Air travel still hasn’t returned to pre-9/11 levels and the looming recession isn’t helping. The New York Times has reported that varying forms of aviophobia affect 40% of the world’s population and that 6.5% of Americans refuse to fly under any circumstances. If the current population of the United States is 305 million people then [...]
From the LA Times – this breaking news seems troublesome: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, alarmed by the ongoing national financial crisis, warned Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson on Thursday that the state might need an emergency loan of as much as $7 billion from the federal government within weeks. The warning comes as California is [...]
Monday, September 29, 2008
In light of the bailout bill’s failure today and the subsequent 777 point loss to the DJIA I find this HL Mencken quote quite fitting: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Friday, September 26, 2008
You know how everybody’s been trying to get you to eat a lot of green, leafy vegetables, less meat and processed foods? And you know how you don’t want to, and you fucking refuse? And you know how you’re in crappy physical condition? Well, the glorious market might solve this for you, though not quite [...]
Monday, September 22, 2008
I don’t understand much about the big economic issues going on right now – especially the $700 billion taxpayer funded bailout of the fat-cats on Wall Street – but this article made me feel less dumb. These quotes in particular stood out but the whole thing was accessible to the layperson: Normally this would have [...]
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Sometimes I get in the habit of thinking my life is very complicated. At those times it’s helpful to get another perspective: Tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins competed for Swaziland King Mswati III’s eye on Monday in a traditional Reed Dance. Walking through the dense crowds in a leopard skin loin cloth, Sub-Saharan Africa’s [...]
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Harry at Crooked Timber discusses some new NEH grants for academics who develop classes on “enduring questions.” Except people aren’t happy: That said, most of their examples are questions that philosopher tackle every day, and are already covered and discussed in great detail in undergraduate courses in Philosophy in every University that has a philosophy [...]