NewsTrust - World - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

The Facebook Illusion

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Ross Douthat - May. 27 (Opinion) - There were two grand illusions about the American economy in the first decade of the 21st century. One was the idea that housing prices were no longer tethered to normal economic trends, and instead would just keep going up and up. The second was the idea that in the age of Web 2.0, we were well on our way to figuring out how to make lots and lots of money on the Internet.

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Bain Capital and our screwed-up culture

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Fromma Harrop - May. 26 (Opinion) - The problem is not the profession. It's what one does in the course of business. But even among those intent on making it big, people with a conscience will not cross certain lines. Bain blew across them.

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What Makes Countries Rich or Poor?

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Jared Diamond - May. 24 (Review) - Norway, the world’s richest country, is 496 times richer than Burundi, the world’s poorest country (average per capita incomes $84,290 and $170 respectively, according to the World Bank). Why? That’s a central question of economics.

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Improved but Not Always Safe: Despite Global Efforts, More Than 1 Billion People Likely at Risk for Lack of Clean Water

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:07:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 21 - A clean drop to drink? Although hundreds of millions more people have access to "improved" water sources, not all of the water is free from contamination, according to new reports. Image: iStockphoto/vijaya_5712 The Best Science Writing Online 2012 Showc

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Spain's banks do not need bailout, says minister

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:05:06 -0700

The Independent - May. 21 - Spain's banks do not need to be bolstered with European money as suggested by France, the country's economy minister said today.

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Do You Want the Good News First?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - May. 19 (Opinion) - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers” — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.

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The Wright stuff: President Obama and the Ricketts smear

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ana Marie Cox - May. 19 (Opinion) - Republicans are rightly shamed by a Super Pac ad plan to tag Obama as a black radical. The irony is his very lack of radicalism Nebraska has already supplied the right with a billionaire boogeyman: Warren Buffet, hero of the secretarial pool and worldly philanthropist. Now, the left has a Husker to hate: Joe Ricketts, the man for whom a group of Republican troublemakers dreamed up the perhaps-intentionally hilarious, to-be-sure-intentionally shocking "Plan to Defeat Barack Hussein Obama" . The document's deadpan staccato phrasing has the punctuation-agnostic urgency and livid prose of a "Mission: Impossible" assignment memo (or an Austin Powers trailer). "The Plan. An Overview," reads the titular section: "A five-minute unusually unique" – sic! – "film bringing his tutorship beneath Reverend Wright and others to the forefront of popular discourse … We start by raising an eyebrow. Teasers, hints of dark clouds to come. Buying print space, newspaper ads, kiosks at the airport, around the ...

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What the Chinese Want

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Tom Doctoroff - May. 19 (Opinion) - Consumers in China are increasingly modern in their tastes, but they are not becoming 'Western.' How the selling of coffee, cars and pizza sheds light on a nation racing toward superpower status.

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Russia says action on Syria, Iran may go nuclear

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:57:20 -0700

Reuters - May. 17 - MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western

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How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Howard Rheingold - May. 13 (Opinion) - Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic bad info. Use them and then pass them along to others. Promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see. Although the Web undermines authority (by enabling anybody to publish), authority is still useful as one clue to credibility in a detective hunt that accounts for many other clues. Claims to authority, however, need to be questioned. I might add credibility to my assessment if a source is a verified professor at a known institution of higher learning, an authentic MD or PhD, but I would not subtract it from people without credentials whose expertise seems authentic. If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don't stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step is to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar's publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don't trust just one source; triangulate.

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Europe’s rush to austerity will have severe consequences.

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - May. 13 (Opinion) - This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: The crisis countries have to get their houses in order,...

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Under Attack

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Michael M. Phillips - May. 13 (Dramatization) - When a suicide bomber struck a convoy in Afghanistan, a routine Marine patrol turned into a harrowing firefight. Michael M. Phillips with an eyewitness account of bravery and tragedy in the confusion of war. When the suicide bomber exploded, the world skidded to a stop. The Afghan police pickup truck, 30 yards directly behind us, disappeared in a geyser of thick gray-brown smoke. The only visible object was its hood flying through the air, a black silhouette against the murk, followed by the sound of broken glass falling. Then the smoke thinned, like the curtain rising on a stage, revealing the chaos the bomber had set loose. The pickup truck wasn't where it was supposed to be. The blast had hoisted it into the air and dropped it onto the median strip. There was a moment's hesitation among the troops next to me in the lead pickup. A lone motorcyclist emerged from the cloud, inexplicably upright and seemingly uninjured.

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Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By William Deresiewicz - May. 12 (Opinion) - is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

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Game Over for the Climate

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By James Hansen - May. 11 (Opinion) - 'Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read...that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do.''

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Bernanke Gets 75% Approval From Investors in Global Poll

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:36:00 -0700

Bloomberg - May. 10 - Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual monetary policy report to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 2012. Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual

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Obama, Gay Marriage, and the American Equality Quilt

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Esquire - By Charles P. Pierce - May. 09 (Opinion) - This was no happy accident. Just look at how he wove his endorsement into the fabric of everything else he'd done for the cause of equality since he's been president.

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Hillary Clinton, barefaced and bespectacled, is a refreshing image in politics

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Suzi Parker - May. 08 (Opinion) - The caption read “Hillary Au Naturale,” and the photo showed the Secretary of state without makeup except lipstick, wearing black-framed glasses.

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Those Revolting Europeans

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - May. 06 (Opinion) - The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time.

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Diageo to end funding of Heartland Institute after climate change outburst

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Leo Hickman - May. 06 - Firm has 'no plans' to work with thinktank following campaign comparing people concerned about climate to mass murderers Diageo, one of the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute , a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski. On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens. The caption read: "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" A day later it was withdrawn. The London-based drinks giant, which owns brands such as Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Moët & Chandon, said this year that it was "reviewing any further association with Heartland" following the release online of ...

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Wind farms can increase night time temperatures, research reveals

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Apr. 29 - Study in US claims building of huge wind farms in Texas has increased night temperatures by up to 0.72C Large windfarms can increase local night time temperatures by fanning warmer air onto the ground, new research has revealed. The study used satellite data to show that the building of huge wind farms in west Texas over the last decade has warmed the nights by up to 0.72C. "Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problem," said Liming Zhou, at the University of Albany in New York. "But understanding the impacts of wind farms is critical for developing management strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of wind power." West Texas has seen rapid expansion of wind farms , with turbine numbers rising from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011. Zhou's team compared the land surface temperatures at the wind farms with other areas across this period and detected a clear rise at night. They note, however, that the effect on the ...

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A third industrial revolution

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Paul Markillie - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries. Outside the sprawling Frankfurt Messe, home of innumerable German trade fairs, stands the “Hammering Man”, a 21-metre kinetic statue that steadily raises and lowers its arm to bash a piece of metal with a hammer. Jonathan Borofsky, the artist who built it, says it is a celebration of the worker using his mind and hands to create the world we live in. That is a familiar story. But now the tools are changing in a number of remarkable ways that will transform the future of manufacturing.

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Hey, Not So Fast on European Austerity

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Christina Romer - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The core of a sensible approach to Europe’s is to pass needed budget measures now, but to phase in actual tax increases and spending cuts gradually — as economies recover.

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American dream: 10million Indians want to settle in US

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:04:00 -0700

Times of India - Apr. 26 - WASHINGTON: Around 13% of the world's adults - over 640 million people - would like to emigrate with roughly 150 million, including 10 million Indians wishing to settle in America. So suggests a new Gallup survey giving the US an undisputed title as the

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Letters: Shale gas could fracture our renewables policy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Apr. 24 - It beggars belief that fracking is recommended to be extended and earthquakes the only risk taken into account ( Gas fracking gets the green light , 17 April). Other risks are not just theoretical; appalling consequences have already happened on a wide scale in the US. Fracking has been carried out in rural areas where people's off-grid water supplies have been made unusable by pollution. There have been cases where people cannot use water from the tap at the kitchen sink because methane comes with it, with the risk of explosions. Only half the chemical-laden water used in the process is recovered. It is then kept in lagoons on the surface where it is allowed to evaporate volatile toxic chemicals into the air. We cannot afford the risk to our water supplies. We don't have the open spaces which have been affected in the US. Even now we are faced with water restrictions and drought. We don't have the necessary huge quantities of water available to be used and made dirty for ever. The landscape ...

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Technology should help us share, not constrain us

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Stallman - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - Companies like Amazon can control the way we use the ebooks we buy. Instead let's build a publishing model based on freedom I love the detective novel The Jehovah Contract , and I'd like everyone else to love it, too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed books let us do that. I couldn't do it with most commercial ebooks; it's not allowed. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict access, so it simply won't allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are not allowed for ebooks. With the Amazon Kindle, for instance, you're not allowed to buy a book anonymously. Kindle books are typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon doesn't accept cash so users must identify themselves. Thus Amazon knows exactly which books each user has read. ...

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