The NYTimes.com has an excellent (and long) article on what lead to the demise of Washington Mutual, The Reckoning – WaMu Built an Empire on Bad Loans. The bank had so many bad practices it was only a matter of time it imploded. I think the article is well worth the read, but if you don’t have the time, one of their commercially ironically sums it up well:

The Copenhagen Cycle Chic Blog! I highly recommend this blog to anyone. It challenges the idea of what cycling can be. If you thought a) you can’t cycle in winter b) cycling is not for large cities c) cycling is for cycling fanatics only, then you owe it to yourself to spend some time looking over this blog. Plus it’s well written and has wonderful photos….like this one!

Weltverbesserungswahn (a German word, of course): the conviction that the world could be better