Nationalization

President Obama has forced the resignation of GM’s CEO and is requiring strict conditions before the government gives more money to GM and Chrysler. Here are two critiques in the article:
“This nationalization of business may prove to be folly,” warned Louis E. Lataif, dean of Boston University’s School of Management and a former president of [...]

In the long run

It turns out that the government agency that insures private pension funds decided in 2008 that it should put more money in the stock market. It turns out the timing was about as bad as it could be:
The agency refused to say how much of the new investment strategy has been implemented or how the [...]

Religious Craziness in the UN

The UN Human Rights Council has voted for a non-binding resolution to:
provide “protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation, and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general.”
“Defamation of religions is the cause that leads to incitement to hatred, discrimination, and violence toward their followers,” Pakistan’s ambassador Zamir Akram said. [...]

Development in Jerusalem

Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat is in Boston trying to drum up money for the city. And the article says he’s very inclusive:
Working with Weinberg, who’s collaborated with Porter for more than a decade, they formed Startup Jerusalem, a nongovernmental organization that lined up secular and Orthodox Jews as well as Arabs to support the cluster-based [...]

Republicans give, admit they’re stupid

Since people have complained that they haven’t actually made any proposals only complain, House Republicans have put together ‘The Republican Road to Recovery.’ It was announced as a budget proposal, but because they have no actual proposals or budget estimate in it, they quickly backtracked and said the details will come out later. As Ezra [...]

A moon and some stars and a poem

First here’s Globular Cluster M13. It looks better than it sounds. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

and here’s the M101 galaxy–very impressive. Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC, and STScI

and a picture of  Rhea as it slip behind Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

And here’s the weekly poem:
Throw [...]

More money to small banks?

It will depend on how it’s done, but this could be a good thing:
US Representative Barney Frank yesterday called on the Obama administration to quickly issue rules to get public funds into the hands of smaller banks, including many in Massachusetts, which to date have been shut out of the Treasury’s capital lending programs.
Compared to [...]

Torture memos to come out?

This (via Kevin Drum) would be a good thing:
Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against “high value” Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by [...]

Linda Linda Linda and Haruhi

I’m a bit bored today, so I went looking for some videos from the movie Linda Linda Linda. Here’s one

and here’s another

Paran Maum is Korean for Blue Hearts, who originally did these songs.
Update: I didn’t realize it as I watched the anime, but the following scene from [...]

Now that’s real money

NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has won a legal battle to be able to publicly name employees at Merril Lynch who were given large bonuses last December. Cuomo thinks this means he will also win the battle to release the names of people from AIG. Some of the information is coming out now and it’s [...]

Another reason why arbitrary detention is so bad

I would have liked this article by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, a lot better if it had come out when this was all happening. Many of the things he mentions are now widely known, but this really shows what can happen when you don’t follow the rules:
The fourth unknown is the [...]

Saturn pictures and a poem

Today I offer you two pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft.
The first is of one of Saturn’s moons, Rhea (credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, taken 8/19/08). To me it looks like the inside of a golf ball, baseball after the string or rubber bands have been taken off:

The second is a nice full picture of Saturn [...]

A couple older bits about unions and the CEOs that hate them

In the way of the web, I found a couple items that say something about something.
The first is from the Huffington Post in January detailing comments from conference calls last November (Marcus is a co-founder of Home Depot):
“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as [...]

Pope shows no mercy for AIDs

Well then, it seems that the Pope is really against contraception:
Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.
”You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. ”On the contrary, it increases the problem.
Lovely man. If people [...]

Gay marriage in New England

This could be a big year for gay marriage in New England. Massachusetts allowed gay marriage in May 2004, Connecticut joined last October, and now there are proposals in other New England states.

Vermont is debating a bill right now and legislators say they will pass the bill by May. Vermont became the first state to [...]

Obama: it’s ok, we no longer call them enemy combatants

President Obama has said that he will close Guantanamo and will abide by international law. Sounds good, but it’s not obvious that he’s actually going to change things (there are links to the actual documents there):
But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects [...]

This is a tough spot for Obama?

I’m with Kevin Drum, this seems to be a pretty straightforward choice:
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would “fight hard” for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports [...]

More Same Sex Classrooms

The New York Times has another article about same sex classrooms. I’ve had a few posts about this. My take-away is that any gender difference in learning is dwarfed by individual differences. And I’ve noticed that all the articles I’ve seen have comments like:
Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of [...]

A picture of Mercury and a poem

Ok, here’s a picture of Mercury:

It’s titled ‘Volcanism on Mercury’ and shows lava filled craters and lava plains. It comes from here Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Brown University/Carnegie Institution of Washington).
And here’s a poem that has pretty much nothing to do with Mercury (unless you want it to):
What is life
And what is death
What is [...]

Pakistan’s Zardari trying to get military to take over?

It seems the politicians in Pakistan want the military back in power. What else would explain President Zardari’s arresting hundreds of ex Prime Mininster Sharif’s activists, keeping the power to dissolve Parliament despite a pledge to rescind it, and Sharif’s attempt to topple the government with huge marches. All of this during a huge economic [...]