Signs That The Global Economic Turmoil Is Just Beginning
Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 2 months ago to Business
From the article:
1. The number of job cuts in the United States skyrocketed 218 percent during the month of January according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
2. The Baltic Dry Index just hit yet another brand new all-time record low. As I write this article, it is sitting at 303.
3. U.S. factory orders have now dropped for 14 months in a row.
4. In the U.S., the Restaurant Performance Index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008.
5. In January, orders for class 8 trucks (the big trucks that you see shipping stuff around the country on our highways) declined a whopping 48 percent from a year ago.
6. Rail traffic is also slowing down substantially. In Colorado, there are hundreds of train engines that are just sitting on the tracks with nothing to do.
7. Corporate profit margins peaked during the third quarter of 2014 and have been declining steadily since then. This usually happens when we are heading into a recession.
1. The number of job cuts in the United States skyrocketed 218 percent during the month of January according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
2. The Baltic Dry Index just hit yet another brand new all-time record low. As I write this article, it is sitting at 303.
3. U.S. factory orders have now dropped for 14 months in a row.
4. In the U.S., the Restaurant Performance Index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008.
5. In January, orders for class 8 trucks (the big trucks that you see shipping stuff around the country on our highways) declined a whopping 48 percent from a year ago.
6. Rail traffic is also slowing down substantially. In Colorado, there are hundreds of train engines that are just sitting on the tracks with nothing to do.
7. Corporate profit margins peaked during the third quarter of 2014 and have been declining steadily since then. This usually happens when we are heading into a recession.
For some reason writers believe the heroes can be so fantastic physically but must be complete basket cases emotionally and intellectual Neanderthals. That's not what heroes are; that's a propaganda caricature.
Cap is not a good example, so he must go.
Were I to try to create a Superman show, I would diminish his powers. He did not originally have heat vision, for example, and his 'flying' was more extended jumping (like the Hulk). I think that I would probably keep the flying (because, good scenes), do away with the heat vision and then make his xray vision 'the ability to see further into the IR spectrum' - so, like a heat scope. Hmmm...invulnerability...maybe morph it into 'really tough' plus 'regeneration'.
Cutting down the powers would give one room for more Super-person plots where there was real risk and vulnerability. (You cannot have heroes without the weight of possible cost to oneself.)
Yeah, I get your point about Supergirl-is-OK because she is a just girl and therefor cannot possibly be so powerful that she will be boring. But I remember when Mrs Peel was criticized because she was 'unfeminine' because she actually physically fought opponents. That was followed by several decades of women who did not fight - or who did an incredibly bad job of doing so (ie on Original Star Trek). Finally, B5 had some scenes where women kicked butt...over 30 years later. So, while I would rather gaze at Superman than Supergirl, I react with a "Yay Team!" to that aspect of modern culture.
Jan
Oh I get it, but its more than that, Herb. Its a guy who does things after a rational reasoning process to choose his actions that result in survival., he is not a cute politically correct character that would have died several times following the poorly reasoned script. People are getting trained to accept rubbish, and they are the people who will vote Hillary into office and destroy our way of life. If a movie is just fluff entertainment, that's fine, but when its supposed to be based in science, and it gets it wrong, I object.
you guys just don't get it. I go to the movies to be entertained. If I were to use the criteria you espouse I would never enjoy half the flicks I see. I could name at least a dozen movies, not all of them scifi that make little sense scientifically that are entertaining, or amusing, or yes, edifying. The science part is not, I repeat Not what the movie is about. It is about a resourceful person not giving up in the face of continuing adversity. The movie, The Martian may be more scientifically correct, but it's not about the science, but about a guy who is tenacious and will not allow himself to be defeated by his circumstances.
http://www.spaceanswers.com/space-exp...
Jan
Jan
I had thought that Mark was wearing glasses during those last scenes because of the number of times he had breathed pure oxygen in the course of his Martian excursions, but I did a bit more research and it was probably due to the acceleration of the hot-roded MAV. This sort of attention to detail makes my little techie heart go pity-pat.
Jan
I recently began reading a fantasy novel that had such a poor understanding of economics, trade, and technology that I could not finish it, in spite of the fact that the author spun a good story. For example: an entirely insular medieval subsistence country where the country is unaware (because it does not engage in trade) that its neighboring countries are being attacked and taken over by an invading army but the nobles of said subsistence country have estate homes filled with velvets and silks and china. When the book got to the 'crudely welded gun' (the invaders had) I could not maintain my 'suspension of disbelief'.
What authors need to realize is that it matters if your world 'hangs together' well and that flagrant inaccuracies (The Black Hole: asteroid crushes space station without any explosive decompression) lead to loss of belief. The Science is in science fiction for a reason, but accuracy also applies to historical and other forms of fiction.
Jan
HipHip -HURRAH!
Jan
(Surprised you didn't "groan" about my punishing comment, too.)
twndlngs meaning twinning.
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