1 US adds 211,000 jobs in Nov (Jana Kasperkevic in
The Guardian) The US economy added 211,000 jobs in November, slightly better
than expectations, with the unemployment rate remaining steady at 5%, the US
Department of Labor has announced.
The report is the last before the Federal Reserve
meets on 15-16 December to determine whether it should raise interest rates.
The last time the Fed raised interest rates was June 2006. Friday’s job report
would have had to have been a “disaster” for the Fed to delay raising interest
rates, said economists. The addition of 211,000 jobs likely paves the way for a
rate hike later this month.
Economists expected the US economy to add 200,000
jobs in November and the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 5%, a
seven-and-a-half-year low. “This is exactly what the Fed is looking for: solid
job growth – better than 200,000 – plus an upward revision to both September
and October numbers; decent gain in average hourly gain; unemployment rate
still at 5%,” said Gus Faucher, senior macroeconomist at PNC Financial Services
Group.
In October, US employers smashed expectations and
added 271,000 jobs, the largest number of any month so far this year. Friday’s
report included upward revisions to that number: according to the Department of
Labor, an additional 27,000 jobs were created in October and about 8,000 more
jobs were created in September than originally believed.
As the unemployment rate has gone down, employers
have had to offer better pay to attract better job applicants. According to Jim
O’Sullivan, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, recent jobless
claims data shows no signs of labor market weakening. Last week’s claims came
in at 269,000 – 9,000 more than the week before – but still near levels last
seen in 1973.
2 Poor urban planning feeds South India misery (San
Francisco Chronicle) The relentless rains that lashed southern India's Tamil
Nadu state for three days eased Friday, but the misery of tens of thousands of
people was far from over, with large parts of the main city still underwater
along with the region's biggest airport.
As Chennai, the state capital, reeled from the
heaviest rains in over a century, experts said the devastation was in large
part due to the same breakneck and haphazard urban planning that has marked
many of India's major cities.
It's a pattern that's been repeated for at least a
decade. In 2005, India's commercial capital Mumbai came to a standstill after
several days of monsoon rains. Last year, Srinagar in Indian Kashmir, saw
massive devastation as flood waters swallowed a city where unchecked
construction had blocked rainwater channels and eaten into wetlands.
India's main monsoon season runs from June through
September, but for Chennai and the rest of India's southeastern coast, the
heaviest rainfall is from October to December — also called the retreating
monsoon.
This year's deluge — which experts linked to the El
Nino weather pattern, when the waters of the Pacific Ocean get warmer than
usual — caught Chennai, with a population of 9.6 million, completely
unprepared. Chennai's airport was closed for a third day.
"We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact
that our urban sprawls such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Srinagar etc
have not paid adequate attention to the natural water bodies that exist in
them," said Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and
Environment, an advocacy and research organization.
"In Chennai, each of its lakes has a natural
flood discharge channel which drains the spillover. But we have built over many
of these water bodies, blocking the smooth flow of water," she said. "A
lot of people built their houses on lake beds. The government should not have
approved those projects. Now they are all submerged," he said.
3 ‘Dumb people’ post inspirational quotes, shows study
(Khaleej Times) Are you a Deepak Chopra fan and love to bombard your friends'
Facebook wall with inspirational quotes? This may sweep the floor off your feet
but according to interesting research, people who post motivational quotes on
Facebook and Twitter are actually dumb and "have lower levels of
intelligence".
In a study titled "On the reception and
detection of pseudo-profound bulls***t", psychologists from University of
Waterloo in Canada examined whether some people are more receptive to some
silly inspirational statements than others. The findings show that there is a
definite link between low intelligence and being impressed by what looks like
"profound statements".
During four experiments involving 845 volunteers,
the team asked the participants to evaluate a series of statements to indicate
how profound they thought they were or if they agreed with them. They used
phrases such as "attention and intention are the mechanics of
Manifestation" and "imagination is inside exponential space time
events". Most of the quotes were posted on Twitter by New Age guru Deepak
Chopra.
To reach the conclusion, lead researcher Gordon
Pennycook and his colleagues utilised a website called Sebpearce.com to
generate random insightful statements. Some examples were: "This life is
nothing short of an ennobling oasis of self-aware faith" and "Today,
science tells us that the essence of nature is guidance", including
others. The team found that certain people are more receptive to these
nonsensical statements.
The researchers found that individuals who were
unable to discern a "bullshit" statement and rated them as profound
were less intelligent and unlikely to engage in reflective thinking. They were
also more vulnerable to ontological confusions and conspiracy theories and more
likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs.
"One benefit of gaining a better understanding
of how we reject other's b******t is that it may teach us to be more cognizant
of our own b******t," the authors concluded. The results appeared in the
journal Judgment and Decision Making.
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