Global Public Articles

A wise Chinese antiques shop dealer could tell you much about Chinese Mings and things, and so much about each regime or emperor through his, or figures of Confucious. But if you were to talk about modern politics you might encounter some understandable hesitation to talk so freely. So we will. Hu Jintao was a top honor student who excelled at every task he was given. And for the world that is a very good thing since the need for a clear bright mind in control is so vital these days as we all clearly see.

Hu Jintao is now the supreme leader of China. Hu has three official titles: he is the secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party, president of the People’s Republic of China, and chairman of China’s Military Commission. Hu was a prorege of Deng Xiaoping as the Fourth Generation sice the Communists came to power in 1949. Hu is the first not of the Long March mentality. Hu is considered brilliant in his administrative capacities;he is a graduate of the prestigious Qinghua University in 1965 with his degree in engineering.

Hu worked in several ministries, gaining policy making experience. He became leader of the all important All-China Youth Federation during the 1980’s. When he arrived in Beijing in 1992 he soon came to the attention of Deng, who recognized Hu’s leadership capacity. This drew him into many inner cicrle groups, of which Hu was a central part. In 1993 Hu became president of the Central Party School, which is the training body for senior party officials. In 1998 Hu was named to be vice president of the People’s Republic of China, and therefore the heir to Deng.

Another first in this is that the president Jiang stepped down. It was the first stepping away from power since 1949 without the previous leader having died. Hu’s strengths are considerred to be administrative, which is vital in the world’s largest market, changing quickly. China is still poor but is making enormous strides forward daily. It is very important that China has a pragmatic, logical leader who also lived poor and understands life on a farm as well as once the royalties of status come they can pull any leader away.

Hu seem to have none of that, and while it is yet early in his period of power, prospects seem very good that President Hu is a gifted, very worthy and noble minded man. Harmonious agreements are needed in the world, and this seems to be a man we can do business with. Hu seems to be reaching out to all nations that he comes in contact with. He shows an amazing understanding of matters he is dealing with, world leaders have remarked. Hu has been pivotal in attermpts to get cooperative behavior from North Korea, who have notoriously been pointing, and at least once times shooting missiles into the Sea of Japan.

Hu is known as a populist as well as pragmatist. Hu’s humble origins have his heart connected, it seems, to any large decision that need to be made, he discusses how the people will fare. The enormous decisions, and virtually moving mountains requires wisdom to ensure the new damned valley will enrich the group overall. As with haste and progress at such a scale and pace, mistakes have been made. But mostly they have been some enough to be cofrrected in time to assure success for the group.

Many serious issues are out there, and Hu Jintao will look out for the interests of China first, of course, but it would seem he is far more the model world leader to deal with, on our way to a more perfect world.

Derek Dashwood enjoys noticing positive ways we progress, the combining of science into the humanities to measure life at Chinese Antiques

In a world where entire stock market values can change by 2 % a day this is a very difficult question to answer. It’s best that we spend some time looking at what has caused the recent decrease and then look at some trends that are starting to happen around the world.

The recent decrease in the price of oil has to do with two major factors. The world is in the middle of a recession and depending on what country you live in your leaders are either recognizing it as a reality or they’re too scared to say the r word. The second reason is gas consumption is down, people are quite frankly driving less.

Most of us have either been affected directly by the current situation of the global economy or are at least cutting back in reaction to it. Given the insane over consumption most of us have been a part of this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Overall the world has in the last 4 months reduced its consumption of oil and the oil makers have stock piles of it and because of this supply the prices have dropped. The question is will this trend continue? First off OPEC has decided to cut back production in the hopes that it will boost the value of oil per barrel. This combined with the ever growing demand for oil in developing nations such as China will cause oil to climb higher.

Many analysts who I agree get things wrong from time to time are expecting oil to climb back to around $80 and stay there for most of 2009. With oil supplies that are high and consumption dropping are there any other factors to consider?

Yes there is, have you noticed that every car manufacturer in the world is now making alternative fuel vehicles. There are bio diesel, hybrid, hydrogen, electric and blue tec diesel vehicles and most of these alternative fueled vehicles can be purchased today. Not only can you drive down to a local dealer and purchase one of these cars tomorrow you will have more options very shortly. Some of these alternative vehicles don’t use any gas at all, Hydrogen vehicles will basically run off of water, electric vehicles will fall into this category as well.

Things aren’t going to change overnight, our entire system is based on driving to a local gas station to fill up so there are major changes that need to happen for some of these new vehicles to work. The point is it’s happening and the oil companies are going to lose business. The less we depend on foreign oil the better off we’re going to be in my opinion!

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Some court reporters predict the future of their careers through business indicators. They might study how tort reform will change the profession or how new online technologies fuel growth or decline in employment. Few watch the nation’s nuclear waste processing, yet a major change might be coming out of that arena.

The Yucca Mountain Hearings

The project to build the country’s first long-term nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been subject to massive public interest and complex licensing requirements. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has held licensing hearings in the past but the Yucca Mountain hearings will be unprecedented in scope. Experts predict 300 times the amount of typical material including four years of video and transcripts. There could be 100 simultaneous participants in facilities 2500 miles apart, not to mention countless interested public observers.

The NRC has designed a digital information system that may change court reporting in courtrooms across the world. They hope it will allow everything from web access to the 40 million pages of information in the public database to live annotation of electronic transcripts by witnesses to publically streamed and captioned video of the proceedings.

Features of the NRC System

The licensing hearings will take place simultaneously in Rockville, MD and Las Vegas, NV. The system has been designed so that participants in either area will have immediate and simultaneous access to all documents and live testimony. Telephone and video conferencing will allow witnesses from remote locations to participate without needing to travel to one of the courtrooms.

Security is critical and has been implemented into the design from day one. The staff had to carefully balance both easy public access and secure storage of information. While the network is not secure enough to allow the dissemination of classified information, it does allow sensitive information to be stored safely. Access to most of the system is allowed only to participants who have undergone several hours of training.

How Does This Affect Court Reporting?

In an article in the October 2008 issue of the Journal for the Reporting and Captioning Professions, Administrative Judge Paul Bollwerk said court reporting was “an absolutely essential part of the design process” for this new digital courtroom. They consulted with a realtime court reporting agency to ensure that court reporters’ jobs could be made as easy as possible.

The court reporting station can be located in different areas of the courtroom depending on the proceeding. Live video feed to the station includes close-ups of the person speaking so the reporter can note it accurately in the transcripts. DVD copies of the proceedings will be available to the reporters quickly so that transcripts can be corrected.

Court reporting professionals will watch this system carefully over the next several years as the Yucca Mountain and other hearings unfold. The features that work will likely be incorporated into other court systems while the ones that don’t will, we hope, be replaced with better ones.

Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on Real
Time Court Reporting, visit http://www.huseby.com/.

While Indian Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, died in BC 486 his teachings did not reach into China until AD 286. As usual this journey was a long and difficult route. Their route was to go to the west and up over the lower shoulder of the vast Himalayan Mountains. This would be them down on the ridge of the high and barren Tibetan Platea. Moving eastward they would have made their way down into the Gobi Desert. As this was now the Silk Road there were occasional places for respite,food and water.

Therefore the first Chinese provinces to meet Buddhist priests was China’s western most province Xiinjiang. From there Buddhism spead from the ancient capital of Changan and inward to Louyand in Henan province. By the time of the Sui dynasty (581-618 BC)Buddhism became the state religion of China. Communism since it came to power has tried to blend what they can from Buddhism or Confucian beliefs, with limited success. Confucian ways work better with Communist ideals. Like the worker bee that that state wants, they are getting educated free thinkers.

And for these free Buddhist thinking workers now sitting in parks in a lotus meditating position makes some thing inside authority very nervous. The exciting thing is this drama is happening real time, and we think the issue of individual freerom of expression or fear will be changing the world. It is happening while we speak, and mostly it is all so for the good. Buddhists anywhere, same as the other religions should have the right for assembly. Today many different sects are active in China.

Although the Communist Party denies religion, modern China is allowing assembly of people for the purposes of religious thought and expression. Zen Buddhism is Japanese and emphasizes reaching enlightenment through contemplation. This is Chang Buddhism in China. In China the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province is the most famous monastary in China. While tens of thousands of tourists come yearly to experience the wonder of this place, active Zen or Chang warriors are also training on the site out of the view of the tourists.

The Zen, or Chang Buddhism teaches that careful paying attention to live’s basic truths reveal peace. Buddha discovered that our suffering is because of our want of things we do not have, thus we are miserable. Buddha became enlightened when he discovered the truth of human existence is based on suffering because of our desires. To free ourselves of suffering and the cycles of life and birth that humans must ensure, one should follow the eightfold path.

The Eightfold Path: Right view, right resolve, right speech, right livelihood,right effort,right mindfulness, right concentration, and right action. How you make this something of importsance to your will be your path. Chinese antigues shop reasoning about ageless mysteries of the soul.

Derek Dashwood enjoys noticing positive ways we progress, the combining of science into the humanities to measure life at Chinese Antiques

Mortgage rates for most of the major mortgage products fell again this week. Although the drop was not as substantial as last week it is still nice to see rates come down this week. The 30 year mortgage rate fell from 6.20 to 6.14. The small movement this week marked a departure from the wild swings we have been experiencing recently. In fact the drop of .06 points in the 30 year mortgage rate was the first time 30 year rates didn’t move over .20 percent since October 9th. That said I would not preclude the possibility of us experiencing some more wild fluctuations over the next month. Nothing has happened that would seem to stabilize the markets. Looking at the other mortgage products 15 year rates dropped .07 points (from 5.88 to 5.81) and 5 year arms dropped .21 points (from 6.19 to 5.98). The 1 year arm was the only rate to increase moving up .08 points (from 5.25 to 5.33). Below are rates for the major mortgage products for the last few weeks.

November 13, 2008
30-yr 6.14 15-yr 5.81 5-yr ARM 5.98 1-yr ARM 5.33

November 6, 2008
30-yr 6.20 15-yr 5.88 5-yr ARM 6.19 1-yr ARM 5.25

October 30, 2008
30-yr 6.46 15-yr 6.19 5-yr ARM 6.36 1-yr ARM 5.38

October 23, 2008
30-yr 6.04 15-yr 5.72 5-yr ARM 6.06 1-yr ARM 5.23

October 16, 2008
30-yr 6.46 15-yr 6.14 5-yr ARM 6.14 1-yr ARM 5.16

Looking at changes in mortgage rates is interesting but it’s always nice to see what they translate into as far as a mortgage payment. Using our free mortgage calculator we translated the rates for the last two weeks into what they would mean for a 200k mortgage.

November 13th
30-yr $1217.16
15-yr $1667.25
5-yr ARM $1196.53
1-yr ARM $1114.33

November 6th
30-yr $1224.92
15-yr $1674.77
5-yr ARM $1223.64
1-yr ARM $1104.40

October 30th
30-yr 1258.87
15-yr 1708.31
5-yr ARM 1245.77
1-yr ARM 1120.56

So in the last two weeks the monthly payment on a 200k loan would have dropped $41.10 from $1258.87 to $1217.16. So what would be my advice for people looking for mortgage rates right now? First off I would avoid the 5 year arm. The small difference between the 5 year arm and the 30 year mortgage makes the 5 year arm pretty unappealing. In addition, the unstable nature of the market makes locking in to a longer loan term more appealing. If one gets a 30 year loand and rates move down they can always refinance to take advantage of the lower rate.

We talked a lot about rates but the other major factor in today’s market is the difficulty of getting approved for financing. Banks have become more reluctant to give out loans and that means credit scores are very important. If you are thinking of getting a mortgage soon I would start looking at your credit sooner rather than later. Also no doc loans are pretty much dead. So if you are self employed and received a no doc loan in the past I would not expect to get one in the current environment. So that basically means its a good idea to start preparing for a loan earlier in the process (talking to a loan officer, getting paperwork ready). Talking to a loan officer at later in the process without prepared documentation is probably a recipe for disaster.

So what is going to happne with rates over the next few months. Mortgage rates have been swinging wildly up and down recently. I expect to see some more large swings moving forward. That said I expect rates to stay roughly between 5.8 and 6.6. I don’t expect them to fall below 5.8 as long as banks have an uneasy feeling about the market. I don’t expect them to go above 6.6 any time soon because the government has made it clear they are going to do whatever they can to keep rates low.

Ki helps buyers looking for real estate in Austin. His website provides a search of the Austin MLS along with a free mortgage calculator and a tool that graphs mortgage rates.