Yay! My inboxes are empty, both physical and electronic. That's a lot of catching up done.

Now I guess I'll have to do some real work ...

New Spanish cabinet includes first woman defense minister - International Herald Tribune

MADRID, Spain: Spain's first woman defense minister was among 17 members of the Cabinet sworn into office Monday.

Carme Chacon, 37 -- who is seven months pregnant -- is one of nine women in Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's new government.

Chacon, from the Catalan town of Esplugues de Llobregat, served as a city councilor in 1999 and as deputy parliamentary speaker in 2004. She was promoted to housing minister in Zapatero's first government and was accredited with the Socialist party's success in the powerful northeastern region of Catalonia in the March 9 elections.

Zapatero's Socialists won 169 seats in Spain's 350-seat lower house in last month's elections.

Five key Zapatero allies retained their posts: Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega as deputy prime minister, Pedro Solbes in economy, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba as interior minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos in foreign policy and Mariano Fernandez Bermejo in justice.

East Germany's Top Party Wants Marx Back | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 14.04.2008

Oskar Lafontaine, co-leader of Germany's Left party, has called for parts of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to be officially adopted as party policy. He also wants Germany to nationalize energy companies.

Left Party co-chief Lafontaine told the conservative newspaper Die Welt that he found some sections of the Communist Manifesto to be "very contemporary," and should be adopted into the party program.

 

The segment he would like to include in his policy, about the bourgeoisie and capital, reads: "For exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, (the bourgeoisie) has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

 

The Left Party is Germany's third most popular political party, after the ruling right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD).

Cosmic Variance: Goodbye.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Wheeler's bedside. I tried to say thank you. But it was impossible to convey how much he means to me, and how grateful I am to him. In that moment when I crossed the threshold to his office, I was embarking on a new path. I am still on that path, and every day I am grateful to him for showing me the way.

John Wheeler died this morning.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

This is, I think, the third Monday evening in a row without power. Load shedding (a wonderful euphemism for controlled black-outs) is becoming professional in South Africa. The stint in our neighbourhood generally lasts from six to ten, so some 50 minutes to go.

I am getting weary of cold food for supper. I don't think this will get much better in winter.

I've been busy to write up on all the crazy people I've met in this country so far. I could post it here, with names as pseudonyms - but it's not even remotely intellectual.

The core of evil is a lack of empathy

Nomad, this is cold

http://codgy.com/michigan-winter-ice-waves/

For robot fans: Big Dog, from DARPA.

Breathtaking technology but a tad spooky, too.

New York Times: A Pub Crawl Through the Centuries

DR. JOHNSON declared a tavern seat "the throne of human felicity." The Frenchman Hilaire Belloc, who spent his life in England, said: "When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves. For you will have lost the last of England."

A good pub is a ready-made party, a home away from home, a club anyone can join. Some British pubs began as simple meeting places, some as coaching inns -- hostelries where stagecoaches stopped for the night for fodder, bed and stable. Generally these were larger, and had a secondary pub at the back for ostlers, farriers and other riffraff.

In Oxford, which has some pubs -- like the Bear, on Blue Boar Lane, and the Mitre, on the High Street -- that date back to the 1200's, many of the names echo the Middle Ages. The White Hart (a stag, Richard II's heraldic emblem), the Kings Arms (named for James I, during whose reign neighboring Wadham College was founded), The Bear, the Wheatsheaf: all are names that call up a past of knights, farms and forests.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

BBC NEWS | Health | Hormones 'may fuel market crises'

Hormone surges among City traders could be partly responsible for driving "boom and bust" economics, say researchers.

A Cambridge University team found testosterone levels were directly linked to the profit they made.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study also found levels of the stress hormone cortisol could affect the risks they took.

A psychologist who works with investment bankers said it may help explain seemingly irrational behaviour.

As we journey through life, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from dessication.

The gears of my double-secret travel plans are turning. I fly to Auckland on Nov 3.

Yes, I will vote absentee. No, I did not choose that date because John "bomb bomb Iran" McCain is going to be elected supreme overlord the next day.

you are the media you consume.

I happened to notice this word 'skorkle' used as a verb in connection with the consumption of oysters. Never heard it before...

You can't be me, I'm taken

Le Monde staff on strike over job cuts at the French newspaper - International Herald Tribune

PARIS: Readers of the respected French daily Le Monde are going without their newspaper and getting only a bare-bones online version. Le Monde employees are holding a rare strike to protest a tough plan that includes 130 job cuts to make the paper profitable again.

Journalists would account for two-thirds of the job losses under the plan. The head of the paper, Eric Fottorino, also wants the paper to part with four publications in the Le Monde group.

The plan aims to put the paper in the black by 2010. Unions used their Monday strike to denounce the plan as "brutal."

For when you tire of Italian elections.

I'd be the first to move over here but duty calls...I guess I'll be stuck with a beer all by myself.

So, uhm, we've gone from a mortgage crisis to a credit crisis to a food crisis in the last, oh, week.  Why do I feel like I am in one of those bad Hollywood disaster movies?  

In other bad news, Russia's sending some monkeys to Mars... (Those monkeys they just bought from Uganda?)

Anyway, Laika!  We will never ever forget!!

New monument to spacedog-martyr:

Probably it is a good thing they're putting monkeys on Mars, as it looks like the human race is about to fizzle out here on earth.  Primate colonization of Mars seems like as good a "Plan B" as any...


"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."