Some Stuff to Read
December 7, 2008
Just a couple of articles thrown together for no reason other than I found them interesting:
- Woe Canada! about the Constitutional crisis in Canada
- Copper Thieves Threated U.S. Infrastructure, FBI Says. I used to work at a scrap metal firm that worked closely with the police. I once recall a guy bringing in a refrigerator to sell for scrap, but it was clearly functional, so we stalled him while the police were called. Turned out the guy had stolen it from a neighbor, so the police came and arrested him on the premises.
- Boosting The Power Of Solar Cells. While the editor ignores capitalization convention for titles, the article is good news. Solar is interesting.
- Buyers flock to condo auctions, ready to snap up bargains. But of course. It’s a buyers’ market.
- How to create terrible professors. Good read for anyone involved in academia.
- Special Ed for Journalists. Using proper capitalization, the author of this article sticks it to journalism schools, linking them (rather weakly, I think) to widespread public loss of confidence in journalists as a whole and dropping newspaper subscriptions.
- What Really Happened? Cato on the current financial problems. It’s a long read and blames more than just the government.
- No Line Responsibilities. What Robert Rubin did for his $115 milliion. At Citibank. Where he has apparently helped to cause me to lose money (on paper, so far): “Citigroup shareholders have suffered losses of more than 70% since Mr. Rubin joined the firm.” Another quote: “What is clear is that Mr. Rubin encouraged changes that led Citi to the brink of collapse.” Rubin (current Wikipedia entry) worked for Clinton as Secretary of the Treasury and might reappear under Obama, for whom he has been working as an economic advisor.
- Agreement For Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq. The comments are worth a look, most (the last time I looked) worried about placing US troops under or at risk of foreign direction and jurisdiction. That’s a somewhat sensitive topic in Japan, because when a member of the US military at a base in Japan commits a crime off base, the Japanese police have to turn the soldier back over to the US military, which angers Japanese nationalists as well as the offended locals.
- Che, or a Statue of an Actor Playing Che. A New York Times piece, it notes that Che Guevara was a murdering bastard (I’ve read Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by a reluctant Che fan who skirts certain distasteful facts, but the article says Exposing the Real Che: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him really nails Che).
- Family suicides on the rise in Taiwan. Yikes! I’m afraid that the childless elderly in Japan will increasingly turn to suicide.
- Crisis forces Russians to cut back vodka drinking. It’s a Yahoo! article an will soon disappear, but the title is pretty adequate. However, this paragraph is scary: “Research by his organization showed deaths from alcohol poisonings in September increased to 1,458 — the result, it said, of some Russians turning to dangerous vodka substitutes as they try to find a cheaper way of becoming intoxicated.”
- Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they’re good. This is also a Yahoo! article, but it’s also interesting social commentary.
- Sun + Water = Fuel. Artificial photosynthesis at room temperature?
- The Next Disaster. Bad news about Mexico, and something of an argument for the US to legalize drugs, or at least marijuana, to reduce drug-related destabilization in other countries.
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