go figure

4-27-2010—Democrats Deny Buffet on a Key Provision. WSJ A4
--Senate Democrats agreed Monday to cut a provision from their derivatives bill that was sought by Warran Buffet—Ibid.
--I tell all my patients: Chocolate is a vegetable. Dr. Beatrice Golmb WSJ D1
--People who eat more chocolate are more likely to be depressed than people who eat less chocolate, a new study has found.—WSJ D3

weekend update

4-25-2010—“She [GOP Gov. of AZ] felt that the majority of Arizona fall on the side of, Let’s solve the [immigration] problem and not worry about the Constitution.”—[former AZ Att.Gen.,GOP]—NYT A15
--Not your daughter’s jeans: hot doesn’t have to come in flashes.—Bloomingdale Nordstrom Ad, NYT ST9
--So to a contemporary writer like the Soviet-born Andreï Makine, who found political asylum here in 1987, French promises assimilation and a link to the great literary tradition of Zola and Proust. He recounted the story of how, 20-odd years ago, his first manuscripts, which he wrote in French, were rejected by French publishers because it was presumed that he couldn’t write French well enough as a foreigner.
Then he invented the name of a translator, resubmitted the same works as if they were translations from Russian, and they won awards. He added that when his novel “Dreams of My Russian Summers” became a runaway best seller and received the Prix Goncourt, publishing houses in Germany and Serbia wanted to translate the book from its “original” Russian manuscript, so Mr. Makine spent two “sleepless weeks,” he said, belatedly producing one.—NYT AR 21
--4-24-2010—Chinese Military seeks to extend its naval power.NYT A1 [you read it here first]
--Rating Agencies Shared Data and Wall St. Seized Advantage NYT A1 [luv these markets!]
--4-24/25-2010—The bishop of Bruges, Belgium, on Friday became the third European bishop in three days to offer his resignation, after admitting he sexually abused a child 25 years ago. WSJ A6 [hey, he seized his advantage...]
--Ibid. The Army filed formal charges against Lt.Col. Terry Lakin, a military physician who refused to deploy to Afghanistan because he believes President Crack Obama hasn’t proven he was born in the US.—WSJ A5 [military medicine is to medicine as military music is to music...]
--Ibid.—Thirty five people at the [SEC] were found to have looked at porn over the past five years [so now we know why the SEC didn’t catch all the inside informationsharing...]

4-22-2010

4-22-2010--...a “South Park” episode last week ... depicted the founders of various religions, including Moses, Jesus and Buddha, but declined to show the Prophet Muhammad, instead representing him as wearing a bear costume.—NYT C2
--“After much soul searching—and, by the way, it was nowhere to be found—I have decided to do another season of ‘Curb [Your Enthusiasm}’—Larry David, NYT C2
--10/1—Odds that Erin Nordegren will publicly announce her support for Europe in this fall’s Ryder’s Cup. Ms. Nordegren’s husband, Tiger Woods, usually plays for the US.—WSJ D8
--LRB 28 Jan. 2010, p. 3—Today, the high speed growth of the PNC is transforming Western attitudes once again, attracting excitement and enthusiasm in business and media alike, with a wave of fashion and fascination recalling the chinoiserie of rococo Europe.—Perry Anderson

4-20-2010

4-20-2010- The SEC decided to sue Goldman Sachs Group Inc over the objections of two Republican commissioners [in a 3 to 2 vote]—WSJ A1
4-20-2010—Drug prices jumped last year, ahead of federal health overhaul. WSJ B1
--4-20-2010—Defending champion FC Barcelona is the heavy favorite heading into Tuesday’s first leg of Champions League semifinal matches for a simple reason: It has an absurd number of great players.—WSJD8

4-15-2010

4-15-2010—The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. NYT A1
--America’s future math teachers, on average, earned a C on a new test comparing their skills with their counterparts in 15 other countries NYT A15
--With cars as meth labs, evidence litters road. Elkhart Ind.—NYT A1

weekend update

4-10-2010—[Michelle] Bachmann’s fame has increased by leaps and bounds despite the fact that she, um, makes stuff up.—NYT A17 [Midwestern girls]
--4-10/11-2010[Danish truck driver union rep] argues that the right to tip a cold one at work is as sacred as other rights enjoyed by Copenhagen-based Carlsberg workers, such as a year’s sick leave at full pay, an average annual salary of $59,000 and two free crates of beer monthly.—WSJ A1 [workers of the world unite]
4/11/2010----BOSS: Say the user needs to lube the product ten times a day with the wax from a bear’s ear; and say the warranty is voided if the device isn’t properly maintained. DILBERT: Is that legal? BOSS: It’s better than legal. We’re using the law to keep justice away!
--After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.
“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.”
Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects. NYT A1 [you read it first in EXTREME PROUST sec. 46]

4-9-2010

4-9-2010—Major US banks have masked their risk levels in the past five quarters by temporarily lowering their debt just before reporting it to the public, New York Fed data show. WSJ A1
--A South African boy discovered the first known fossils of a pre-human species, raising more questions about the course of human evolution. ..[Bernard Wood, Geo.Wash.U.:] “I think these fossils are evidence that the tree of human evolutionary history had lots of twigs, all but one of which became extinct.”—WSJ, A1, A3 [cmon, give us a little time...]
--“We were fighting what was an obvious, difficult, never-ending, and probably impossible struggle to shoot arrows at this on-coming juggernaut of what was a corporate machine that was going to sweep us away and turn this whole culture into nothing more than a karaoke playground.”—Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, dead at 64. WSJWSJ W3

4-8-2010

4-8-2010—The president of Kyrgyzstan was forced to flee the capital, Bishkek, on Wednesday after bloody protests erupted across the country over his repressive rule, a backlash that could pose a threat to the American military supply line into nearby Afghanistan. … [the] opposition leaders were angered last spring when Obama administration officials courted Mr. Bakiyev — who they admitted was an autocrat — in an ultimately successful attempt to retain rights to the military base, Manas, used to supply troops in Afghanistan. President Obama even sent him a letter of praise. …The American attitude toward Mr. Bakiyev ruffled opposition politicians in Kyrgyzstan, who said it was shameful for the United States to stand for democratic values in the developing world while maintaining an alliance with him. The Kyrgyz president’s son, Maksim, had been scheduled to be in Washington on Thursday for talks with administration officials. The opposition views the younger Mr. Bakiyev as a vicious henchman for his father, and was infuriated that he was granted an audience. The State Department said late on Wednesday that it had canceled the meetings. NYT A1

--Therefore I cannot refrain from speaking about the city of this world, a city which aims at domination, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust of domination.—St. Augustine [don’t ferget, kids, Rome was sacked 1600 years ago this August!]

4-7-2010

4-7-2010—The priest protested he was sleepwalking. Three days later, the archbishop sent the priest to a rehab place in New Mexico; e ended up as a Notre Dame professor. –Dowd NYT A27

4-1-2010

4-1-2010—CEOs see pay fall again. WSJ A1
--Hedge fund pay roars back. NYT B1
--The man chosen by Gov. Charlie Crist to lead the Republican Party of Florida is under criminal investigation after a new audit showed that he may have steered $200,000 in party money to a company he owned. NYT A16