XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Friday, 16 December 2011

Canada eliminated mandatory retirement after the government repealed labor code that forced workers to retire at 65 -

Canada eliminated mandatory retirement Friday after the government repealed sections of the labor code that had enabled employers to force workers to retire once they reached the age of 65.
"We're not born with date stamps saying our fitness for work expires at 65," David Langtry, acting head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, said in a statement, praising the changes contained in a budgetary implementation bill.

"Age discrimination is discrimination, pure and simple."

As Canada's baby boomer generation ages, more and more people want to continue to work past retirement age, for personal or financial reasons, the commission noted.

The change affects only jobs under federal jurisdiction, but all others except the province of New Brunswick have already moved to nix their respective mandatory retirement laws.

Read more -
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.88b8dcdc3eb80bcdf0a224b9f7916368.241&show_article=1

'I Just Made Love' app lets you tell the world where and when - and thousands already have -

Sharing apps such as Foursquare already let us share where we eat, drink and shop.
Now 'I Just Made Love' lets you log and GPS-tag your private life in just the same way - and, bizarrely, some people seem to want to.
The Android app has been downloaded 10,000 times, and rated five stars by dozens of users.
'Did you just make love? Or just want to check where people near you made love?' says the app.
'I just made love lets you do all that and more!'
The Android - and now iPhone - app lets you record where, when and even in what position you 'made love' - and then upload it to an online database - with your comments.
The Android app has already been downloaded 10,000 times.
'I Just Made Love lets one brag without fear of correction. What is clear, and at risk of quoting Tina Turner, is that love has nothing to do with it'

The iPhone app is available to download via I Just Made Love's site - and seems to be available via the U.S. iTunes store, although not the UK one.
The app is free, earning its money via advertising.
The I Just Made Love site claims to have recorded 193,000 'acts of love', along with where the event occurred and a limited amount of context - very limited, in fact, offering only the options of Inside, Outdoors, In a Car and On a Boat.
Most of the posts via the site so far seem to be in Polish - with only isolated instances of lovemaking in other countries.
One brave soul (male, on a sofa) even logged an act of love from Iran - although he declined to comment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2075169/I-Just-Made-Love-app-lets-tell-world--thousands-have.html

50 Economic Numbers About The US That Are "Almost Too Crazy To Believe" -

The Economic Collapse Blog does a terrific job of periodically putting together a compilation of the scariest data points about the US economy. Today is one such day, and the list of 50 economic numbers presented is indeed, as the author puts it, "almost too crazy to believe"... Almost. As noted: "At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends. If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that "business as usual" will result in a national economic apocalypse." Or, far more likely, 99% of the population can continue watching Dancing with the Stars, as what little wealth remains is terminally transferred to those who are paying attention right below everyone's eyes.

From the Ecopnomic Collapse Blog:

The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe....

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.

#3 If the number of Americans that "wanted jobs" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8%once you account for inflation.

#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

#13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

#14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

#15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

#18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

#19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

#20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

#22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

#23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

#24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.

#33 Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

#34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

#35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

#36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.

#38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

#40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

#43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

#45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

#46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

#50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

As for the culprit, there is no surprise here - all central planning, all the time.

Of course the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence. If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape. The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based. That would be a very significant step toward restoring prosperity to America.

During 2011 we made a lot of progress in educating the American people about our economic problems, but we still have a long way to go.

Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country.

Indeed it will - in it America will pick yet another president that it so rightfully deserves.

Wednesday, 14 December 2011

With $666,000 in Federal Research Money, Scientists Determined Prayer Could Not Heal AIDS - Really -

Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn’t do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone’s intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did.

NCCAM also has invested in studies of various forms of energy healing, including one based on the ideas of a self-described “healer, clairvoyant and medicine woman” who says her children inspired her to learn to read auras. The cost for that was $104,000.

Read more -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-nccam-overview-20111211,0,3391775.story

NASA Builds Six-Foot Crossbow to Harpoon Comets - spear the heart of the comet, collect a sample and reel it back -

NASA Builds Six-Foot Crossbow to Harpoon Comets - spear the heart of the comet, collect a sample and reel it back -

What’s the best way to take a sample from a violently speeding comet? One that’s doing cartwheels through the cosmos, spewing out chunks of rock and speeding through the solar system at 150,000 miles an hour?

Landing on its surface sounds like risky business, so engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are working on a harpoon gun that can spear the heart of the comet, collect a sample of subsurface dirt in its tip and reel it back into the hovering craft.
To that end, the Goddard lab now houses a monstrous six-foot-long crossbow, with a bow made from a pair of truck carriage springs, and a string made from a half-inch-thick steel cable. This industrial-strength ballista can generate a level of force up to 1,000 pounds.

The engineers only point the bow towards the floor, for safety reasons. “It could potentially launch test harpoon tips about a mile if it was angled upwards,” said NASA’s Bill Steigerwald in a press release.

The engineers are also building a special arrow, with a collection chamber secreted away inside a hollow tip. “It has to remain reliably open as the tip penetrates the comet’s surface, but then it has to close tightly and detach from the tip so the sample can be pulled back into the spacecraft,” explains Donald Wegel, lead engineer on the project.

During tests, the harpoon can penetrate a 250 liter drum of dirt. These are materials you’d likely find on a comet. Things like sand, salt, pebbles or a mixture of the lot. “We’re not sure what we’ll encounter on the comet — the surface could be soft and fluffy, mostly made up of dust, or it could be ice mixed with pebbles, or even solid rock,” says Wegel.

Comets — frozen balls of ice and dust, which are cosmic leftovers from our solar system’s birth — are an interesting prospect for research. Nasa’s Stardust mission previously found amino acids in various carbon-rich meteorites and samples of the comet Wild 2. These molecules are needed to build proteins, and are a key ingredient to making life.

That research gave credence to the theory that some of the building blocks of life on Earth were seeded from space, on comets. “One of the most inspiring reasons to go through the trouble and expense of collecting a comet sample is to get a look at the ‘primordial ooze’ — biomolecules in comets that may have assisted the origin of life,” Wegel said in the release.

NASA has already got a mission to return a sample from an asteroid. it’s called Osiris-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security — Regolith Explorer), it recently won funding and will blast off in 2016. But it will only collect surface material.

The surface of a comet can be altered by the harsh environment of space. So this proposed harpoon system would plug the depths of a comet’s stomach and pull out its secret ingredients — without ever needing to land on the rock or drill down into its crust.

Read more -
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/nasa-comet-harpoon/

Newt Gingrich's 10 Craziest Comments - Beach Volleyball, Child Labor, and Other Craziest Newt Gingrich Comments -

“When Secretary Sebelius said the other day she would punish insurance companies that told the truth about the cost of Obamacare, she was behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny.”

—Values Voter Summit, 9/17/11

“And if you want to put people in jail—I want to second what Michele said—you ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and let’s look at the politicians who created the environment, the politicians who profited from the environment, and the politicians who put this country in trouble.”

—Republican debate, October 2011

“The poorest children in the poorest neighborhoods should have jobs in the schools that they go to…The kids could mop the floor and clean up the bathroom and get paid for it and it would be OK.”

—Fundraiser dinner in Iowa, 12/1/11

“I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [my grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular, atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

—Address to Cornerstone Church in Texas, March 2011

“The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.”

—Interview with Mother Jones magazine, October 1989

The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

—In his book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, May 2010

“A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.”

—Speaking at the Republican National Convention, August 1996

“I want to say to the elite of this country—the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton… of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.”

—Speaking about the Columbine shootings, May 1999

“This is, by the way, one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger. And therefore, the better they’ve done at making sure there wasn’t an attack, the easier it is to say, ‘Well, there was never going to be an attack anyway.’ It’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.”

—Speaking in Huntington, N.Y., April 2008

“I did no lobbying of any kind, period. For a practical reason, I’m gonna be really direct, okay. I was charging $60,000 a speech and the number of speeches was going up, not down. Normally, celebrities leave and they gradually sell fewer speeches every year. We were selling more.”

—Campaign stop in Bluffton, S.C., 11/30/11

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

—Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, 11/21/11

“All the Occupy movement start with the premise that we owe them everything,” Gingrich said. “They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything. That is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something by saying to them, ‘Go get a job right after you take a bath.’”

—Speaking at Iowa family values forum, 11/19/11

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

—Interview with the National Review, 9/11/10

“How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.”

—Speaking at CPAC, 5/3/07

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. What I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.”

—Interview

Read more -
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/12/beach-volleyball-child-labor-and-other-craziest-newt-gingrich-comments.html

2011’s most stolen cars revealed -

2011’s most stolen cars revealed -

Toyota Venza 2009 is deemed the most-stolen car of 2011.

Bad news for Toyota Venza owners — the 2009 edition of the crossover SUV is the new hot target for Canadian car thieves.

The Toyota model tops the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s top 10 most frequently stolen vehicles in Canada.

The 2009 Venza replaces the 2000 Honda Civic SiR, which was last year’s No. 1 stolen vehicle and drops to third place this year.

In at second this year among car thieves is the 1999 Honda Civic SiR two-door.

Rounding out the top five are the 2006 Ford F350 Pickup Truck 4WD in fourth place and the 2002 Cadillac Escalade EXT four-door AWD in fifth.

The insurance bureau says high-end vehicles are often targeted by criminal organizations that strip them for parts or resell them to unsuspecting consumers.

“Consumers need to be aware when they’re in the market for used vehicles or parts,” said Rick Dubin of the insurance bureau.

“Generally, Quebec stolen vehicles — like the Venza — are ending up in the Port of Montreal, as thieves appear to be seeking a quick distribution of the vehicles,” Dubin said.

While auto theft is a big business, Dubin said the numbers are dropping.

“The good news is that statistics show that in 2010, the number of stolen vehicles in Canada — approximately 93,000 — was down 15 per cent from 2009,” Dubin said.

“The bad news is that recovery rates for stolen vehicles are continuing to decline,” he added.

The Three Unscripted Sentences that may have cost Jon Corzine his Freedom -

The Three Unscripted Sentences that may have cost Jon Corzine his Freedom -

Today, in advance of their sworn testimony, each witness to the Senate Agricultural Committee’s MF Global hearing was requested to disclose what their prepared remarks would be. Sure enough, CME executive chairman Terry Duffy did that, and his prepared testimony can be found here.

In and of itself there was nothing unexpected about said speech, the relevant section of which has been transcribed below. Where things got very ugly for Corzine, is when Duffy literally veered from the script, and added three unexpected sentences, catching everyone in the committee off guard (including those who had given up on the testimony which came just after Corzine’s) and which according to most news wires could have buried Corzine’s defense strategy, exposing him for a liar under oath, and potentially costing him his freedom. The video of the relevant 2 minutes is attached below.
First: here is what the Duffy prepared remarks should have been:
Our auditors returned on Sunday, October 30th because we learned from the CFTC that the draft segregation report for Friday, October 28th, which had been provided to the CFTC that day, showed a $900 million dollar shortfall in segregation caused by an “accounting error.” Our auditors, working with the CFTC, devoted the rest of the day and night Sunday to find the so-called accounting error. No such error was ever found. Instead, at about 2 am Monday morning, MFG informed the CFTC and CME that customer money had been transferred out of segregation to firm accounts. Transfers of customer funds for the benefit of the firm constitute serious violations of our rules and of the Commodity Exchange Act. MFG was taken over by a SIPC Trustee on Monday. However, before the SIPC Trustee stepped in Monday, the segregation report for Thursday, October 27th, which had shown not only full segregation compliance but also $200 million in excess segregated funds, was corrected by MFG to show a deficiency of $200 million in segregated funds. Apparently based on MFG’s segregation reports, additional transfers out of segregation occurred on Friday.
And here is what they ended up being: revised text in bold.
Our auditors returned on Sunday, October 30th because we learned from the CFTC that the draft segregation report for Friday, October 28th, which had been provided to the CFTC that day, showed a $900 million dollar shortfall in segregation caused by an “accounting error.” Our auditors, working with the CFTC, devoted the rest of the day and night Sunday to find the so-called accounting error. No such error was ever found. Instead, at about 2 am Monday morning, MFG informed the CFTC and CME that customer money had been transferred out of segregation to firm accounts. After receiving this information CME remained at MF Global while MF Global attempted to identify funds that could be transferred into segregation to reduce or eliminate the discrepancy. A CME auditor also participated in a phone call with senior MF Global employees wherein one employee indicated that Mr. Corzine knew about the loans that had been made from the customer segregated accounts. CME Group has provided this information, the names of these individuals to the DOJ and CFTC who are investigating these matters. Transfers of customer funds for the benefit of the firm constitute serious violations of our rules and of the Commodity Exchange Act…. etc.
The only question we have is: why?

Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/presenting-three-unscripted-sentences-may-have-cost-jon-corzine-his-freedom

MIT's Trillion frames per second light camera - camera capable of visualising the movement of light -

MIT's Trillion frames per second light camera - camera capable of visualising the movement of light -

A camera capable of visualising the movement of light has been unveiled by a team of scientists in the US.

The equipment captures images at a rate of roughly a trillion frames per second - or about 40 billion times faster than a UK television camera.

Direct recording of light is impossible at that speed, so the camera takes millions of repeated scans to recreate each image.

The team said the technique could be used to understand ultra fast processes.

The images have been turned into films lasting roughly 480 frames.

This footage shows different wavelengths of light rippling over the surface of a tomato.

Read more -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16171635

Time Person of the Year - The Protester -

Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news — vivid, important, often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the '70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the '80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means.
And then came the End of History, summed up by Francis Fukuyama's influential 1989 essay declaring that mankind had arrived at the "end point of ... ideological evolution" in globally triumphant "Western liberalism." The two decades beginning in 1991 witnessed the greatest rise in living standards that the world has ever known. Credit was easy, complacency and apathy were rife, and street protests looked like pointless emotional sideshows — obsolete, quaint, the equivalent of cavalry to mid-20th-century war. The rare large demonstrations in the rich world seemed ineffectual and irrelevant. (See the Battle of Seattle, 1999.)
There were a few exceptions, like the protests that, along with sanctions, helped end apartheid in South Africa in 1994. But for young people, radical critiques and protests against the system were mostly confined to pop-culture fantasy: "Fight the Power" was a song on a platinum-selling album, Rage Against the Machine was a platinum-selling band, and the beloved brave rebels fighting the all-encompassing global oppressors were just a bunch of characters in The Matrix.
(See pictures of protesters around the world.)
"Massive and effective street protest" was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.
Prelude to the Revolutions
It began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132,00.html?artId=2101745?contType=article?chn=specials