December 27, 2009 – 8:09 pm
The weekend incidents on flights tell a strange story. Here’s a bit from McCLatchey on the Sunday incident: The latest scare aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 involved what the airline described as a “verbally disruptive” passenger and triggered an examination of baggage on the Detroit tarmac to determine if there were explosives on the plane. [...]
December 21, 2009 – 10:59 am
Alan Atkisson on Copenhagen The world will never be the same. But it’s the way that the world will never be the same that interests me, for the events of the past two weeks in Copenhagen signal not just a change in global climate politics, but a change in global politics, period. The primary outcome [...]
November 25, 2009 – 10:22 am
Lawrence Johnson on FB has sparked yet another conversation related to education and culture, drawing on an example of textbook company incentives and the seeming de-emphasis of the value of hard work required for excellence in learning: use this tool and student performance will improve. The conversation is proceeding but as I don’t like the [...]
November 22, 2009 – 9:02 pm
The buddha in me is burning.
November 22, 2009 – 7:08 pm
How the contexts of history repeat themselves. At the outset, no one was sure the New Deal would work, but it did. Soon afterward, economist John Maynard Keynes provided the reasoning: Contrary to economic orthodoxy, government action and deficit spending are essential tools to combat the failure of the private economy in a depression. The [...]
August 14, 2009 – 6:21 pm
Professor Richard Edwards posts this article from The Independent entitled “The Brutal Truth about America’s Health Care System.” It’s very sad: In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday [...]
I’ve been writing in the mornings, gardening, and working on reports and courses for the fall. Usually, I’ll eat a baloney sandwich and watch MSNBC or CNN with it. This has become an unhealthy habit, and the baloney’s not much good for me either. Afternoon TV news is all commercials and random goodies I have [...]
My wife brewed up some silver needle tea pretty close to tea time and it was a wonderful experience. This is becoming a pleasant habit.
February 26, 2009 – 6:30 am
What a wonderful display of ignorance on Morning Joe this morning. All talking heads admitting little understanding about banks and how someone should explain it all, please. Oh, how all of them were tricked and did not see the crisis coming (while reporting for years on proper power tie colors). Little is required other than [...]
February 24, 2009 – 6:41 am
I’m not sure what the notorious $25 to the unemployed has to do with relief, stimulus, or economics, while AIG gets billions, but I’m reading HR1 anyway. The billions to Citigroup is taxpayer money but it boggles me why the “common share” question is just an easy decision (see second to last paragraph below). The [...]
February 16, 2009 – 6:43 pm
My friend, Bryan Carroll, writing or The Daily Campus, UCONN’s news paper has covered a few stories that deal with education and health, his latest on the subject of John Dempsey Hospital, which has been bleeding in its own way for several years. Carroll writes An ad-hoc committee with appointed facility of the engineering, nursing [...]
February 14, 2009 – 9:04 am
I watched a lot of news on Friday, following votes and commentary on the “stimulus,” tweeting reactions Over the past couple of weeks the waves have been filled with statements against, with two primary arguments: too much spending and not enough jobs and tax cuts. And in the shakier regions: socialism and big government. But [...]
February 3, 2009 – 6:40 am
Taxes are all the rage these days–again. What I’ve learned is that lots of people in positions of power avoid them in interesting ways. (Why lower a tax, therefore, if its value is empty. Logical flop, but fun nonetheless.) Who’d have thought that tax on driving would be worth over 100 Grand. I’m sure there’s [...]
January 11, 2009 – 11:10 am
The Courant has a sad article on mortgage relief in CT. The Wrights, with yearly income of about $80,000, share a predicament with thousands of families in trouble in Connecticut — many of whom had reason to hope for help from the state. An examination of Connecticut’s mortgage relief programs shows that only a small [...]
January 11, 2009 – 10:29 am
Yet another article by Tom Condon on suburbia. Suburbs have been developing for more than 100 years. A main problem with the explosive suburban growth after World War II, driven by such things as GI mortgages and cheap cars and gas, was its form. Low-density, auto-dependent sprawl might have made sense in an era of [...]
That Night I Wandered on my Homeward Way (DrunkenBoat 10)
100 Days: 100 Poems, Summer 2008
