Stuff below the fold

Office-based doctors support 4 million jobs

"...According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 463,400 people worked in physician offices in 1972. The number grew to 2,330,000 in 2010.....On an individual level, physicians support an average of 6.2 jobs each..."

On the other hand, 40 years ago, the doc ran his office with one "Nurse" who did everything, and no billing was done: you paid cash or pay him when you got the money.

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Inflation due to higher oil prices is hitting the Philippines.

all those yuppies who think walking and bicycle paths are the answer for "oil addiction" need to understand that growing food requires fertilizer, diesel for the handplow, diesel for the thresher, gasoline for the tricycle that takes your crop to the rice mill, (and if it's raining, diesel for the rice drier). Then you need diesel for milling the rice, oil based plastic bags to pack it, and jeepneys or trucks to take it to markets.

Yes, you could do this all the old fashioned way, but somehow I doubt they'd like to do it, and of course it's much less efficient... taking rice to feed ten million folks in Manila via a slow walking waterbuffalo cart, walking 60 miles at one mile per hour?

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caught on film: Illegal lotteries that siphon off money to politicians under the guise that the lotteries are legal.

so instead of lottery profits being used for hospitals and schools, it is going into the politician's pocket.
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Strawberry fields forever...

In the mountain fields of the Baguio region, they grow strawberries and flowers.
We have a tiny plot of land there, bought 30 years ago for a vacation house that we never got around to building, and we found the neighbors were growing flowers on it.
Instead of chasing them off, we got a contract with them, agreeing if they kept squatters from buildling on the land they could grow their flowers there.