I found this chart in The Economist to be astounding when I see the changes in GDP shares of the G7 versus the Brics. It’s striking evidence of the shift in purchasing power from the G7 countries (essentially “the West” or the First World) to Russia (the old Second World) and the largest countries of the developing or Third World).

Looks like Electronic Arts is not only playing fast and loose with Dante’s Inferno (according to the NYTimes.com) but with Sony and David Jaffe’s games series, God of War. I can’t speak for that series of games, but I do know Dante’s Inferno, so when I read this:

“…images of Virgil spout lines from the poem at you once in a while, and Dante’s ranged weapon appears as crosses of light, but there is no heavy religious imagery and never any real sense of horror or torment. There are, however, a lot of bare female breasts. There is even a giant Cleopatra demon who spurts knife-wielding unbaptized children out of her nipples.”

I wonder: is it likely that this game will get younger people — ok, men — to read Dante? It would be a good thing if it did, but I am doubtful. (And if they do, they will be likely disappointed in the lack of bare nekkid ladies in it.). I am also doubtful if you should get this game. It sounds like God of War is better.

From The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens. I am aware of this quote from my copy of The Practical Cogitator (page 115). It’s a great quote from a great anthology:

“In the present, every day is a miracle. The world gets up in the morning and is fed and goes to work, and in the evening it comes home and is fed again and perhaps has a little amusement and goes to sleep. To make that possible, so much has to be done by so many people that, on the face of it, it is impossible. Well, every day we do it; and every day, come hell, come high water, we’re going to have to go on doing it as well as we can.”

“So it seems,” said Abner.

“Yes, so it seems,” said Judge Coates, “and so it is, and so it will be! And that’s where you come in. That’s all we want of you.”

Abner said, “What do you want of me?”

“We just want you to do the impossible,” Judge Coates said.

On the Shortness of Life, by the Roman philosopher Seneca, is not just a great “book” on how to not waste our lives. it is also something I would recommend to anyone starting a career. Seneca addresses this book to Paulinus, who has a job managing the corn stores of Rome, but he could just as easily be addressing a doctor, lawyer, or an IT professional. In this book (more an extended letter), Seneca is advising Paulinus not only how to live one’s life better, but on how to keep his job in perspective. It may be centrues old, but it is still good advice.
I think anyone with a career or considering a career should read this book. Good advice never goes out of date.

For more on the book, goto the Penguin site and check out On the Shortness of Life – Seneca – Penguin Books

The U.S. Government looked to tax soft drinks to decrease consumption, saying it was a signifigant contributor to obesity. Soda manufacturers did not want that and countered by saying that the tax would hurt the poor. Sad. Reading the article, it appears that the major soda manufacturers are adopting the same approaches big tobacco adopted. This is telling, and terrible. I like drinking diet soda, but I think it is time to ditch it when I see behavoir like this. You read and let me know what you think: Beverage industry douses tax on soft drinks – latimes.com (via Matt Yglesias).

I have no idea if this works or not, but Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools recommended it, and that’s good enough for me. If you have to deal with alot of snow, don’t like snow blowers, and find shovelling exhausting (or life threatening!), consider this:

To buy, check it out at Amazon.com: The Sno Wovel Wheeled Snow Shovel

P.S. It’s unusual enough you might be able to get some kids to do your shovelling, I mean snowovelling, just because it is unusual and fun to try! 🙂

I love the covers done at the BBC Live Lounge. Here’s another one:

This song hasn’t been out long, but already I’ve heard a few covers of it. No wonder.

YouTube – Paramore – Use Somebody (Kings Of Leon Cover) – Live Lounge

For years I have had a recipe for carrot soup that I enjoy making. It has a fair amount of butter, but it is delicious and still fairly light. For my carrot soup recipe, I have the following ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1/2 onion (or more if you like onion)
• 1 clove of garlic (again, if you like more, make it 2…or 3.. :))

• 2.5 cups of carrots, chopped
• 5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (it calls for water, but I prefer stock)

• 1/4 cup of long grain rice, uncooked (for thickening, I think)
• Seasoning: herbs or spices (more on this in a bit), salt and pepper

The recipe is easy.

1. Get out all your ingredients and prepare them (e.g. chop the onions, mince the garlic, roughly chop the carrots).
2. Put a pot on a burner on medium heat. It should be big enough to contain all these ingredients (at least 3 L / 3 Qt)
3. Melt the butter in the pot. Once it stops sizzling, add the onion and garlic and stir around until the onion and garlic are soft. Don’t brown them. (2-5 minutes, depending on the pan you use and your burner).
4. Add the rest of the ingredients, save the seasoning
5. Turn up the heat to high and bring it to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 20 minutes until the carrots have softened. Put a lid on it while it simmers.
6. Once the carrots are soft, puree them.  As for me, I use a hand blender from Braun. In the worst case, mash ’em up then use a whisk to make the soup silky smooth.
7. Add seasoning until it tastes the way you like.

So that’s the basic carrot soup recipe.

Now if you like that, try replacing the carrots with other root vegetables. I used parsnips the other day and that was delicious. I am going to try sweet potatoes next. Also try combos: if you have one parsnip and a bag of carrots, make carrot-parsnip soup. I start by getting a deal on root vegetables and go from there. You know those soon to be tossed out veggies at the supermarket or local green grocer? Those are cheap and are great in this recipe.

For carrot soup, I prefer adding herbs like thyme or chives as a seasoning. A good parsley works, as will tarragon. For the parsnip soup, I found spices go well and I used Asian garlic-hot sauce and that was great. Curry powder would be good, and blends like herbes de Provence are also good. Heck, you could even try a dash of lemon or lime juice  or even Tabasco or HP sauce if you like.  (If you are experimenting, try it in an individual bowl first, rather than on the entire pot of soup. That way, if you overdo it, you have only ruined part of the soup.)

If you like a thicker soup, change the ratio of liquids to carrots. Right now it is 2:1 in terms of quantity. For a thinner soup, try 3:1. For a thicker soup, try 3:2 or 1:1. (If you make it too thick, just slowly add warm broth until it is the way you like it).
For other ideas, check out this recipe: Golden Carrot Soup with Mozzarella. Note the carrot to liquid ratio is the same, but they replace the stock with milk to make it a creamier soup. Nice! Also, they add cheese. (Hey, it’s by the Daily Farmers! :)) These are all great ideas, but I like my simple and humble soup.

Please stick with the 1/4 cup of butter. I think a bowl of this soup has around 100-150 calories, but the butter makes it delicious, and you need some fat.

Experiment with herbs and spices. Whenever you see a nice spice combination, for example in a Jamaican or African inspired dish, mix up a batch of the herb or spice combination and put it in a spare pepper shaker and then shake it into your soup. (And once you have this shaker, you can use it on baked fish, roasts, grilled veggies, rice, etc.)

Try adding some canned beans to the soup (e.g. 1/8-1/4 cup of chickpeas per soup bowl) for some additional protein. Make sure they get a chance to warm in the soup before you serve it. You can add left over meats (e.g., sausage, rotisserie chicken) to it. Sometime those additional bits of meat that don’t look good on your dinner plate will look great in your soup.

Cooked pasta (without sauce) that was left over the night before will also go well with the soup. Indeed, soup is a great way to use up things. If you have some leftover corn, or peas, or green or yellow beans, they would also go well.

Of course dried bread, crackers or croutons also go well with purreed soup. Again another way to use up bread starting to dry out. (Plus if you add in after seasoning, they will thicken up the soup more.

Try replacing the onion with related vegetables like leeks (perfect with potatoes) or vidalia or red onions. If you use a nice looking onion, put a bit aside, chop up finely, then garnish the soup with it before you serve it.  Likewise, if you have some roasted red peppers in your fridge — I keep a bottle around — they also look good chopped up and garnished on your soup.

The key is to start with a basic recipe and then try different ideas.

Anyway, I am not a professional chef, but this works for me, and it should work for you too. Let me know what you do!

I love smart new bands that can refresh and recreate older music and make it their own. Nouvelle Vague is such a band. blogTo wrote about them being in Toronto recently, and this lede into the review of their show sums them up quite nicely:

Nouvelle Vague brought back British ’80s new wave and punk in their own style Wednesday night at The Opera House. It’s not everyday you get to see a pretty, young French singer break into The Clash, Sex Pistols, New Order and Joy Division.

Recreating some memorable hits in either a country, bluegrass, bossa nova or folk genre, they put on quite the entertaining cabaret-style show. Supporting their third studio album, 3, the French group, led by arrangers/producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, enchanted the audience with 20 remarkably reworked songs, sung by two young chanteuses, Helene Nogueira and Karina Zeviani.

They have lots of great videos over at YouTube, including this one:

That’s not your Dad’s Billy Idol. And I should know! 🙂 But it’s great pop, done terrifically well.

Over at John Hamilton’s Life and Times blog is a great post on the stages or emotions you go through when moving from one place to another. As John says:

So you might know about the seven stages of grief, especially if you’ve had a relative go through a bad illness or someone close to you died. Denial, bargaining, acceptance… It’s important to know this stuff and you should: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/change_management/kubler_ross/kubler_ross.htm

Well, apparently there are seven stages of emotions you go through when you move as well. Especially with an international move.

You might think: well, there is a big difference between dying and moving. True. But moving is highly disruptive and stressful. Anyone considering a big move like John’s would be advised to check this out.

The New Yorker has great examples of artists using the Brushes application for the iPhone/Touch, such as this one.

The works are brilliant in themselves, and an impressive display of how to use a technology. What I also like about the animation is how they show the work being built up, and illustrates how the artist goes about creating it. For non-artists like myself, that is very educational.

This one is pretty obvious. The email says:

Dear customer

We regret to inform you that your Bank of America Online Account
has been temporarily suspended.
Your account has been suspended after too many failed login
attempts have been made. This is most likely an attempt to gain
unauthorized access to your account and/or personal information.

To resolve this problem we have attached a form to this email.
Please download the form, open it and follow the instructions on
your screen.

Bank of America, Member FDIC
©2010 Bank of America Corporation

First off, I am not a BofA customer. Second, they want me to download a form (!!) and basically fill in information that runs some PHP program on some non-BofA site.

Needless to say, NEVER fill in such forms. If you ever get an email like this, talk to your bank or other institution directly.

Food.about.com has not only a great video on how to make packzkis, but they also have a good video on how to make another polish food:
Pierogis.

If you like traditional Italian dishes like gnocchi and ravioli, then you want to consider pierogi: they are closely related. Likewise, paczkis are a form of fried rich bread, much like Berliners and other jam filled pastries.

Give them a try!

Thanks to Bakers Journal for a great article  (and photo) of a great Polish desert: paczkis! (“pronounced “poonch-key,” “pooch-key” or “punch-key”). According to this article,

“on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (known as Fat Tuesday or Paczki Day; in 2010 it falls on Feb. 16), (Polish) bakers would enrich their yeast-raised dough with sugar, shortening and eggs to create a deep-fried pastry delight similar to a raised Bismarck or jelly doughnut. Their original purpose was practical: to use up lard and eggs, which are prohibited during Lent. But now, like king cakes in New Orleans, they are marketed as a last-minute indulgence before the Lenten season of sacrifice.”

They are truly delicious. We used to make the dough, stuff it with jam, then deep fry them until they were golden brown, then shake them around in a bag of sugar before eating them hot! Having them that fresh really makes a difference. But even cold, they are tasty.

So if you are looking to give up something like eggs for Lent, try having some of these first. You’ll be very glad you did.

Now that it is getting very cold here in Hogtown, if you are out and about in such weather, it can be helpful to know where you should go to get The Best Hot Chocolate in Toronto. BlogTO has a rundown of some great places to go for this wonderful hot beverage.

As an aside, I love going to Aroma for their hot chocolate. They drop a big chunk of chocolate into hot steamy milk and you stir: delicious. However, while you won’t find it in the article, you will see people argue for it in the comments.

Regardless, if you go to Aroma or any of these other places, you will (almost) appreciate the cold weather better once you have one of these drinks from one of these places.

Kudos the the government of Canada. As well as the signifigant relief funds Canadians are providing, the Canadian government has cancelled Haiti’s debt to Canada and is urging other  creditors to cancel Haitian debt. Indeed, Canada’s….

“…Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urged Haiti’s international creditors Wednesday to cancel the country’s debts following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed 200,000 people, including 21 Canadians.

Canada cancelled all its Haitian debt last fall, Flaherty noted, and all Canadian contributions to the country’s earthquake relief – more than $100 million – is in grants, not loans.”

If you are not a Canadian, contact your local political leader and ask them to follow the Canadian government’s lead.

Are you an aspiring Canadian filmmaker? If so, then check out the NFB’s web page, Hothouse » Hothouse 6: Call for Submissions. They are looking for talented filmmakers like you for a 12 week paid apprenticeship. You’ve got until February 19, 2010 to apply. You can do it! Go to the site for entry details. And when you win, come back here and tell me! Thanks!

Well, it likely has nothing  — NOTHING! — on the 19 most complex and dangerous roads in the world.

Here’s The Road of Death, Bolivia:

The other 18 are just as bad. You have to see it to believe it.

This is a great article (Overhyped, Overpriced & Disappointing: iPad? No, iPod in 2001) that shows that alot of the comments for the iPod were very similar to the iPad. If anything, the iPod likely had a more difficult going over. I highly recommend the article and especially the comments that it links to.

As a side note, it is remarkable that back in 2001, the iPod was going for $399. Now the iPad is going for $499. That’s quite striking in it’s own right.

When I first saw this article, A Licence to Print Money For Canadian News Sites – Torontoist, I thought, this won’t work. Well, according to Toronoist

“..news organizations everywhere have been experimenting with different sources of income, such as licensing. For more than a year now, CBC.ca, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, have been using iCopyright…

Here’s how iCopyright works: if you want to print an article from your printer, just click the little print icon beside any story, and an iCopyright window pops up asking you how many copies you’d like to make. Printing is free, as long as you’re making fewer than six copies. If you want to print six or more, iCopyright asks you to pay per article. The system works the same way if you’re trying to email an article, and it can also be used to quickly purchase republication rights.”

Now, technically this is trivial to get around. But it could still make money if larger organizations such a school boards mandate that teachers must pay for such things. This may not make sense to individuals, but large organizations sometimes will make such a call. And not just public organizations, but private ones as well.

I don’t believe it will make alot of money, and it won’t stop the march towards a new journalism that recognizes that people will no longer pay directly for news. But it could be more successful than one might think.

Reading this article, Squeeze an Extra Hour Out of Your Busy Day – Time management – Lifehacker, I thought: that’s all fine and good, but what I want is less busy time, not more. I want more weekend. Likely you do too.

One simple way of doing this is to actively plan your Thursdays, Sundays and Mondays. For Thursdays, try and arrange for a relaxing or enjoyable activity to do Thursday evening. It could be going for coffee or drinks, or seeing a show, going book or window shopping, or going out for a nice dinner. Anything that makes Thursday night more special than Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday night. If I do that, even though I have to work on Friday, I  feel like the weekend has already started.

As for Sunday and Monday, it is a similar idea. Even if you find your weekend busy, try to schedule the busyness and chores before Sunday evening and try and  make Sunday night enjoyable, even if it is taking extra time to relax. So many people I see — via email — that they have already started their work week on Sunday night! They not finished working on Saturday morning and they start working on Sunday evening! If they are lavishly rewarded for this, then fine. Otherwise, they need to better manage their time Monday to Friday so that that doesn’t happen. And they certainly need to manage their time so that they enjoy Sunday evening.

Finally, try to extend your weekend into Monday as much as you can. If you can have a relaxing breakfast, or a special lunch, or just meeting a friend for coffee on Monday, you will have eased into the week nicely and the next thing you know, you are already launched into the work week.

For the rest of the week, work hard. But when it comes time to relax and play, play hard too.

It’s your life: make the most of it. Extending your weekend is one way to do that.

While this announcement is anything as sexy as the new iPad, it is also a big development: Google Proposes to Extend DNS Protocol, Optimize Speed of Browsing.

Google and these other DNS providers are essentially changing the way the Internet will work. If this goes ahead, these DNS providers will be taking over or at least dramatically shaping the structure of the Internet. The way it is presented, the DNS providers will use part of your IP address to determine where to send your request in order to speed up your request. Right now if I want to go and browse ACMEJAPAN.COM, my DNS servers — in this case, the ones provided by Google — will say: oh, ACMEJAPAN.COM, that is located at IP address a.b.c.d. It should do this regardless of where I am connected. Knowing a.b.c.d, my ISP will (at least partially) route my request to IP address a.b.c.d. However, if  a.b.c.d points to a web server in Japan and my laptop is connected to an ISP in Canada, it’s going to take awhile (relatively speaking) for my request to get to Japan and back. What Google is proposing is this: if ACMEJAPAN.COM also has web servers in a location closer to me (say at w.x.y.z), then it will tell me that instead and as a result my request and response will be quicker.

It sounds all good, but it also means that Google DNS (and others) have more control over directing traffic around the Internet. That’s the part that concerns me. Those DNS providers are going to be actively shaping the flow of Internet traffic. And that is interesting.  I expect to see alot more coming out of this development.

Since the NYTimes.com has this: The Blogosphere Reacts to the Apple iPad, I thought: hey, I am part of the blogosphere, so I should react too! 🙂

• The response in this article is different than what I have been seeing. One difference: in the article, people have access to the iPad. Perhaps this will make people more enthusiastic once they get it.
• Overall, it doesn’t have the same Wow factor for me that other apple technology had. I remember the first iMac, iPod and others and thinking how special they were. This doesn’t seem that way. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can’t help.
• In some ways, I am seeing people argue for it the same way I see people argue for Google Wave. If you have to argue that strongly in favour of something, that is a bad sign. It should be obvious to people why they want it. I don’t see that for the iPad.
• It does remind me of a big iPhone / iTouch. That’s not too surprising: that is a classic design. But I would have been more impressed if they had done something more innovative in the overall physical form. Many times that alone gave other i devices their wow factor. Nothing about the iPad’s overall physical design excites me. It reminds me more of a new machine.
• The iPad could go the way of the Air computer. A colleague of mine said this and I think there is a possibility this is true. There could be a minority of people who get it, but the vast majority may stick with other devices.
• The size is relevant. I find I fuss alot with my Touch when I surf the web. With the iPad, there will be less of that.
• I think it will hurt the Kindle, but how much remains to be seen. I think the iPhone is superior to most Blackberries as devices, but what makes the Blackberry powerful is the deep integration with backend systems. The Kindle’s deep connection to Amazon could help it achieve the same thing.
• I know lots of people are joking about the name, but I think it is a good name. It is very close to iPod, and it is related to IBM’s ThinkPad.
• People are complaining about its lack of features, for good reason, but I think the big thing that is going to happen is the unleashing of application developers on that platform. For that’s what the iPad is: a newer/better platform for developers. I expect the apps alone will eventually drive people to get one. People won’t get one to replace their other devices. They will get it because it has apps that you can’t get anywhere else.
• iPad apps could allow Apple devices to get into businesses where they could never get in before. They could start appearing everywhere instead of a sheet of paper. There are already tons of big screen TVs everywhere in businesses now. I could see the same thing with iPads.
• iPads are going to change the nature of mobile devices. Whoever makes the technology for Apple will eventually make it for HTC and others.
• iPads could be the end of cellphones, even smart phones. If I have a bluetooth headset and a 3G iPad, the reason to have a phone diminishes greatly.
• If I were a print publisher, I would be excited and nervous. Excited because I believe Apple will give them a lifeline, a rope, so to speak. And nervous because that rope might be used to tie them to Apple, just like the music industry is. It was interesting to see the emphasis of print media at the Apple demo. That will be the direction for 2010, but I think the apps will take over and take it in unexpected directions.
• I like the lack of a keyboard. Honestly, keyboards and mice are very limited ways to interact with computers. Jobs recognized that with the first iPod and he has been pushing that as he goes forward. But I also think we need richer ways to interact with the computer. The iPad may give that to us.
• I think the iPad will evolve to become a much more impressive platform. This is just the beginning.

I wrote about “winners” in politics the other night: people who run only when they are confident they will win. There is another angle to this. Winners also will do what it take to win, even what it takes is outrageous or worse. In talking about Harold Ford at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about such winner, people like John Malcolm Patterson, who

 ‘…defeated Wallace, and embraced the murderous (Ku Klux) Klan, (and who also!) backed Barack Obama for president in 2008, and said of his segregationist days:

“If you didn’t do that you wouldn’t get elected. You might as well go home and forget it.” Even after his election, the issue constrained him. “The law required that the schools be segregated,” Patterson says. “And the legislature was not about to change the law. If I had attempted to force some issue myself, the legislature might well have impeached me. Timing is everything. And the timing was not right to do anything about segregation.”

This is not to say that Patterson doesn’t regret the way he handled segregation, particularly the issue of voting rights. “We were denying black people all over the state, highly qualified folk, the right to vote,” Patterson says. “You’d see these country guys on these voting registration boards. They’d call in some guy with a doctorate from Columbia University teaching at Tuskegee and ask him questions about the constitution and turn him down because they weren’t satisfactory. This was ridiculous. It was outrageous.”‘

Patterson was a “winner”. As Julius Caesar says in Shakespeare’s play, such men, with lean and hungry looks, think too much and are dangerous. They are “winners”.

According to the Globe and Mail, Talks with Taliban gain traction in plan for Afghan peace. Some signifigant points:

“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO commander in the 42-nation Afghan mission, said in an interview with the Financial Times. “I believe that a
political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it’s the right outcome.”

By saying that Taliban leaders could be included in a future Afghan government and suggesting that Afghans should “extend olive branches” to the insurgents, Gen. McChrystal has gone further than any previous U.S. commander.

Also, this

At a meeting in Istanbul yesterday ahead of the London conference, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told reporters that he wants to begin negotiations with the more moderate of the several groups usually classified as “Taliban.”

“I will be making a statement at the conference in London to the effect of removing Taliban names from the United Nations sanctions list,” Mr. Karzai said.

This is all very big and very signfigant for the future of NATO in that country. Dividing “The Taliban” is likely the best way to achieve stability in Afghanistan and likely the best way to deal with al-Qaeda there.

Easy. I recommend you buy these shower curtains:

Honestly, even if people think: ha! ha! Funny!, they will also think: where are the hotel listings. 🙂

From the brilliant ReflectionOf.Me

This time in a more challenging piece than “O mio babbino caro”. Here she performs Elettra’s Aria “D’Oreste, d’Aiace” from Mozart’s “Idomeneo, Re di Creta”. I think she performs it very well.  It’s a powerful aria, powerfully sung.

YouTube – Anna Netrebko Mozart – Idomeneo – D’oreste, D’ajace, Mozart

I mention power because I actually learned something from the comments of Youtube. The microphone in front of her is apparently not for projection, but for recording (you see a few of them onstage). Compare it with this video, with her performing with Andrea Bocelli.

In this video –not very well recorded — they are using amplification microphones. Now skip ahead to around the 2:44 minute mark and note how close he is to the mic as compared to her. In order for him to project over the overall sound, he has to be on top of the mic. Her? Not so much. If anything, if she was that close, she might overwhelm the overall sound. Power.

(This is not a knock against Bocelli, who has a fine voice. But he appears tense and struggling at this point, while she opens up her arms. Indeed, towards the end she is taking his hand, almost to lend support to the big finish to a difficult piece to sing.)

The Third Bit » Blog Archive » Amen

In this Harper’s article, Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine—By Ken Silverstein, is a look at the upcoming Barack Obama, who is  “Already considered a potential vice-presidential nominee in 2008”. Ha!

It’s a good article, mostly focused on lobbyists and their relationship with politicians. However, one quote that jumped out at me was this:

Obama said that the “blogger community,” which by now is shorthand for liberal Democrats, gets frustrated with him because they think he’s too willing to compromise with Republicans. “My argument,” he says, “is that a polarized electorate plays to the advantage of those who want to dismantle government. Karl Rove can afford to win with 51 percent of the vote. They’re not trying to reform health care. They are content with an electorate that is cynical about government. Progressives have a harder job. They need a big enough majority to initiate bold proposals.”

You can see Obama’s thinking about Health Care Reform here, even if it is something that so many progressive bloggers object to. That asymetry is unfair and frustrating to the left in the U.S. Howevre, once those bold proposals are set in place, they gain an inertia all of their own and the asymetry shifts in favour of progressives. (Ask conservatives that try to dismantle New Deal programs.)

(And yes I realize that the blogger community is more than just liberal Democrats….hey, this was written ages ago. :))

Whenever a party loses badly, as the GOP did recently, you get a withdrawal of mainstream participants, leaving a vacuum that can be filled by others. On the other side, you get people focused on those that fill the vacuum, as the Dems have. But really, that is a temporary state, until the side now in power starts to look weak. As the Dems are currently looking. Then you get something like this, G.O.P. Seeks to Widen Field of Play in Fall Elections – NYTimes.com, where the mainstream participants — in this case, from the GOP — start to reengage.

How you see this depends on your affiliation. Regardless, the idea that the the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin followers were ever going to lead the GOP was not very likely. Instead, it’s going to be people like Scott Brown in Massachusetts and Mike Pense in Indiana who will become the next leaders. I am not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just the way it is.

Perhaps the Tea Partiers and the Sarah Palin followers will feel that they paved the way for these new leaders. Whether that is true can be determined by how much Senators like Scott Brown listen to them. My belief is the answer is: not much. And that too is just the way it is.

Now we will see the “winners” return. Winners only play when they can win. For them, it’s not about participating so much as it is about winning.

See here.

Did you know that the Gates of Hell open? Surely you want to know about that! Well, now you can. Also Woman Gives Birth to Angel and The 10 Lost Commandments are revealed.

I’ve been hearing Paul Simon everywhere lately in the sound of new musicians. This post over at LETTER TO JANE, on Vampire Weekend’s “Giant”,  highlights its appearance in that song. And a good friend sent me Jeremy Fisher’s “Scar That Never Heals” on blip.fm and I can’t help but think of “Cecilia” and “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard” when I listen to it.

Now obviously Paul Simon is still alive and still making great music. But it is great to see newer musicians take that sound and use it too.

If you have already contributed financially to Haiti, you might be thinking: are there other ways I could help. Well, there are some Simple Tasks Anyone Can Do and compiled at this CrisisCommons Wiki. Check it out.

from the brilliant ReflectionOf.Me

P.S. I think a man made this. The clue is the “bacon” reference. If it was “chocolate”, I would have thought it was a woman. Just sayin’! 🙂

As characters go, Gianni Schicchi is remarkable. Not only does he appear in a Canto (XXX) of Dante’s Inferno, but he is also the subject of a one act opera by the great composer, Giacomo Puccini. Not bad for a minor crook of a man. Other than Othello, not many characters can claim such an honor.

The opera contains one of the most beautiful arias I know, “O mio babbino caro” (Oh, my dear papa).

The night before my daughter was born, I went to see Gianni Schicchi. After, when she was born, I used to hum “O mio babbino caro” to her to help her fall asleep.

One of my favourite sopranos is Anna Netrebko, and she sings “O mio babbino caro” here:

It’s not often you see economic idea laboratory tested, so to speak, but as Matthew Yglesias shows, that’s exactly what we have seen in comparing the West’s approach to the Great Recession as opposed to Chin’a approach. As he points out:

When the world entered a major downturn, China applied major stimulus. Really across the board stuff. …The government spent money, they did credit easing, they stimulated consumer demand (”retail sales rose 16.9 percent in 2009″), they did infrastructure, they did exchange rate policy, they did a lot. People warned that all this stimulus might create inflation, but China kept doing it anyway. Now, GDP growth is back on track and there’s actual evidence of inflation happening so they’re looking to pivot. Policymakers in the developed world—especially Europe—have, by contrast, spent much of the past twelve months doing the equivalent of worrying about a flood while standing in a burning house.

As a result, China’s ecomomy is taking off and their Central Bank is worried about inflation. Meanwhile, in the West, the central banks act like they are worried about inflation, but without the economic growth to cause inflation, I am not sure what they are worried about. It is the rest of us in the West who are worried, and it’s not about inflation.

When I think of print journalism, I think of journalists working the phones and going to press conferences to gather news. However, that is not the only way to do it. Indeed, the famed journalist I.F. Stone had a different yet very successful way of working. His “journalistic work drew heavily on obscure documents from the public domain; some of his best scoops were discovered by peering through the voluminous official records generated by the government”. It looks like the Guardian is supporting something along similar lines as it launches a search engine for government data. As the article in the link states:

The UK Guardian, ostensibly a newspaper but a major proponent for opening data held by governments to use by outside software developers, has launched some software of its own: a search engine that unearths datasets and pathways to data sets provided by governments around the world. World Government Data Search is now live.

In effect, The Guardian is enabling the new generations of I.F. Stones to muckrake and report on what is happening in the government. We are going back to the future.

Whatever you think of President Obama’s policies, one thing to note about him is that he plans long term. When he brought Paul Volcker onto his team, I first wondered if it was just window dressing. Volcker all but dropped off the radar until recently, when he has been saying scathing things about the big banks. Now there’s this: Obama to Propose New Limits on Banks – WSJ.com. In this article, the WSJ says that…

“Mr. Obama is also expected to endorse, for the first time publicly, measures pushed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, which would place restrictions on the proprietary trading done by commercial banks, essentially limiting the way banks bet with their own capital. Administration officials say they want to place “firewalls” between different divisions of financial companies to ensure banks don’t indirectly subsidize “speculative” trading through other subsidiaries that hold federally insured deposits.”

Why does any of this have to do with the long term? This could have been done anytime in the last year. Instead, Obama shored up the banks and let them more or less do what they wanted. And what did they do? They went on to rake in some serious profits and pay out some huge bonuses, much to the dismay of Obama’s supporters. However, Obama in the short term has focused on the more difficult task, which was Health Care Reform, while cajoling the banks to show some restraint (which they did not).  Once that is settled, one way or another, Obama will pivot towards bank reform, which is what he appears to be doing now. Just in time for the 2010 elections. Which is the plan.

After that, the plan will be to work on climate change, propose improvement to health care reform,  complete the draw down of forces in Irag and Afghanistan, and get the economy in the best shape it can be for the U.S. presidential election. That’s the long term plan. Watch.