Silly Humans

Balance Whack

2008-07-16T12:12:00.003-04:00

Personally, I think teh N'Yorker could've gotten it by and made the point if only they'd just run it as a 'toon inside the magazine, instead of on the cover.

Whatevs...

Scouts (dis)Honor

2008-07-08T18:53:00.004-04:00

Yeah. I did teh Cub Scouts right up 'til was time to become a Webloe. Wasn't gonna happen, eh.

In my case, and another kid's at the same time and for the same essential reason, 'twas 'cause our Den Ma's kid and her nephew didn't like the fact the other kid was always so quiet, so they kept messing with him to make him say stuff. I never did know what the exact cause was, but when I saw her too snot-nosed pups start whalin' on dude, I just had to join in. I didn't know the kid that well either, but he'd never been in any trouble of which I knew, and DM's punks were Always startin' shit and gettin' other kids yelled at for their crap. Besides, it was two on one, and Fairness required some balance at that point. Me and dude were fine. The other two? Well, we were asked not to come back is all I'll say.

Then I grow up and find out just how messed up the Scouts really have become. NOT without redeeming qualities By Any Means. Just - For the Most Part - a load of jingoistic, chauvinistic crap. And I'm still sure that quite a few guys are better of for them in their lives. It's a good read if you know next to nothing about why folks would Evah bad talk a group that's always been seen as "good guys".

L8

Picking Up The Pace?

2008-07-03T15:57:00.004-04:00

Took us until 1920 to make that the fact in Legalese. Only 143 years, eh.

Here's hoping the backlash to teh $hrub's 8 year reign o' delusions and constitutional back-sliding goes a little more quickly.

(an early) Happy 4th to All my American amigas y 'migos!

(No) Sane Claim

2008-07-01T06:06:00.004-04:00

Well, not a hekkuvalot more than average at any rate. Less in some ways. More in others. Messily or with aplomb, it all evens out o'er the long run.

L8

Alternative Reality Sources???

2008-06-20T14:14:00.005-04:00

I'm surprised he doesn't just Talk With Jesus™ about it.

Oh, that's right! He has to be serious with his Big Oil buds. Unlike with his frothing fundy political supporters amongst the electorate, it wouldn't do for him to go counting on teh bible with that bunch.

{rollin'eyes}

Quote of the Year; So Far . .

2008-06-19T10:15:00.005-04:00

Coming to a Planet Under You

"Cities routinely build in the flood plain, That's not an act of God; that's an act of City Council."
Kamyar Enshayan, Cedar Falls, Iowa college professor and City Council member

Actually, in the pic above, that already is a planet under us. Click on the pic to get the description.

And watch out for those pesky "parking lots". According to some apparent Bush appointee* at the National Weather Service (3rd paragraph, page 2) one o' those may be all it takes to cause Costner's Bomb** to flood our backyards.

:-)

* ;->

** Don't know why that flick bombed so bad. It sure as shite weren't no Classic, but it was entertaining enough and a gnarly story to boot. Whatevs...

When "McSame" is an Accurate Appelation

2008-06-18T08:32:00.004-04:00

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution...

George Will
column of June 18, 2008

One of the few Conservative pundits with whom I frequently find myself in agreement has again laid reality out on the page. Sociologically and politically, George Will may not share my belief in the necessity of the State taking responsibility for those of its citizens who can't quite seem to make it in society, but, unlike certain Presidents and their political dopplegangers, he sure as Death and Taxes doesn't believe the government has some Top Secret right to ignore its own raison d'etre.

McCain and the writ of habeas corpus
By GEORGE F. WILL
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well.

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect?

With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

Did McCain's extravagant condemnation of the court's habeas ruling result from his reading the 126 pages of opinions and dissents? More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court -- meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees -- a campaign issue.

[Wouldn't you like to be a prisoner too? For your Country, but of course!]

As an appropriate follow-up, Happy 60th Anniversary of the signing of the UN's International Declaration of Human Rights!

A wee li'l relevant addendum.

{Whew!}

2008-06-13T05:49:00.003-04:00

By the skin o' their necks, eh.

US Supreme Court Backs Guantánamo Prisoners’ Right to Appeal

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

--snip--

The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”

[Our Enemies ARE People Too]

All authorities are more effective in the long run when they realize this.

If the Authority isn't getting its job done, it's generally most likely time for the Authority to be replaced. In this Administration's case, it's Long Overdue.

Kudos to the 5 Justices not afraid to be rational in times of trouble.

Philosolophically Speaking...

2008-06-10T06:09:00.004-04:00

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Existentialism
Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”

--Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”

--Blaise Pascal

More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

Existentialism

95%
Hedonism

80%
Utilitarianism

80%
Strong Egoism

55%
Kantianism

45%
Nihilism

45%
Justice (Fairness)

40%
Apathy

30%
Divine Command

0%

Yeah, yet again I've gone an' pilfered another blogger's schtick for a post. So sue me.

Or just take the quiz yourself! :-)

Warm Swarm of Advertising

2008-06-06T06:02:00.005-04:00

We need stuff. Right? I mean, really!, where's the harm in buyinig a mass produced Tickle Me Elmo for teh wee ones.

It all depends, now. Doesn't it.

Over the last few decades I've quietly wanted to be a less voracious consumer. Even though I'm nowhere near what I'd say is close to meeting that want, I've made some headway. Not much. But I'm getting better at it. My problem is that I've been impoverished; not knowing when my next meal would be. Mostly I've just been middle-class lazy, though. When I've had money, I've spent it.

Live and - hopefully - learn, eh.

This one's going on my sidebar soon.

Thanks go to Michael for his Believe Nothing Day post. LOTS of food for thought in that one.

L8

In This Together?

2008-06-02T10:07:00.009-04:00

Shankar, as usual, takes a look at one of the more ironic self-defeating idiosyncrasies of our silly, social species.

When Disadvantages Collide
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, June 2, 2008; Page A02

One hundred forty-three years ago, women's suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton faced a conundrum: With the Civil War over, Stanton had to decide whether to support the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which enabled black men to vote -- at a time when white women such as herself still did not have that right.

Stanton decided to oppose the amendments: "As the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see Sambo walk into the kingdom first."

The question of what to do when the interests of two groups that had long suffered discrimination clashed with each other split the feminist movement. In order to gain passage of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 gave women the right to vote, leading feminists jettisoned issues important to African Americans to win support from women and politicians who would have nothing to do with people of color. Without the support of the racists, the amendment might have failed, said Kimberle Crenshaw, professor of constitutional and civil rights law at Columbia University and UCLA.

There were two ironies in this: Stanton, like many other suffragists, was a passionate abolitionist. And in the years before she made her derogatory remark about "Sambo," abolitionists had treated women in exactly the same manner -- excluding them from equal participation in the movement merely because they were female.

The political alliance that the suffragists built helped pass the 19th Amendment, but it drove a wedge into the women's movement. Over the long term, just as relegating women to second-class citizens weakened the campaign for civil rights, abandoning solidarity with people of color weakened the women's movement.

"At the end of the day, what is winning and what is losing?" asked Crenshaw. "Yes, the 19th Amendment happened, but feminism lost its soul in the process."

--snip--

The real question, with the suffragettes or with those in the current political race, comes down to whether groups that face discrimination focus their disappointment and resentment at discrimination -- or at each other.

[We can either Fight Each Other or Fight the Power but we can't fight both and win anything worth fighting for.]

Much as with the political race being run today between Senators Clinton and Obama I don't see anyone losing any souls here. Just one person slamming another hard enough to make that other look less deserving, in hope of proppin' their own diminishing opportunities.

The Big Stink lately has been Clinton's repeated refs to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy as being only one of the reasons she's maintaining the Fight for the Democratic nomination. Unlike her Bosnian Dream this is hardly a bold-faced lie. In plain fact, it's simple truth; as far as it goes. By making that particular allusion though, Clinton seems to once again cross over the line of Civil discourse and into the realm of pandering to the fears of ignorance.

We don't know what might have happened in the 1970's had Bobby Kennedy not been shot, and while the two men's earliest backgrounds are extremely different, their lives of dedication to helping those far less fortunate than average folk raise themselves up to within sight of the American Dream, make me really hopeful that, in this decade, in our time, we may actually get to see what Might Have Been.

As a white man, you know, one of the Rulers of the World, I don't care if a person is "one of my own" or a diametric opposite of me physiologically. I care that what they do and what they say is in accord with what I hope for my country and my species as a whole.

Hillary Clinton, extraordinary woman and incredibly worthy politico though she be, gives me no such hope.

Shiny Happy Spaceships

2008-05-30T06:45:00.004-04:00

Just a pick and a quick link. I'll prolly be posting more freq'ly again, once my brain stops trying to kill me.

Mars lander to inspect itself with robotic arm
---Phoenix touched down in Mars's north polar region on Sunday and quickly started beaming back images of its surroundings.

Now, the lander's robotic arm has finished freeing itself from its restraints, a crucial step along the way to sampling the Martian soil and ice.

Two pins held the arm in place and prevented it from being damaged by vibrations during Phoenix's launch and landing. NASA commanded the arm to start the process of freeing itself on Wednesday morning PDT (Wednesday afternoon GMT).

The arm has now completely freed itself from the pins and a sterile wrapping called the biobarrier, which prevented the arm from being contaminated with Earth microbes prior to launch, the Phoenix team reported at a press briefing on Thursday.

"Our arm was cooped up in our restraints for 14 months," Phoenix team member Matthew Robinson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, US, said during the briefing. "It was raring to go, it's busted loose now, and we're ready to go – we're excited."

You Stick Your Right Foot Out . .

2008-05-26T07:18:00.006-04:00

. . and make sure it's firmly planted. There's work to be down now.

I wouldn't say I've been holding my breath, but it still did come as quite a relief to learn that the Phoenix has landed successfully on Mars. There were no bouncing bags on this mission as like those which made the two Mars Rovers landings so successful. This one came down standing, as it were.

Now, to the mission.

First Phoenix images reveal 'quilted' Martian terrain

...
Phoenix is designed to dig down to the ice and search for traces of organic residue that might indicate whether this part of Mars could have been habitable in the past.

--snip--
Prior to this evening, NASA's recent successes – including Mars Pathfiner in 1997 and the two Mars Exploration Rovers in 2004 – have all bounced to the surface of the Red Planet encased in inflatable air bags.

Phoenix and future missions, including the more ambitious Mars Science Laboratory, were designed to land with thrusters, considered a must for heavier payloads – and for any future attempt to send astronauts on Mars.

"The way we're going to land humans on Mars is with propulsive systems and landing legs," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
[Talk about "look before you leap"!]

On a timely note; I think that this landing on Mars is an incredibly significant Memorial to the men and women who've given their lives so that people could continue to freely discover all that our universe has to offer. There are so many reasons to hate War, and so many more to be grateful to the Warriors who have fought and sacrificed for their countries. I hope that, going into the depths of our Solar system, we have ever less need for such sacrifices, and ever more opportunities for Heroes to be made sans killing.

Fighting Ignorance, not each other, is what missions such as this one are all about.

L8

Literated

2008-05-22T05:42:00.003-04:00

It's always comforting to find other folks who've not read all the "classics", but have a similar number of 'em under their belts as I do. That's one reason it was cool to come across this post on Wren's site. Another is just that I dig teh memes.

;-)

With a little help from cut/paste, here're the directions, the list and my own emphasisations. Have at it for yourselves.

Copy the list of books, then bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. As Wren did, I'll add a wee bit o' commentary next to some of the titles. Enjoy!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina (Always wanted to, but maybe that's just cuz I love her name.)
Crime and Punishment {shudder}
Catch-22 (I think everyone but me has read this book.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hmmm... Sounds familiar, but I don't think so.)
Wuthering Heights (I'll probably approach this one some time.)
The Silmarillion (Tolkien)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose (No, I guess watching the movie [w/ Sean Connery] doesn't count)
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses ("Lucy says Joyce is effing incomprehensible. I totally agree." And I heartily concurr!)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey (For school and I'm glad as I loved it!)
Pride and Prejudice ("Another Great Book my English teachers didn’t assign and so I’ve never read". What she said.)
Jane Eyre (There's a series by a guy named Jasper Fford about a woman who "goes into" books, and this is one of 'em. I don't think I'll read it though. Of Fford's novels, though, I can't get enough. )
The Tale of Two Cities (Depressing or I'd own it. Maybe I will yet.)
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad (Same as for the Odyssey.)
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (On the list to read)
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (Saw a movie version then loved the book!)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (The only Joyce I did get through, though how I'm not sure.)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula (Not read, but... you know)
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King (Worst of the Arthur stories. Go with Marion Zimmer Bradley's for historical realism.)
The Grapes of Wrath (Took me forever to get to it, since it wasn't assigned in school. WELL worth the read.)
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels and Demons
Inferno (Attempted, but bored me quickely.)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist (Ummm... I really think I've read this...)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere ("I love this title. I’d better read the book." I'm with Wren! lol)
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Really enjoyable writing.)
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
The Mists of Avalon (Well, there ya go!)
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Note to self; Add it to the list)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Just as Wren did on her post, I gots to list "some of my own old favorites, read over and over:" or which were simply some of my all time faves.

The Lord of the Rings (read at least 7 or 8 times.)
Ringworld (Series by Larry Niven)
Thieve's World: Sanctuary Anthology (Edited initially by Robert Lynn Aspirin, then by several others.)
The Mote in God's Eye More Larry Niven. Dude is my All Time Favorite author!
Anything by Ben Bova, Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clark, Jerry Pournelle or Kage Baker.

What Was Lost Shall Be Found

2008-05-21T06:48:00.002-04:00

Study one's own spine
Sooner or later revealed
Questions unanswered

Errr.... Or somethin' like that. VERY cool, regardless.

Missing matter found in deep space

...
Now about half of the missing baryonic matter has turned up, seen by the orbiting Hubble space telescope and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, or FUSE.

"We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe," said Mike Shull of the University of Colorado, who helped lead the study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The matter is spread as superheated oxygen and hydrogen in what looked like vast empty spaces between galaxies.

However, observations of a quasar -- a bright object far off in space -- show its light is diffused much as a lighthouse can reflect on a thin fog that was invisible in the dark.

"It is kind of like a spider web. The gravity of the spider web is what produced what we see," Shull said in a telephone interview. "It's very thin. Some of it is very hot gas, almost a million degrees."

This is where the dark matter comes in. The dark matter is heating up the gas, Shull said.

"Dark matter has gravity. It pulls the gas in," Shull said. "This causes what I call sonic booms -- shock waves. This shock heats it to a million degrees. That makes it even harder to see."

The atoms of oxygen are in a stripped-down, ionized form. Five of the eight electrons are gone. It emits an ultraviolet spectrum of light that instruments aboard FUSE and Hubble can spot, Shull said.

These web-like filaments of matter are the structure upon which the galaxies form, he said.

[Where shall we go from here?]

.. and I can't it get it outta my head.

2008-05-15T05:56:00.003-04:00

Heheh... Maybe.

PUDDLE OF MUD

On that note;

2008-05-14T05:47:00.001-04:00

Wishes as fishes
Lost in the aquarium
Old habits die hard

No Pill's Gonna Cure This Ill

2008-05-08T08:29:00.006-04:00

From Public Agenda

It's been more than 15 years since Bill Clinton's campaign advisors confidently declared "it's the economy, stupid," to sum up the public's mood of the moment. For the past few years, foreign policy and the war in Iraq in particular have been at the forefront of public concern. But the economy is reasserting itself as a priority�and economic concerns are shaping how the public views foreign policy.

The most dramatic example of this is the public's worry about the cost of energy. Fully 7 in 10 say they worry "a lot" about the rise in the cost of energy, a 16-point jump from six months ago. But for the public, economics and security are tied together on this issue. Becoming less dependent on other countries for our supply of energy is now the public's first choice as a national security strategy, with 6 in 10 saying it would do "a great deal" to make the country more secure.

[Getting it Right without guns. What a concept!]

Normally, what the Pollsters show the Public is thinking doesn't mean a whole lot in regards to what Policies are needed. Sure I love seeing $hrub's approval numbers being the worst of any President's since polling began, but that's because it gives me hope that the Public will force their Representatives to do something about it.

{sighhh} Well, anyway...

Whether for good or ill, well, we'll be to see.

Note: Hmmm... I'd referenced the Consumer Confidence index, but realized that I had it confused with another system, so pulled it. Fun stuff... Need vacation...

L8

Two Haiku

2008-05-06T05:58:00.003-04:00

My foot, tasting burned
Still I munch it. Ecstasy!
No rare occurrence

For a friend.

Sanity subsumed
True/False light envelopes me
Hopeless? Not as such

For me.

Me fo' Mo!

2008-05-05T06:46:00.002-04:00

Yet another spam mail from mi hermano, Lee Long.

Is (just about) All I'm Sayin'...

2008-05-01T13:50:00.003-04:00

No Matter What Is Said . .

2008-04-30T15:45:00.006-04:00

". . (i)ts about context people and we are not so important that we need to inject our cause into every sentence that comes out of everyone’s mouth."

[From a commenter on Qweerty*, as quoted in NYT political blog, The Caucus]

There are much better ways to deal with bigoted speach than by lettin' our anger manage our reactions; even when the speech is from politicians. I like the quote because it gets to the Unequivocal Real Problem with human beings: distorted self-importance.

You can defend yourself without deluding yourself into thinking that a person expressing themselves poorly by showing off their down-home flavor of ignoramia is an unrequited and socially worthless bigot. They - WE - are dangerous; no doubt about it. Such is life, and it takes a little more effort than a reactionary lashing out to alleviate the damage such ignorance does cause.

Personally, I think the NC Gov'nor should've gone with pushover instead of pansy. He didn't because society demeans homosexual peops fairly casually, even though that's seriously not a very rational state of affairs. But look at society's priorities; at the death and carnage we allow our government to inflict upon other peops in order to merely protect our horrifically wasteful and destructive, and incredibly consumptive and unsustainable way of life, and go figure.

Then think of a more productive way of pointing out how the Gov's use of "pansy" as a pejorative might actually be tactless and impolitic.

Then again, ranting and raving is a rocking way to get shiite out of one's system. And nobody gets hurt if we just remember to lash out in safe venues, and especially to always try to fight subtle battles with subtlety, and the big ones with more intensity.

If we realize that, then we can care what others think about us when it's negative, without succumbing to our own self-doubts.

* I kind of doubt it, but have been unable to get confirmation as, well, ... meh! You figure it out. {-;

* I can't even check the site from work: Weighted Phrase Limit Exceeded says my work's Interwebs software. {sigh}

'-)

Everyone Has Hopes to Dash

2008-04-29T08:05:00.004-04:00

No.. I don't think it does.

2008-04-29T05:48:00.005-04:00

"The sentence 'Women want men who have power and money' works just as well if you erase the words 'men who have.'"

--Meredith Small, What's Love Got to Do With It?, 1998

From the PBS Evolution website

Which, as a Great Equivocator, I must be quick to add does not mean that it doesn't work for all women. I just think that, irrespective of their being every bit as unavoidably human as men, most women are at least smarter enough ;) to prefer that their man be the one to hold the Wealth and Power, whilst they access it via the holding of their man.

A biologically originated situation which is culturally well cemented for a majority of majorities.

Is this a sexist analysis on my part? Well, considering that the two sexes, though each definitionally of the same species, and each inescapably possessed of both our greatest virtues and weakest faults, are spectacularly and irresolvably different from each other, I don't believe it can be helped. IMO, such knowledge just needs to be utilized in a manner which benefits each half of our single, though constantly evolving, species.

Facts for Thought

2008-04-28T06:43:00.003-04:00

Everyone can aspire to "having it made." In the U.S.A., opportunity has always been the watchword; the motto, the credo.

The illusion, or delusion, depending on one's depth of belief (or gullibility.)

Reality, not only unregulated, but purposefully manipulated, is far less Democratic.

Economic View
The Wealth Trajectory: Rewards for the Few

---

They report that one out of every 10,000 American families has income in excess of $10.7 million. These lucky duckies number less than 15,000. Put together, they could all fit into a modest-size town. (We could call it Aspen or Nantucket.)

What’s more, the superrich have been getting an increasing slice of the economic pie. In 1980, the top 0.01 percent of the population had 0.87 percent of total income. By 2006, their share had more than quadrupled to 3.89 percent, a level not seen since 1916.

[The Land of Delusion Welcomes Your Wealth!]