Category Archives: Around the world

However you feel about the current situation in Iraq, I believe this proposal by Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is something we can all support. This May we are returning to Iraq with the intention of dedicating a twenty-four station “Internet … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Daylight Savings time is upon us again this weekend (*). Whether you like it or not (I do, in cases anyone is curious), just be glad you’re not in Indiana, where they will start observing DST for the first time … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Best of luck to Seth and Sarah Oldmixon as they leave to spend the next two years in Bangladesh with the Peace Corps. They’re writing about the experience here. Bon voyage, you two! Continue reading →

I’m sure everyone has heard by now about the terrorist attack on London mass transit (Two BBC stories; Reuters is inaccessible.) I have always thought London would be better prepared for terrorist attacks after its experiences with the IRA in … Continue reading → Continue reading →

London, not New York, will host the 2012 Olympics, according to CNN. But at least the NYC boosters had an opportunity to stick it to the French: In the first round, London got 22 votes, Paris 21, Madrid 20 and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Brad DeLong points us to a new paper which attempts to explain how New York got so big, and stays so big: For 200 years, New York City has been the largest city in the nation, and it continues to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I just want to say that I can’t think of any other couple getting married in recent memory who deserved each other more richly. That is all. Continue reading →

Forty four thousand dead. I have no words. Here’s how you can help. Continue reading →

I’m always grateful to hear of a really dumb law being passed someplace other than Texas. Alarmed by glimpses of sweaty citizens in the buff, the city council in the southeastern city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning indoor … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Nice article on former Rep. Charlie Wilson, the eccentric Texan whose career may be making it to the big screen in an adaptation of the book Charlie Wilson’s War. He was an interesting guy – I wish I could find … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This is a petition urging President Bush to take action against the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. I’ve signed it and I urge you to sign it as well. That said, it’s somewhat hard to imagine what exactly the United … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Christians look to form “new nation” within US Calling the approval of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” a group of Christian activists is in the beginning stages of an effort to have one state … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Julia suggests a way to help an acquaintance of hers in Afghanistan help some kids over there. Check it out. Continue reading →

I hate stories like this. GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador — Armed with spray guns and tanks of herbicide, 15 Ecuadoreans descended into the crater of an inactive volcano to beat back one of the Galapagos Islands’ most voracious foes: the blackberry. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Pieces of an airplane that were found recently have been definiteively identified as being from the plane Antoine Saint-Exupery was flying when he was last seen. The mystery of the death of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who celebrated the mysteries of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Damn straight. There’s the basic contradiction all at once: Wolfowitz and the neocons seem to truly believe that they’re motivated by an idealistic devotion to democracy, but at the same time they’re willfully blind to the fact that their own … Continue reading → Continue reading →

One of the things we saw a lot of in France, out where we were in the champagne country near Epernay and Reims, was war memorials. An awful lot of WWI and WWII happened right there, and there’s no forgetting … Continue reading → Continue reading →

So long, supersonic. LONDON — British Airways’ last Concorde flight for fare-paying passengers took off for New York today, a day before scheduled supersonic service ends for good. Both today’s London-New York flight and Friday’s final trans-Atlantic return are expected … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Hope has a friend who’s a reporter for the Associated Press, and he was kind enough to respond to a few questions she emailed him. He spent time in Afghanistan and was embedded in Iraq, and he’s now in East … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Such a shame we didn’t have time to visit Austria while we were overseas, or we could have stopped in on the Schwarzeneggar Museum. In Graz, travelers can visit the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum in the Fitnessparadies gym, with photo displays … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Great. As if I don’t have enough to worry about: If Russian researchers in Antarctica succeed in drilling through the final 396 feet of nearly 2-1/2 miles of ice to reach an ancient, unexplored lake underneath, scientists at NASA warn … Continue reading → Continue reading →

You remember Afghanistan, right? Here’s how things are going over there: Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Looking for a nice, recession-proof stock? Try an Australian brothel. “Everyone knows sex is a smart investment,” said Heidi Fleiss, the former Hollywood madam, who helped launch the Daily Planet on the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday. Investors in the Melbourne … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Big Media Matt points to this article about the US siding with repressive regimes to block language in a United Nations resolution that calls for countries to condemn violence against women and “refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or religious … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Max Power points to this story of what happened when a Business Week reporter decided to respond to all of those Nigerian email scams. Check it out. And now the Nigerian scammers have met the Raving Atheist. If that’s not … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s a nice little article about the former Soviet republic of Estonia, which is now one of the most Net-connected places on earth: Dubbed E-Stonia by some, the country ranked No. 8 out of 82 countries in putting the Net … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Well, Dubya’s about to get his wish. The prospect leaves me depressed, worried, and angry. I do not believe this invasion will make us safer – quite the contrary. I do not believe that Saddam was an imminent, uncontainable threat. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

As long as we’re thinking outside the box today, I’ll point you to Centerpoint’s take on how to bloodlessly resolve the Iraq situation. Interesting reading. And I plan to hold Ted to his promise of future analysis. On a different … Continue reading → Continue reading →

From Yahoo News: The Bush administration said Tuesday that it expects Iraq to pay for its own reconstruction in the event there is a war to oust Saddam Hussein. “Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s a fantastic story about the international campaign by the Rotarians to eradicate polio. They started in 1985, have raised $1.8 billion, worked with WHO and UNICEF and government health agencies everywhere, and have reduced polio outbreaks to almost nothing. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here’s a fascinating article about a Mennonite community in Mexico and how it has adapted its traditional ways of making a living by farming and dairy farming in an increasingly competitive environment. Check it out. Continue reading →

The Texas A&M phone system was hacked by some Saudi Arabians, who used it to make free long distance calls. Phone carriers alerted the school to the suspicious activity Thursday, said Walt Magnussen, A&M’s associate director of telecommunications. The university … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’ll be scaling back on posting for a day or two (there’s some kind of holiday coming up). In the spirit of that holiday, read about the USS Meredith Victory, which rescued 14,000 Korean War refugees on December 22, 1950. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

William Burton has posts on why North Korea is a bigger threat than Iraq, why unilateral action in North Korea has a better risk-reward ration than Iraq, why we really need to keep nukes out of Kim Jong Il’s hands, … Continue reading → Continue reading →