Today is Monday, Nov. 30, the 334th day of 2009. There are 31 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Nov. 30, 1939, the Russo-Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, began as Soviet troops invaded Finland. (The conflict ended the following March with a Soviet victory.) On this date In [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Today in History – November 30
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 30 on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Decisions, Decisions
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
President Obama has no trouble making them! Well, except when they’re hard. If it seems as though the world is moving faster than ever before, maybe that’s just because the White House is moving so slowly. To take an example at random, on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush gave an address to a joint session of [...]
Terror by Trial Lawyer
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Arlen Specter would make it easier for terrorists to sue. If you think it’s outrageous that Navy SEALs who helped capture one of Iraq’s most wanted terrorists now face court-martial on charges they roughed him up, just wait. It may get worse. Tomorrow morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on a bill [...]
Temporary Workers and the 21st Century Economy
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The surge in temp hiring is not a sign of a malfunctioning economy. It is the face of the future. The White House is turning its nose up at last month’s spurt in temporary work—the one bright spot in an otherwise grim jobs report. It claims that such work is proof that the economy is [...]
John Kerry’s Tora Bora Campaign
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, tagged Afghanistan on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The Senator is now in favor of more troops after he was against them. President Obama unveils his new Afghanistan strategy today, and in the nick of time Senator John Kerry has arrived with a report claiming that none of this would be necessary if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops [...]
The Climate Science Isn’t Settled
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted. Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned. [...]
Climategate: Follow the Money
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Climate change researchers must believe in the reality of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God. Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute [...]
Open Source as a Model for Business Is Elusive
Posted in Computers on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the world free of charge, and legions of volunteers contribute improvements that are also freely shared. The start-up company came out of nowhere, building a database application beloved by vibrant, young [...]
Lead Us Not Into Debt
Posted in Economy and business, Religion on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Dave Ramsey Dave Ramsey looks nothing like a televangelist. He’s a little on the short side, neither fat nor thin, and he wears jeans and a sports jacket, not a shiny suit and an oily smile. With his goatee and what’s left of his graying hair trimmed close to his head, he looks mostly like [...]
At This School, It’s Marijuana in Every Class
Posted in Other, tagged Marijuana on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Nick Tennant, 24, the founder of Med Grow Cannabis College, something of a trade school for medical marijuana growers At most colleges, marijuana is very much an extracurricular matter. But at Med Grow Cannabis College, marijuana is the curriculum: the history, the horticulture and the legal how-to’s of Michigan’s new medical marijuana program. “This state [...]
Things French kings never said
Posted in History, Literature on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
King Louis XIV of France never said L’état c’est moi, Louis XV never said Après moi le déluge and Queen Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake [Qu'ils mangent de la brioche] Of course true scholars here on the blog already knew this but I didn’t. Those famous royal remarks are among dozens [...]
Does everything have to be shortened?
Posted in Language on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Last week the New Oxford American Dictionary named “unfriend” as word of the year. “Unfriend” is a verb that means to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site. Reading the shortlist for word of the year was depressing. There was “funemployed” — referring to those who take advantage of being out of [...]
The Fall and Rise of Media
Posted in Economy and business, Media on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a [...]
Growing, Yes, but India Has Reasons to Worry
Posted in Economy and business, Politics, tagged India on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Military trucks in Arunachal Pradesh, where India has maintained a heavy military presence since its 1962 war with China. During President Obama’s recent visit to China, many in India speculated that an emerging “G2” would leave their nation out in the cold. “Obama’s China (credit) card casts shadow on PM’s US visit” ran a headline [...]
In Search of Their Own Elixir of Love
Posted in Health, Living on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
BLUSHING AT THE THOUGHT There is no corresponding drug like Viagra for women, who see men enjoying the benefits of a little blue pill. CHARLOTTE McLAUGHLIN was married for 35 wonderful years. “He was the only partner in my life, a terrific guy,” said Ms. McLaughlin, a retired cosmetics consultant. But in 2001, her husband, [...]
The art of being an expert witness
Posted in Law, tagged Expert testimony on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
In-depth knowledge of a subject is not enough. Professionalism and integrity are essential too, says senior judge In the popular American crime drama, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, expert usually provide the vital missing link needed to solve the crime. But in real life, experts are not the panacea, one of the most senior judges in [...]
Fossil theft: One of our dinosaurs is missing
Posted in Law, Natural sciences on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The illegal trade is increasingly lucrative, with dire results for science Fossilised remains in a museum in Kunming, China Armed with rock chisels, it took the thief only a few minutes to wipe out 135 million years of history. The fossilised iguanodon footprint was hacked out of the limestone slab where it had lain in [...]
Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
Posted in Economy and business, Living, Religion on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking [...]
Rocker Offends Germans with Nazi-Era Anthem
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Law, Politics, tagged Germany on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Doherty Über Alles Pete Doherty on stage at his concert in Munich Sunday following his gaffe on a live radio broadcast on Saturday. British musician Pete Doherty was booed heavily in Germany after singing the first verse of the German national anthem. The lyrics are taboo in Germany because of their Nazi associations. Pete Doherty, [...]
‘Germany Would Also Have Voted to Ban Minarets’
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Human rights, Politics, tagged Germany, Switzerland on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The World from Berlin The Mahmud Mosque in Zurich has one of only four minarets in Switzerland. No more will be built following Sunday’s referendum. Switzerland’s vote to ban minarets is a disaster for its image, write German commentators. The vote doesn’t just reflect a fear of “Islamization” but also shows that setbacks in recent [...]
Susan Boyle reaches No 1 with record-breaking debut album
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, tagged Susan Boyle on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Britain’s Got Talent star makes UK chart history with highest ever first-week sales for a debut album Susan Boyle … Britain’s Got Talent star soars to No 1. A 48-year-old Scottish church volunteer has trumped Arctic Monkeys and Leona Lewis – not to mention U2 and Michael Jackson – with record-breaking sales of her first [...]
Fed ‘reform’ we don’t want
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged Federal Reserve on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Ever since its creation in 1913, the Federal Reserve has grappled with a daunting political contradiction. The Fed is charged with preventing the collapse of the banking and financial system, whose health is essential for the “real economy” of production and jobs. But financial bailouts usually occur when mistakes or misdeeds by bankers and investment [...]
The deflated Arab hopes for Obama
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
It’s been nearly six months since Barack Obama stirred hearts and raised hopes across much of the Arab world with his much-promoted Cairo address. Many came away from it expecting a new and more vigorous U.S. attempt to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others hoped for more American sympathy and support for liberal reform in countries [...]
Social climbing with a twist
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Editorials and opinion, Living, Strange but true on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
White House gate-crashers in a long tradition President Obama shakes hands with Michaele Salahi at Tuesday’s state dinner as her husband, Tareq Salahi, looks on. Social climbing is an ancient art, one as old as society itself. The character of the high-society impostor — the fake aristocrat, the soi-disant marquis, the “professor” with no degree [...]
The FHA goes upmarket
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged FHA on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Washington’s latest benefit for the not-so-poor CREATED DURING the depths of the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration has a long history of supporting homeownership in the United States. In recent decades, its mission has been to enable lower-income Americans to tap otherwise inaccessible mortgage credit. Purchasers who meet certain qualifications can get a house [...]
Enlarging NATO, Expanding Confusion
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Nato on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
TWENTY years ago, dictatorships across Central and Eastern Europe toppled. During this season of remembering, the focus has rightly been on celebration of the new freedoms gained by the inhabitants of those countries: to speak freely, to travel, to vote and to choose their own national futures and alliances. Yet the legacy of 1989 has [...]
A Generation in the Balance
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Do downturns create Democrats? The Great Depression certainly did: The generation that came of age in the 1930s has cleaved to the Democratic Party like no population before or since. And it makes intuitive sense that experiencing a recession at a formative age could inspire lifelong sympathy for the party of the welfare state and [...]
The Jobs Imperative
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged Unemployment on November 30, 2009 | Comments Off
If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s. [...]
Today in History – November 29
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 29 on November 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Sunday, Nov. 29, the 333rd day of 2009. There are 32 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Nov. 29, 1961, Enos the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning. On this date In 1530, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, one-time adviser [...]
Pepper…and Salt
Posted in Pepper and salt, tagged November 29 2009 on November 29, 2009 | Comments Off
__________ Full article and photo: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574565964075852856.html
