US Productivity Rate For 2Q20 Surged 10.1%; Number Of Hours Worked By Americans Declined By Largest Amount Since Government Began Collecting Data More Than 70 Years Ago -- September 3, 2020

 This story was reported by Rick Santelli over at CNBC first thing this morning:

U.S. productivity rose at a 10.1 percent rate in the second quarter as the number of hours worked declined by the largest amount since the government started compiling the data more than 70 years ago.

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

• amazing how much "fat" is in our employment numbers (interestingly enough, to the best of my knowledge, there were no cuts in federal employees);
• unlike his earlier prognostication about jobs, in this case ex-president Obama would probably be correct if he said, "most of these jobs are not coming back"-- at least not any time soon;
  

So, how did the market finish?

• Dow: down 807 points -- let's just say, down 800 points; down almost 3%;
• S&P 500: down 125 points; down 3.5%;
• NASDAQ: down 600 points; down 5%
• AAPL: down 8%; P/E at 37; about where it was when the split was announced; still slightly over $2 trillion market cap
  
• TSLA: down 9% during the day; another 6% after hours; P/E remains over 1,000;
  

With a productivity surge like that, is another stimulus bill needed? The "market" is probably reading the same tea leaves. 

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Paleontology

Following volution during the  "transition" across the Permian Mass Extinction -- when life on earth came close to being wiped out 252 million years ago -- is extremely difficult for me to sort out. On land we had amphibians, the earliest reptiles (turtles), and mammal-like reptiles. How those that survived the extinction and crossed over is very, very difficult for me to keep straight. 

On top of that, and it seems to some extent, somewhat separate, is the history of the reptilian skull at that time. One very "gross" method of separating reptiles at that time was by examining the presence or absence of the opening or opening ("holes"; fenestrae) in the skull behind the eyes. 

Anapsids: no temporal openings behind the eyes; this group includes the turtles.

Diapsids: two temporal openings; this group includes / included dinosaurs, crocodiles, birds, tuataras, lizards, and snakes.

Synapsids: continued controversy whether these were reptile-like mammals or mammal-like reptiles. Richard Dawkins in The Ancestor's Tale called them mammal-like reptiles, but was on the fence, ready to call them reptile-like mammals. My favorite book, Evolution: The Whole Story, refers to them as reptiles, as far as I can tell, in most cases. 

Wiki, not surprisingly, seems to have the most current thinking -- synapsids were neither reptiles nor mammals, but "stem" mammals or "proto-" mammals, having evolved from one branch of reptiles. If one follows this "classification" we have reptiles and synapsids at that point in evolutionary history. There were three waves of synapsids (Dawkins called them mammal-like reptiles): pelycosuars (the most recognizable being the Dimetrodon which went extinct before the Permian Mass Extinction); the therapsids; and then the cynodonts, as close to mammals as possible without being called mammals.

The fourth wave: the mammals, a continuation of the continuum from synapsids to therapsids to cynodonts to mammals. 

This is all in flux, but it helps me put a framework together when working with the granddaughters on evolutionary biology.