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Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate |
Blowing |
By Joseph E. Stiglitz from Singapore, Opinionator @ nytimes.com, March 18, 2013
Inequality has been rising in most countries around the world, but it has played out in different ways across countries and regions. The United States, it is increasingly recognized, has the sad distinction of being the most unequal advanced country, though the income gap has also widened to a lesser extent, in Britain, Japan, Canada and Germany. Of course, the situation is even worse in Russia, and some developing countries in Latin America and Africa. But this is a club of which we should not be proud to be a member. [....]
Singapore has had the distinction of having prioritized social and economic equity while achieving very high rates of growth over the past 30 years — an example par excellence that inequality is not just a matter of social justice but of economic performance. Societies with fewer economic disparities perform better — not just for those at the bottom or the middle, but over all.
It’s hard to believe how far this city-state has come in the half-century since it attained independence from Britain, in 1963. [....]
BBC News, March 19, 2013
An Iranian, a Lebanese and 16 Saudis have been arrested on spying charges in Saudi Arabia, officials say.
The 18 suspects had been "involved in a spying cell for a state", an interior ministry spokesman told state TV.
"They were gathering information about installations and vital areas in the country and providing intelligence agencies of that state with it," said ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki.
He did not name the country thought to be running the spy network [....]
Palestinian protestors hoisted cheeky anti-Obama signs as the West Bank city of Ramallah prepared for a visit from the U.S. president.
Huffington Post, March 19, 2013
T.J. Lane, who appeared in court Tuesday morning wearing a t-shirt with the word "KILLER" in marker across his chest, will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of three teenagers at an Ohio high school.
Going against the recommendation of his counsel, Lane addressed the courtroom before learning his fate. He smiled periodically and showed little remorse for his actions.
"F--- all of you," he said, before raising his middle finger at the victims' families, according to the Plain Dealer [.....]
More from the Associated Press:
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN
CHARDON, Ohio (AP) — [.....]
T.J. Lane, 18, had pleaded guilty last month to shooting at students in February 2012 at Chardon High School, east of Cleveland. Investigators have said he admitted to the shooting but said he didn't know why he did it. Before the case went to adult court last year, a juvenile court judge ruled that Lane was mentally competent to stand trial despite evidence he suffers from hallucinations, psychosis and fantasies.
Lane was defiant during the sentencing, smiling and smirking throughout, including while four relatives of victims spoke. [.....] At one point, he swiveled around in his chair toward the gallery where his own family members and those of the slain teenagers were sitting and spoke suddenly, surprising even his lawyer.
"The hand that pulls the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory," he said, then cursed at and raised his middle finger toward the victims' relatives. [.....]
The University of Michigan and Wayne State University will lose 15% of their state appropriations next year if they negotiate contracts with unions "under certain circumstances" (whatever they may be).
Sec. 265b. Employee Contracting – NEW
Provides that funds appropriated for fiduciary responsibility in employee contracting be paid to a university only if it does not extend, renew, or enter into a labor contract under certain circumstances between December 10, 2012 and March 28, 2013 without achieving 10% or greater savings and does not enter into a contract between the same dates that contains only terms that constitute a union security agreement that requires any of several specified employee actions as a condition of employment. House adds new section.
Caleb Gordley wanted to go to a party Saturday night. But the 16-year-old was grounded because he hadn’t cleaned his room. So he decided he’d sneak out of his Loudoun County house to be with his friends.
When he left the party about 2 a.m., Caleb needed to sneak home. His friends dropped him off and helped hoist him through a back window. But Caleb had been drinking and had gone to the wrong house. The brick homes on his street are similar, and Caleb was two doors down from his own.
(Family photo) - Caleb Gordley
Caleb didn’t stop, and the home-owner fired again, striking and killing the teen, the official said.
A day later, Caleb’s friends and family were trying to figure out how this promising, well-liked athlete, who stayed out of trouble and generally listened to his parents, could have died in such a way.
.....
Every day I am online giving away — not just bits of information but bytes of my soul, or at least that’s the way it feels. Obviously the social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, et al, are the most glaring examples. We can complain about Google and about the predatory identity thieves out there who hack into our so-called private information. But the truth is we are the saboteurs of our own privacy.
...
I see in myself what I see in others, a turn towards the spotlight — or the cyberlight, if you will. A willingness to live a large part of life in public, to give away part of myself, to spill my guts, my sorrows — over losing a mother, for example, as I did not so long ago — in a cheap and easy way.
Reuters Paris, March 17, 2013
French President Francois Hollande's popularity has fallen to the lowest level since he was elected last May, taking his rating below that of far-right leader Marine Le Pen for the first time, a poll showed on Sunday.
Only 31 percent are satisfied with Hollande's performance, eight points less than last month, as the Socialist president battles unemployment at a 13-year high and a stagnant economy, according to the poll carried out for newspaper Metro and TV channel LCI. Hollande had started his presidency with a 59 percent approval rating [....]
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici have as few supporters as Hollande, while Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who cultivates a tough-guy image, comes top of the government, with 58 percent satisfied with his performance.
Senior opposition politicians, including former conservative prime ministers Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe are more popular than Hollande and Ayrault. Far-right leader Le Pen was ahead by one point, the first time she has beaten Hollande during his time in government.
Nearly two thirds want a government reshuffle [....]
Also see:
Paris Housing Prices Sputter as Hollande’s Taxes Threaten Boom
By Francois de Beaupuy & Caroline Connan, Bloomberg News, March 17, 2013
By Amy Chozick,New York Times, March 15/16, 2013
BALLIVOR, Ireland — Legend has it that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. The economic crisis has brought some of them back.
During the Celtic Tiger boom, snakes became a popular pet among the Irish nouveaux riches, status symbols in a country famous for its lack of indigenous serpents. But after the bubble burst, many snake owners could no longer afford the cost of food, heating and shelter, or they left the country for work elsewhere. Some left their snakes behind or turned them loose in the countryside, leading to some startling encounters.
A California king snake was found late last year in a vacant store in Dublin, a 15-foot python turned up in a garden in Mullingar, a corn snake was found in a trash bin in Clondalkin in South Dublin, and an aggressive rat snake was kept in a shed in County Meath, northwest of Dublin, an area dotted with sprawling houses built during the boom.
“The recession is the thing that’s absolutely causing this,” said Kevin Cunningham, a 37-year-old animal lover who started the National Exotic Animal Sanctuary after he left his job at a Dublin nightclub [.....]
By Umesh Singh in Gwalior, Hindustan Times, March 16, 2013
A 38-year-old Swiss national, who was taking a bicycle tour through Madhya Pradesh, was gang-raped, beaten up and robbed at gunpoint by more than six men on Friday night.
The victim, who resides in Lausanne, Switzerland, was with her husband when the horrific incident took place. The two were cycling from Orchha, a heritage tourism spot, to Agra when they decided to camp in a jungle near Jhadia village.
Around 9pm, the criminals, mostly in their 20s, broke into their camp, handcuffed the husband and raped the woman. They then fled with their mobile phones, a laptop and Rs. 10,000. Battered and bruised, the couple took a lift from a passerby and reached the police station in Datia district, from where they were taken to the hospital. A medical examination confirmed rape by multiple people [....]
The current Vatican standard for Pope: 'he was never charged with anything', Federico Lombardi, Director of the Holy See Press Office. Pope or Mayor of Chicago?
Cardinal Bergoglio on the murder and 'disappearance' of new mothers by the Junta, after delivery of their babies who were then stolen, from the link: "The cardinal said he had only known about that practice after democracy returned to Argentina in 1983." A grandmother of a 'disappeared' woman ..."When my father met the bishop, he was informed that his granddaughter was 'now with a good family',...."
Yikes, is this guy trolling or does he really believe what he said???? OMG.
By Shan Ross, The Scotsman, March 13, 2013
The remains of a medieval knight have been discovered underneath a car park that is being demolished at a city-centre building site. The skeleton was found in Edinburgh’s Old Town after archaeologists uncovered the corner of an elaborately decorated sandstone slab bearing markings of a member of the nobility – the carvings of the Calvary Cross and an ornate sword. An excavation of the immediate area uncovered the adult skeleton [....]
The discovery is being hailed as having the potential to be “one of the most significant and exciting archaeological discoveries in the city for years”.
The find comes just a month after a skeleton unearthed in a car park in Leicester was confirmed as being that of the English king Richard III [....]
The knight’s remains have also revealed the exact location of Blackfriars Monastery, which was founded in 1230 by Alexander II – king of Scotland from 1214 to 1249 – before it was destroyed during the Reformation [....]
But wait, there's more medieval skeletons paved over in the UK:
Construction Crews May Have Found 'Black Plague' Victims In Britain
By Korva Coleman, The Two-Way @ NPR.org, March 15, 2013
What can you find underneath a British railroad or parking lot? These days it could be skeletons, and probably a lot of them. Last month, researchers announced the bones of a man discovered underneath a British parking lot were actually King Richard III. Today, a British rail project says some of its staff stumbled upon skeletons of people who may have died of the Black Death nearly 700 years ago, during an outbreak of bubonic plague.
Thirteen skeletons were found lying in two neat rows about eight feet beneath the road in central London, as workers surveyed land for the Crossrail project, a transportation effort that's building new rail lines for London. It's believed they're from a bubonic plague outbreak in 1348 [....]
The idea that we’re being unwittingly drugged when we drink a glass of ordinary tap water smacks of dystopian science fiction or political conspiracy theory. Accusations that Communists were spiking America’s water with sedatives—under the cover of the federally instituted fluoridation program—were such a staple of Cold War–era paranoia that Stanley Kubrick satirized it in his 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. While such fear-mongering may seem quaint, what’s truly ironic is that Americans today are consuming prescription drugs—including addictive psychoactive ones—via the water supply. Who knew?
Not able to discuss except to say that this is what unions do. So proud of these folks.
Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches, God's Profits) is an American journalist. She is Senior Editor for Religion Dispatches, writing on the intersections of religion and politics and Mary E. Hunt (Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual, Religion Dispatches) is a lesbian feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. 34 minute video.
By Ryan J. Reilly, Huffington Post, March 14, 3013
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer seemed to indicate Thursday they'd consider a U.S. citizen born in Puerto Rico "natural-born" and eligible to run for president. Their comments, directed at Puerto Rican-born Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.), came during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the Supreme Court's budget.
[....]
Kennedy noted that the "likely explanation" for the natural-born citizen clause of the constitution was that the founding fathers were trying to prevent European royalty from occupying the White House.
"That's the probable reason," Kennedy said. "I wasn't there at the time."
By Robin Givhan, Washington Post/Style, March 14, 2013
The bangs made it into Vogue.
First lady Michelle Obama will appear on the cover of the fashion glossy when the April issue arrives on newsstands in less than two weeks. But with this sophomore turn on the Vogue cover, the sight of her smiling visage and freshly cut locks in the pages of the fashion industry’s guardian of establishment aesthetics is less of a surprise and more of an expectation.
Obama seems to have settled comfortably into her pop-culture status as a fashion icon [....]
Also see:
Michelle Obama on Vogue cover. Running for something?
By Peter Grier, DC Decoder @csmonitor.com, March 14, 2013
Michelle Obama is the focus of a new Vogue piece about the first couple. Also this week, Hillary-Michelle has been a hot search term, but there's no real news on such a front.
Associated Press, March 16, 2013
PITTSBURGH—The mother of a man charged in a fatal shooting at a western Pennsylvania bar is now accused of having illegally provided her son with firearms.
Sixty-year-old Gloria Mazzocco of Imperial was charged Wednesday in Allegheny County with conspiracy, violations of the uniform firearms act and providing a firearm to a person barred from possessing one [ ....]
Hat tip: Joe Nocera's Day in Gun Violence blog @ nytimes.com
Finally time to really seriously lock up your guns?
Edit to add: This is a case of mental illness, see the updated news in my first comment; added to my headline.
......
Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker online, March 12, 2013.
In an announcement reminiscent of "Dewey Defeats Truman", TBogg jumps the gun and reveals the new pope to be Marisa Tomei I.
Sad, as with her star-studded career, she might have been regarded the world's first SuperPope, and would certainly have looked better in Prada than the previous pope.
Plus the name "Raymond J. De Souza" evokes a writer of detective novels, not the shepherd of the world's sheep.
Still, it marks a departure of the Papacy out of depressing grey Central Europe to warmer southern climes, where mass will now be conducted clockwise due to the reversed Coriolis force.
Rumors have it the new Pope will take his vows wearing a Gaucho hat and boots. However, many rumors have previously been shown to be dead wrong.
I'm also left wondering how we'll make a movie about Benedict what with Heath Ledger gone...
“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated. It’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
– President Barack Obama
One of the enduring myths of the Iraq War is that George W. Bush’s “surge” of 30,000 US troops into Iraq in 2007, reduced the number of attacks on US troops and effectively defeated the Sunni-led insurgency in Baghdad. This is entirely false.
By Mark Hugo Lopez, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera and Eileen Patten, Pew Research Hispanic Center, March 7, 2013
Latinos own smartphones, go online from a mobile device and use social networking sites at similar—and sometimes higher—rates than do other groups of Americans, according to a new analysis of three surveys by the Pew Research Center.
The analysis also finds that when it comes to using the internet,1 the digital divide between Latinos and whites is smaller than what it had been just a few years ago. Between 2009 and 2012, the share of Latino adults who say they go online at least occasionally increased 14 percentage points, rising from 64% to 78%.2 Among whites, internet use rates also increased, but only by half as much—from 80% in 2009 to 87% in 2012.
Over the same period, the gap in cellphone ownership between Latinos and other groups either diminished or disappeared [.....]
By Aamer Madhani, USA Today, May 19, 2013
President Obama on Sunday told the graduating class at Morehouse College, the country's pre-eminent historically black college, there is "no time for excuses" for this generation of African-American men and that it was time for their generation to step up professionally and in their personal lives.
[....] The president connected his own path to the White House to the work of King and other African-American leaders of that generation. But Obama also conceded that at times as a young man he wrongly blamed his own failings "as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down."
"We've got no time for excuses — not because the bitter legacies...
Prompted by Peggy Noonan's claim in The Wall Street Journal that "we are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate," Andrew Sullivan steps forward to defend Pres. Obama's honor. "Can she actually believe this?," he asks incredulously.
By Julian Pecquet, The Hill, May 18, 2013
Congress is ramping up a new round of sanctions against Iran, ignoring the Obama administration's request to let diplomacy run its course.
In back-to-back hearings this week, lawmakers on key House and Senate panels put the State and Treasury departments on notice that their patience is wearing thin after the latest round of talks last month failed to produce a deal. Both chambers have legislative efforts in the works – the House foreign affairs panel will vote next week – but the administration is warning against any moves that could undermine international support for the existing sanctions against Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program [....]
By Carl Zimmer, New York Times/Science, May 16/17, 2013
An article that summarizes the recent work of Ya-Ping Zhang, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has led an international network of scientists who have compared pieces of DNA from different canines which is pointing to the theory that dogs domesticated themselves.
But the article's message is not just what it first appears to be. When you get to the concluding paragraphs there are some real though provokers:
[....] SLC6A4 may have played a crucial part in this change, because serotonin influences aggression.
To test these ideas,...
By Neha Paliwal, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, May 17, 2013
On Friday, chaotic clashes broke out in Georgia as an angry mob -- comprised mainly of young men but also including robed priests and some women -- descended on a gay rights rally commemorating International Day Against Homophobia. A day earlier, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church had demanded that authorities stop the rally, calling it a "violation of the majority's right."
According to EurasiaNet, the mob, which numbered...
