October 2009
22 posts
Palestinian farmers: Not much of an olive branch |... →
“Working fast, unnoticed by Palestinian landowners in the nearby Arab village of al-Mughayir, the settlers cut down nearly 200 olive trees, of which 70 belonged to Mr Abu Awad. As a result, he reckons to have lost income worth around $3,400 that he would have earned from this year’s harvest. But that is not all. “I planted these trees with my own hands 35 years ago”, he says”....
Marco.org - The lesson of the Sidekick failure
... →
Nerds only.
The Wages of Terrorism | D-squared →
“taking the $15 figure, how does this work in terms of financial logistics, exactly? Assuming that officers get paid a little more than enlisted men, at this level the wage bill for a 10-men Taliban unit would be about $5000 a month. Without getting into the questions of financing, how do the Taliban handle payroll? I can’t believe that there are paymasters hiking around ToraBora with...
The Health Care Blog: Why Standards Matter 2:... →
“In other words, [policy makers] are committed to using the regulatory tools available to them to change the course and to move the curves of IT adoption in as short a time as possible.”
Meat Facts | Ezra Klein →
“Plenty of folks are appalled to see a living room light left on but would never think to trade the cheeseburger for a grilled cheese”
Cracking the Spine of Libel - Olivia Judson Blog -... →
“English libel laws create particular difficulties for science journalists. Science, after all, is about evaluating evidence. Science journalism, sometimes, requires pointing out when evidence is weak or absent. … The problem the libel laws create is not so much that critical stories can’t be written, but that they won’t be. … the potential for a libel case is a powerful...
Is incident reporting effective in reducing... →
“caregivers, freed from the “report everything” mantra, would be more enthusiastic about reporting, and hospital leaders and administrators would have the time to analyze the reports and develop meaningful action plans”
Ontario Medical Association is taking aim at wrong... →
“Ontario spent $736 per capita on physicians in 2008, while all other provinces spent an average of $625 per capita – 18 per cent less. (This gap is expected to widen as physicians’ new contract takes effect.) This disparity, coupled with the OMA’s adamant defence of physicians’ status, has prompted reasonable people to question whether taxpayers are getting the system...
Andrew Ross Sorkin's 'Too Big to Fail' |... →
(via Instapaper)
Can Openers for Beginners « The Baseline Scenario →
Interesting analysis of the impact of traffic court variation on insurance premiums.
The Times Takes on Overdraft "Protection" : CJR" →
“TheTimes reports that 14 percent of bank customers account for 93 percent of all overdrafts.USA Today has reported that the poorest 10 percent pay for 40 percent of all fees.”
Business.view: Woke up, smelled the coffee | The... →
“Starbucks seems close to halting its decline. Same-store sales have not quite stopped falling, but the rate of decrease has slowed significantly, while cost-cutting and other efficiencies have increased margins.”
How Detroit Went Bottom-Up | The American Prospect →
“One of the most stubborn myths about monopolization is that it eliminates competition, making it easier for both managers and financiers to plan and invest for the long term. In practice, monopolization only redirects competition. In place of competition along horizontal lines (between firms vying to offer the same basic products and services) monopolization tends to increase competition...
Ezra Klein - Swiss Health-Care Costs
... →
“This seems to be evidence that substantially public systems hold down costs much better than substantially private systems, like the Swiss system, or more starkly, the American system”
Peter W. Galbraith | U.N. Isn't Addressing Fraud... →
“the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai”
Woman’s Shattered Life Shows Ground Beef... →
“The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came...
Bites of passage - The National Newspaper →
“The Asian tiger mosquitoes breed in artificial containers, shelter and feed in domestic shrubbery. Given a choice of animals, they will take their blood meals from humans.“Albopictus here,” Strickman said, “is acting like a domesticated mosquito.””
It seems like everybody is dissecting Iggy these days, so I might as well try too.
Chris Selley has been expounding on how Ignatieff needs to do or say something bold and worthy of his intellect/eyebrows. I think that’s a good idea, too, although I find the points that he made today more compelling than did Chris.
But it seems to me that this suggestion only takes the party further down...