Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
That's what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is about to do: Many will doubtless regard with skepticism the Bloomberg administration’s newly announced “micro-unit” pilot program. The administration is asking developers to submit proposals for the design and construction of an apartment building on a city-owned site in Manhattan; the city will adjust zoning restrictions there, …
Continue reading "Making the Fifty Square Metre Apartment Look Like a Mansion"
The UN's latest idea for funding itself: The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries. An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or …
Continue reading "What a Billionaire's Tax Means Depends Upon the Currency"
Like now: President Obama spoke today at a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire. "You know, it's fashionable right now for people to be cynical. We go in cycles like this and right now a lot of people are saying "Oh, America is doing terribly" and "What are we going to do?"... Being cynical, however, …
The head of the Global Forum on Migration and Development thinks they should be undermining their national identities: The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states, the UN's special representative for migration has said. Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming …
Continue reading "The EU is Really Good at Undermining Certain Things"
Most on the "religious right" aren't paying attention to rulings like this, but like Charles Rubin they should be: The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled that same-sex couples can take advantage of the estate tax marital deduction provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. This ruling has far-reaching federal …
Continue reading "Same-Sex Civil Marriage: The End of the Marital Estate and Gift Tax Exemption?"
Pollster John Zogby finds young people disillusioned these days: Nearly four years after enthusiastic younger voters poured into polling booths to help push Barack Obama over the finish line and into the Oval Office, their hope has turned to fear and pollster John Zogby says that they are ready to give up on politics. “I …
Continue reading "Generation Y Answers the Question from the Last Presidential Cycle"
Things are not pretty in the Windy City these days: But despite the chorus of praise, it’s becoming evident that the city took a serious turn for the worse during the first decade of the new century. The gleaming towers, swank restaurants, and smart shops remain, but Chicago is experiencing a steep decline quite different …
Continue reading "Chicago: The City of Big Shoulders Slumps"
There has been a great deal of discussion these days about gender selective abortions, which, when done, usually go against girls. We've been presented stories of nations where the ratio of men to women in the population is rising to "unprecedented" proportions because families are doing away with their baby girls through abortion. And, of …
Continue reading "Abortion, Infanticide and the "War on Women": A Lesson From China"
When we think of China today, we think of a nation growing very fast economically and taking its place as one of the great powers of the world. Getting to that point--or getting to that point again, if one takes a long view of history--took a course of great suffering and several unexpected turns (how …
Michael Tomsky of the Guardian is simply wrong about this: So if Warren’s mother told her there was Cherokee blood, and if one little rivulet of Cherokee blood going back generations makes one a Cherokee, which legally it does, then she’s Cherokee, at least as far she knows. Now she has to prove this? You …
Continue reading "Yes, it Can be Proven Whether Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee or Not"
