Laser test to tell us when we will die -

Laser test to tell us when we will die - 



SCIENTISTS have patented a “death test” that can tell people how long they have left to live. The simple, non-invasive test is the first of its kind in the world.

A painless laser pulse is applied to the surface of the skin through a wristwatch-style device. This measures how a person’s body will decline with age by analysing endothelial cells. These cells line the smallest blood vessels, capillaries, in our bodies and respond to complex activity elsewhere in the body.

By measuring the oscillations within the cells, the scientists say they can calculate the length of time before death and also test for diseases including cancer and dementia.

The result is graded from 0 for death to 100 for optimum functioning. The predictions become more accurate as more data is added.

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A Quadrillion Yen And Counting – The Japanese Debt Bomb Could Set Off Global Panic At Any Moment -

A Quadrillion Yen And Counting – The Japanese Debt Bomb Could Set Off Global Panic At Any Moment - 



How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen worth?  Well, a quadrillion yen is worth approximately 10.5 trillion dollars.  It is an amount of money that is larger than the "the economies of Germany, France and the U.K. combined".  It is such an astounding amount of debt that it is hard to even get your mind around it.  The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan will reach 247 percent this year, and the Japanese currently spend about 50 percent of all central government tax revenue on debt service.  Realistically, there are only two ways out of this overwhelming debt trap for the Japanese.  Either they default or they try to inflate the debt away.  At this point, the Japanese have chosen to try to inflate the debt away.  They have initiated the greatest quantitative easing experiment that a major industrialized nation has attempted since the days of the Weimar Republic.  Over the next two years, the Bank of Japan plans to zap 60 trillion yen into existence out of thin air and use it to buy government bonds.  By the time this program is over, the monetary base in Japan will have approximately doubled.  But authorities in Japan are desperate.  They know that the Japanese debt bomb could set off global panic at any time, and they are trying to find a way out that will not cause too much pain.

Unfortunately, the only way that this bizarre quantitative easing program will work is if investors in Japanese bonds act very, very irrationally.  You see, the only way that Japan has been able to pile up this much debt in the first place is because they have been able to borrow gigantic piles of money at super low interest rates.

Right now, the yield on 10 year Japanese bonds is sitting at an absurdly low 0.76%.  But even with such ridiculously low interest rates, the central government of Japan is still spending about half of all tax revenue on debt service.

If interest rates go up, the game is over.

But now that the Japanese government has announced that it plans to double the monetary base, it would be extremely irrational for investors not to demand higher rates on Japanese government debt.  After all, why would you want to loan money to the Japanese government for less than one percent a year when the purchasing power of your money could potentially be halved over the next two years?

Amazingly, this is exactly what the Japanese government is counting on.  They are counting on being able to wildly print up money and monetize debt, but also keep yields on Japanese bonds at insanely low levels at the same time.

For the moment, it is actually working.  Investors in Japanese bonds are behaving very, very irrationally.

But if that changes at some point, we could potentially be looking at the greatest Asian economic crisis of all time.

And there are some very sharp minds out there that believe that is exactly what is going to happen.

For example, the founder of Hayman Capital Management, Kyle Bass, has been sounding the alarm about Japan for a long time.  He correctly predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown, and in the process he made hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.  Now he believes that the next major crash is going to be in Japan.

According to Bass, the bond bubble in Japan is so large that once it begins to implode fear is going to start spreading like wildfire...

Remember, Japanese banks in general have 900% of their tangible assets invested in JGBs that are the most negatively convex instrument you can put into a portfolio. Assume for instance that a bank holds a 10 year bond yielding 80 basis points. A 100 basis point move will cost the JGB investor about 10 years of expected interest payments.

Think about the psychology of all the players and financial implications if rates do move 100 basis points. Think about the solvency of a nation which currently spends 50% of its central government tax revenues on debt service, half of which earns the lowest yields of any country in the world.

You can’t look at this as a simple question. You need to think about this as a multivariate equation. You have to think about the incentives and the fears of all the participants. And you need to think about the fiscal sustainability of the government.

If rates even rise by a full percentage point, it could start a stampede toward the exits that nobody in the entire world would be able to control...

I ran a survey of 1,009 Japanese investors where we asked: “If rates were to move up 100 basis points, would that engender more confidence and make you want to buy more JGBs?” or, “Would you take your money elsewhere, even if it were hamstringing your government’s ability to operate?” 8 – 9% of respondents that said that they would buy more bonds and almost 80% said they would run, not walk the other way.

For much more on this, you can watch a video of Kyle Bass discussing why Japan is doomed right here.

And of course Japan is not the only "debt bomb" that could potentially go off over in Asia.  As I mentioned in another article, the major problem over in China is the level of private debt...

In China, the big problem is the absolutely stunning growth of private domestic debt.  According to a recent World Bank report, the total amount of credit in China has risen from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

That increase is roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. commercial banking system.

There is simply way, way too much debt in our world today.  Never before has there been so much red ink all over the planet at the same time.

Many in the mainstream media insist that this party can go on indefinitely.

But that is what they said about the housing bubble too.

Sadly, the truth is that every financial bubble eventually bursts, and this global debt bubble will be no exception.

Read more - 

http://www.blacklistednews.com/A_Quadrillion_Yen_And_Counting_%E2%80%93_The_Japanese_Debt_Bomb_Could_Set_Off_Global_Panic_At_Any_Moment/27984/0/38/38/Y/M.html

IBM developing computer that thinks like a human -

IBM developing computer that thinks like a human - 



Check this out: earlier this week, Gigaom.com reported that researchers had built a computer simulator, a programming language, and a series of applications and algorithms designed for computing on the level of the human brain.

Believe it or not, that sentence is not the plot set-up for a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie (at least not yet). Instead, it’s the latest development in computing to come out of IBM’s research lab, and it could mean big things for technology.

IBM and several unnamed partner groups have been working on the intuitive computer system for awhile now, all as part of a project for the Federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The project is known as SyNAPSE, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, and it has what a principal investigator at IBM Research called “a very modest goal” of creating a brain-like computer.

Read more - 

http://natmonitor.com/2013/08/10/report-ibm-developing-computer-system-that-thinks-like-a-human/

Video Of The Day: "Operation Everyone Talk Like A Terrorist" -

Video Of The Day: "Operation Everyone Talk Like A Terrorist" - 



The folks at Funny or Die have come up with an ingenious solution to render the NSA’s spy program useless. Operation: Everyone Talk Like a Terrorist All the Time. It makes a lot of sense, especially since the government already clearly considers everyone with the ability to think critically a potential “domestic terrorist.” Short video and really funny. Enjoy!

Abortion Clinic Sends Coupons to Low-Income Women, Save $50 on Sundays -

Abortion Clinic Sends Coupons to Low-Income Women, Save $50 on Sundays - 



An abortion center that’s open seven days a week in Florida is giving away coupons to poor women in a crisis pregnancy so they can save money on their abortions!

Limo Driver Attempting To Avoid Being Tracked Installs GPS Jammer... - hit with a big fine — $32,000 -

Limo Driver Attempting To Avoid Being Tracked Installs GPS Jammer... - hit with a big fine — $32,000 - 



A New Jersey man wanted to hide his movements from his boss. He ended up interfering with operations at a busy airport instead.

Now he’s facing a massive fine, CBS 2’s Tony Aiello reported Friday.

Limo drivers say it’s no big deal — their employer put GPS trackers in their vehicles.

“[I have] nothing to hide from my dispatcher,” driver Catherine Fitzgibbons said.

“I’m driving their vehicle. They should know where I’m at 24/7, absolutely,” Will Smith added.

But a man who works for an engineering company obviously felt differently. Gary Bojczak admitted buying an illegal GPS jammer to thwart the tracking device in his company vehicle, Aiello reported.

The problem was his work took him near Newark Liberty Airport, and his GPS jammer, which available online for less than $100, interfered with a new GPS-based guidance system called Smartpath being tested at the airport.

Federal agents tracked the jamming signal to Bojczak’s truck and this week hit him with a big fine — $32,000.

“It’s a very significant issue,” attorney and aviation expert Brian Alexander told Aiello.

Alexander said the Federal Aviation Administration is worried and is pushing to expand the use of GPS in aircraft. He said inexpensive jammers could cause big problems.

“To the extent these devices are out there and illegal, they have to send a message and pursue those jammers to make sure that they’re not anywhere near the airports, not being used at the airports,” Alexander said.

The jamming incident cost Bojczak his job at Tilcon. The company said “safety is paramount — the company places a high value on the trust established with customers and neighbors. Jeopardizing that trust is unacceptable.”

No one was endangered during the GPS jamming incident, which happened during a test of the airport’s new system, Aiello reported.

Read more -

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/08/09/n-j-man-in-a-jam-after-illegal-gps-device-interferes-with-newark-liberty-operations/

Swedish men warned of testicle-chomping fish... -

Swedish men warned of testicle-chomping fish... - 



Swedish men have been warned to keep their swimwear on while bathing in the Öresund Sound off the southern coast of Sweden after a relative of the piranha was discovered in the area.

Ever since a fisherman reeled in a 21 centimetre pacu in the Øresund Sound off southern Sweden, experts have been on alert. The fish species, a relative of the notorious piranha, caused museum staff in nearby Denmark to put out a warning.

"Keep your swimwear on if you're bathing in the Sound these days - maybe there are more out there!" the Natural History Museum of Denmark wrote.

The fish species is more usually found in warmer climes, and has a reputation as something of a ball breaker among male swimmers, an expert confirmed for The Local.

"The pacu is not normally dangerous to people but it has quite a serious bite, there have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea where some men have had their testicles bitten off," said Henrik Carl, fish expert at the Danish museum.

While Carl said the museum's warning about the pacu, sometimes known as the "ball cutter", was meant "as a bit of fun", human victims of the pacu are rarely laughing.

"They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth," he explained.

"And its mouth is not so big, so of course it normally eats nuts, fruit, and small fish, but human testicles are just a natural target. It's not normal to get your testicles bitten off, of course, but it can happen, especially now in Sweden."

Pacus have reportedly killed fishermen who have bled to death after losing their testicles.

While Carl admitted that he was unsure if there were any more pacu in the Swedish waters, the team at the museum is looking into the fish's DNA to confirm whether it is indeed a pacu. The fish, he explained, looks exactly the same as a piranha and is even a member of the same sub-family.

"They are almost identical to the piranha, you couldn't even tell from the outside. It's just that they have different teeth. Flatter and stronger, perfect for crushing," he added.

While the Öresund pacu may not have caused any harm before it was caught, Carl said there is nothing to fear for other men planning to take a dip in the area.

"No, there's nothing to worry about... you're more likely to drown that get your nuts bitten off," he told The Local with a laugh.

"However, it could become a problem some time in the future if it's not the only one. This one was the first, but who knows, it's probably not the last."

The pacu, native to South America, can grow up to 90 centimetres and weigh up to 25 kilogrammes.

Read more - 

http://www.thelocal.se/49558/20130809/