Category: Aggregated

For years, health authorities believed coffee was bad for your heart. But listen up, java lovers, there’s a new reason to have that extra cup of coffee every day! Drinking as many as four cups daily may actually help in the prevention of a heart attack. That’s according to new research published by BMJ Heart. Compared to people who don’t drink coffee at all, those who have three to four cups of the black stuff every day have 40 percent less coronary artery calcium – or CAC –according to the BMJ Heart study. A well-established marker of heart disease, CAC … Continue reading →

Dining in a social setting can be one of life’s finest pleasures, where the wine flows as freely as the conversation. However, certain foods can leave you on a collision course with culinary faux pas where, at best, you’re left feeling awkward and, at worst, said dish ends up covering you or your companions. Just ask Ed Miliband, who probably never wants to see a bacon sandwich again after photos of the Labour leader doing battle with a particularly gristly rasher were widely ridiculed. With an election on the way and plenty of opportunities for the nation’s politicians to make … Continue reading →

The Economist magazine recently published “What’s gone wrong with Democracy … and what can be done to revive it?” The suggestion is that democracy is some kind of ideal for organizing human conduct. That’s a popular misconception. The ideal way to organize human conduct is to create a system that maximizes personal liberty for all. Liberty and democracy are not synonymous and most often are opposites. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison explained, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an … Continue reading →

There is no such thing as a free market. Not in the United States, at any rate. You are free to buy what they (the people who comprise the apparat of government) allow you to buy. Nothing more – and nothing less. But what might we be able to buy if we did have a free market? Or even a more free market than the one we’ve got right now? Almost certainly, we’d have access to new cars that are much more fuel efficient – and much less expensive – than the current crop of government-mandated cars. These cars – the … Continue reading →

Although she is no longer first lady, a U.S. senator from New York, or Secretary of State, and has not officially announced her candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton can’t seem to stay out of the news. Conservatives love to hate Hillary almost as much as they love to hate Obama. And rightly so. Most lately it has come out that she used a private server for all of her e-mails when she was President Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. At the very least, she concealed government documents from the very government she … Continue reading →

Many people always have duct tape on hand, and for good reason it can be used for so many different things. It comes in handy when you are in a bind, no pun intended, but if you find yourself in a dangerous situation you can easily get out of it! I know we have all seen those spy or kidnapping movies where the victim’s hands are bound with duct tape. But, what happens if you find yourself in one of these situations in real life. Never say never  because everything is a possibility, and you never know what could happen … Continue reading →

EU and Greece Running Out of Time – As Bank Runs Intensify, Bail-Ins Likely – EU and Greece running out of time as talks end “in disarray” – again – Greece warns Merkel of ‘impossible’ debt – Concerns Greece out of money by end of April – Friday’s “agreement” in Brussels falls apart hours later as protagonists fail to agree on specifics – Greece now insolvent – will run out of liquidity by end of April- Greek banks on verge of collapse as runs continue – €1.5 billion emptied out of banks last week alone – ‘Grexit’ could propel gold … Continue reading →

Oranges are not the only fruit – but they are certainly one of the most annoying to open. We all know the routine. You begin by picking at their skin and get pithy peel stuck under your fingernails; then the flesh comes off in a series of tiny flakes rather than one satisfying strip. Finally, you break into the fruit’s soft core – squirting juice all over that nice, freshly-pressed shirt that you’re wearing. Thankfully, never again will you have to suffer the ignominy of turning up to work looking like you’ve just been dragged backwards through an orange grove. … Continue reading →

It was just a matter of time before Western governments used the trumped up “War on Terror” as an excuse to drastically ratchet up the very real war on the use of cash and personal privacy that they are waging against their own citizens   Taking advantage of public anxiety in the wake of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, France has taken the first step.  It seems the terrorists involved partially financed these attacks by cash, as well as by consumer loans and the sale of counterfeit goods. What a shockeroo!  The terrorists used CASH to … Continue reading →

Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in US history.” Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two “mission accomplished” moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq. President Obama last year ordered the US military back into Iraq for the third time. It seems the Iraq “surge” … Continue reading →

It might not be Hitler’s famous Wolfsschanze, but researchers are equally excited to study an apparent Nazi lair hidden in the Argentinian jungle. They believe it was proactively built to house top Nazi members in the case of their defeat in WWII. Researchers from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), together with archaeologists from the Museum Andrés Guacurarí, stumbled upon ruins of a site that is believed to have been erected to house high-ranking former Nazi officials. The team is studying the buildings laying in relatively inaccessible part of the Teyú Cuaré Park, southeast of Misiones, on the border with … Continue reading →