At last some sanity about the air terrorist … In The God that Fails, David Brooks in The New York Times writes: “…we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents – who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t.”
“Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.
Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.”
Worth reading.
Tiger Woods, Person of the Year, (The New York Times, Sunday, Dec. 20)
Frank Rich synthesizes it for the rest of us, naming Tiger as the best representative of the past decade “… that began with the ‘reality’ television craze … [and] spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.”
“Under Murdoch’s rule, a new tone in the news pages”
Maybe you’ve noticed, too. David Carr in his Monday, Dec. 14th New York Times column The Media Equation “Tilting Rightward At Journal” says: “…there are growing indications that Mr Murdoch, a lifelong conservative, doesn’t just want to cover politics, he wants to play them as well.”
“AT&T Takes the Blame, Even for the iPhone’s Faults.” In Randall Stross’s Sunday, December 13, New York Times Digital Domain column, he writes that it’s actually AT&T — not Verizon — that’s fast, ubiquitious and reliable. Just ask the people who are actually following and testing these things …
Columnist James B. Stewart (Smart Money Magazine) writes “Dodging the Big One” in The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, November 25th where he gives thanks for the jobs Bernanke and Geithner did …
Get up to speed with the latest (and greatest) the internet has to offer…Time magazine, “50 Best Websites 2009,” by Adam Fisher
Here are answers to many of the questions circulating about Swine Flu and whether or not you should take the shot …
The New York Times, “As Flu Vaccine Arrives for the Season, Some Questions and Answers”, by Tara Parker-Pope
The New York Times reports that for the first time, a vaccine for AIDS seems to be working (slightly) according to recent research conducted in Thailand…
The New York Times Magazine feature story September 10th: Is Happiness Catching? elaborates on some not-so-controversial research on how we influence our friends and our friend’s friends 3 degrees away … (Snoety highlighted a different research effort earlier this year whose results reinforce this one. ) …
The best Kennedy eulogy — This one was by Ted Kennedy, Jr. and with warmth and love focused on the many lessons this son learned from his father ….
The NY Times Magazine focuses on “Saving the World’s Women.“ Check out the sidebar for the other stories in that issue as well, such as Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign “A New Gender Agenda” and “The Power of the Purse” about how women are finally funding other women …
U.S. News this year declares Harvard and Princeton tops. Click here for more rankings …
Madoff Cancer: The New York Post breaks the story and The Daily Beast posts that Madoff has pancreatic cancer and not long to live …
According to Reuters report “Babyboomers still getting high,” the rate of drug use among those 50-59 is going strong, while almost everyone else is doing less, and, yes, this has an impact on medical costs …
First the liberals love him and now they hate him. See what John Mackey, the chief executive Whole Foods wrought when he criticized the President’s health care plan in Whole Foods Fight …
Political commentator and columnist Robert Novak dies — I can’t count how many times Robert Novak pissed me off — but he was such a strong force to be reckoned with that it’s a shock to think that at 78 he’s gone … As The Washington Post captured it in their story, Novak’s Washington’s ‘Prince of Darkness’ Broke High-Stakes Scoops …
e BBC reports that Iran had more than 4000 detentions, along with other figures that conflict with Iran’s own …
The Economist reports in “Friends for Life” that “Big pharmaceutical firms are learning to love their erstwhile enemies, makers of generic drugs” …
TheWashington Post reports that: “HHS: Insurance Companies Encourage Employees to ‘Revoke Sick People’s Health Coverage’ ” .
In New York Magazine this week: If you think Obama is over-saturating the media, overexposed and off message, well, you just don’t get it. Read “The Message Is the Message” …
In The New York Times Magazine, columnist Roger Cohen just “back from Tehran, gets inside the Obama administration’s struggle with its biggest diplomatic challenge” with his article: The Making of an Iran Policy, Sunday, August 2.
In US News & World Report, it looks like mammals are evolving faster than we thought as reported in: Some Rodents Getting Bigger Because of Humans, Climate Change, Monday, August 3.
In The Washington Post, an excerpt from the book: “Battle for America 2008, The Story of an Extraordinary Election“ … ‘High Risk, High Reward,’ John McCain Was Looking for a Way to Shake Up His Campaign. He Took a Surprising Gamble on a Relative Unknown,” by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, Monday, August 3, 2009
From Politico.com: “Waxman, Blue Dogs Strike Deal on Costs” — the first paragraph: “Moderate House Democrats and a key committee chairman emerged from a three-hour meeting at the White House on Tuesday with a tentative agreement to give an outside panel – rather than Congress – the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs.”
“Cocksure” by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker writes about how our current economic woes were not just caused by what is commonly told — lack of regulation and incompetence — but a third factor, the psychology of overconfidence …
David Brooks in The New York Times does a dissertation on the “Liberal Suicide March” about how, first, the Republicans, and, now, the democrats have lost touch with America or, as he says, “Ideological overreach, part deux.” Hate to say it, but I think he’s right.
Will California be first (they always are) to make pot legal? Read the AP story by Marcus Wohlsen and reported in Yahoo! News about the bill that’s just been introduced: Calif. tax officials: Legal pot would bring $1.4B …
Love ’em or hate ’em, here’s a tirade against Goldman Sachs as The Great American Bubble Machine in Rolling Stone. “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again,” by Matt Taibbi, who gives his perspective on Goldman’s presence through six “Bubbles” starting with the Great Depression and ending with Global Warming.
Is hating Goldman Sachs — instead of constantly being awed by it — the start of a new trend?
