September 2010
137 posts
Barack Obama under fire for grossly... →
The Obama administration lost the public trust and may have sabotaged clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico by grossly underestimating the amount of oil gushing from BP’s broken Macondo well, according to a White House commission appointed to investigate the spill.
In a scathing critique of the administration’s handling of the disaster, the two co-chairs of the commission yesterday said...
Survey: Americans don't know much about religion →
A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.
Forty-five percent of Roman Catholics who participated in the study didn’t know that, according to church...
Blaming China Won’t Help the Economy - Anatole... →
With Chinese economic policy now serving as a model for other Asian countries, Japan was faced with a stark choice: back United States criticisms that China is artificially keeping down the value of its currency, the renminbi, or emulate China’s approach. It is a sign of the times that Japan chose to follow China at the cost of irritating America.
Japan’s action suggests that, in the aftermath of...
“Last week the Pentagon destroyed thousands of copies of a single book. The book...”
– Not A Joke: The Pentagon Just Destroyed Thousands Of Books
Holy hell, Ray Bradbury. (via irunfrombears)
Happy Banned Books Week, everybody! (via thetart)
Couldn’t the author just publish those censored bits online?
(via afghanipoppy)
Iran Fights Malware Attacking Computers →
WASHINGTON — The Iranian government agency that runs the country’s nuclear facilities, including those the West suspects are part of a weapons program, has reported that its engineers are trying to protect their facilities from a sophisticated computer worm that has infected industrial plants across Iran.
The agency, the Atomic Energy Organization, did not specify whether the worm had already...
September 26, 1774
Happy Birthday to the original American guerrilla gardener, Johnny Appleseed!
“It started with a $24.8 billion price tag and was supposed to be completed in 13...”
– High-speed rail: the long view — Metropolitan Planning Council (via smarterplanet)
Bracing for a New Food Crisis →
The U.N. is warning that the world may be on the cusp of a new major food crisis as the result of a wave of recent environmental disasters (heat waves, floods, wildfires) and capitalist disasters (market speculation, inflation) that are pushing up the price foodstuffs.
via buffleheadcabin
The Director Jean-Luc Godard Defends an Accused... →
“Downloading is a citizen’s right,” Mr. Climent said. “Even if there is only a small chance, there is a chance that a favorable judgment could change the laws across Europe.”
Mr. Godard has yet to comment publicly on Mr. Climent’s case, but he laid out the rationale for his opposition to French copyright rules in a recent interview with the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, in which he...
What Would a Fair-Labor iPod Cost? - Umair Haque →
An American made iPod Classic costs just 23% more than a Chinese made iPod Classic: $58 more, to be precise. The same relationship holds across the iPod family (price differentials in the 20-30% range) The iPod is a durable good, so that’s a difference — but smaller than one might expect.
