Residents and critical infrastructure in the nation’s six highest-risk volcanic areas—including the Yellowstone region– will benefit from increased monitoring and analysis as a result of Recovery Act funds being channeled into volcano monitoring, Secretary Salazar announced today.
Hillary Clinton is the Most Admired Woman in America
But just barely: Clinton’s long reign was almost ended by Sarah Palin.
Now there’s a slap in the face!
I’ve always wanted to ride the Orient Express, the famous Paris-to-Istanbul sleeper train made famous by countless movies and novels. It’s an elegant train steeped in glamor and history. Ever since it opened in 1883 it was the way to go to the East. It’s been one of my travel goals for as long as I can remember, but I figured I could always put it off until next year because it would always be there.
The second full moon of December — commonly known as a blue moon — will include a partial eclipse. Talk about an overachiever!
Yes, they’re pests — at least in the US. Yes they crowd out native birds and leave terrible messes — in the US. But in Europe, where they belong, they are an event, spectacular in a way that no humans will ever begin to achieve. And that’s a shame. We could learn a lot from Starlings.
(Thanks for the idea, Murr!)
The organ, the Craighead-Saunders, is a unique instrument, not only because of its lovely sound, but also because it is a nearly exact copy of a late Baroque organ built by Adam Gottlob Casparini of East Prussia in 1776. The original stands in the Holy Ghost Church in Vilnius, Lithuania.
There is no other contemporary organ quite like the one at Christ Church…. More…
“Following international criticism, Uganda has softened the language in its controversial “anti-gay” bill, downgrading the maximum possible punishment for homosexuality from death to life in prison.”
Well, isn’t that freakin’ wonderful? How long do you suppose people live in Ugandan prisons? Let’s cut off their foreign aid. Let ‘em put that where the sun don’t shine.
Banks That Bundled Bad Debt Also Bet Against It – NYTimes.com
Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.
Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s — and then made financial bets against them, called selling short in Wall Street parlance. Others that created similar securities and then bet they would fail, according to Wall Street traders, include Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia Inc., an investment company whose parent firm was overseen by Lewis A. Sachs, who this year became a special counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Hey, those fellas are pretty clever! They deserve a bolus bonus.
Marking the 20th anniversary of the Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, the paper described the show as a “tender and irreverent, scandalous and ironic, boisterous and profound, philosophical — and sometimes even theological — nutty synthesis of pop culture and of the lukewarm and nihilistic American middle class.”
Who knew they were fans?
