crabs

HARPERS NOV. 2009:
--% of white Americans in August who said they considered Fox News “reliable: 46
--% of black and Latino Americans, respectively, who did: 5, 11 [p.13]

--Those who celebrated Bush’s militancy back in the intoxicating days when he was promising to rid the world of evil see Obama’s enthusiasm for pressing on in Afghanistan as a vindication of sorts. They are right to do so. ... Not for nothing has [Afghanistan] acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how the British, Russians, or others have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans.... For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building ... why not fix first, say, Mexico? ... The contrast between Washington’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of US national security priorities adopted by George W. Bush in his post-9/11 prophetic mode—distortions now being endorsed by Bush’s successor. It also testifies to a vast failure of imagination to which our governing classes have succumbed. ... The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom.—Prof. Andrew Bacevich [pp. 15,16,18,20]

--...we concluded that I was doomed for the rest of my life to be a professor. Not that I hated to teach. But defined. Classified. Serious. That was the worst part, to have to be serious about life. ...The basic question: Who was ready, willing even, to launch an attack on the other, to lead us into a new war that would devastate the planet. Obviously, it was the United States. ... Then deGaulle seized power and suddenly it dawned on my that my life would be totally absurd, that my generation was doomed to exist under his pathetic and ridiculous assurances of “la grandeur de la France.”—Jean Paul Sartre [21]

demographics

10-28-09—[an analysis] found that Dallas and Houston were attracting less-educated migrants [raising thegeneral average IQs of where they came from and also where they were going to] NYT A20

--Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden lead the world in gender equality, as measured by economic participation, education, health and political empowerment. The USA is 31st.—NYT A11

catch up

10-27-09—[the new US Embassy in Iraq] is a monument to shoddy work and incompetent oversight.—NYT A8
--“We see a situation where [college] athletics expenditures are rising three or four times gaster than expenditures in academic programs..”—NYT B15
--An OECD report found that just 57% of children in the US live with both parents, among the lowest percentages of the world’s richest nations.—WSJ B8
--[In Georgia, a school district policy of prohibiting school sponsored Biblical citations] has produced an unexpected result: more biblical verses at football games, displayed not by cheerleaders, but by fans sitting in the stands.—NYT A12
10-25-09--A Saudi court on Saturday sentenced a female journalist to 60 lashes after she had been charged with involvement in a TV show in which a Saudi man publily talked about sex.—SBT A8

10-14-09

10-14-09Wall Street on Track to Award Record Pay—WSJ A1

10-13-09

10-13-09-- Ms. Ostrom is the first woman to receive the economics prize in the 41-year history of the award. She is a political scientist, not an economist, and in honoring her, the judges seemed to suggest that economics should be thought of as an interdisciplinary field rather than a pure science governed by mathematics. “This award is part of the merging of the social sciences,” said Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist. “Economics has been too isolated and too stuck on the view that markets are efficient and self-regulating. It has derailed our thinking.”

10-11/12

10-12-09—HOOSIER WINS NOBEL PRIZE. A U.S. academic who proved that communities can trump state control and corporations became the first woman to win the Nobel prize in economics on Monday, sharing it with an expert on conflict resolution. Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University defied conventional wisdom with studies that showed that user-managed properties -- such as community fish stocks or woodland areas -- more often than not were better run than standard theories predicted. "Since we have found that bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information while citizens and users of resources do, we hope it helps encourage a sense of capacity and power," the professor told a news conference via telephone. The previously accepted view was common property was poorly managed and should be either regulated centrally or privatized. (Reuters)

–10-11-09--...While Leif Erikson Day passed largely unnoticed Wednesday amid the daily presidential smorgasbord of Afghanistan and health care, the White House took care to mark the event with a soaring tribute to the Scandinavian explorer... [Former White House press secretary Martin Fitzwater observed] “You can just come out and proclaim it “National Rabbit Day” or something and make a bunch of rabbit lovers very happy very easily. Or Polish Americans. Some were no doubt gratified by Mr. Obama’s proclamation of General Pulaski Memorial Day (Friday), just as German-Americans might have been buoyed by Germany-American Day (Tuesday), and Nordic Americans were likely cheered by Mr. Obama’s Leif Erikson Day gesture. “It’s one of my favorite days,” gushed Sig Rogich ....”Leif never gets any credit at all ... It’s all Columbus this, Columbus that.” NYT 21

10-09-09

10-09-09—Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize [find a news source]

--There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe is still the center of the literary world, not the United States. The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”—Horace Engdahl, Nobel Prize Secretary, 2008 (NYT, C34)

--“The Damned United”[a British soccer movie] is rated R...British football fans, players, and coaches swear a lot when they’re upset. Also when they’re happy. Pretty much when they’re awake.—A.O.Scott, NYT C8

10-08-09

10-08-09--...the quality of the health care children get today will shape their contributions to the economy when they grow up. –WSJ A2
--...I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel [who argue before the Supreme Court] except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.—Antonin Scalia WSJ A17
--...more than a third of parents don’t want their kids vaccinated [for swine flu] according to an AP-GfK poll. AP

this medical stuff is just really so too complicated

10-06-09 –Expanding health insurance to cover everyone over the age of 51 might help save costs to Medicare in the long run ... People between the ages of 51 and 65 who lack health insurance end up costing Medicare about $1000 more per year when they turn 65 than people who have had coverage all along... NYT A17

hopefully FOX, Rush, Glen or Bill can give us the real scientific truth here...

10-05-09--STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three Americans won the Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for revealing the existence and nature of telomerase, an enzyme which helps prevent the fraying of chromosomes that underlies aging and cancer...An outspoken researcher, Blackburn was fired in 2004 from then-President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics for her criticism of his policy on embryonic stem cell research.

day late a dollar short

10-02-09—Chicago loses
10-01-09—The US government said Wednesday it had ended its 11 year contract with the nonprofit body that oversees key aspects of the Internet’s architecture, afer demands from other countries for more say in how the Web works. ... Some countries, including China, have suggested they would build their own version of the Internet if the matter wasn’t resolved. WSJ B4
10-01-09---Gates has voiced doubts about Afghan war strategy. WSJ A1