Day: August 18, 2011

Science & Technology

Pravda tells us you can eat fried potatoes on your diet.

Truly this is a victory for us all. I’m going to ignore this advice but it is nice to know that fried potatoes can be a part of a weight-loss regimen. Hmmm.

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News

HP to drop PC business, WebOS and Palm Phones.

In a pretty monumental development for tech-nerds today, HP is dropping its WebOS and Touchpad as well as spinning off its consumer PC business. If you will recall, HP purchased the then nearly defunct Palm for its WebOS to try and craft it into an alternative platform to Android and iOS. Apparently, they think it’s […]

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News

Japanese defense spending only behind that of the US and China?

Japan, a pacifist country that has had a rough year so far, apparently has the third largest defense budget in the world. It is speculated that this posture is maintained because of disputed islands with its neighbors, such as Diaoyu Islands with China and the Kuril Islands with Russia, and that Japan’s increasing involvement with […]

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News

Norway’s PM: We Choose Dignity

Norway’s Prime Minister speaks about the tragic massacre in that country.

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News

Remember all those mortgage-backed securities? S&P rated them all stellar investments.

Now they are reaping the rewards of their downgrade of US sovereign debt. The Justice Department announced an inquiry into the ratings process and any potential conflicts of interest that may arise therein with regard to Standard and Poor’s high ratings of the now infamous mortgage backed securities that brought the world economy to its […]

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News

Austerity? Bad for business.

You gotta spend money to make money.

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News

The US credit downgrade and its impact on speculative markets.

The downgrade of US credit by Standard and Poor to AA+ from AAA really did not have as large an impact as feared but nonetheless served as a kind of wake-up call for the international financial system. The US’s debt market remains the world’s largest, safest and most liquid, presenting the best investment for foreign […]

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News

August 1991.

Was the suppression of the coup against Gorbachev a victory for democracy? Twenty years after the events of August 1991, many Russians’ views of these events have changed considerably. The Levada group which conducts polling in Russia on the issue recorded that one quarter of the population saw the suppression of the coup as a […]

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