BC - But for the blubber, it would have been sushi! :) A case for obesity, huh? :P :D As for the "kuppy" or " pitten", if true, only a mutation could explain it. And boy what a mutation that would be! :P SNDY - Funny. Nightwish - Geez, I am done with watching lion videos for a week :P :D ######################### Here's some serious stuff: Economists miss the boat in ignoring globalization's impact "We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master, and a worse religion." - Amory Lovins If you do much of your work on a computer, whether working at home or in an office, you might feel that you're part of the economic avant-garde. Indeed, you are. In fact, you're in the front ranks of the next sector moving on . . . to another country. If your job could possibly be done at home, does it really matter if the home is in Boston or Belfast or Singapore? You are a part of the Almost Gone economy. What got me thinking about jobs with one foot in the ocean was seeing that a few economists have finally come around to wondering about the impact of globalization on American workers. In fact, one prominent practitioner of the dismal science, Alan Blinder, made it personal this year. He put together a list of "highly offshorable" jobs and there on his list was economists. (Envisioning how they'd move overseas: Financial firms could hire consulting firms staffed by Indian and Chinese economists. And someday, when we moved past the greatest barrier to free trade ever erected, faculty tenure, classes would be online from the London School of Economics.) Yes, the invisible hand has been replaced by the invisible hook, slipping into the collar of those who've been telling us for decades that the freer the trade the better off we all are. Also on Blinder's list were accounting clerks, computer programmers, actuaries, film editors, mathematicians, graphic designers, and on and on. If it can be done on a computer, it's part of the Almost Gone economy. ("Newspaper columnist" is not on the list, by the way. I suspect that's only because there's not enough money in it.) So what have economists done to help? They yammer on about "comparative advantage," that old argument that if each country does what it is naturally most suited to do, that the world will be a better, more prosperous place. Okay, but here's the question: What is the comparative advantage of the United States? There was a time when we were out front because of our technology, our collective knowledge, our access to capital of both the monetary and intellectual variety. That advantage we have given away. The rest of the article can be found at - http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/articles/2007/06/10/economists_miss_the_boat_in_ignoring_globalizations_impact/ I'd definitely recommend reading all of it :)