For a while I was having my doubts there too.

In reply to this comment by firefly:
'Welcome! For a while there I didn't think she'd get sifted...

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Thanks!

In reply to this comment by firefly:
*promote

'Welcome! For a while there I didn't think she'd get sifted...

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Thanks!

In reply to this comment by firefly:
*promote

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Wow that's quite surreal. I was in Game Traders Robina, just last week. It's in my local shopping centre!!

Thanks!

In reply to this comment by firefly:
*promote

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Hank Snow, Country, A fool such as I, Bill Trader' to 'Hank Snow, Country, A fool such as I, Bill Trader, 50s' - edited by swampgirl

Trader Joes has good frozen vegetables that are vastly superior to any other frozen vegetables I've come across.

I also am addicted to those 4-pound bags of frozen Breaded Chicken Breast Tenderloins from Sam's Club. It's better than "fresh" chicken.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Frozen seafood can be better than fresh- but I think it's the case that the crappy, farmed fish is usually frozen, like Tilapia- while the nice fish is sold fresh for a higher margin. Trader Joe's has good frozen seafood.

As for the fresh vs. frozen vegies- I suppose that makes sense. We spend about $100 a week at the organic farmer's market- which beats frozen or supermarket fresh.

We're going to live forever- but be poor because it is a lot more expensive than the supermarket.

and this from the woman who gnawed off her own leg to escape a fur trader's trap.

I wonder how much Bernanke can actually do. The only instrument the Fed has to immediately act on the stock market is the interest rate. But back in December, Bernanke and everyone else knew that cutting interest rates would promote inflation and another credit bubble. So he decided against it, just like the European Central Bank decided this week.

But the market tanked, because traders don't give a damn about inflation. Actually, they can't even care about long term perspectives, because if they did the market would crash. They want to see stocks rising in the short term, and it's up to Bernanke to keep the music going.

Back in December, Bernanke made the responsible choice of controlling inflation and preventing further long-term damage to the economy. Bernanke was hoping Bush's tax rebate proposal would have some effect, but it didn't. On MLK day, world markets took a dive and the forecast for the next day was a historic plunge on the Dow. It was already being called the Black Tuesday.

So Bernanke and the board of the Fed convened and decided on a 0.75% emergency rate cut, because the way they saw it, they could either have a crash right then or worry about the dollar some other day. They decided to postpone the problem, and made the cut.

It worked for a day. The Dow closed lower, but it didn't crash. On Wednesday, it degenerated during trading hours and it was pretty obvious that traders were going short. In came the PPT, the Plunge Protection Team, also known as the Working Group on Financial Markets. Created by an executive order by Reagan, these guys give recommendations to the private sector for "enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of [United States] financial markets and maintaining investor confidence". No one knows what the hell they talk about in their meetings, no one has access to the minutes and they respond to no one -- not even to Congress.

The rally on Wednesday afternoon had all the signs of concerted stock manipulation originating in the futures market. The rise started tentative at best, but the index was propped up by very well timed buying over an essentially perfect trendline. The first leg of the rise scared the folks who were short, but a lot held on. But they couldn't handle the second leg, closed their positions and made the stocks surge up with incredible volume.

The panic is over, at least for now. But the market's pricing in a 0.5% cut for the Fed's next meeting, which happens in a week. If they don't cut, the markets will fall AGAIN.

Ron Paul said many times that the credit problem is like an addiction, and I can't think of a better description.

Wow, so you really WERE fur traders, like in the “my name is Joe” commercial.

Nice one, and Happy Birthday, zifnab!

* Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
* Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion."
While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it."
* On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:

I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him."

* Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ."
* In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess."
* On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead.
* The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and spanish raids.
* As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous."
* The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell."
* What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive."
Or, on another occasion:
"The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs."
* The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated."
* "And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitln [Mexico city] was next."
* Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
* "When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead."

Also, National Geographic Channel has just revealed from their programming: the first gunshot in Americas, that Spanish vs Native American battles weren't always what Spanish chronicles claimed.

They were ALWAYS accompanied by Inca's former enemy states. And the siege of Lima (Puruchuco) in particular reveals that most of the fighting was done between Native Americans and the battle won by Native Americans, not by some sheer overwhelming power of horses and muskets.

So politics plays a very critical role in human history than just purely on physical geographic location, critical though it may be.

I'm also bit miffed at what Diamond said when he gave ancient Greeks as evidence of 'cultivation civilization'.

From what I know, Greek cities (Peloponnese) did have large population with heavy population density, but they weren't too big on farming, mainly because the Greek land is not the most ideal place for farming because it's full of jagged rocks and salty coastlines. They had a big animal herding tradition with goats and sheeps, and probably had a big fishing tradition going on, but not to the extent to feed big cities. Plus, that's not really a diverse diet.

There survived mainly as active traders, who got lot of their material needs from other parts of the world by setting up colonies and establishing trade relations (Mycenae, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Dorians later on). They especially had a very close relation with Egyptians, perhaps because they were the largest providers of wheat at the time. They give them fish and sheep skin, Egyptians give them surplus of wheat.

Anyways overall, Diamond comes up with definitely interesting fresh theories, but also comments on some things that are directly against historic evidence. Like how conquistador's guns and swords were such a large factor, enough to compensate their lack of numbers (which he later corrects as germs), how Greeks flourished because of cultivation or that Sumerian writings had influenced Chinese characters... etc etc.

Like, Huh?

And I also couldn't find anything about smallpox and black plague originating from farm animals. As far as evidence goes, some say bubonic plague started from Ethiopia, where Diamond claim domestication of animals didn't take place... that 13 of 14 farm animals all originated from Middle East, which is another point of doubt (he also contradicts himself from 1st part to 3rd part.. what's going on here).

Oh! and why Europeans happened to be the ones to keep colonizing the world, when Ming and Qing China had plenty of capability to do the same, but never did so?

Oh! and how was conquistadors survive in the tropics? or early American pioneers who were dying by hundreds?

This is why this guy is a biologist, and not a Historian. Stay in your own profession old man!

Stick with the original theory of geographic effect in human history. Discard the rest.

From the second quotation, one might well be forgiven for assuming that the paper in question drew stronger conclusions than it actually did. In reality, it was far more reserved. Here are some further quotations qualifying the issue:

Despite the views expressed by the popular media, leading academics, and option market professionals, there is reason to question the decisiveness of the evidence that terrorists traded in the option market ahead of the September 11 attacks...

On the basis of the statements made about the links between option market activity and terrorism shortly after September 11, it would have been tempting to infer from this put-call ratio that terrorism probably was the cause of the November 12 crash. Subsequently, however, terrorism was all but ruled out...

[T]he article notes that the heaviest trading in the AMR options did not occur in the cheapest, shortest-dated puts, which would have provided the largest profits to someone who knew of the coming attacks. Furthermore, an analyst had issued a "sell" recommendation on AMR during the previous week, which may have led investors to buy AMR puts. Similarly, the stock price of UAL had recently declined enough to concern technical traders who may have increased their put buying, and UAL options are heavily traded by institutions hedging their stock positions. Finally, traders making markets in the options did not raise the ask price at the time the orders arrived as they would have if they believed that the orders were based on adverse nonpublic information.

Much better-! how bout, like Heather Mills is to fur traders.

This looks like a trading desk, and trust me when I say that this does happen. Especially when one of the traders is losing money and the others are heckling him. I've personally seen a Chinese man get up and round-house kick another trader for standing behind him telling him how 'NOT' to lose money. Very funny.