could make five years of my life vanish so I can watch these!"

It is impossible for some people to see that this watch is at the intersection of art, engineering, and style.

While it is not my style it is very impressive in terms of the attention to detail, the complexity, and the skill of its makers.

Sure this watch is made for a Saudi Prince or a Chinese gazillionaire, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.

I don't cry foul when someone spends their life making music or sculpting stones into statues. What a waste of resources...

Where will Patek be in five years? Making even more money as Asia continues to buy up more luxury goods.