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On our way across North Carolina Montblanc Replica Watches, we stopped to chat with some Native American Farmers trying to change the food and work situation in their communities. Plagued with high poverty rates and little access to good food Replica rolex watches, these folks were inspiring in their efforts to farm in a sustainable way.
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Replica Rolex Watches My Favorite Thriller of 2011
I’ve been reviewing crime fiction for well over a decade on-air Replica Rolex Watches, in print, and on-line, and always look for something original. I found it in Justin Evans’s amazing 2011 thriller The White Devil, my favorite crime book of the year.
Ask yourself what’s worse: thinking you saw a ghost or having it confirmed that you did see a ghost?
Andrew Taylor faces that creepy dilemma and a lot more in a book that ingeniously mixes literary detective work, a horror story, young love, academic satire, and cultural conflict between Americans and Brits. If that sounds like a lot, well, Evans is terrific enough to keep all the balls in the air at the same time. The White Devil is truly one of the most compelling thrillers I’ve read in the last few years.
The title should is an obvious clue you’re signing up for a dark thrill ride since it’s the name of a play by John Webster, one of those grim Jacobean authors given to writing about ghosts, conspiracies and revenge.
Sinister revenge is at the heart of the book, but Taylor doesn’t want anything dark at all when he comes to Harrow. He’s screwed up big time at his previous prep school and this is his last chance, made possible only because his father gave Harrow a lot of money. He wants clarity and good grades, but he bears an unfortunate resemblance to Lord Byron Replica Breitling watches, who also attended Harrow two hundred years ago. And Byron left some bitterness behind, bitterness that reaches out from another dimension and snares Taylor.
The writing in this novel is quietly beautiful and so balanced, so appropriate to the material that despite the propulsive story, I stopped now and then to read passages aloud to my spouse or just to myself. I wanted to savor and share the excellence of a superb storyteller. When it was over, I felt lucky to have spent a weekend with this gifted writer’s second book, even though I lost some sleep because the book was so fine it was hard to let it go.
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As an education technology journalist, I see a lot of mobile phone apps. A lot of mobile phone apps. I receive a daily flood of email pitches from developers who’ve just had theirs submitted or accepted to the Apple or Android stores. It’s exciting to see so many new apps for education, as mobile and Web development (and the associated app stores) have greatly lowered the barriers to entry for creating and distributing innovative educational content.
But I can’t help but wonder if, in the rush to build native apps — apps designed specifically for iPhones, iPads, Androids Replica Breitling Watches, and/or Blackberries, we are neglecting the mobile Web — applications and websites optimized to be accessed via any mobile browser, smart-phone or not. And as such, the great promise of greater access to more knowledge and technology is only coming to those who can afford smart-phones.
Mobile Technologies and the Digital Divide
No doubt, the adoption of mobile technologies has been rapid and widespread. Currently, about 85 percent of Americans 18 and older and 75 percent of those 12 to 17 own cellphones. But of those, only 27 percent own smart-phones. In other words, cellphones have become ubiquitous, but smart-phones — although their growth is explosive — simply aren’t there yet.
This means that mobile technologies serve to both address and to complicate our notions of the “digital divide,” the gulf between the Internet technology haves and have-nots. On one hand, mobile phones will increasingly serve as both our gateway to the Internet and as our personal computers. As costs come down, more and more people will have mobile computing devices in their hands. But on the other hand, accessibility and equity remain an issue. Income still dictates cellphone ownership and Internet access. And for many people, accessing the Internet via their phone is their only connection, as they don’t have Internet at home. A recent Pew Hispanic Center study found, for example, found that 6 percent of Latinos respondents said that they access the Internet via a cell phone but have no Internet access at home. This rate is the same for blacks, but notably higher than the rate for whites (1 percent).
Educational Apps for the Mobile Web
These statistics point to the importance of websites that are mobile-ready. And arguably they should give us pause when we start to succumb to what O’Reilly Media’s Gov 2.0 correspondent Alex Howard calls shiny app syndrome,” the rush by governments to build an iPhone or Android app when their own websites aren’t even mobile friendly.
“The goals that public officials pursue when they create new .gov websites or applications should be based upon civic good,” writes Howard. “If that civic good is to be rendered to a population increasingly connected to one another through smartphones Replica Rolex Watches, tablets and cellphones, truly open governments will employ methods that provide access to all citizens, not just the privileged few.”
As we think about education — also a civic good — we should consider how we can bring teaching and learning to as many people as possible, and as such focus on building HTML5 web apps that are accessible via any Internet-ready device.
That’s the direction taken by the science education site Scitable, for example, an online learning space that’s part of the educational wing of the global science publisher of Nature. Scitable offers a library of science education resources — all free, peer-reviewed, and updated every other month or so — as well as a community of students, educators, and scientists.
When Scitable launched its mobile versions of its website last year, it opted not to create apps, but to design the site to be accessible via any mobile phone. As the site is built in HTML5, those students accessing the Scitable site on an iPhone or iPad can get a media-rich experience, and yet the site is still accessible by those with the simplest of cell phone browsers. Scitable’s mission — to “democratize science education” — coincides with its mobile strategy, making the educational site accessible to those with feature phones and with limited or no access to broadband. Scitable’s users, it’s worth pointing out, aren’t just in the U.S., but come from over 156 countries.
I don’t mean to argue here “no more iPhone apps for education.” My original contention still stands: we are seeing a great deal of innovation as developers take advantage of smart-phones’ features — mobile Web, GPS, cameras, voice recording — in the construction of educational apps. But building these mobile technologies for education doesn’t have to mean building a native app. If we’re to take full advantage of the connectivity and communication afforded by mobile technologies, we should turn to the mobile web to make educational content accessible to more than just the smart-phone owners.
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My cell phone is an idiot. It’s a straight-up, dingbat dumb-ass. It can’t do anything, except make phone calls, and has no competency to tell me where I am, why I am there, how I got there, or what I should do, think, feel, and see now that I’m there.
It doesn’t inform me of my position vis a vis the nearest Williams Sonoma. It can’t tell me the deepest lake in South America, play Tetris Replica Breitling Watches, recite the last ten Superbowl winners, or even the weather.
It’s occasionally embarrassing to have a stupid phone. Because you can tell that my phone is dumb just by looking at it. It’s five years old, which is like 250 years old in Human Years Replica Rolex watches, and Smart Phones wear their smarts ostentatiously. The thinner they are, the smarter they are. Smart phones are sleekly discreet about hiding the fat bulges of their buttons, whereas my phone actually has buttons that you actually press, you don’t flick your pinky fingertip over them like a plenipotent wizard.
Sometimes I pull my meathead phone out in public and wince at my obsolescence. Other times, I defend it to myself like you would a big bruiser of a child whom you love but who is more adept on the playground than the classroom.
There’s a fine line between “smart” and “smart ass,” after all. I feel like I should have a bumper sticker that paraphrases, “My Stupid Phone Can Beat Up Your Honor Student Smart Phone.”
My husband keeps nudging me to undertake a techno-upgrade, but I’m resisting it. This isn’t about anything so facilely embattled — although appealing — as being a Luddite. I’ve got nothing against technology, per se.
(And, there’s also a serious side to my resistance: The trace minerals that go into manufacturing our relentlessly upgraded Playstations and high-tech gadgets are fueling unimaginable violence in Congo to extract and profit from tin ore, coltan, cassiterite, and other resources. The yen for the new new thing has its victims, in a few different places).
My reluctance is more about my uncertainty that I really want a smart phone in my life, some appliance that outwits me.
“Smart.” That attribute must be testing well in focus groups, because it’s the Madison Ave. adjective of choice, the fashionable “new black” of descriptors. It elaborates everything from lipsticks to dishwashers. Smart mascara makes mysterious adjustments to your lashes with its acumen, and so on.
It’s ironic. Charles Pierce describes in Idiot America that we’ve become notoriously anti-intellectual, especially as regards our politicians. We like our Humans and Politicians folksy and defiantly ignorant of things like science, book-learning, “hard” words, and facts, but meanwhile, we prefer phones, vacuum cleaners, dryers and jeans (they’re smart! Microfibers “know how” to conform to your shape!) to be brainy and dazzle us with their intelligence.
Being a nerd (think Al Gore’s debate performance) is a curse if you’re an American politician. But it’s a blessing if you’re an American blender.
There’s a long, tormented history in fiction around this business of animating machines and things with human attributes, of course. It stretches from Frankenstein to Hal in 2001, to the Terminator movies. It begins with hubris and the urge to demonstrate ingenuity.
Then, our creations turn against us, destroying us by the human attributes that we endowed them with. A modest example from a Smart Phone: they send a beacon that “informs” on you. Owning some of this technology is like putting a Lo-Jack on yourself.
Now, researchers are using our “really smart phones” to “harvest” a wealth of “intimate detail from our cellphone data, uncovering the hidden patterns of our social lives, travels, risk of disease” and political views, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Basically, your phone is snitching on you. They’ve been able to predict with “uncanny accuracy” where you’ll be tomorrow. Through it, outside parties can even identify “influencers,” people who are likely to sway other people’s opinions. What they do with these people once they find them, I’m not really sure.
I can imagine a phone turning on its maker and doing HAL’s incriminating monotone from 2001: “I Am Now Telling Your Wife Where you Are, Joe…. I Am Now Telling Your Wife Where You Are, Joe…” Or, “I’m Afraid That I Can’t Let You Use Me to Cruise that Website for Bottles of Expensive Red Wine, Pamela Haag… You Said You Would Cut Down… Remember? Remember?”
The Washington Post ran a feature a few months ago about a woman who was having an affair. Her husband reported her missing, and one of those loathsome traffic cameras to snag speeders helped provide footage to the police that pinpointed her exact location — at her lover’s apartment. She hadn’t even been speeding (as a group, those who are on their way to top-secret trysts are probably scrupulous about obeying speed limits and not getting hit by buses). The police knocked on the door, and told her to “call her husband.”
I’m sorry, but I’d rather not have a municipal Speed Monitoring and Enforcement System Camera getting involved in my marriage in any way whatsoever.
We are captains of our iPhones, and masters of our Smart Technologies. Then they can become ours, in ways subtle and direct. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows documents the “This is Your Brain on the Internet” decay of our cognitive skills and capacities to “think deeply” that our technological over-reliance has wrought.
For the time being I’m sticking with my dumbass phone. When I ask my phone where the nearest pizza joint is, it doesn’t jump to attention and tell me. No, my dumb-as-dirt phone stares implacably right back at me, with the dense, undiscriminating girth of a knee-whacker who knows how to keep a secret, and would say to me incredulously, if it could say anything at all, “Are you tawkin’ to ME?!?! Well, you MUST be, ‘cuz I’m the only one here…”
Replica Rolex watches What Is Character And How Do
Traditionally, in psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the term “character” has been used to refer to constellations or configurations of behavioral traits. “Anal characters” are said to be compulsive and perfectionistic; “hysterical characters” are described as histrionic; “passive-aggressive characters” show anger covertly by withholding; “narcissistic characters” are excessively self-centered; “borderline characters” form chaotic and primitive relationships and so on. How might character be understood from a perspective, like mine, that takes organizations or worlds of emotional experiencing as its principal focus?[1]
I have long contended that such organizations of emotional experiencing always take form in contexts of human interrelatedness.[2][3] Developmentally, recurring patterns of emotional interaction within the child-caregiver system give rise to principles (themes, meanings, cognitive-emotional schemas) that recurrently shape subsequent emotional experiences, especially experiences of significant relationships. Such organizing principles are unconscious Replica Cartier watches, not in the sense of being repressed, but in being pre-reflective. Ordinarily, we just experience our experiences; we do not reflect on the principles or meanings that shape them. The totality of a person’s pre-reflective organizing principles constitutes his or her character.
From this perspective, there can be no character “types,” since every person’s array of organizing principles is unique and singular, a product of his or her unique life history. These organizing principles show up in virtually every significant aspect of a person’s life — in one’s recurring relationship patterns, vocational choices, interests, creative activity, fantasies Replica Rolex watches, dreams and emotional disturbances. Psychoanalytic therapy is a dialogical method for bringing this pre-reflective organizing activity into reflective self-awareness so that, hopefully, it can be transformed.
Early situations of consistent or massive malattunement to a child’s emotional experiences (situations in which the child’s feelings are ignored, rejected, invalidated, devalued, shamed, punished and so on) have particularly important consequences for the development of character as I have conceived it. One consequence of such malattunement is that emotional states take on enduring, crushing meanings. The child, for example, may acquire an unconscious conviction that unmet developmental yearnings and reactive painful feeling states are manifestations of a loathsome defect or of an inherent inner badness. A defensive self-ideal may be established, representing a self-image purified of the offending emotional states that were perceived to be unwelcome or damaging to caregivers. Living up to this emotionally purified ideal then becomes a central requirement for maintaining harmonious ties to others and for upholding self-esteem. Thereafter, the emergence of prohibited emotion is experienced as a failure to embody the required ideal, an exposure of the underlying essential defectiveness or badness, and is accompanied by feelings of isolation, shame and self-loathing. A person with such unconscious organizing principles will expect that his or her feelings will be met by others with disgust, disdain, disinterest, alarm, hostility, withdrawal, exploitation and the like, or will damage others and destroy his or her relationships with them.
A second consequence of significant emotional malattunement is a severe constriction and narrowing of the horizons of emotional experiencing so as to exclude whatever feels unacceptable, intolerable or too dangerous in particular relationship contexts. When a child’s emotional experiences are consistently not responded to or are actively rejected, the child perceives that aspects of his or her emotional life are intolerable to — and unwanted by — the caregiver. These regions of the child’s emotional world must then be repressed or otherwise kept hidden in order to safeguard the needed tie. Large sectors of the child’s emotional experiencing are sacrificed, and his or her emotional world may thereby become emptied and deadened. Such sacrificing may also take the form of aborting the process whereby emotional states are brought into language. When this is the case, emotions remain nameless, inchoate and largely bodily, and psychosomatic problems may develop.
How does character — that is, the array of a person’s pre-reflective organizing principles and the corresponding horizons of emotional experiencing — change as a result of a successful psychotherapeutic process? In regard to psychoanalytic therapy, there has been a longstanding debate over the role of cognitive insight vs. emotional attachment in the process of therapeutic change. The terms of this debate are directly descended from Descartes’ philosophical dualism, which sectioned human experience into cognitive and emotional domains. Such artificial fracturing of human experience is no longer tenable in a post-Cartesian philosophical world. Cognition and emotion, thinking and feeling, interpreting and relating — these are separable only in pathology, as can be seen in the case of Descartes himself, the profoundly isolated man who created a doctrine of the isolated mind, of disembodied, unembedded, decontextualized cogito.
The dichotomy between insight through interpretation and emotional bonding with the therapist is revealed to be a false one, once it is recognized that the therapeutic impact of analytic interpretations lies not only in the insights they convey, but also in the extent to which they demonstrate the therapist’s attunement to the patient’s emotional life. I have long contended that a good (that is, a mutative) interpretation is a relational process, a central constituent of which is the patient’s experience of having his or her feelings understood. Furthermore, it is the specific meaning of the experience of being understood that supplies its mutative power, as the patient weaves that experience into the tapestry of developmental longings mobilized by the therapeutic engagement. Interpretation does not stand apart from the emotional relationship between patient and therapist; it is an inseparable and, to my mind, crucial dimension of that relationship.
In a nutshell, interpretative expansion of the patient’s capacity for reflective awareness of old, repetitive organizing principles occurs concomitantly with the emotional impact and meanings of ongoing relational experiences with the therapist, and both are indissoluble components of a unitary therapeutic process that establishes the possibility of alternative principles for organizing experience, whereby the patient’s emotional horizons can become widened, enriched, more flexible and more complex. As the tight grip of old organizing principles becomes loosened, as emotional experiencing thereby expands and becomes increasingly nameable within a context of human understanding and as what one feels becomes seamlessly woven into the fabric of whom one essentially is, there is an enhancement of one’s very sense of being. That, to my mind, is the essence of character change.
References:
[1] Stolorow, R. D., Atwood, G. E., & Orange, D. M. Worlds of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books. 2002. Link
[2] Stolorow, R. D. Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections. New York: Routledge. 2007. Link
[3] Stolorow, R. D. (2011). World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. 2011. Link.
For more by Robert D. Stolorow, click here.
For more on mental health, click here.
Replica Tag heuer Watches We Can All Make a Differ
We often talk about our beliefs, values and convictions. It can be truly magical when we move beyond words toward action Replica Rolex Watches, reaffirming my belief that we can all make a difference.
In a week that has been nothing short of a whirlwind, I have gone from the White House and the Capitol in Washington to a studio in Hollywood — telling the story of the financial crisis in my school district. The Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania has experienced drastic cuts to programs, libraries and school staff. The district announced it would not be able to make payroll in January.
America’s public schools can be likened to a domino game, where schools align in intricate rows.
Cut corners and wrong moves send the pieces spiraling, jeopardizing students’ future and that of our nation.
So how do we stabilize these teetering pieces? We do it by working together and making a commitment to children. We’re all accountable for student success.
Ellen DeGeneres showed her commitment by shining a spotlight on our plight. She presented a $100,000 check from JCPenney to help students at Columbus Elementary School in Chester Upland. Their generosity is amazing. Ellen truly warmed my heart when she looked into the camera and said to students in my district, “We believe in you. Don’t ever give up.”
Despite the challenges, the dedicated educators and members of the Chester Upland Education Association will never give up on students in our area. The union demonstrated a deep commitment to students by keeping teachers and support staff together and focused on the real issue — helping our students succeed. We voted and vowed to keep coming to work as long as we could, in hope of getting a paycheck at some point, even though there was no guarantee.
Quality public education should be guaranteed for all students. However, news stories and reports like “Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation’s Students” tell a very different, very grim picture. There have been massive cuts to pre-K and kindergarten programs across the county. These programs provide the solid academic foundation students need to carry them through college. Class sizes are going up, so there’s less one-on-one attention for students. Extracurricular activities are being eliminated.
I’ve seen how teachers in my school make resources stretch and attempt to make up for lost classes like music Replica Tag heuer Watches, band and technology. Teachers are doing art projects with the students. I’ve seen others come in early or stay late to create dance routines and compose music… just to make sure students get a well-rounded education. But there are only so many “stretches” we can make with resources this low.
Elected officials must do their part by giving our students and teachers the resources they need. It’s difficult to provide our students with a quality education in the face of massive funding cuts.
I always tell my students that you can’t go wrong by doing what is right. So I charge everyone who is reading this to stand up for public education and our children. Whether it is taking time to read a book to a child, mentoring, or attending a school board meeting to push for an after-school program–we really can all make a difference.
Students have a right to attend great public schools with caring and qualified teachers. We all have a responsibility to ensure that right for them. The future depends on them and they are depending on us.
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When I was a kid in Brooklyn, I and a couple of other nerds would wonder about crazy things. Here’s one: if every person in China climbed up on a six-foot ladder and then jumped off at the same time, would it nudge the Earth into a different orbit?
Well, it wouldn’t, but not just for the obvious reason, that all the sore feet in China couldn’t generate enough energy to make any difference. It would only create a windfall for Chinese podiatrists.
There is, however, a more fundamental reason why it wouldn’t work.
First, let’s see how strong their impact would be on the Earth’s surface. It’s a simple matter of calculating the energy gained by bodies falling a certain distance under the influence of gravity. (One of the kids insisted that they can’t fall down; they must fall up, because they’re on the bottom side of the globe. We beat him up.)
China is the most populous country on Earth, with a population of 1.35 billion souls (that’s 2.7 billion soles) and an average body weight of 135 pounds, according to Alvanon, the global apparel-sizing experts (who incidentally peg the weight of today’s average American at 178 pounds!). According to my calculation, the choreographed Chinese pounce would hit the ground with an energy of 1.6 trillion joules (a joule is an international unit of energy equal to about 1 thousandth of a Btu).
That may sound like a lot of energy, but it’s only 2 trillionths of the total amount of energy released in what seismologists call the seismic moment by the 9.0 earthquake in Fukushima, Japan on March 11, 2011. Earthquakes have been occurring for billions of years Replica Tag heuer Watches, yet there is no evidence that even they have been able to nudge the Earth into a different orbit. So, obviously, those leaping Chinese certainly couldn’t do it.
But here’s the kicker: this whole question is a red herring, because no amount of earthquake, footquake, atomic bomb, or any other kind of energy unleashed on or below the Earth’s surface could possibly change its orbit. It’s physically impossible. And here’s why.
Our planet has contentedly circled the sun in the same old orbit, more or less, for billions of years, because it is a faithful devotee of Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion: “An object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” Note that Sir Ike specified an external force, a force from outside the object. That’s critical.
So would trillions of Chinese feet pounding on the surface of the Earth constitute an external force on the planet? No, because those feet, the bodies attached to them, and even the tectonic plates that crash into one another during earthquakes are all part of the orbiting body we call Earth. How can any of them exert an external force on something they are a part of? It would be like trying to make your car move faster by pushing on the dashboard. You can’t change the motion of something you’re a part of by exerting force — an internal force — on a different part of it. That would constitute the old lift-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps caper.
But wait! Although catastrophic events taking place on or beneath the Earth’s surface cannot change its orbit, they can change its rotation. So believe it or not, Chinese jumpers and Japanese earthquakes could in principle change the rotational speed of the Earth.
The rotational speed of a spinning object, related to what physicists call its angular momentum, is affected by how it is shaped, that is, how its mass is distributed within its volume. For an object of any given mass, the more compact it is, the faster it can spin. That’s why a figure skater spins faster when she gathers her mass into a tighter configuration by pulling her arms in closer to her center.
Thus Replica Rolex watches, if some of the Earth’s mass were shifted farther toward or away from its center, it would spin faster or slower. That’s exactly what happened one year ago when the Fukushima earthquake thrust a plate of the Earth’s crust deeper underground by jamming it beneath an adjacent plate. That event speeded up the planet’s rotation by 1.8 microseconds per revolution. And because we define our 24-hour day as the time of one revolution of the Earth, our day is now 1.8 microseconds shorter than it was last year.
Now go explain to your boss why you weren’t able to get that report finished on time: “The days were just too short this year!”
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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Catering to all those who will make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or eat better, Lowes Food Stores will host a healthy eating-themed Twitter party on Jan. 5.
The party Replica rolex watches, to be held Wed., Jan. 5 at 10 a.m. EST Replica vacheron constantin watches, is open to all those who follow “@lowesfoods” on Twitter and search for the party tag “#healthyeating.” As an incentive for shoppers to participate, Lowes will award two, 30-minute healthy eating consultations and a $25 Lowes Foods gift card during the event.
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A Twitter party is a virtual party discussing a topic using the Twitter platform. Most Twitter parties have a host to keep the party on topic The host for Wednesday’s party is Cindy Silver, Lowes’ corporate nutritionist.
Silver is part of Lowes’ newly launched Savvy Shoppers, a five-person team of employees and consumers charged with helping shoppers make the most of their food-shopping experience. The “Savvy Shopper” team writes blogs, and provides recipe suggestions, money saving ideas and suggestions of other websites to visit.
Each week, a different member of the Savvy Shoppers team hosts a Twitter party.
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Kate Collins | BDNAccording to Orlando Frati of Frati's Pawn Shop in Bangor, the current price of a $50 American Eagle gold coin is between $1,800 and $2,000. The pawn shop purchased this coin several months ago. Buy Photo
BANGOR, Maine — A depressed economy, high unemployment rate, and a gold price hovering around an all-time high have made it an ideal time for cash-strapped people to sell the precious metal.
And if you have the money, it’s also a good time to buy gold, area coin dealers say.
“The overall number of sellers and buyers are higher these days, but they’re pretty even in terms of the two groups,” said Barrie Jenkins, owner of MCN Coins LLC in Rockport and a coin and collectibles dealer and appraiser for more than 50 years. “I think a lot of people who can afford it are sitting on it before selling.”
Both Jenkins and Paul Zebiak, owner and operator of Maritime International, a coin and collectibles shop in Bangor, have been amazed by gold’s soaring value.
“Gold’s gone up $150 an ounce in one week,” Zebiak said Thursday. “It’s toying with $1,800 an ounce right now. When it hit $1,000 an ounce, that was the benchmark. I think it’s been over that for three years now.”
Gold actually surpassed the $1,800 mark last week for the first time, causing both J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and the Certified Gold Exchange to update by 39 percent — to $2,500 per ounce — the price they think the metal will reach by the end of the year.
“As people get scared with what’s going on in the world, they have more confidence in gold because they see it as a safe haven for their money. The stock market seems pretty risky,” Zebiak said. “I think most people are trying to protect value rather than speculate on the metal. Most people, including myself, may not be geniuses in predicting the price of metals down the line, but they know it won’t lose its value.”
The most recent surge is due Replica rolex watches, at least in part, to American investors’ desire to find a safer haven for their money after the U.S. government raised the debt ceiling. Recent stories and reports cite fear factors as pushing investors away from dollar-backed assets.
The price per ounce for gold Monday closed at $1,755.50, according to The Associated Press.
“The price of gold never really goes up. It’s more the value of the dollar, which has gone down,” Jenkins explained. “The U.S. is printing so much paper, I don’t know how it can hold its value.”
Even with spare funds — and change, for that matter — in shorter supply for many Americans, there are still several so-called “recessionproof” items that fetch top dollar, regardless of gold’s wildly fluctuating value.
“In my field — older, rare coins and truly rare items — the market is as good or better than it’s ever been,” Zebiak said. “Other market items — middle-value items like antique furniture, glassware, coins and such — are slower, but what I call the stuff kings play with — that stuff is still selling.”
While Jenkins is seeing even numbers of buyers and sellers come into his shop, Zebiak is noticing an imbalance.
“More people are selling than buying,” said Zebiak, who has been in business for more than 30 years.
He has noticed, however, that there’s more interest in gold from people who were never interested in it before. “But at the level I’m working at, I’m not seeing speculators,” he said.
Jenkins concurs, noting more buyers are going with coins as opposed to bullion.
“They like American Eagles. That’s what we sell the most of,” Jenkins said. “With sellers, I think the price has gone up and some people want to see what they can get for their stuff.”
Still, not everyone who comes into the Bangor and Rockport stores with gold and coins to be appraised ends up selling them.
“I would say the surprising thing for me is that most of the items I see these days is of fairly recent vintage,” Zebiak said. “I think there’s an instinct by people who don’t have to sell that this is not a good time to sell a rare item.”
That doesn’t apply to all people, some of whom are being targeted by businesses through a barrage of recent Internet, radio, TV and newspaper ads offering big payoffs for gold and collector coins as well as unused or broken gold jewelry.
“Everyone claims to pay more for gold, and it really runs the gamut,” said Zebiak. “I’ve been trying to brainstorm some way to let people know that a lot of these Barnum and Bailey type radio and TV ads should be checked out thoroughly.”
Both Jenkins and Zebiak said that as gold’s value keeps rising, so will the number of people trying to separate owners from it — for a less-than-fair return.
“We’re going to see more charlatans come out of the closet and people need to be more savvy when trying to sell rare items or gold,” Zebiak cautioned.
BNP Paribas to Continue With Bahrain Operations, D
By Donna Abu-Nasr
(Updates with AXA comment in last two paragraphs.)
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — BNP Paribas SA will continue operations in Bahrain, said Jean-Christophe Durand, the Paris- based lender’s head for the Middle East and Africa.
If the bank had taken a decision to pull out it would have informed the central bank, Durand said in a phone interview yesterday. “We haven’t done that.” Durand was responding to speculation that the bank may quit Bahrain after the Persian Gulf nation witnessed political unrest.
BNP Paribas, which has its regional headquarters in Bahrain, last year set up backup operations in Dubai as part of its policy to establish these centers worldwide Replica Omega watches, Durand said.
Societe Generale SA said last week it will move its private banking office in Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates as the French lender seeks to cut costs.
AXA Insurance Gulf’s revenue in Bahrain grew more than 10 percent last year amid the unrest, Jerome Droesch, chief executive officer for the Gulf and the Middle East, said in a phone interview from Dubai today, without giving details.
The company, which has its regional headquarters in the island nation, increased its staff by 5 percent to 100 last year Replica Rolex Watches, he said.
–With assistance from Stefania Bianchi in Dubai. Editors: Shaji Mathew, Ben Holland, Karl Maier.
To contact the reporter on this story: Donna Abu-Nasr in Manama at dabunasr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
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