Good morning, folks. Conan might be going to Fox, Tebow\’s throwing some balls around, and Jennifer Love Hewitt isn\’t that excited about being single. Basketball starts this afternoon, so let\’s get on with our morning constitutional: Whoo: Jobs bill passes Senate with 11 Republican votes. Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is mad tall, has an office in the White House but hardly ever uses it, loves fly-fishing and cheap cigars. And he might be the key to solving the world\’s financial problems. Whoever said you can\’t get a fair shake on Fox News?...
Continue reading...Poplicola
Ownership of the means of production
It is both disheartening and convenient when you are struggling to write an essay, forcibly putting words together that do not work, trying ideas that make almost no sense, and working in a direction that isn’t clear, and finding an essay that says what you are trying to say more clearly and cogently than your efforts could lead you. I was trying to write such an essay recently, when today I came across the following spectacular essay by Ken Lowery Eugene Ahn at The Bureau Chiefs. It is a response to Rachael Maddux’s cover story for Paste,...
Continue reading...Morning Consitutional – Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Good morning, everyone. Black Eyed Peas are playing the World Cup Kick-Off Celebration Concert, and that\’s just awful. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: Support for health care reform is ticking up, according to some new polls. From the Post, President Obama\’s push for health care reform in Ohio convinces a few skeptics. The priest at the center of the sexual abuse scandal in Germany has been suspended. Slate has a piece on the Pope in the Catholic Church\’s child abuse problem. The Pope has announced that he will address abuse in a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics...
Continue reading...B-A-N-A-N-A-S
Finally, bananas might be good for something after all: A simple fruit that many of us eat every day could soon prove to be a powerful new inhibitor of HIV, and lead to new treatments to prevent sexual transmission of the virus. Bananas, according to new research of the University of Michigan Medical School, might be good for you in an exciting new way. Lectins, naturally occurring chemicals in plants, are drawing the interest of scientists because they can stop the chain reactions that lead to a variety of infections. In laboratory tests, BanLec, the lectin found...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Beckham\’s Achilles\’ tendon is really torn, Ovechkin is out for two games, and Spencer Pratt is taking some time off to fight cyber crime. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: California felt some tremors this morning as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit about a mile away from Pico Rivera. The Los Angeles Fire Department has received no reports of damage so far. Is Rand Paul the wrong shade of blue? The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has released their State of the News Media 2010 report. It claims to be the most interactive it...
Continue reading...Saving daylight
Over at Greater Greater Washington, Matt Johnson seems to accidentally make a argument for Daylight Saving Time: In 1895, George Vernon Hudson first proposed Daylight Saving Time, the idea was to make use of an hour of morning daylight which people tended to sleep through. In the modern era, this was thought to save energy by reducing the need for household lighting in the evenings (the lights would not have been on in the mornings because residents were still asleep). Studies by the Department of Transportation and the National Bureau of Standards in the mid-1970s indicated that...
Continue reading...Meet me at the combination doughnut shop and Chinese joint
Over at the Atlantic, Katie Robbins explores the mystery of the Californian combination doughnut shops and Chinese restaurants: Like any good investigator, I searched for patterns, and a few quickly emerged. The establishments tended to be in working-class neighborhoods. As I’d noted at that first sighting in LA, most of the restaurants kept the Chinese food and the donuts in separate counters, and while I occasionally spotted someone with both a chocolate-glazed orb and a plate of Kung Pao on his table, patrons tended to stick to sweet or savory. According to the folks behind the counters,...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Monday, 15 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Alice is still number one, Jennifer and Jamie broke up, and Jack might be heading over to NBC. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and Syracuse take number one seeds in NCAA men\’s basketball tournament. One of us is officially cheering for a 16-1 upset of UVM over Syracuse. In an op-ed to the Times, Michael Gorbachev defends perestroika and ponders Russia\’s future. San Francisco is experimenting with augmented reality with their BART mass transit system. For instance, hold up your iPhone to a BART station and see when the next trains...
Continue reading...Look for the words "social justice" or "economic justice"
As basically an introduction to Q’s letter, here’s the story about how Glenn Beck has advised Christians who hear the words “social justice” or “economic justice” to leave their churches. Watch this, but make sure you read Q’s letter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBFNWqAkoj4&w=425&h=344
Continue reading...Walking around the Garden of Eden moaning about the lack of mobile reception
While PM Gordon Brown has yet to officially call a general election in Britain, it is widely assumed that it will happen 56 days from today when the English local elections are scheduled. For two years, the consensus has been that a Tory victory is inevitable. After the failed experiment that was the Iraq War, a faltering economy and a falling pound, fortunes have slightly turned for Labour in the run-up to the Gordon Brown’s first contest as leader. While even now few think Labour will garner enough seats to maintain an outright electoral majority, there is...
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