The NYTimes has an article about problems with the Global fund to fight AIDS.
It seems that they checked the books and found some of the money was stolen or diverted, and as a result, a lot of European donors are not giving any more money until the problem is cleared up.
You want honesty at […]

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This year’s hottest Thanksgiving event is being held in Minneapolis at the headquarters of Target Corp. The mega retailer, whose cheap designer duds keep Joe and Jane Doakes looking stylish even during a depression, will be celebrating T-Day in a novel way. Target’s chief execs and board of directors are ditching family gatherings in favor […]

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“Traumatic grief, with its unanswered questions, its numbing shock, its horror, its ability to sear disturbing images into our souls that cannot be erased by sleep or by time–this process follows the same general path both for persons and groups.”
When 12:30 struck, none of us fourth graders knew that our young president was being […]

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I read a name from the past in today’s news: Medgar Evers.
The name takes me back to the days of when as a child we visited our aunt who lived in the deep south, and I was astonished that there “colored only” restaurants and water fountains.
Evers was one of the heroes who fought for the […]

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One Minneapolis social worker once told me that the only reason my husband’s grandchildren weren’t removed from their parents sooner was because of the Indian Child Welfare Act. He said that had they been of any other heritage, they would have been protected much sooner.

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Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu was facing criticism for being too slow in building cases against participants in the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver.  So he held a press conference in August where he introduced Constable Lee Patterson to explain how evidence is collected.  It was an odd choice of spokesperson, since Patterson is accused […]

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It takes a lot to shock Hollywood. But the news that Newt Gingrich has bumped Jon Corzine as supervillain Two-Face in the next Batman is making jaws drop in Dream City. Corzine was reportedly in like Flynn; his duplicitous doings at MF Global made him Two-Face to the max. Sure, Jon had heavy competition from […]

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I am bemused to see that there is a moderate earthquake in Oklahoma making the news.
Such things are not unknown, of course, but the “Green” oriented blogs are all blaming the earthquake on “fracking”.
This is a “hot” item, since the oil shales of North Dakota and Pennsylvania are potential “black gold” that will rewrite the […]

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I see the “Occupy Wall Street” folks are still there.
But what is puzzling me: usually a movement starts with a few activists and then slowly grows, as more who believe the same things join.
So exactly how many are in these rallies?
We know who is in the rallies: From Fastcompany.com via the Democratic underground.
Among the […]

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One of God’s top 10.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Contrary to what some think, coveting is not just wanting something. Coveting is wanting something that belongs to someone else. God […]

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In my previous post, I wondered if the protesters on Wall Street had proposals of how to fix things, or if they were theoreticians from Nephelokokkygia.
So exactly what do those Wall Street protesters want?
A proposed list of demands can be found at their website. They don’t want much.
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This […]

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Some of the progressive blogs are lauding the protests against Wall Street as if these protests were an uprising of the “PEOPLE” against the rich, and a copy of the heroism of the Arab Spring.
Now, I am aghast at the Wall Street shenanigans as much as the next person, but when the president and his […]

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Paranoia kills. And the internet, which allows anyone to post any conspiracy theory without having to include minor things like facts, is a growing problem for doctors, because our patients who google sometimes end up at conspiracy theory sites for their medical information.
And this ignorance is one reason why Bachman is now no longer […]

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The latest “Western” movie from Hollywood, about aliens and starring a petulant British actor, was a bomb, and that led many “experts” to again predict the demise of the Western as a film genre. Of course, the real reason for the problem is the nihilism of Hollywood, not the lack of stories.
So could I suggest […]

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Joe Biden’s visit to China has gotten little respect in the US press, who seem to despise his “everyday man” approach to things and who trumpet his verbal gaffes without noticing his common touch is something desperately needed by the elitist Obama administration.
During his trip to China, he visited an ordinary Chinese restaurant and ate […]

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The president is taking a much needed vacation, this time to Martha’s Vineyard.
So what does the Washington Post have for a headline this morning?
As rebels close in on Tripoli, Obama getting updates on Martha’s Vineyard
Why yes.
Martha’s Vineyard isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, and they do have internet connections, an airfield and a […]

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I had written two skeptical articles on the issue of “isolated tribes” in the Amazon region.
In the first article, I pointed out that the idea that these people can and should remain isolated (by keeping out the governments and do gooders and developers) is wrongheaded, because that won’t stop the bad guys from moving in […]

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This year, for the first time, our accountant told us we don’t have to pay any US taxes.
So what do I hear in the news? Lots of right wing criticism of those stupid people who don’t pay taxes while the rest of “us” work hard and have to pay.
Time out, fellahs.
For years, my husband and […]

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My summer reading this year kicked off with Cambodia’s Curse: the Modern History of a Troubled Land by former New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley. Brinkley won a Pulitzer in 1980 for his coverage (at the Louisville Courier Journal) of the fall of the Khmer Rouge.
The title Cambodia’s Curse bugs me. Though cultures resistant to […]

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From Freakonomics:Killer Cars:
An Extra 1,000 Pounds Increases Crash Fatalities by 47%

The Actual report name is “Pounds that kill: The external cost of vehicle weight.
Well, anyway, the study shows the obvious: If you have a big car that collides with a smaller car, the small car folks are toast.
Well, duh. Yes, all of that’s obvious […]

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“What would you do if you found out at age 16 that you didn’t have the right papers?”
I would do just as I did in Canada when the visa’s for my entire family ran out and we were denied new visa’s in Calgary. We left the country and did not re-enter until we had valid visa’s again.

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A lot of Americans seem puzzled about why NATO is so eager to get rid of Khadafi in Libya. Yes, he was behind the TWA bombing, but why get rid of him now?
But what the US press also misses is why Libyans are angry. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the corruption, stupid. Khadafi has billions […]

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Los Alamos, with it’s nuclear facility, has been evacuated again. The NMNational Guard is busy helping with the fires near Alamagordo, as is the California, Colorado and North Carolina Air National Guard. From the BBC:

The town outside Los Alamos National Laboratory was evacuated on Monday.
On Wednesday, there were expected to be between 600 to 800 […]

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 The man was well until his wife baked him a “healthy recipe” from the NYTimes “Healthy recipe section: Fava bean and artichoke stew.
He soon became pale and jaundiced, and it took awhile for the ER doc to figure out why the man was sick. He had an acute hemolytic crisis, where his red blood cells […]

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The outbreak of E Coli induced Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome by those who ate salads in northern Germany is still a puzzle.
First they blamed Spain for dirty cucumbers (implications: Spaniards are not as clean as Germans). This has caused a lot of financial problems for Spanish farmers, and it doesn’t help that it’s now found it […]

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While the economy collapses, the Middle East is on fire, and our beloved President seems to be as unable to communicate with the American people as the previous president, the news stories are full of a tweeting congressman.
Jokes are easy to make about the problem, especially since the congressman’s name is easily mispronounced to resemble […]

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Should we ask students to “give back” to society?
Actually, many do: all sorts of volunteers out there, such as the churches and religious groups helping to clean up after the recent tornadoes and floods. A lot of those doing so are following the family tradition. My grandkids routinely work at soup kitchens and in community […]

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Well, this year’s Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally got some publicity today when Sarah Palin and family accompanied them as private citizens. As the mother of an Iraqi veteran, she is entitled to this.
Most of the half million attending the rally seemed pleased.
So of course most of the press coverage was about Andrea Mitchell finding the […]

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When the first message on the ARPANET (the predecessor of today’s Internet) was sent by UCLA programmer Charley Kline, on October 29, 1969, the message text was the word “login”; the letters “l” and the “o” were transmitted, then the system crashed.
Forty two years later, the Internet is everywhere and rapidly becoming embedded in every […]

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 Photo:  After battling prostate cancer, Jack Layton announced, ”I’m almost vegan.”  Here he is seen during the election campaign eating a thick smoked meat sandwich in Schwartz Deli in Montreal.

Jack Layton has just done something never done before in Canada.  In Monday’s federal election, he moved the left wing New Democratic Party from it’s chronic third […]

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