Thousands of people have attended a state funeral for 205 people who died in the Abruzzo earthquake, as Italy holds a day of mourning.

Victims' families and top politicians were among mourners at the funeral near the damaged city of L'Aquila.

The death toll was raised to 289 on Friday morning.

One of Ireland's most senior clergyman admitted yesterday that an imminent report on the sexual abuse of children by clergy will shock the country and reveal that thousands of children were abused by priests.

In an unprecedented homily for Holy Thursday, Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, warned that the depth of the abuse "will shock us all".

Anglo-French rivalry in the arena of industrial resistance against the effects of the recession is alive and well. So far the score is France 9, Britain 5. But the workers from each country seem to be playing different games. So far there have been nine cases of bossnapping in France and five cases of occupation in Britain.
...
But which of the tactics - bossnapping versus occupations - is more effective? While better than sullen resignation and meek acceptance of one's fate, both tactics are of little use in stopping redundancies per se. That would take much more hard-hitting and widespread action by many more workers across the whole economy.
...
But in the battle to get better severance terms, it seems bossnapping wins out.

Some 50,000 people gathered peacefully Thursday (9 April) afternoon in front of the Georgian parliament asking for president Mikheil Saakashvili's resignation.

"Misha, go home!" and "Protect Georgia from tyranny" were some of the slogans shouted by protesters gathered by 13 opposition parties who pledged to stay on the streets until the president resigns.
...
After three hours of political speeches on a podium, most of the protesters started walking back home, as a cold wind swept the streets in the evening.

EU governments have committed €3 trillion to bail out banks with guarantees or cash injections in the wake of the global financial crisis, the European Commission said on Wednesday (8 April).

The money has been spent on "guarantee umbrellas, risk shields and recapitalisation measures for the financial sector," Brussels said in a report.

Some €2.3 trillion went to financial guarantee schemes, some €300 billion to recapitalisation schemes, and around €400 billion were spent on other rescue and restructuring programmes.

The commission data also shows that while most member states have offered their banks some special guarantees, many central and eastern European states - including Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria - have not.

Reacting to Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany. His stance is in opposition to Chancellor Merkel, who wants to keep the bombs to secure Germany's say in NATO.
...

"These weapons are militarily obsolete today," Steinmeier told SPIEGEL, explaining that he would take steps to ensure that the remaining US warheads "are removed from Germany." Disarmament involving "weapons in this category" also needs to be an issue on the agenda at the disarmament conference which the US is planning, Steinmeier said.

In late 2008, it looked as though Germany had finally managed to reverse its falling birthrate. New statistics, though, indicate that the opposite is true. German commentators say Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen was naive to believe otherwise.
...
The problem, though, is that the mother of seven's report only used data for January through September 2008. On Tuesday, though, the German Federal Statistical Office released preliminary figures for all of 2008, and the news is not pretty. Rather than the heralded rise in births, 2008 saw a 1.1 percent drop in the birthrate -- or 8,000 fewer children for a country already worried about its growing demographic crisis.

Germany's government is finalising "bad bank" plans to deal with toxic financial assets as part of efforts to restore confidence to the banking system that also include a takeover offer launched this week for Hypo Real Estate, the stricken property lender.

Peer Steinbrück, finance minister, is expected to reveal by the end of April how he intends to help German banks separate unwanted or heavily impaired assets from their balance sheets, thereby freeing up capital and cutting the risk of further writedowns.

The finance ministry said on Friday that the issue would be discussed after Easter with Angela Merkel, the chancellor. The ministry declined to comment on German press reports that €200bn ($262bn) in guarantees would be made available to banks.

Hundreds of Irish rugby fans who were due to travel to London on Sunday for a crucial European cup tie have returned their tickets in a sign of how Ireland's biting recession is hitting middleclass professionals.

The lengthening dole queues and the grounded helicopters of Ireland's bankrupt property developers may be the common leitmotif for Ireland's current economic plight.

But it is the suffering of the middle class - and few groups better epitomise this than loyal travelling rugby fans - that makes this downturn different.

CHISINAU, April 10 (RIA Novosti) - Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin asked on Friday the country's Constitutional Court to order a recount of the results of the April 5 parliamentary polls, won by his Communist Party.

"I am convinced that a full election recount in line with existing legislation and procedures will become an important factor in establishing political stability, peace and mutual trust in the Moldovan Republic," Voronin said in a statement to the Constitutional Court.

The British National Party could pose a major threat to Labour in the upcoming European elections, Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman has said.

The BNP "are a bigger threat than they have been before", she told the Independent newspaper in an interview.

She also outlined Labour's efforts to counter the BNP ahead of elections for the European Parliament in June.

Labour is "focused on the BNP in this election in a way it hasn't been previously," she added.

'Below the radar'

Labour is using the slogan "fairness not fear" in areas where there is heavy BNP activity, instead of its national banner "winning the fight for Britain's future".

SMALLER nations than Wales are thriving in the European Union as independent states - and we should follow their examples, a leading Plaid Cymru figure has claimed.

MEP Jill Evans' election a decade ago was a watershed moment for Plaid and this year her Labour and Conservative counterparts are stepping down.

She does not believe that her party's renewed emphasis on independence will damage her electoral chances when she faces fresh challengers at the ballot box in June.

Describing the difference independence would make to Wales' status in the EU, she said: "We have four MEPs - we'd have about 12. We'd have our own commissioner and we'd be voting in the Council of Ministers."

She continued: "When you say to people that six of the 27 member states are smaller than Wales, people are really shocked by that... It becomes clearer to people we'd be much better off as an independent member of the European Union."

Barack Obama is drawing up plans for comprehensive reform of immigration rules, offering hope to millions of illegal immigrants but risking a backlash from conservatives worried about US jobs.

On the campaign trail, Obama argued it was not realistic to send the 12 million illegal immigrants home. Last month, at a town hall meeting in southern California, he said that "if they stay in the shadows", some employers will exploit them, hurting wages and work conditions for all American workers.

Pakistan has criticised Britain's immigration system and offered to help with security checks on foreign students after it emerged that the majority of those arrested in connection with an alleged terror plot entered the country on student visas.

Gordon Brown yesterday pointed the finger at Pakistan, saying it needed to do more to stop suspected terrorists coming in to the UK. But Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the country's High Commissioner to the UK, hit back - saying Britain was not doing enough to prevent bogus applications for foreign student status. He added that Pakistani authorities could carry out background checks on those applying for student visas but were currently prevented from doing so.

[Murdoch Alert]

President Robert Mugabe's top lieutenants are trying to force the political opposition into granting them amnesty for their past crimes by abducting, detaining and torturing opposition officials and activists, according to senior members of Mr. Mugabe's party.

Mr. Mugabe's generals and politicians have organized campaigns of terror for decades to keep him and his party in power. But now that the opposition has a place in the nation's new government, these strongmen worry that they are suddenly vulnerable to prosecution, especially for crimes committed during last year's election campaign as the world watched.
...
To protect themselves, some of Mr. Mugabe's lieutenants are trying to implicate opposition officials in a supposed plot to overthrow the president, hoping to use it as leverage in any amnesty talks or to press the opposition into quitting the government altogether, ruling party officials said.

There was pomp and circumstance, huge adoring crowds -- not to mention one heck of a lot of choreographed propaganda.

A frail-looking Kim Jong Il, North Korea's paternal "Dear Leader," appeared Thursday before the newly elected Supreme People's Assembly, which reappointed him as the nation's reigning military chief.

The 67-year-old leader, who reportedly suffered a stroke last year, bringing rumors of a possible succession, has turned North Korea "into an invincible political and ideological, military and scientific and technological power," trumpeted the government-controlled Korean Central News Agency.

A photograph released Wednesday by North Korea shows thousands of smiling celebrants in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square. Many are dressed in traditional Korean clothing. All are clapping in unison under a banner that reads "Hurray for Great Victory of Songun [Military First] Politics."

Last month's announcements that Britain and Spain had launched criminal investigations of torture allegations arising out of US interrogation practices had a certain poetic justice. The Bush administration from the outset sought to exploit gaps in legal protections for foreign nationals beyond US borders in its torture policies. Yet now it is precisely foreign investigations and international law that may well force the US to launch an investigation of its own. Globalisation is often criticised for allowing the powerful to avoid legal obligations through outsourcing. But here globalization may work in the other direction, bringing international pressure to bear on the powerful to compel it do what it would rather not.

The UNHCR says that 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes since the war began, up from 3.8 million two years ago. Iraqis are the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe. And whatever their dreams - making a new life in the West or waiting out the worst until Iraq becomes livable again - Iraqi refugees generally land first on Jordan's doorstep.

It is almost impossible to estimate how many Iraqis are now living in Jordan, immigration officials say, because the vast majority of them are undocumented. FAFO, a Norwegian group, gave the estimate of a half-a-million Iraqis living in Jordan in its last study, but others say that number was has receded, due to acceptance for resettlement in other countries. The UNHCR says in its most recent report that more than 54,000 Iraqis are registered with them as refugees in Jordan, compared with more than 221,000 in neighboring Syria.

FIJI'S President has assumed control and fired the judges who a day earlier had declared the military government illegal, deepening the troubled South Pacific country's political turmoil.

Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced in a nationally broadcast radio address yesterday that he had abolished the constitution, assumed all governing power and revoked all judicial appointments.

"I hereby confirm I have abrogated the 1997 constitution and appointed myself as head of state in the new order," he said in the address.

The move came a day after Fiji's second-highest court ruled that the government of Frank Bainimarama, which took power after a coup in 2006, was illegal, in effect creating a power vacuum.

In response, Commodore Bainimarama went on national television to announce he had met Mr Iloilo and told him he was relinquishing the prime minister's post. He said the armed forces would continue to enforce security.

Observers said yesterday's announcement by the aged and ailing Mr Iloilo had the stamp of Commodore Bainimarama, and that the measures he announced appeared to prepare the way for the President to reappoint Commodore Bainimarama as prime minister.

Another letter requesting a meeting with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sent to Burmese Premier Gen Thein Sein by her lawyer, Kyi Win.  

The letter was sent via post and should reach the premier after the Burmese New Year, Kyi Win told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

Her lawyer said the letter included another request for a meeting with Suu Kyi prior to a hearing on her extended detention on May 27. 

Kyi Win, in his letter, recalled that he had previously sent a letter to Gen Thein Sein on March 13, in which he had also sought permission to meet with his client before the appeal hearing. 

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 9 (IPS/IFEJ) - In May, the bartering system will celebrate 14 years of new life in Argentina. After a peak in this form of trade following the country's late 2001 economic collapse, today it has a lower profile, though it involves tens of thousands of people around the country. But despite its survival, economists question its long-term viability.

Some 500 barter clubs operate in Argentina. And although the number of people involved today is far below the three million people who sought support in bartering in 2002, spokespersons say there are twice as many people in the clubs now as there were last year.

In the clubs, people exchange clothing, school supplies, homemade food, household repair jobs in carpentry, bricklaying and electrical work, medical and dental services, tutoring and tourism, among other goods and services.

Organisers have seen a 50 percent rise in the number of barterers over the last year or so, coinciding with the beginning of a feeling of economic uncertainty linked to the conflict between the government and farmers over a hike in export taxes.

President Bouteflika took more than 90.24 per cent in the elections, and begins his third consecutive term as the leader of the African country.

Turnout for the vote was just less than 75 per cent, according to an announcement by Interior Minister Yazid Zehouni on Friday. This is an increase on 2004, when he secured 58 per cent of the vote, with a turnout of 85 per cent.

Political opponents have been critical of the election, with some boycotting the polls. Incidents in the country caused some disruption on Thursday with an explosion in Naceria, 50 kilometres from Algiers, injuring two police officers.

The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's brokerage is seeking the return of $150m (£100m) that an offshore investor withdrew six weeks before the jailed financier's $65bn fraud was exposed.

It is the first lawsuit that attempts to claw back money from investors who made withdrawals from the firm before it collapsed in December.

While Madoff was running his Ponzi scheme, the lawsuit argues, some customers received payouts of "fictitious profits" to the detriment of other defrauded customers. This money should be returned to help reimburse Madoff's many victims, Picard says in the lawsuit. He says the liquidation of Madoff's business is "well under way" but the proceeds of the sale will not be enough to reimburse defrauded clients.

Justin Lahart reports in the WSJ on a new research paper: Giving Corporate Credit Its Due (ht James)

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Monetary Economics [economists Simon Gilchrist and Vladimir Yankov at Boston University, and Egon Zakrajsek at the Federal Reserve] show that spreads on low- to medium-risk corporate bonds, particularly those with 15 or more years until maturity, predicted changes in the economy phenomenally well, forecasting the ups and downs in both hiring and production a year before they occurred. Since writing the paper, they extended their analysis back to 1973 and found bonds' predictive ability still held.

With the massive widening in corporate-bond spreads last fall, the economists' model predicts industrial production will fall another 17% by the end of the year, and the economy will lose another 7.8 million jobs on top of the 5.1 million it has shed since the recession began. Ouch.emphasis added

I haven't seen the paper yet, but here are the spreads I've been following based on 30 year corporate bonds.



This graph shows the spread between 30 year Moody's Aaa and Baa rated bonds and the 30 year treasury.

Gordon Brown on Friday warned UK overseas territories on a "grey list" of offshore tax centres to match up to international standards within six months or face sanctions.

The prime minister has put territories including Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands on notice as Britain attempts to maintain the momentum against tax secrecy generated at the G20 meeting in London.
...
Seven UK overseas territories - Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos - remain on the OECD "grey list" for failing to agree a sufficient number of information sharing agreements.

Mr Brown also sought to increase pressure on Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man - UK crown dependencies on the OECD "white list" after signing at least 12 bilateral agreements to share information.

In a letter to the crown dependencies, he praised the progress they have made but "made clear" that he wanted them to go beyond minimum standards and increase levels of tax transparency.

However, there are greater signs of economic recovery in March from the depths of Q4 2008 and most forward looking indicators suggest that Q2 2009 through Q4 2009 growth will accelerate relative to the dismal Q4 of 2008 and weak Q1 of 2009.  In particular, economic data for China (including loan growth, the PMI, recovery in residential sales volume - if not prices, and public investment) do point to a stabilization or even slight improvement but we at RGE Monitor still see risks that Chinese growth will be well below the government target of 8% and even below the 6.5% level that the IMF and World Bank are predicting - a figure of 5-6% seems more likely.

Lord Mandelson has raised concerns about the failure of developers in the United Arab Emirates to pay British contractors, and has sought reassurances from local rulers that financial commitments will be honoured.

The UAE, particularly Dubai, has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, and some contractors and consultants have complained that they have not been paid for up to six months. Government-linked developers dominate the UAE's property sector, and cash-strapped Dubai-affiliated companies are thought to owe billions of dollars.

The latest credit default spreads data for the largest banks show a speculative run underway.  As the system stabilizes, it becomes more plausible that a single big bank will fail or be rescued in a way that involves large losses for creditors.  This would like trigger further speculative attacks on other banks, much as the shorting of countries' obligations spread from Thailand to Indonesia/Malaysia and then to Korea in fall 1997.

The government's own policies are facilitating these attacks, because as the Fed and Treasury make progress towards easing credit conditions, this makes it easier and cheaper for large hedge funds and others to take large short positions. 

When the woman who calls herself Queen Omega moved into a three-bedroom house here last December, she introduced herself to the neighbors, signed contracts for electricity and water and ordered an Internet connection.

What she did not tell anyone was that she had no legal right to be in the home.
...
Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were actively moving homeless people into vacant homes -- some working in secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly.

The increased use of ethanol could cost the government up to $900 million for food stamps and child nutrition programs, a congressional report says.

Higher use of the corn-based fuel additive accounted for about 10% to 15% of the rise in food prices from April 2007 to April 2008, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That translates into higher costs for food programs for the needy.

The CBO said other factors, such as skyrocketing energy costs, had an even greater effect than ethanol on food prices during that period.

Economists at the agency estimate that higher food prices will increase costs for food programs overall to about $5.3 billion in the current budget year.

Taro Aso, Japan's prime minister, on Friday launched a Y15,400bn fiscal stimulus designed to sustain an economy in its worst slump since the second world war.

The Y15,400bn ($154bn, €117bn, £105bn) of new money - equivalent to roughly 3 per cent of Japan's gross domestic product - is on top of Y12,000bn of stimulus in previous supplementary budgets.

Including loan guarantees and other support for companies that do not require upfront spending, the total value of the package comes to Y56,800bn.

Czech Republic to provide IMF with 1,3 billion euro loan for countries in trouble

The Czech Republic will provide a loan worth 1.3 billion euros (around 27 billion crowns) to the International Monetary Fund for possible help to countries hit by the financial crisis, the internet daily E15 reported on Friday, citing Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek. The loan is the Czech contribution to a trillion dollar aid package which the G20 countries agreed on at their London summit earlier this month. The Czech contribution should be drawn from foreign exchange reserves of the Czech National Bank.

"Listen, (financial) world: we are not Hungary!"

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Today is Fed balance sheet day. That is, every Thursday except for federal holidays, the Fed releases its H.4.1 report, Factors Affecting Reserve Balances. In response to the Fed's sharp deviations away from traditional interactions with the banking system - i.e., open market operations and discount window lending - the H.4.1 has been seriously modified, in part from the efforts of Roger Shealy.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

"The government, as the legal representative of the largest shareholder in the bank, will use all the means available to make the former CEO return the bonus," Finance Minister Franc Krizanic told journalists, citing the current economic crisis.

Prime Minister Borut Pahor also criticized the bonus, adding that he had talked by phone with the former head of Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), Marjan Kramar, and had urged him to give back the bonus he received in January.

"Such behaviour is unacceptable," Pahor said.

He said the bonus "could not be a fair price (for an executive) even if we were not in such a crisis."

... Krizanic said the government would prepare an anti-crisis bill that would limit to 12,500-euros the monthly wages of executives in companies in which the state has a majority stake and would set a 90-percent tax on all revenues exceeding that amount.

Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Pressure is mounting on the UN's International Maritime Organisation and the EU to tighten laws governing ship emissions following the decision by the US government last week to impose a strict 230-mile buffer zone along the entire US coast, a move that is expected to be followed by Canada.

The setting up of a low emission shipping zone follows US academic research which showed that pollution from the world's 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330bn per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases.

Those are big numbers...

Scientists and laypeople alike tend to agree that ``good thinking" encompasses sound judgment and decision-making ― the type of thinking that helps us achieve our goals. Yet assessments of such good (rational) thinking are nowhere to be found on IQ tests.

Intelligence tests measure important things, but they do not assess the extent of rational thought. This might not be such a grave omission if intelligence were a strong predictor of rational thinking.

But my research group found just the opposite: it is a mild predictor at best, and some rational thinking skills are totally dissociated from intelligence.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Experience the Passion of Christ -- in 140-character bursts.

In a marriage of Christian tradition and digital technology, Wall Street's Trinity Church is using the micro-blogging service Twitter to perform the story of Jesus Christ.

The main characters will tweet the Passion play for three hours beginning at noon on Good Friday. The feed also can be delivered to mobile devices or e-mail addresses.

Sivertsen argues that the "supernatural" events that occur in the biblical description can be explained by phenomena that follow volcanic eruptions.

In a telephone interview from Chicago the author said the first exodus from Egypt occurred after a 1628 years BCE, the same year an enormous volcanic eruption nearly destroyed the island of Santorini in the Aegean. The effects of the eruption reached Egypt, causing dramatic, climatic phenomena. The eruption "raised an acidic ash cloud," said Sivertsen, making things "dark and there was thunder."

Liz Wetton travelled to the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology a few weeks ago expecting to spend her volunteering session in exactly the same way as she had for the past 10 years: sorting through the extensive collection of birds' eggs and rehousing them in new boxes.

On this particular day, during her routine egg sorting, however, the octogenarian noticed a tiny, chocolate-brown specimen with "C. Darwin" etched on it in faded ink. Assuming it belonged to the famous naturalist, Ms Wetton noted and boxed it as normal, assuming the museum must be aware of its existence.

With the acquisition of new trams on the horizon,  Helsinki City Transport (HKL) wants to avoid the problems that it encountered with the low-carriage trams provided by the German manufacturer Bombardier. The Bombardier Variotram trams have been fitted with fixed bogeys.

The Daily Beast - John Batchelor - The Republican Party is a corpse

The party's death 76 years ago was never more obvious than over the last six months of the financial crisis. The Democrats sensibly blamed the feckless, bootless Bush administration for the collapse of the markets. Tongue-tied Bush and dyspeptic Cheney defended themselves with grunts and sarcasm before they surrendered to Congress by sending out the plutocrat Hank Paulson with a plan called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). A breathing Republican Party would have brought out the flintlocks, boarded the windows, and settled down for a defense of the republic. Instead, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate rushed to grab the pork bribery and vote with the Democrats. John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and Judd Gregg distinguished themselves as dhimmis and were later rewarded by the victorious Democrats by being granted parakeet cages for offices in the new Congress. The House Republicans now boasts that they voted a goose egg against the stimulus package, but this was just the twitching of the corpse. The truth about the House Republicans--cowards, sycophants, and snobs just like 1930's lot--is illustrated by the fact that 85 of them voted for the ludicrous AIG bonus-confiscation bill written on the back of a parking ticket

More than two million people who get social security benefits could be left without money for a week when the payment system is changed.

Those affected include lone parents, widows, and disabled and unemployed people who are paid weekly.

Over two years they will be moved to a fortnightly cycle leaving them without a week's payment as the change is made.

The Department for Work and Pensions will offer them loans and says no-one will lose out.

However, the Liberal Democrat shadow social security secretary Steve Webb MP told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: "The whole thing is going to cause huge disruption to people who are already having a hard time.

Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-play game, has died of cancer at 61 in a hospice in St Paul, Minnesota.

His two-year battle with the disease ended on Tuesday when he passed away peacefully, his daughter said.

Arneson created the game famous for its oddly shaped dice in 1974 along with the late Gary Gygax.

"The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life," said his daughter Malia.

How would you be doing it?
I don't know that I would undertake a spending program like this at all. That said, I'm a pretty strong advocate of repairing the national rail system. It's obviously not the answer to everything. But it would certainly put a lot of people to work doing something that's meaningful for society. The infrastructure is out there, waiting to be fixed. I'm pretty adamant that we shouldn't be going the path of high-tech, maglev, high speed rail at this moment, because we need to prove that we can do this at the Hungarian level before we try to proceed past that.

That doesn't sound very ambitious.
I perceive one our biggest problems being techno-grandiosity. We are so full of ourselves and so sure that technology is going to rescue us and that we're so good at it that we can defeat every problem that faces us. It's a fatal hubris, and it's subscribed to by an awful lot people who have something to say about the course we take in this country.

In the past, you've been critical of Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute on similar grounds.
Don't get me started on Amory Lovins. His basic program for hypercars promotes car dependency. Why do that unless you think we're going to continue as a car dependent society? That's why the highway infrastructure thing is so bad, because we're not going to be able to continue the way we've been going. The car is not going to vanish overnight, of course. But it's certainly going to become a problem as people develop resentments because they can no longer afford to participate in it [as oil prices rise over time].

But you think the answer with rail is to keep it very simple.
Absolutely. The infrastructure is already out there! The track beds are there! And you need an entirely new track corridor for high speed rail, because the high speed trains can't deal with the curves in the existing tracks. The idea that we would have to create a whole new set of right-of-ways is nuts when we're not even utilizing what we have.  Another thing to keep in mind is that we're going to be facing a lot of adversity in the years ahead, and we are a culture that will require psychological reassurance. We should have a project that's achievable. We need to demonstrate to ourselves that we're still competent.

And the simple version of the national rail buildout would do that.
This rail project is ideal for that purpose. As I've said, we've got the tracks, and the rolling stock is pretty easy to get. You could argue that GM should be making this stuff. But it's terribly important that we fortify ourselves psychologically so we have some faith in our ability to face all the other really important challenges that lie in front of us.

i liked those seesaw thingys that let you cruise down the railtracks by human power...hey what about whacking a sail on that?

rail, cars, whatever, just make it pollution-free already!

stomps foot on accelerator in pique...

peak pique

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

With a pure heart

Without father without mother
without God or homeland either
without crib or coffin-cover
without kisses or a lover

For the third day - without fussing
I have eaten next to nothing.
My store of power ere my years
I sell all my twenty years.

Perhaps, if no one else will
the buyer will be the devil.
With a pure heart - that's a job:
I may kill and I shall rob.

They'll catch me, hang me high
in blessed earth I shall lie,
and poisonous grass will start
to grow on my beautiful heart.
(Tr.: Thomas Kabdebo)

A note about the name: in some regions of historical Hungary, it was common to turn normal names into surnames (something different from patrinomials).

József's death at a young age was long thought to have been suicide. Would have been fitting to his pre-death mood. However, a new look ito the records suggested that this was a popular myth: he 'merely' made the fatal decision to spare his powers by crossing a stopped freight train between two wagons, and just then the train started.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A Polish politician has criticised his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not procreate, local media reported today.

"We didn't pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there," Michal Grzes, a conservative councillor in the city of Poznan in western Poland, was quoted as saying.

The head of the Poznan zoo said 10-year-old Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14.

...it's probably just a phase...he may grow out of it...