Rotundus.com

From the Vancouver Sun:

Just less than half of B.C. households could comfortably afford their homes if interest rates were to climb by just two percentage points, a new survey has found.

This study in part seems to be BMO trying to attract mortgage customers. It later goes on to mention that:

According to BMO Economics, interest rates are expected to increase beginning next year. Andrew said he wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a much larger rate increase — of six or seven percentage points — in five years time.

I'm guessing a 6-7% interest rate would cause some short-term pain, but probably not be a bad thing for the economy in the longer run.

Does This Language Make Me Look Fat?

Interesting hypothesis: "a new study ... suggests that it could be the language you speak that affects your attitude toward a range of healthy habits, comprising everything from diet and exercise to how much money you save for your retirement. M. Keith Chen, an associate professor of economics at Yale University, claims that languages whose grammar contains no explicit future tense ... are spoken by people who, statistically, are healthier and wealthier."

Middle class children 'are held back by childcare' as they suffer 'significant declines' in their development

Kids in daycare: "Childcare was found to significantly improve development for disadvantaged children. But the ‘lion’s share of the population experienced significant declines in motor-social development and health measures as well as increased behavioural problems’, the study found."

Alcohol as muse

"[T]he intoxicated participants solved more items on the Remote Associates Test compared with the control participants (they solved 58 per cent of 15 items on average vs. 42 per cent average success achieved by controls), and they tended to solve the items more quickly (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds)."

Female beach volleyball players permitted to drop bikinis: Less revealing clothing allowed to commodate "cultural requirements"

I'm guessing that requiring bikinis raised TV ratings somewhat, but it's still kind of silly to require this for an event of this sort.

TED recently released a talk looking at the problem of storing electricity, focusing on the development of a particular type of liquid metal battery. It's the sort of thing that's needed to help get renewable energy other than hydro to be able to provide more reliable power. (You might have noticed when standing outside that the sun isn't always shining or even over the horizon).

Even when the sun is up, power output of something like solar panels isn't constant - with the possibility of changes of +/- 50% in a 30 to 90 second time frame and +/- 70% in a 5-10 minute time frame. Solar panels it seems are continuing to come down in price, with one recent development promising solar panels at half the cost, using about 1/10 the material of conventional solar panels. Perhaps with changes like this in conjunction with improved energy storage devices we'll gradually start to be able to phase out some of the coal, oil, and gas powerplants.

On the downside, as my research is looking at how to exploit the crazy levels of volatility in the electrical market that are in large part a consequence of this absence of storage, in the future that sort of research might become somewhat less important (although some of the stuff that I'm working on is looking at trying to provide battery-like services by adjusting the operational patterns of some types of equipment which would still persist). I suppose that such a downside is something that I could live with though.

A widening gap (confusingly it's the 2nd of 3 stories on the page)

"If Canada used the U.S. definition, our jobless rate would be at least a percentage point lower than the official number."

Has Africa really turned the corner?

"... between 1975 and 2005 the size, diversity and sophistication of industry in Africa have all declined." One interesting counterpoint from the comments on the page was the case of Botswana which the US state department notes "Botswana has enjoyed one of the fastest growth rates in per capita income in the world since independence, although it slowed considerably due to the global economic downturn. The economic growth rate averaged 9% per year from 1967-2006" - It's still not a particularly rich country but hopefully it'll continue to improve.

How Many Workers Is the Right Number for a Retailer? Stories from Trader Joe’s, Michaels, and Whole Foods

Points you to and elaborates on a study suggests that those lower-end retail chains which have more employees per store, pay them better, and train them more are actually more profitable. Their examples: "Costco, Trader Joe’s, the convenience-store chain QuikTrip, and a Spanish supermarket chain called Mercadona"

Landmark ruling legalizes Ontario brothels

Basically they seemed to have voted to eliminate the laws against basically all prostitution other than street prostitution. "The landmark decision is binding on Ontario courts and sets up a final showdown at the Supreme Court of Canada next fall or in early 2013." Most provisions of the ruling aren't set to result in changes on the street until next year though. Will see what results - I think that places like Amsterdam are starting to reverse some of their laissez faire stances towards things like coffeedrug shops and prostitution.