Kong Hee Fatt Cai, Mates!

OOOpppss! Chinese New Year was yesterday & I have been guilty of forgetting to wish all my Chinese visitors "Happy Chinese New Year"!

It is the Year of the Rabbit, supposedly, a somewhat tough year for many.

Here's one prediction--forcast-- I quite believe may be accurate!

World Forecast 2011
Forecast for 2011: the Chinese year of the Yin Metal Rabbit (or Hare) - 3rd February 2011 to the 22nd January 2012.
Although the world economy will technically be out of recession, many countries will still be marred in debt and subject to high taxation. Unrest will grow and governments will be forced to place their dometic agendas above the demands of international co-operation. This will place great strain upon the European Community, the Russian Federation, the Chinese Communist Party and the economic co-operation between Canada, the USA and Mexico.

This is because the Yin Metal Rabbit is an introspective, home loving pacifist with a sharp business acumen who will ensure the preservation of his own creature comforts to the exclusion of outsiders. It is a year in which the family will come first. Expect moves by some States in the USA and China to demand greater autonomy, and for pressure to grow in Britain to withdraw from the European Community.

Expect that individual countries (and those in a currency union) will introduce protectionist measures by raising tariff barriers leading to disputes at the WTO, and moves to manipulate currencies to ensure competitive export prices.

Housing markets in the Anglo-Saxon world will fall back to their long term average and a mood of realism amongst both buyers and sellers will lead to a propitious year for Estate agents as volumes increase. Interest in the Art world will increase markedly.

Expect too that NATO countries will tire of the war in Afghanistan as Al Quaeda and other Jihadists lose their enthusiasm for attacking the West. And the Middle East should also expect a period of relative calm.

But please note: our prediction for 2010 included these words: "We must also face the possibility in a Metal Tiger year of yet more military conflict between opposing idealogies, rather like the Korean War that started in 1950 - a previous year of the Yang Metal Tiger." It is conceivable that 2011 will be affected by events that have their origin in 2010.

All this will be in marked contrast to what will happen in 2012 - the Year of the Water Dragon which starts on the 23rd January 2012, and finishes on the 9th February 2013. Our forecast for 2012 will be available soon.

Ha! I didn't make that prediction! I found it on the Net and it's anyone's guess who did the prediction... Net wizard, chinese feng shui naster, MI5, CIA ...?! Que Sera Sera

Good News!

My passport has been found!!! It is with the authorities.

Is this a rat like me or what???!!!

Year of the Mighty Rat!

WELCOME, Year of the Rat! The Chinese lunar calendar is just round the corner... In South America, a new discovery of the dinosaur rat has been found, amazing many with its sheer size and length that would be comparable to a 4-wheel drive!

From The Times
January 16, 2008
Giant rat that once roamed the earth
Giant rat

The skull of the rodent is 53cm long. The creature had huge incisors that may have been used for felling trees or fighting
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

The fossilised skull of a rat the size of a car has been unearthed. The creature lived about four million years ago, weighed about a tonne and ate mostly soft vegetation. It was so big that it probably spent much of its life semi-submerged in water, like a hippo, to reduce the stresses caused by its size.

Palaeontologists found the skull in rock deposits in Uruguay. It is believed to date back two to four million years to a time when giant wildlife was commonplace in South America.

The rodent, Josephoartigasia monesi, was uncovered by Andrés Rinderknecht and Ernesto Blanco. It has been nicknamed Mighty Mouse and is thought to have been similar to the capybara and pacarana, much smaller creatures that are still found in South America. Capybaras are the biggest living rodents at just over 60kg fully grown, while pacaranas weigh 15kg. The common rat weighs about 300g.

J. monesi is thought to have weighed about a tonne and the biggest specimens could have been more than 2.5 tonnes — about the same as hippopotamuses, which range from 1.4 tonnes to 3.2 tonnes.
Related Links

* New dinosaur found in ‘lost world’ graveyard

* Bones that prove T. rex was not so much a terrifying predator, more a big chicken

The rodent was estimated to be about 3m (10 feet) long and 1.5m tall. Its huge incisors were more than 30cm (12in) long, of which 10cm would have been exposed.

The incisors puzzled the researchers because they were much tougher than necessary for an animal that ate only soft plants. Dr Blanco suggested that they could have been used to fell trees like beavers do, or to fight off predators or courtship rivals.

“It probably ate aquatic plants and fruits, and the environment probably was a forest near fresh water,” Dr Blanco said. “But much work is needed to have a definitive picture. We are working on biomechanical determination of the bite force to better understand this point.”

It shared the Earth with sabre-tooth cats and giant predatory birds that did not fly but could run down prey at terrifying speeds. Its great bulk would have protected it from the killer birds, but its young would have been at risk.

The near-complete skull delighted palaeontologists studying giant South American rodents. Before, they had been limited to bone fragments.

Other teeth in the skull were too small to have allowed the animal to have chewed food well. Researchers concluded that it must have consumed soft vegetation, including fruit.

Rodents make up about 40 per cent of all mammals but the new South American species was still about twice the size of the next biggest, a South American species called Phoberomys.

The skull came from a type of rodent, known as dinomyids, that include today’s pacaranas and which during the Miocene and Pliocene periods, from about 2 to 23 million years ago, underwent an evolutionary explosion creating many species in modern-day Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia.

Dr Rinderknecht, of the National Museum of Natural History and Anthropology in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, and Dr Blanco, of the Institute of Physics in Montevideo, reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.