Renting better then bying

Renting Makes More Financial Sense Than Homeownership
By Jack Hough

I have something un-American to confess: I rent an apartment, despite having enough money to buy a house. I plan to keep renting for as long as I can. I'm not just holding out for better prices. Renting will make me richer.

I normally write about stocks for SmartMoney.com, but the boss asked me to explain to readers my reason for renting. Here goes: Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I'd rather rent the latter and own the former.

Stocks vs. Houses: Returns

Shares of businesses return 7% a year over long time periods. I'm subtracting for inflation, gradual price increases for everything from a can of beer to an ear exam. (After-inflation or "real" returns are the only ones that matter. The point of increasing wealth is to increase buying power, not numbers on an account statement.) Shares have been remarkably consistent over the past two centuries in their 7% real returns. In Jeremy Siegel's book, "Stocks for the Long Term," he finds that real returns averaged 7.0% over nearly seven decades ending 1870, then 6.6% through 1925 and then 6.9% through 2004.

Full article at:http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/renting-makes-more-financial-sense-than-homeownership.html;_ylc=X3oDMTFta3Jqcjk3BF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDOTc2MjA0NjUEc2VjA2ZwLXRvZGF5BHNsawNyZW50aW5nLWJldHRlcg--

Can Bill Gates Help Africa Feed Itself?

By Vivienne Walt / Paris

The global economy might be reeling from the shakeout on Wall Street, but two of the world's richest businessmen are vowing to spend tens of millions of dollars more — not on bolstering their own companies, but in helping the world's poorest.

With Congress locked in talks over a mammoth bailout package, Bill Gates and Howard Buffett (Warren's oldest son) announced at the United Nations on Wednesday that their private foundations will plow more than $75 million into helping small farmers in Africa and Latin America to sell their crops as food aid — a move which could potentially overhaul the decades-old — and often criticized — global food aid system.

Full story at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1844632,00.html

Ditos que marcam

"As pessoas que não fazem barulho são perigosas." - Jean de La Fontaine, escritor francês (1621-1695)

"Cão que não ladra, morde." - Anónimo

"É perigoso estar certo quando o governo está errado." - Voltaite, filósofo e dramaturgo francês (1694-1778)

"Surpreendeu-me não ter encontrado um único sinal do género 'seu malandro, ainda bem que te foste embora." - Correia de Campos, in 24 Horas

"Quem sabe verdadeiramente do que fala, não encontra razões para levantar a voz." - Sacha Guitry

"Só fechando as portas atrás de nós se abrem janelas para o provir." - Francoise Sagan

"Quem troca felicidade por dinheiro não poderá trocar dinheiro por felicidade." - José Narosky

Energias renováveis

Portugal vai ser pioneiro a nível mundial no aproveitamento da energia das ondas

North America's smallest dinosaur

Researcher finds tiny dino in world of giants

By Jeffrey Jones

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A Canadian researcher has discovered what is believed to be North America's smallest dinosaur, a 70-million-year-old chicken-sized beast that was also unusual for its diet of insects.

Called the Albertonykus borealis, the odd-looking creature had bird-like features including slender legs, jaws like pincers and stubby arms with big claws.

Its bones were excavated near Red Deer, in fossil-rich Alberta, in 2002 among about 20 Albertosaurus remains, and went unnoticed.

Full article at:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080923/sc_nm/us_dinosaur_science

Robotic helicopteres

Robotic helicopteres taught themselves

Robotic helicopters are pictured prior to an airshow on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California, September 15, 2008.

The airshow, which involves helicopters that have taught themselves to fly by watching other helicopters, is a demonstration of an "apprenticeship learning algorithm" developed by computer science professor Andrew Ng and other students at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, where robots learn by observing an expert, rather than by having software engineers attempt to write instructions from scratch.

REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES)

Caviar crisis

Fish farmer Igal Ben-Tzvi holding a sturgeon at a farm in Kibbutz Dan. Thousands of kilometres (miles) from the Caspian Sea, Israel is cashing in on a global caviar crisis, gearing up to export tonnes of the delicate and costly roe from farm-raised sturgeon(AFP)

Israel cashing in on caviar crisis, but is it kosher?
by Charly Wegman

KIBBUTZ DAN, Israel (AFP) - Thousands of kilometres (miles) from the Caspian Sea, Israel is cashing in on a global caviar crisis, gearing up to export tonnes of the delicate and costly roe from farm-raised sturgeon.

It may not be quite kosher -- depending on who you ask -- but there is definitely a huge international demand for the gourmet treat.

"This is top quality," says Yigal Ben Tzvi, managing director of Caviar Galilee, holding up a blue tin of "Made in Israel" sturgeon eggs, which he says caviar giant Petrossian buys wholesale at 2,800 dollars (2,000 euros) a kilo.


Full article at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080922/lf_afp/lifestyleisraelbusinesscaviar_080922042251

De Dion Buton

1906 Model
The company started soon to produce engines and to provide to other car manufacturers, such as Latil, Peugeot or Renault. The engines of Dion were used by more than 150 other companies.

In 1900, Of Dion-Button was the largest manufacturer of cars in the world. The company produced 400 cars and 3.200 engines this year there. The company was the first to manufacture an engine V8 in series, in 1910. These figures of production will be exceeded by those of Panhard & Levassor before the First World War, then by other manufacturers like Peugeot or Renault, but especially Citroen and its production “in series”.

Source:http://www.speedylook.com/Of_Dion-Button.html

Ditos

"De uma pequena tolice e uma enorme curiosidade resultam muitos casamentos." - George Bernard Shaw (escritor irlandês 1856-1950)

"O maior prazer de um homem inteligente é passar por idiota diante do idiota que quer passar por inteligente." - Confúcio (filósofo chinês 551 a.C. - 479 a.C.)

"Quando morrer, metam o meu corpo num saco de plástico e atirem-no para a sarjeta." - Francis Bacon, pintor irlandês (Dublin 1909-Madrid 1992)

Recriação do Big Bang

CERN recria os primeiros momentos do nosso Universo

O maior acelerador de partículas do Mundo já foi colocado hoje em funcionamento com sucesso.


Decorreu bem a primeira tentativa para colocar em funcionamento o maior acelerador de partículas do Mundo. Os cientistas do CERN (Centro Europeu de Investigação Nuclear), construído entre a França e a Suíça, conseguiram pôr a circular um feixe de milhões de protões naquele que é o primeiro passo para a recriação dos primeiros momentos do Universo.

Ver artigo em:
http://ww1.rtp.pt/noticias/images/articles/362536/aceleradorparticulas.jpg

Artificial life

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life
By Alexis Madrigal

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.

It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.

Full article at:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp

Samak Sundaravej forced to resign

Samak Sundaravej

Thai leader forced to resign over TV cooking show
By AMBIKA AHUJA, Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand's prime minister was forced out of office Tuesday along with his Cabinet after a court ruled that he had broken a conflict-of-interest law by hosting TV cooking shows.

Samak Sundaravej's party later unanimously agreed to re-nominate him as a candidate for prime minister, indicating that Thailand is still not free from its deep political crisis that has virtually paralyzed the government, spooked the financial markets and scared away tourists.

Full article at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080909/ap_on_re_as/thailand_political_unrest

Ditos

"Quero que os grandes artistas voltem a olhar para os temas religiosos." - Gianfranco Ravasi, Presidente do Conselho Pontífico para a Cultura, do Vaticano

"A política legislativa na área criminal perdeu seriedade, rigor científico, harmonização sistémica e não mostra preocupação pelo impacto negativo das çeis aprovadas. Legisla-se em função de casos concretos." - Rui Rangel, in Correio da Manhã

"Uma pessoa pode abdicar do sexo, mas o sexo não abdica da pessoa." - Gabriel Garcia Márquez (escritor colombiano 1928-)

Poor building of schools in China

BEIJING — A Chinese government committee said Thursday that a rush to build schools during the country’s recent economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the deaths of thousands of students during a devastating earthquake in May.

Full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/asia/05china.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Copiar ou não

Nos últimos dias temos recebido diversos comentários, protestando contra o facto de o conteúdo deste blog não poder ser copiado. Pensando sobre o assunto, resolvemos eliminar essa restrição, pois damos mais importância e valor às visitas dos nossos amigos bloguistas, que não desejamos perder, do que manter inacessível os conteúdos que aqui vamos deixando.

O que pedimos é que nos deixem qualquer comentário sobre a validade e a utilidade que for sendo dado ao material apresentado, e até sugestõrd sobre a forma de podermos tornar o blog mais válido e apelativo.

Ditos

"Quando perdemos o direito de ser diferentes, perdemos o privilégio de ser livres." - Charles Evans Hughes, juíz norte-americano (1862-1948)

"Manuela [Ferreira Leite] tem um défice emocional: não consegue surpreender ninguém. A bondade não rende votos. E ao não fazer ouvir a sua voz de líder, ela está a estender a passadeira vermelha para a sua rápida sucessão." - Fernando Sobral, in Jornal de Negócios

Ditos

"Uma piada é uma coisa muito séria." - Winston Churchill, primeiro-ministro britânico (1874-1965)

"Os problemas da segurança estão, antes de mais, ligados ao tipo de sociedade que se construiu nos últimos anos. À insegurança das ruas somam-se muitas outras: a precaridade do trabalho, o desemprego, (...) as péssimas soluções urbanísticas, os graves problemas da escola pública." - António Cluny, in Diário de Notícias

"O casamento é o triunfo da imaginação sobre a inteligência." - Oscar Wilde, escritor irlandês (1854-1900)

"Os partidos políticos são pagos com o dinheiro público, (...). Recordem-se de Churchill quando ele disse que não é possível enganar toda a gente durante todo o tempo." - Mário Crespo, in Jornal de Notícias