Category Archives: Politics

Gen. David Petraeus spoke this evening at Seattle Town Hall in an event sponsored by the Seattle World Affairs Council.  His talk, innocuously titled US Central Command Update, focused on lessons learned from the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, with an … Continue reading →

This WSJ article lays out six possible outcomes for the Iranian election.   Sadly, recent developments would suggest some combination of #3 and #4 taking place.

Excellent TED talk by Clay Shirky called “How Twitter Can Make History.”  Given earlier this month at the State Department, it succinctly summarizes the dramatic evolution of the media from one-to-one (telephone) or one-to-many communication (print, radio, television) to today’s … Continue reading →

I had a paper route when I was a kid.  I delivered The Toronto Telegram, or The Telly as it was known, to about 25 homes in the subdivision where my family lived in Oakville, a bedroom community just west … Continue reading →

TED is a web site featuring talks from leading thinkers in the very broad fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design.  I think many of these talks are given at the annual TED conference.  If you’ve never visited TED it’s well … Continue reading →

This evening we attended a talk given by Paul Krugman at Seattle Town Hall sponsored by the Seattle World Affairs Council.  Krugman is the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a regular columnist at the New York … Continue reading →

I watched some of the coverage on CBC and, wow, nothing much has changed in Canada.  A Liberal elected in Vancouver Quadra, NDPers elected in Nickel Belt and Trinity-Spadina, Tories sweep (almost) Alberta Peter Mansbridge brought out of cryostasis to … Continue reading →

This weekend, Ira Glass, host of NPR’s This American Life, ran another report from Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, a sequel to their earlier report The Giant Pool of Money.  This one, Another Frightening Show About the Economy, explores the … Continue reading →

Good column yesterday by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on the bailout plan.  He does a good job explaining the interconnectedness of Main Street and Wall street.  I particularly liked this: "We’re all connected. As others have pointed out, … Continue reading →

I used to think I had a pretty fair grasp of economics and finance.  The subprime lending crisis which has now mushroomed into a full-scale credit meltdown has disabused me of any such notion.  It’s also shown pretty conclusively that no … Continue reading →