October 2008 archive

Sometimes Its Better To Just

Not Speak Rather Than To Keep

Digging With That Power Shovel  

Rivals Split on U.S. Power, but Ideas Defy Easy Labels

IF ELECTED .

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 22, 2008

WASHINGTON – John McCain has said his worldview was formed in the Hanoi Hilton, the jail where as a prisoner of war he learned to stand up to his country’s enemies and lost any youthful naïveté about what happens when America shows weakness.

Barack Obama has written that his views began to take shape in the back streets of Jakarta, where he lived as a young boy and saw the poverty, the human rights violations and the fear inspired by the American-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto.

It was there, Mr. Obama wrote in his second autobiography, that he first absorbed the “jumble of warring impulses” that make up American foreign policy, and received a street-level understanding of how foreigners react to “our tireless promotion of American-style capitalism” and to Washington’s “tolerance and occasional encouragement of tyranny, corruption and environmental degradation.”

Wealth gap creating a social time bomb

 • Race behind division in US cities, says UN report

• Beijing is most egalitarian place in the world

John Vidal, environment editor

The Guardian, Thursday October 23 2008

Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment.

In a survey of 120 major cities New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable “alert” line used to warn governments.

“High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies,” said the report. “[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity.

USA

Job Losses Accelerate, Signaling Deeper Distress



 By Neil Irwin and Michael S. Rosenwald

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, October 23, 2008; Page A01



Employers are moving to aggressively cut jobs and reduce costs in the face of the nation’s economic crisis, preparing for what many fear will be a long and painful recession.

The labor market has been weak all year, with a slow drip of workers losing their jobs each month. But the deterioration of the job market is now emerging as a driver of economic distress, according to a wide range of data and anecdotal reports from corporate America.

In September, there were more mass layoffs — instances in which employers slashed 50 or more jobs at one time — than in any month since September 2001, the Labor Department said yesterday.

We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.

We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.

The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

I want to know: Does laughter cause gene expression?  This is a question I have never heard asked.  If there is a psychologist or neuroscientist in the audience who knows if this question has ever been asked, I want to know that, also.  The answer is certainly, Yes.  Of course, there are genes constantly activated by everything we do.  But are there specific genes associated with laughter?  This is not a subtle question, such as the difference between humor and laughter.  I am talking about Hee-Haw, robust, in yer face, I can’t stop laughing, lol catz!