Travels etc.

Very interesting article ' China aims to build over 7 million public homes this year ' There is a couple of questions in this regard: 1. How those properties will be distributed among the tenants? Would it be an income test, need based or merit based system? All all of that together in some proportion? 2. How the property rights will be established? Would the tenant of such a property be an owner with the right of disposition, just a tenant on a lease with payments made by government or something else? How this will work in China where communist and capitalist principles seem to work very well together. We'll see.

Отсмотрел кино «Волк с Уолл-стрит». Как обычно возникло несколько мыслей по ходу. Вот ради чего всё это напряжение, наёбка большого количества человек, покупка гигантских домов и кораблей? Ради порева и наркоты? Ради своих личных амбиций? В конце фильма два прекрасных по силе момента – фбровец, едущий домой на метро после успешной операции по закрытию успешного человека, и толпа жаждущих того, что их научат успеху мошенники! Первый момент указывает нам на то, что чисто человеческое стремление к Справедливости и Правосудию никого не впечатляет, и невзирая на размер отбитого у мошенников основным действующим лицам достаётся хуй с маслом. Второй момент о том, что если речь идёт про Деньги, то неважно мразь ты, или нет. Люди тебя оправдают и придут на твои лекции, потому что основная цель существования – как можно больше денег. Скорсезе даёт понять, что то, ради чего люди готовы жертвовать честью и совестью, семьёй, человеческим обликом – это беспорядочная ебля и употребление нарк...

Today have contributed to Australian law by defending my application at NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The Tribunal ordered exactly as I expected. The application was lodged 19th March and the hearing has been set up for today 14th April. It is related to the building defects that were reported originally in December 2011 and the builder made several attempts to fix it without a proper result. There were several factors to that: - Negligence by the sub-contractors - No quality assurance by the builder - Builder was not willing to fix the issue which involved dragging process of numerous inspections, involving Fair Trading, the builder, independent inspector etc. - The builder tried to be smart and started coming up with ways to recover their costs - though all the work they did was part of statutory warranty. The conciliation went well and the matter proceeded to the hearing with a mutual agreement by the applicant and the respondent (the builder). As expected, the ...

Political Parties, Their Organization And Activity In The Modern State by Maurice Duverger My rating: 5 of 5 stars Very interesting book. It is a good approach to review and analyse the principles of political parties’ functionality, their influence on state development and politics. There is a comprehensive overview of how in reality and not in dreams democracy and, for example, very frequently mentioned system of “checks and balances” work. Author is moderately humorous and that makes reading even more fascinating. It becomes clear why many people consider politics as obscenity. This opinion is based not on competence, but because politics is obscure to majority of people. Highly recommended to those who watch and read news, do things, make decisions, and is just merely interested in how everything works around. View all my reviews

Have recently started  Understanding economic policymaking  course by  IE Business School . Though the name doesn't say macroeconomics, it's the best macroeconomy lectures I have ever attended. Even some specific economy courses didn't do much for me to start understand the principles and rules. Professor Gayle Allard is a great instructor and the structure of the course is very easy to follow and to learn. The course is an awesome opportunity for everybody interested in how the economy works.

Have got an interesting read this morning -  America's young workers: Destined for failure? In regards to the education and "The obvious solution is for university, community college, and industry leaders to get together and design the coursework and the on-the-job experiences young workers need to be productive, learn, grow, and gain access to better and higher paying jobs.", I see a couple of issues here: 1. Current education system is still mentally a centuries old master-apprentice type of concept. At the times when it was relevant and apprenticeship may take years to spend on learning the certain trade the trade wouldn't change much and after somebody finishes the studies the trade would still be the same for the lifetime of the person or even several generations. This system just simply doesn't cope effectively with our modern challenges of industries appearing and disappearing and older traditional occupations paying less and less to their practitio...

Let's look at the February 2014 information about Australian retail trade and check what the trends are in comparison with the same period last year in the major and minor industries of that trade and the most recent quarter. Turnover includes: retail sales;  wholesale sales;  takings from repairs,  meals and hiring of goods (except for rent, leasing and hiring of land and buildings);  commissions from agency activity (e.g. commissions received from collecting dry cleaning, selling lottery tickets, etc.);  and the goods and services tax. Will start with NSW.  Here's the top 2 industries - Supermarket and grocery stores & Food retailing ($ Millions): What is obvious - food retailing follows the trend of supermarket and grocery stores. In comparison with same period last year both industries have grown by 0.1% Two others from top 5 industries in NSW retail - Household goods retailing & Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food service...

According to the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy, 2013 , global coal reserves declined in the decade ending 2012: Figure 1. Proved coal reserves . Proved reserves of coal are generally taken to be those quantities that geological and engineering information indicates with reasonable certainly can be recovered in the future from known deposits under existing economic and operating conditions. If we look at supply and demand factors in the decline, we can see that: a) Coal price has grown significantly in the decade ending 2012 1 :   Figure 2.  Prices in US Dollars per tonne . b) Coal consumption has also grown significantly worldwide 2 : Figure 3. Coal consumption by region . c) The price of substitutes (i.e. Natural Gas) has also grown. Not so in North America though, but if we look at the world trend it is growing 3 : Figure 4. Natural gas prices . Therefore if the rule of supply and demand worked we would see increase i...