Austin Improv

But seriously :: all of my business interests, i.e. the ways I scramble to make it happen (including killing), are better than ever. I asked this same question in class when we were running the Living Room. I was surprised to see the crisis affecting more than just the lunatics screeching at one another on the stock market floor. I guess television doesn't lie.

db

"The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own." - Baron Rothschild

"You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus" - Warren Buffett

"Buy at the point of maximum pessimism" - Sir John Templeton

"don't panic - mortgages and 401(k)'s still make sense - ride it out" - Mike McGill

It's affecting an Illinois sheriff.
CNN-Illinois sheriff scolds banks for evictions of 'innocent' renters

International trade is seizing up because shippers can't use letters of credit.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/ ... ue-to.html

Yeah, so the stock market and the world economy is all linked.

On the bright side, the dollar has risen on international markets. A Euro only buys $1.35 or so these days, whereas two weeks ago, it would buy $1.50. Last time i went to Europe, it would only buy $.78. That was before the Iraq war, before Bush, back in 2000 when the dot-com bust was what everyone was complaining about... how unfair THAT was...

I went to Mexico last year... it was more expensive than the trip to Europe eight years ago.

Did you know that most people in the world today live without electricity?

Did you know that most people in the world today live without electricity?

Actually, according to this Rice website, it's a quarter of people living w/o electricity.
http://www.rice.edu/energy/research/pov ... index.html

Does this mean the first world nations deserve being punished for a while? I know some people are quasi-hoping for an apocalypse.

nadine wrote:I know some people are quasi-hoping for an apocalypse.

What? Who?

kaci_beeler wrote:

nadine wrote:I know some people are quasi-hoping for an apocalypse.

What? Who?

Some of the new age hippies.. they're prophesying doom and gloom
one of my friends is part of building a community outside Austin that independently sustains itself with food, for when global transport systems fail. His Livejournal entries have been terribly Chicken Little-like lately. Makes me want to rush out and by a hand-cranked radio. (Actually, watching Blindness made me want to rush out and by a hand-cranked radio. Hmmm.)

I'm going to Amazon and buying a hand-cranked radio.

I miss Y2K

nadine wrote:I'm going to Amazon and buying a hand-cranked radio.

"Dow rebounds on reports of hand-cranked radio purchase"

There's a popular theory involving the year 2012. I think it originates from an aboriginal South American society. Maybe Aztec? Year of the quatezocal or something like that.

May we live in interesting times.

Jon Bolden wrote:There's a popular theory involving the year 2012. I think it originates from an aboriginal South American society. Maybe Aztec? Year of the quatezocal or something like that.

Mayan, I think. I learned about it in Spanish class.

Jon Bolden wrote:There's a popular theory involving the year 2012. I think it originates from an aboriginal South American society. Maybe Aztec? Year of the quatezocal or something like that.

December 21 (or 22?) 2012 is the last day of the Mayan calendar. A great number of people are clinging to the prediction that the Mayan calendar ends when human civilization (as we know it) ends.

Even back in 1996, I attended a Whole Earth convention for the express purpose of meeting Terence McKenna, and there I found out that he believed humanity will experience some kind of paradigm shift toward enlightenment in 2012.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, but I do think that if enough people believe there will be some kind of change, that sheer number should inevitably render some kind of an effect.