GOOD: Happiness

For decades, the World Database of Happiness has tracked how happy people are- (1) not at all happy, (2) not very happy, (3) quite happy, (4) very happy. As it turns out, most of us are mostly happy, even when things aren't going so well. Take a look and see how happy some people said they were (on average) over the last 30 years...

The W Hollywood's Photos

http://www.whollywoodhotel.com/

Address	6250 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90028 · Get Directions
Phone	323 798 1300
Website	http://www.whollywoodhotel.com/

You can find this chic boutique hotel at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, under the shadow of the icon Hollywood sign. The W Hollywood is the newest destination sensation. Hotel guests get to enjoy the signature Whatever/Whenever® service that defines W Hotels. 

You can shine like a star at W Hollywood, where you take center stage. 


Indulge in fabulous Los Angeles dining at Delphine

then take the lift upstairs and splash around in our rooftop pool, WET

Soak up the celebrity scene at Drai's Hollywood

then wind down in the comfort of "WOW"-worthy rooms featuring the Wonderful Room or Cool Corner Suite

What the $100,000 bill and other Large denominations of United States currency look like

What the $100,000 looks like

What the $10,000 bill looks like

What the $5,000 bill looks like

What the $1,000 bill looks like

What the $500 bill looks like

US ranks #5 in "EASE OF DOING BUSINESS" in Economy Rankings by the World Bank

Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1 – 183. A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. This index averages the country's percentile rankings on 9 topics, made up of a variety of indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings for all economies are benchmarked to June 2010.

Ease of Doing Business Ranking

The ease of doing business index ranks economies from 1 to 183. For each economy the index is calculated as the ranking on the simple average of its percentile rankings on each of the 9 topics included in the index in Doing Business 2011:

• starting a business
• dealing with construction permits
• registering property
• getting credit
• protecting investors
• paying taxes
• trading across borders
• enforcing contracts
• closing a business

The ranking on each topic is the simple average of the percentile rankings on its component indicators.

If an economy has no laws or regulations covering a specific area—for example, bankruptcy—it receives a “no practice” mark. Similarly, an economy receives a “no practice” or “not possible” mark if regulation exists but is never used in practice or if a competing regulation prohibits such practice. Either way, a “no practice” mark puts the economy at the bottom of the ranking on the relevant indicator.

Here is one example of how the ranking is constructed. In Iceland it takes 5 procedures, 5 days and 2.3% of annual income per capita in fees to open a business. The minimum capital required amounts to 11.97% of income per capita. On these 4 indicators Iceland ranks in the 13th, 4th, 15th and 63th percentiles. So on average Iceland ranks in the 24th percentile on the ease of starting a business. It ranks in the 50th percentile on protecting investors, 40th percentile on trading across borders, 10th percentile on enforcing contracts, 9th percentile on closing a business and so on. Higher rankings indicate simpler regulation and stronger protection of property rights. The simple average of Iceland’s percentile rankings on all topics is 25%. When all economies are ordered by their average percentile rank, Iceland is in 15th place.

More complex aggregation methods— such as principal components and unobserved components—yield a nearly identical ranking. The choice of aggregation method has little influence on the rankings because the 9 sets of indicators provide sufficiently broad coverage across topics. So Doing Business uses the simplest method.

The ease of doing business index is limited in scope. It does not account for an economy’s proximity to large markets, the quality of its infrastructure services (other than services related to trading across borders), the strength of its financial system, the security of property from theft and looting, its macroeconomic conditions or the strength of underlying institutions. There remains a large unfinished agenda for research into what regulation constitutes binding constraints, what package of reforms is most effective and how these issues are shaped by the context in an economy. The Doing Business indicators provide a new empirical data set that may improve understanding of these issues.

Doing Business 2011 also uses a simple method to calculate which economies improve the most on the ease of doing business. First, it selects the economies that reformed in 3 or more of the 9 topics included in this year’s ease of doing business ranking. Twenty-five economies met this criterion: Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Grenada, Guyana, Hungary, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Mali, Montenegro, Peru, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Sweden, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zambia. Second, Doing Business ranks these economies on the increase in their ranking on the ease of doing business from the previous year using comparable rankings.


The World Bank is an international bank established in 1944 to help member nations reconstruct and develop, especially by guaranteeing loans and is a specialized agency of the United Nations.

The TOP 10 Countries with The Most Billionaires

No longer dominated by Americans and Europeans, the members of the world's billionaire club increasingly hail from around the globe, first and third world countries alike. And while some of the mega-rich might may spend more time on yachts than in their home countries, even billionaires have a place they call home. It's just becoming increasingly difficult to predict where that home is.

According to this year's annual Wealth Report, published by Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank -- Scorpio Partnership, a wealth management consultancy firm, also contributed -- new billionaires are increasingly likely to come from emerging economies like India and Russia, the latter of which increased its billionaire count by 30 percent last year, according to Forbes. The world's total number of millionaires has skyrocketed, too, increasing by 22 percent from one year prior, when the global economy witnessed a drastic drop in millionaires.

No country's elite, however, have benefited more from last year's rebounding economy than China's, with the country's tremendous economic growth raising the billionaire count by 140 percent. At this rate, many economists expect China -- ranked 35th in Forbes' billionaires list as recently as 2005 -- to soon claim the title of most billionaires in the world.

"That growth [in China] may be strengthened," Scorpio Partnership director Stephen Wall wrote in the report, "by the range of wealth sources driving economic growth."

Of all their thriving industries, the Internet technology sector has perhaps treated China's elites the best. And no one better represents that industry than China's richest man and Baidu search engine founder Robin Li. Still, Chinese billionaires will continue to face stiff competition from the U.S. in the future, as Facebook alone represents six of America's billionaires, including the youngest billionaire in the world: 26-year-old co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

GREGinSD's Jam'n, Pimp'n, & Club'n 2011 Playlist of my favorite tracks

Now Presenting Virgin "Oceanic" (as if Virgin "Galactic" wasn't enough)

Picking up where the late uber-adventurer Steve Fossett left off, Virgin impresario Richard Branson said on Tuesday that he wants to go to the deepest spot on Earth.

In a press conference last Tuesday in Newport Beach, Calif., Branson announced his Virgin Oceanic and Five Dives initiatives, which could send a Virgin-branded deep-sea submersible with a single pilot to the deepest spots in each of the planet's five oceans.

Virgin Oceanic will use the DeepFlight Challenger, a submersible built by Hawkes Ocean Technologies of Point Richmond, Calif., for the dives.

The five dives are intended to be to the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, which at 36,201 feet below the surface is the deepest spot on the planet; the Atlantic Ocean's Puerto Rico Trench at 28,232 feet underwater; the Indian Ocean's Diamantina Trench at 26,401 feet below the surface; the Southern Ocean's South Sandwich Trench, which is 23,737 feet down; and the Arctic Ocean's Molloy Deep, which bottoms out at 18,399 feet down.

The idea is that by exploring these deepest of points on Earth, Branson's new venture will be able to contribute to the science of the oceans. As Virgin Oceanic (see video below) put it in a release, the expedition "offers an unprecedented opportunity to conduct scientific research and to expand our knowledge of the unique conditions, ecosystems, and geology that exist at the bottom of the oceans."

The U.S could eliminate the military and still not balance the budget

Know-Y.org: "The U.S could eliminate the military and still not balance the budget."

The U.S could eliminate the military and still not balance the budget. Learn more at http://know-y.org/

You can see the amounts owed to various countries as of December 2010 in the chart below (Source: Department of the Treasury):

Numbers are in Billions (e.g. 1160 = $1.2 trillion)

Cracks found in 3 grounded Southwest planes

YUMA, Ariz. – Inspectors have found small, subsurface cracks in three more Southwest Airlines planes that are similar to those suspected of causing a jetliner to lose pressure and make a harrowing emergency landing in Arizona, a federal investigator said Sunday.



Southwest said in statement that two of its Boeing 737-300s had cracks and will be evaluated and repaired before they are returned to service. A National Transportation Safety Board member told The Associated Press later Sunday that a third plane had been found with cracks developing.


The cracks found in the three planes developed in two lines of riveted joints that run the length of the aircraft.
Nineteen other Boeing 737-300 planes inspected using a special test developed by the manufacturer showed no problems and will be returned to service. Checks on nearly 60 other jets are expected to be completed by late Tuesday, the airline said.


That means flight cancelations will likely continue until the planes are back in the air. About 600 flights in all were canceled over the weekend.


NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said Boeing was developing a "service bulletin" for all 737-300 models with comparable flight cycle time as the Arizona jet, which was 15 years old and had about 39,000 takeoff and landing cycles.


There are 931 such models in service worldwide, 288 of which in the U.S. fleet.
Boeing's bulletin would strongly suggest extensive checks of two lines of "lap joints" that run the length of the fuselage. The NTSB has not mandated the checks, but Sumwalt said the FAA will likely make them mandatory.


Friday's flight carrying 118 people rapidly lost cabin pressure after the plane's fuselage ruptured — causing a 5-foot-long tear — just after takeoff from Phoenix.


Passengers recalled tense minutes after the hole ruptured overhead with a blast and they fumbled frantically for oxygen masks. Pilots made a controlled descent from 34,400 feet into a southwestern Arizona military base. No one was seriously injured.


The tear along a riveted "lap joint" near the roof of the Boeing 737 above the midsection shows evidence of extensive cracking that hadn't been discovered during routine maintenance before the flight — and probably wouldn't have been unless mechanics specifically looked for it — officials said.


"What we saw with Flight 812 was a new and unknown issue," Mike Van de Ven, Southwest executive vice president and chief operating officer, said. "Prior to the event regarding Flight 812, we were in compliance with the FAA-mandated and Boeing-recommended structural inspection requirements for that aircraft."


Sumwalt said that the rip was a foot wide, and that it started along a joint where two sections of the plane's skin are riveted together. An examination showed extensive pre-existing damage along the entire tear.


The riveted joints that run the length of the plane were previously not believed to be a fatigue problem and not normally subjected to extensive checks, Sumwalt said.

"Up to this point only visual inspections were required for 737s of this type because testing and analysis did not indicate that more extensive testing was necessary," Sumwalt said. That will likely change after Friday's incident, he said.


The FAA declined to say if it was requiring other operators to check their aircraft for similar flaws.


The NTSB also could issue urgent recommendations for inspections on other 737s if investigators decide a problem has been overlooked. The agency's investigation has not determined that the cracks caused the rupture, but it is focused on that area.


Federal records show cracks were found and repaired a year ago in the frame of the same Southwest plane.


A March 2010 inspection found 10 instances of cracking in the aircraft frame, which is part of the fuselage, and another 11 instances of cracked stringer clips, which help hold the plane's skin on, according to an AP review of FAA records of maintenance problems for the Arizona plane.


The records show the cracks were either repaired or the damaged parts replaced. Cracking accounted for a majority of the 28 problem reports filed as a result of that inspection.
It's common for fuselage cracks to be found during inspections of aging planes, especially during scheduled heavy-maintenance checks in which planes are taken apart so that inspectors can see into areas not normally visible.


The Arizona jetliner had gone through about 39,000 cycles of pressurizing, generally a count of takeoffs and landings. Cracks can develop from the constant cycle of pressurizing for flight, then releasing the pressure.


Southwest officials said it had undergone all inspections required by the FAA. They said the plane was given a routine inspection Tuesday and underwent its last so-called heavy check, a more costly and extensive overhaul, in March 2010.


The decompression happened about 18 1/2 minutes after takeoff from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after the pilots reached their cruising altitude. They immediately donned their oxygen masks, declared an emergency and briefly considered returning to Phoenix before the cabin crew told them of the extent of the damage, Sumwalt said.


"They discussed landing in Phoenix, but quickly upon getting the assessment decided to divert to Yuma because it was the closest suitable airport," he said.


The plane's voice and data recorders were being examined in Washington, and Sumwalt said they worked well and showed no sign of a problem before the incident. Southwest operates about 170 of the 737-300s in its fleet of 548 planes, but it replaced the aluminum skin on many of the 300s in recent years, a spokeswoman said. The planes that were grounded over the weekend have not had their skin replaced.


Southwest said "based on this incident and the additional findings, we expect further action from Boeing and the FAA for operators of the 737-300 fleet worldwide." Boeing did not immediately return messages left Sunday. US Airways' website shows that the Arizona-based airline also operates 737-300s, but it did not immediately respond to a call from the AP.


In July 2009, a football-sized hole opened up in-flight in the fuselage of another of Southwest's Boeing 737s, depressurizing the cabin. Sumwalt said the two incidents appeared to be unrelated.


So what could of happened? 

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a scheduled Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, the aircraft suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, but was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. One crew member was blown out of the airplane and another 65 passengers and crew were injured. The extent of the damage was only just below that which would have caused the airliner to break up, and the survival of the aircraft with such a major loss of integrity was unprecedented and remains unsurpassed. 


Below are actual photo's of the plane after it's "Miracle Landing":