Links and Quotes

Pope Benedict XVI

"Fulfillment does not lie in comfort, ease, and following one's own inclinations, but precisely in allowing demands to be made upon you, in taking the harder path. Everything else turns out somehow boring, anyway."

Stillbirth

This link talks about something that happen too to someone I know.  I was told about it once but I think about it often.

The Job Market in America, Japan, France, and Germany 

From the City Journal:

.....the American economy is quite good at creating jobs.

In Japan, by contrast—which ranks 40th in the World Bank Group's "employing workers" standings—lifetime tenure at one company remains the norm, and it's difficult to get a job except immediately after leaving school. The Japanese labor market is like a sold-out show in a theater: people arrive before the curtain rises, sit in their chairs, and don't leave. Anyone coming late tends to lose out. In France, which ranks 155th, many labor contracts severely limit hours and flexibility, high payroll taxes fund workers' benefits, and social policy makes layoffs very difficult. Germany, in 158th place, has many similar policies. If you wanted to extend the theater analogy, you might add that in both France and Germany, the seats are so expensive to build that there aren't enough of them for those who aren't impeccably credentialed.

(*I had a German tell me that grown men will cry if they are laid off from their jobs.  I wonder why*)

China's Leadership in Crisis

Through the past week, I have seen video on the buses of the party congress going on in Beijing.  The linked article above presents a sober analysis of what is happening there.