It certainly sounded good. Hoping, perhaps, to persuade a dubious public that curbing reckless business practices is indeed a Washington priority, the Obama administration and Congress produced a hat trick of financial reforms last week. The outlines of a consumer financial protection agency emerged from the House Financial Services Committee. The House Agriculture Committee spelled [...]
Archive for October, 2009
Wall Street Follies: The Next Act
Posted in Economy and business on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today in History – October 26
Posted in This day in history, tagged October 26 on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Monday, Oct. 26, the 299th day of 2009. There are 66 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Oct. 26, 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death during a dinner party along with his chief bodyguard by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim Jae-kyu, [...]
Antibody ‘fixes internal bleeds’
Posted in Health on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Scientists say they have discovered an antibody that could minimise the major internal bleeding seen in traumas like bullet wounds and car crashes. The team at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) has discovered that a protein called histone is responsible for much of the damage. They say they have found a specific type of antibody [...]
Space hopper
Posted in Space on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Lunar landers A prize for a moon lander will be won this month Boing! IF PEOPLE are to explore the moon again they will need ways of travelling across the lunar surface and also of digging holes in it. But because America’s space agency, NASA, spends most of its money on the space station and [...]
Hell on Earth
Posted in Editorials and opinion, tagged North Korea on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The West still turns a blind eye to the world’s most brutal and systematic abuse of human rights A SPRAWLING encampment of think-tankers, academics, hacks and policymakers earns a living outside North Korea’s walls. They pick over its nuclear intentions and the prospects for the diplomatic dance known as the six-party process, which is meant [...]
Questions about pot
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Law on October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Has the Justice Department taken a first step toward decriminalization of marijuana? THE JUSTICE Department announced last week that it would not prosecute patients who legally obtain marijuana from licensed dispensaries in the 13 states that allow medicinal use. The decision is both sensible and potentially problematic. People suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and [...]
‘Man Up, Obama’ and Other Nonsense
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Our liberal op-ed writers don’t think a president from Chicago is tough enough. Earlier this month, New York Times “visual op-ed columnist” Charles M. Blow blasted Barack Obama for his refusal to stand “up for his convictions.” The thrust of the article—an unoriginal idea if there ever was one—was that the president needs to heed [...]
Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The health-care debate is part of a larger moral struggle over the free-enterprise system. Regardless of how President Barack Obama’s health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year. According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the [...]
Debtors to the Front
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged IMF on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
A plan to cede U.S. influence at the IMF. Banks around the world have been battered in the past year, but most have not responded by turning over control of their businesses to their borrowers. Yet this is what creditors at the International Monetary Fund moved closer to doing at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh [...]
The Countrywide Files
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
A revolt forces Ed Towns to subpoena the ‘Friends of Angelo’ documents. At last, there’s some good news for taxpayers in the Countrywide Financial loan scandal. On Friday night, House oversight committee chairman Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) and ranking member Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) reached an agreement to subpoena documents from the “Friends of Angelo” [...]
Argentina’s Kirchner Targets the Press
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Argentina on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
As the state-run economy hits the skids, the government responds with a crackdown on the free press. One way a president can boost poll numbers in a bad economy is to wrest control of the central bank and start printing lots of pesos. There’s nothing like cheap financing to restore the market’s enthusiasm for buying [...]
Six Steps to Revitalize the Financial System
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
We need one regulator that can see a company’s entire balance sheet. Pay caps will only drive talent abroad. The debate over financial services reform has meandered for weeks without a clear sense of urgency. It would be a huge opportunity lost if our political, regulatory and business leaders cannot craft a credible new regulatory [...]
The Spending Rolls On
Posted in Editorials and opinion on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The fiscal 2010 bills grow domestic programs by 12.1%. The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for [...]
Today in History – October 25
Posted in This day in history, tagged October 25 on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Sunday, Oct. 25, the 298th day of 2009. There are 67 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Oct. 25, 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown went on trial in Charles Town, Va., for his failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. (Brown was convicted of treason against Virginia, [...]
Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt
Posted in History on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The heavy clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault’s farm looks as treacherous as it must have been nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English Army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much [...]
It Takes a Village to Open a Bistro
Posted in Living on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
I WAS recently sitting at the bar of Le Petit Zinc talking to the owner, Charles Sorel, when he said something I found shocking: “I can’t imagine opening a business anywhere but Detroit.” From a local, I would have just written it off as city pride, but Charles is, as he himself puts it, a [...]
Meet the Farmers
Posted in Living on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
LEO AND DEANNA FUHRMEISTER own a beautiful farm in what my husband, Rob, calls the Yosemite Valley of Iowa City. Rob, a landscape painter, noticed their land from the highway. “They’ve got it all,” he said, admiringly. “Rolling cornfields, a winding stream, cows and massive oak trees.” He knocked on their front door, and he’s [...]
More Matter, With Less Art
Posted in Living on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
IT has been a tumultuous year for Rebecca Smith, who owned a well-known contemporary art gallery until last June. The recession delivered an economic shock to the art market, and Becky’s New York City gallery struggled for months before she decided to shutter it. In the process, she came into conflict with some of the [...]
Our Cars, Ourselves
Posted in Living on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
I DECIDED to buy a car. Actually, I didn’t decide so much as realize that at 198,000 miles, even my ever-trusty Honda couldn’t last forever. Now, I didn’t trade it in with cash for clunkers. I got rid of it the old-fashioned way. I sold it for $500 to a college student who was thrilled [...]
Genome analysis changes diagnosis
Posted in Health on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The gene causing the boy’s problem can be traced back to our invertebrate ancestors A critically ill Turkish boy has had his life saved after scientists were able to read his genome quickly and work out that he had a wrong diagnosis. The scientists writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [...]
Galileo’s Notebooks May Reveal Secrets Of New Planet
Posted in History, Physical sciences on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date, according to a new theory by a University of Melbourne physicist. Professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics, is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago and believes that buried in the notations is [...]
Rock of Ages, Cleft by the Pope
Posted in Religion on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
THE images and clichés came spluttering out of the laptops of church people and religious affairs correspondents on Tuesday: The pope has parked his tanks on the Church of England’s lawn; Rome has made a hostile takeover bid for Canterbury. It is understandable if people are at a loss for words, since the move has [...]
Pumpkin Eaters
Posted in Living on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
THERE is a tendency among the French to welcome certain aspects of American life with immediate and uncritical enthusiasm: hamburgers, Jerry Lewis, baseball caps, elderly television series (“Starsky & Hutch” is still running on French TV), Westerns, Marlboro Lights, button-down shirts — these and much more besides have crossed the Atlantic to become firmly embedded [...]
Afghanistan could turn into Vietnam. Let’s hope so.
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
In a ceremony last week honoring a unit of Vietnam veterans for their heroism in a long-forgotten battle, President Obama offered a glimpse of how heavily the lessons of Vietnam weigh on him as he considers the way forward in Afghanistan. “If that day in the jungle, if that war long ago, teaches us anything,” [...]
Islam’s Darwin problem
Posted in Religion on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
In the Muslim world, creationism is on the rise Three weeks ago, with much fanfare, a team of scientists unveiled the fossil skeleton of Ardi, a 4-foot-tall female primate who lived and died 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. According to her discoverers, Ardi – short for Ardipithecus ramidus, her species – [...]
The third-best reform
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
How Congress ducks the problem of tax-free health insurance ECONOMIST ALAN Blinder once proposed Murphy’s Law of Economic Policy, which goes in part: “Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed.” The health-care debate is threatening to show Blinder’s law in action. If there is one thing [...]
Point taken
Posted in The Word, tagged October 25 2009 on October 25, 2009 | Comments Off
How finely should we put it? “NOT TO PUT too fine a point on it, the Roundabout’s revival of ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ is the worst-sung musical I’ve ever seen on Broadway,” wrote Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal of the new production. “Betty has been, not to put too fine a point on it, [...]
Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses. They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect. “We see it as an acknowledgment [...]
Today in History – October 24
Posted in This day in history, tagged October 24 on October 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Saturday, Oct. 24, the 297th day of 2009. There are 68 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History In Oct. 24, 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect. (On this date in 1949, construction began on the U.N. headquarters in New York.) On this date [...]
Squirrels, jellyfish and a red deer in autumn
Posted in Animals, Photo galleries on October 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Felix, a female African elephant, eats a pumpkin at the The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. A squirrel reaches for a peanut from the hand of a woman in a park on an autumn day in the Belarusian capital of Minsk… …while this terrified squirrel runs for its life as a hawk bares its talons and [...]
