"We will not release the full potential of half of the world's population until globally we address the issue of equality; until countries, communities, and households around the world acknowledge women's rights and change the rules of inequality." -- World Bank President Robert Zoellick, 9/14/2011

"We are the information age. You can’t beat us. Join us." -- Chelsea Farnam (a 2010 graduate of Milligan College and a writer for IBM Global Content Services) in Don’t let legislators teach children bigotry, hate for Johnson City TN Press, 6/7/2011

"... These are serious times. Every American’s job is on the line. The United States produces 23 percent the world’s wealth although we are just 5 percent of the world’s people. People in the rest of the world are figuring out that their brains are no different than ours and they are using their brainpower to create the kind of standard of living that we have.... I am a very Republican Republican. I grew up and live in a congressional district that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress since Abraham Lincoln was President. My great-great grandfather once was asked his politics and he answered, ‘I fought for the union and I vote like I shot.’...." -- Tennessee Senior Senator Lamar Alexander

"... Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia and overtake Russia as the world's largest oil producer. Places like Williston are the reason why. 'For many years, they knew that there was oil in that area, but the technology wasn't available to get it out,' the town's mayor, Ward Koeser, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. But in the last few years, advances in such technologies as 'fracking' and horizontal drilling have made, by some estimates, as much as 11 billion barrels of oil available in the Bakken formation under North Dakota and Montana. 'There's oil companies coming from all over the country now.' Koeser says. Williston has skipped the recession entirely. Unemployment there is less than 2 percent. The population, the mayor estimates, has grown from 12,000 to 20,000 in the last four years. ... Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University says in the next decade, new oil in the US, Canada and South America could change the center of gravity of the entire global energy supply. 'Some are now saying, in five or 10 years' time, we're a major oil-producing region, where our production is going up,' she says. The US, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That's compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa. Jaffe says those new oil reserves, combined with growing turmoil in the Middle East, will 'absolutely propel more and more investment into the energy resources in the Americas.'" -- New Boom Reshapes Oil World, Rocks North Dakota , NPR

" Retail sales remain a 'bright spot' in an otherwise bleak economic picture, according to a second quarter retail sales report authored by local economist Steb Hipple. On a year-to-year basis, dollar sales rose 5.5 percent in Johnson City, 6.6 percent in Kingsport, and 8.6 percent in Bristol, showed the retail report from East Tennessee State University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. In 2011’s second quarter, dollar sales reached $248.1 million in Bristol, $457.5 million in Johnson City, and $364.6 million in Kingsport, totaling $1.686 billion for the Tri-Cities metro area, an increase of 5 percent over 2010’s second quarter. ... In addition to the Tri-Cities sales growth, the state of Tennessee also had both dollar sales and sales volume rise above 2010’s levels, by 5.4 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.
...::::::......
Even the national retail market performed well in the second quarter, recording its seventh consecutive quarter of real growth, Hipple said. Dollar sales increased 8 percent and real sales were higher by 4.5 percent in 2011’s second quarter over the same period last year, the report showed. ... But Hipple warned that the 'diverging trends between the regional and the national economies cannot continue,' and ultimately the worst of the national economy trends will affect local business conditions." -- Kate Prahlad in Shoppers ‘bright spot’ for area economy for Johnson City TN Press, 9/6/2011

National Science Foundation Career-Life Balance Initiative