Consider your periodic stop for gas. You pull up to the pump, fill up your tank, pay for the gas, and, many times, wander into the store to buy a cup of coffee and a pastry, perhaps a soda or an orange juice or a candy bar. The economists tell us that gas has gone up for 33 straight days so most of us are now paying in the neighborhood of $4 a ( Read more... )

Today's been a day off and I've used it catching up on various things. That's included watching last night's State of the Union address and reading over some of the commentary floating around. My reaction? A fairly bland speech and there were probably better ways to spend an hour ( Read more... )

The real Science Friday program -- the one I ripped off the title of these posts from -- featured a discussion on this morning's program about how the realities of the interactive online world are affecting the practice of science. New research has found that the tone and content of comments left on science articles can affect how the reader ( Read more... )

Tim Fernholz, a reporter with The Atlantic, created this nifty little flowchart explaining possible outcomes if Congressional Republicans continue to stubbornly play a game of chicken with raising the debt ceiling ( Read more... )

After President Obama's press conference this morning, I got to thinking once again that most Americans probably don't understand all the fuss over debt ceilings and fiscal cliffs. That's because until recently, when the Tea Party Republican wingnuts started throwing an ideological hissy fit over every piece of routine legislative business, none ( Read more... )

1. One of my favourite ways of spending late nights during the week is listening to the BBC World Service on our local NPR station. They often have hour-long programmes devoted to certain specific themes. Last week, they had a show about youth around the world and a large part of tonight's show was -- in reaction to the last-minute retreat from ( Read more... )

When you have waitresses in Arkansas worrying about having to pay an estate tax when they die, you know the right-wing disinformation campaign has gotten way out of hand ( Read more... )

First, a neighborhood in Indianapolis blows up. Then a city block in Springfield, Massachusetts blows up. And now a section of I-77 in West Virginia has blown up. Meanwhile, lots of people remain out of work. You would think that getting our bronze age infrastructure fixed and up to date would be an obvious thing to do. But don't hold your ( Read more... )

It has become common practice for states and local governments to hand out massive amounts of tax breaks, free buildings, and other "incentives" to entice corporations to locate there or even just to stick around. Taxpayers also end up on the hook for building lavish new sports stadiums to benefit team owners who are billionaires and have primary ( Read more... )

While I follow hockey as a casual fan, it has simply not been my number-one sport. And nevertheless, the longer that the current 60+ day lockout drags on, the more infuriated I get. Members of the players' union are now very openly (and correctly) referring to the NHL commissioner's office as a cancer on the game and to commissioner Gary Bettman ( Read more... )