If we’re really going to avoid crises, we’re going to need something more imaginative, starting with a more open-minded attitude to how science can help us understand how markets really work. Done properly, computer simulation represents a kind of “telescope for the mind,” multiplying human powers of analysis and insight just as a telescope does our powers of vision. With simulations, we can discover relationships that the unaided human mind, or even the human mind aided with the best mathematical analysis, would never grasp.

Op-Ed Contributor - This Economy Does Not Compute - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

A group of retired Gurkhas fighting for the right to settle in Britain have won their immigration test case at London's High Court.

They were challenging immigration rules which said that those who retired from the British Army before 1997 did not have an automatic right to stay.
...
The judge, Mr Justice Blake, said the Gurkhas' long service, conspicuous acts of bravery and loyalty to the Crown all pointed to a "moral debt of honour" and gratitude felt by British people.

excellent
the Gurkhas are extraordinary
crikey if they're prepared to die for this country then by God they've got the right to live here -- that's just natural justice

BBC NEWS | UK | Gurkhas win right to stay in UK

Nominal Second stage cut off (SECO) - Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!!!!!!

Spacex Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!!!!!!

This year’s serial bailouts are proof of a colossal regulatory failure. But it is not “the system” that failed, as President Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others who are complicit in the calamity would like Americans to believe. People failed.

For decades now, antiregulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution have eliminated vital laws, blocked the enactment of much-needed new regulations, or simply refused to exercise their legal authority.

Editorial - Don’t Blame the New Deal - Editorial - NYTimes.com

He did, however, have certain foibles. Motor racing was his great passion, and he produced and starred in Winning, a poor movie with the Indianapolis 500 as its background; two years ago he provided an appropriately gravelly voice to oldtimer Doc Hudson, an ancient but well-preserved vehicle in Pixar's animated movie Cars.

There are too few men like you in this world my friend. You will be sadly missed.

Philip French on Paul Newman - an actor of true genius, and a man of great decency

Many people on both the right and the left are outraged at the idea of using taxpayer money to bail out America’s financial system. They’re right to be outraged, but doing nothing isn’t a serious option. Right now, players throughout the system are refusing to lend and hoarding cash — and this collapse of credit reminds many economists of the run on the banks that brought on the Great Depression.

It’s true that we don’t know for sure that the parallel is a fair one. Maybe we can let Wall Street implode and Main Street would escape largely unscathed. But that’s not a chance we want to take.

So the grown-up thing is to do something to rescue the financial system. The big question is, are there any grown-ups around — and will they be able to take charge?

i trust Paul Krugman's opinion on this as someone who knows far more about it than me and I remember reading him talking about a housing bubble and saying it was dangerous rather a long time ago Jan 2006. It makes rather interesting reading now although I didn't take it too seriously at the time.

Op-Ed Columnist - Where Are the Grown-Ups? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

flynn23 wrote:

Decius wrote:
If the Democrats win, all of that money, unfortunately, will have to be spent on bad debt which won't be worth anything in the end. Obama will not be able to make progress on any of his social programs because the national debt and plummeting US dollar will be in an untenable situation. If the Republicans win, however, it will turn out that only 100 billion was needed. Things weren't so bad after all...

Unfortunately, I don't think it matters. This isn't about who gets elected next, because that's irrelevant. It's about which lobby has enough presence to get what they want. Right now, it's the banking and financial system lobby. The price is $700B. That includes cleaning up all the bad debt, making sure my firm survives and has liquidity, and oh, I get to keep my bonus as well. This deal stinks. Period.

Not that I disagree with your conclusion, but...

The banks don't need the government to sell these assets at market value, but they don't want to do that, because if they do, they have to mark all of their other assets to that market price, which will screw their balance sheets (reasonably or not). Hence, the liquidity problem - no one wants to sell anything. In some respect the point of the bailout is to buy the assets above market rates, which keeps the bank's balance sheets from deflating.

Now, I'm quite sure we end up eating the difference. It boils down to whether or not you think the market price is actually reasonable. I'd say if that was in dispute the government's assistance wouldn't be required either.

Regardless of how you slice it, the tax payer is being asked to eat all of the financial losses incurred from the go-go days of the housing boom, while all of the people who generated those losses go home with 6 figure bonuses.

RE: News Analysis - For the Nominees, New Roles and New Risks - News Analysis - NYTimes.com

World leaders are parading through New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly reviewing their (lack of) progress in fighting global poverty. That’s urgent and necessary, but what they aren’t talking enough about is one of the grimmest of all manifestations of poverty — sex trafficking.

Op-Ed Columnist - A Heroine From the Brothels - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

An 18-year-old blind Muslim student in Leicester is the first to be allowed to take his guide dog into a UK mosque.

In Islam dogs are regarded as unclean and are not allowed in mosques.

However, the Muslim Law (Shari'ah) Council UK has now issued a fatwa which allows guide dogs inside mosques but not into prayer rooms.

BBC NEWS | England | Leicestershire | Ruling allows guide dog in mosque

I was reminded, Sunday night, of the strange way in which there’s no one truth about love or lust or romance or about anything else interesting to humans. The Nymph and I went to see Vicki Christina Barcelona, the latest Woody Allen movie. I enjoyed it right well — and Penelope Cruz is just brilliant in her role — but it also gave me a modest insight of sorts.

In the movie, there’s a love triangle that is brief, implausible, and complex. ”Complex” is my eighty-cent college word; my blue collar brother-in-law would be content to say “fucked up”, in a tone of voice suggesting an unacceptable depth of complexity but without any connotation of condemnation. And yet, just as I was marveling at the very implausibility of the arrangement, I was startled to realize “no, this is just remarkable for being in a movie; it’s not the least bit more complicated than a thousand unusual romantic understandings I’ve seen people reach in the real world, or describe on their personal blogs.” People, real people even more so than scripted people, are willing and able to make the most astonishing compromises and bargains physical, emotional, financial in order to get the love, affection, validation and, yes, sex! that they need.

Hardly a deep or original insight, but then, I never claimed different. Still, it served to remind me of what I love about the sex blog genre and to a lesser extent, blogs in general — NAMEly, that they provide a relatively unfiltered window into the inner romantic and emotional lives of a great many more people than we would normally know well enough in meat space to know on that level. And that’s just interesting.

Today’s example is an excerpt from Bitchy Jone’s Diary, in which she is talking about the big strong man she enjoys hurting, and the reasons he enjoys being hurt by her. That’s one of the categories of sexual bargains that usually overstrains the limited capacities my empathic sexual imagination; and so — despite bearing firmly in mind that an explanation of what’s going on for these people may not speak with authority about any other people — I found it fascinating and instructive:

this is a blog which i've often thought about recommending and was never sure whether it was just too risque, too well pornographic really
but I've been following it for a long time partly because I'm a bit of a dirty old man -- sad but all too true -- and also because it is as Bacchus says "interesting" to get an insight into other people's lives

The Uniqueness Of What Works - ErosBlog: The Sex Blog