This isn’t the post I had meant to write. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on May 22nd, swept to leadership of Turkey’s secular opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), a development of which the Economist says Mr Kilicdaroglu’s surprise ascent has transformed Turkey’s political landscape and brought new hope to millions of secular voters who have long [...]
Genius strikes again: kids in village build radio from scrap parts. So while on holiday from school, my brother Caleb, 12; my nephews Ronald, 15 and Jesse, 12 rounded up some scrap parts and built what you see above in about a day. I didn’t have enough time to interview them properly, but man was [...]
Is Europe’s real financial problem Greece, or is it Germany? Steven Pearlstein, in the Washington Post, makes the case for Germany. … What Germans won’t accept is that they wouldn’t have been able to sell all those beautifully designed cars and well-engineered machine tools if Greeks and Spaniards and Americans hadn’t been willing to buy [...]
Just a couple of stray thoughts related to the links in yesterday’s round up. First, it turns out I read a bit hastily when it came to the text messages related to that SC gubernatorial candidate affair allegation. The guy who testily texted “Your the one who screwed her. You’re the one who bragged about [...]
Let’s begin with this story about a murdered man who reappeared after a decade, seeking welfare payments. It’s in Weird News, and you could just read it as a quirky little item of odd news, but it also has a cautionary tale to tell about torture. … In hiding for a decade, Zhao feared he [...]
For a couple of years, in the late 70s and early 80s, Bill Evers tried to win me to the Libertarian Party. I was a Stanford undergrad at the time, and he was a Stanford grad student. We met at an organization called Stanford Against Conscription, which formed to oppose several Congressional attempts to reinstitute [...]
Via Amanda Marcotte’s mockery on Facebook and Pharyngula’s takedown, I find this Touchstone article on Contradeception: The Public Nature of Marital Privacies. The point of the article is that contraception is a bad thing, because married couples should be having babies as evidence that they’re having sex, while unmarried couples should not be able to [...]
The Meeting of the Minds conference takes place once a year here in Orange County. This year’s conference, the 16th, was sponsored by the Mental Health Association, together with the Orange County Health Care Agency, the Orange Police Department, and Lilly & company. “Consumers” (people with mental illnesses and their family members) can attend at [...]
In the days since Kagan’s nomination as Supreme Court Justice, I’ve been watching other bloggers debate two questions. The least interesting of the two questions is: Is Elena Kagan a lesbian? The reason it’s the least interesting question is that, as far as I can tell, the best answer available is a simple, “No.” In [...]
In Kenya, debate on the new proposed constitution fires up on the issue of abortion. Here’s Ms. Magazine’s take: Wonder what happens when abortion is illegal? Then take a look at Kenya. Every year, more than 2,600 women there die from complications of unsafe abortion, accounting for 35 percent of the country’s maternal deaths. Close [...]
This isn’t the first time we in California have voted on some sort of open primary, but the third. Joel has taken a position of principle on these initiatives, similar to that of the ACLU, that parties should get to control their own primaries, and so his choice is simple; each time this comes up [...]
Here’s where I round up links on the Greek debt crisis that didn’t fit in my last couple of posts. Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Athens last week, leading to speculation that a thaw in relations between Greece and Turkey might allow Greece to cut military spending. “The conflict with Turkey has been overwhelmingly [...]
Election time in California is often, for me anyway, a time of wondering whether there’s such a thing as too much direct democracy. You stare at a ballot with more propositions than you can keep track of, often including two competing measures trying to reform the same thing (in one election we had four competing [...]
The deal that has brought Greece loans in return for steep cuts is taking heat in Greece and Germany alike. Support for both the ruling party, PASOK, and the chief opposition party, Nea Dimokratia, is falling in Greece, as 88% of Greeks say in a recent poll by the newspaper Ethnos that they believe the [...]
Here’s what I’ve been able to learn so far about the contested races on my ballot (Orange County, CA, but only the Orange County races that I personally get to vote in).
I got my absentee ballot in the mail a couple of days ago, so it’s time to do my regular round up of sources of California election information. In this election, besides the usual array of candidates in primaries and local elections, we must vote on the following propositions: Proposition 13 Limits on Property Tax [...]
With Yar’Adua dead, and Goodluck Jonathan now President rather than just Acting President, Nigeria needs a new VP. And, after much speculation, we now have Jonathan’s choice: Governor Namadi Sambo of Kaduna State. The Daily Trust writes about the power balancing considerations that drove Jonathan’s choice. According to the source, President Jonathan had earlier settled [...]
As I was searching for information for my post on how European social safety nets vary from country to country, one thing I kept turning up, and having to toss (since it didn’t seem that relevant to the European fiscal crisis) was articles comparing US and European immigration policy. Relative to countries like Germany, the [...]
In news that is sure to further fuel protests in Greece, Reuters reported yesterday In a bizarre twist to the Greek debt crisis, France and Germany are pressing Greece to buy their gunboats and warplanes, even as they urge it to cut public spending and curb its deficit.
First, the obvious news: the European Central Bank has agreed on a 750 billion Euro (or $1 trillion) rescue package (for the weaker countries in the euro zone as a whole, not just Greek specifically), at which news stock markets leapt across Europe. Now the blog round up: Charlemagne at the Economist describes the rescue [...]
Applauding the Shadow City Dwellers of ‘Welcome to Lagos’ Leading in Reconciliation? Fred Mutebi-Artist Boys toys in Mathare Valley Slum Nairobi New Media Companies Redux Kenya: How to buy goods online from Kenya. Survey: Africa in Higher Education.