Besides the original American version, "The Amazing Race" has generated several versions from around the world.
Financial crisis of 2007–2008
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 was a major financial crisis, the worst of its kind since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
In September 2008 many large financial firms in the United States collapsed, merged, or went under conservatorship (a person is assigned to manage a company when it cannot manage itself). The factors that led to the crisis were reported in business journals many months before September 2008.
There are many reasons why the crisis happened. Most economists believe that it started in the United States. From 1997 until 2006, people bought expensive houses, even though they did not have enough money for it. Since the money had come from other countries, it was easy to have good credit. People used this credit for expensive loans, causing the price of homes to rise. This created an economic bubble. Because they had a lot of money, the loaning companies made it easier to get a loan, even if the borrower didn't have a good credit history. These loans are known as subprime loans.
During this time, many home owners refinanced their homes. This caused their mortgage to change, giving them lower interest. After they refinanced, homeowners could take out another mortgage, for spending money. The loaning companies changed their loans so that they would have low interest at first and then increase later. This is known as an adjustable-rate mortgage. The companies often used these to convince more people to take loans. Many people with subprime loans also took these adjustable-rate mortgages, hoping that the good price of housing would help them refinance later.
While the housing prices were still high, many American and European companies, including banks, invested in subprime loans. These investments gave more money to the loaning companies, who used it to give out more subprime loans. These investments would make a lot of money as long as the price of housing was high.
However, the housing companies built too many houses. This caused the price of housing to decrease beginning in the summer of 2006. The value of many homes dropped below the value of the remaining mortgage debt, so the owners were unable to sell and move away. This is called negative equity. About 8.8 million homeowners in the U.S. had zero or negative equity by March 2008. This caused the number of foreclosures on homes to increase, meaning that many people lost their homes. During 2007, almost 1.3 million U.S. homes began foreclosure proceedings. The number of houses for sale continued to increase, which made the prices decrease. The homeowners with subprime loans left their houses with less value than they had when they were bought, which meant that the loans were worth more money than the house. The loaning companies were not able to make money from these houses.
The collapse of the housing bubble caused the value of investments to fall. The companies that had invested in subprime loans lost a total of about $512 billion. Citigroup and Merrill Lynch were two companies that lost the most money. More than half of the money lost, $260 billion, was lost by American firms.
Total financial losses from lost economic activity and stock market declines have been estimated at $15 trillion.
Detritivore
A detritivore (also known as decomposers) is an animal that feeds on dead organisms (living things) and breaks them down into smaller molecules. Detritivores are essential in the ecosystem as they return important materials such as carbon (see carbon cycle) back into the environment. Examples of common detritivores include earthworms and woodlice, but also includes microscopic (things that can only be seen using a microscope) bacteria.
Skid Row
Skid Row is a Hard rock band from Toms River, New Jersey. They were active from 1986 to 1996, then reunited in 1999.
Skid Row have released 5 albums:
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the way carbon is stored and replaced on Earth. Some of the main events take hundreds of millions of years, others happen annually.
The main ways that carbon gets into the carbon cycle are volcanoes, and the burning of fossil fuels like coal and gas. Through most of history, volcanoes were the biggest source of carbon to the carbon cycle, but in the last hundred years, people burning fossil fuels have been adding about a hundred time more CO to the air than volcanoes. That is, for every ton of CO added to the air by volcanoes, about 100 tons of CO have been added to the air by people.
The main way carbon gets taken out of the atmosphere is by photosynthesis by living organisms. Some of this gets released as they die and decompose, but a proportion gets buried in sediment. This is shown in the diagram. Sediment turns to rock, and it is the carbonate rocks like limestone which contain the now-solid CO. Some of the carbon from plants also becomes part of the soil, where it can stay for a long time before decomposing.
Another process takes CO out of the air. Weathering by rain washes out CO in the form of dilute carbonic acid. This reacts with rock, helping to dissolve and destroy it. This also ends up as sediment.
Some CO is also dissolved in the ocean. Right now, the oceans are taking in more CO than they are releasing, every year. However, this is making the oceans more acidic.
The store of carbon in sedimentary rock is far greater than the CO in the atmosphere (this is not shown in the diagram). Eventually it returns to the air as oceanic plates subduct in plate tectonics. At the margins of plate boundaries (and some other places) volcanoes form and spew out CO. This completes the cycle.
The carbon cycle is a process where carbon is recycled through the ecosystem. The concentration of carbon in living matter (18%) is almost 100 times greater than its concentration in the earth (0.19%). So living things extract carbon from their nonliving environment. For life to continue, this carbon must be recycled. See the diagram for a detailed look at the carbon cycle. An example of a route carbon takes in this cycle is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants and used in photosynthesis to produce sugars which the plant uses for energy. When the plant dies, it decomposes and the carbon stored in the plant will, over millions of years, form into coal (a fossil fuel). The coal is burnt and gives off carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere.
At the moment, the carbon cycle, and how human activity is affecting it, is a big topic in international news. Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource which means that they cannot be replaced easily. Our use of fossil fuels has nearly doubled every 20 years since 1900. This release of carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect and acid rain.
The carbon cycle was discovered by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, and popularized by Humphry Davy.
Skepticism
Skepticism or scepticism (Greek "skeptomai": to consider, to examine) refers to any view involving "doubt".
People who have skepticism as an attitude, opinion, or method are called skeptics or sceptics.
Skepticism on philosophy has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. The Greek Sophists of the 5th century BC, such as Protagoras of Abdera (480–411 BC), were mostly skeptics. Gorgias (485–380 BC) said, "Nothing exists; if anything does exist, it cannot be known; if anything exists and can be known, it cannot be communicated". In the 4th century BC Pyrrho of Elis (c360–275 BC), who travelled and studied as far as India, adopted practical skepticism. Carneades (c213–129 BC) disagreed that things were completely true or false. He criticized the Dogmatists, especially Stoics. He said that completely certain knowledge is impossible. Sextus Empiricus (c200 AD), the main authority for Greek skepticism, brought together empiricism into the basis for stating knowledge.