Author Archives: Mark

Len Brown Takes the Train

TVNZ reports: Auckland Mayor Len Brown says he will start to take the train to work on a regular basis to show his commitment to public transport. Does that mean that if he didn’t have a political motivation for taking … Continue reading

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Cato on Farm Subsidies

I was interested to read the following in this June 2009 article from the Cato Institute (via this recent blog article): An interesting example of farmers prospering without subsidies is in New Zealand. That nation ended its farm subsidies in … Continue reading

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Bob Herbert on Poverty

Bob Herbert had an opinion piece in the New York Times last Friday lamenting the Obama administration’s lack of interest in the poor: President Obama is redesigning his administration to make it even friendlier toward big business and the megabanks, … Continue reading

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Protectionism

I’m still very absorbed in studying the Rails codebase, and that has been limiting the amount of time I’ve been able to spend in the past week thinking about blogging. However… TVNZ ran an item a few days ago about … Continue reading

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My Unacceptable Comment

It’s been over a week since my last post, though I have been far from idle… I’m in the process of writing a fairly detailed description of how the Rails 3 web framework works internally. Enjoyable work, but time-consuming. I … Continue reading

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Unhappy Meals

The L.A. Times reports – The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s Corp., claiming that the company’s meals with toys unfairly entice children into eating food that can do them harm… The lead … Continue reading

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Slate’s Libby Copeland on John Boehner

Slate had an article yesterday by Libby Copeland discussing the significance of some recent episodes in which incoming House Speaker John Boehner has cried in public. Her interest follows an emotional speech Boehner gave on the night of the election … Continue reading

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Discovery News on St Ismeria – Misrepresenting the Research

Yesterday msnbc.com yesterday carried an article by Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News about new research on the medieval legend of St Ismeria. The article referenced a paper by Dr Catherine Lawless from the University of Limerick that examines the story … Continue reading

Posted in Ethics, Media | Tagged | 1 Comment

Really?

I am somewhat astonished to read the following that Paul Krugman wrote yesterday, regarding what he says is President Obama “lashing out” at liberal critics of his compromise with the GOP – Leave aside the merits for a moment: what … Continue reading

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Grasping Reality

One of several blogs that I follow on a fairly regular basis is Grasping Reality with Both Hands, by Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. The subtitle of his blog is “The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist J. Bradford … Continue reading

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