Brian Gongol
All the waste in trying to kill Castro
Documenting a long list of attempts and plans to kill Fidel Castro only reinforces the point that he would have been more easily toppled by trade and interaction with the US than by all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Living in Cuba is like being next-door to the greatest party in the neighborhood -- but the embargo and US attempts at isolation have only served to make it impossible for the Cuban people to see just how great a party they're missing.
Officials think Iraq breakup more likely than permanent democracy
Porta-potties and office jobs
As the economy continues to expand and jobs not involving manual labor continue to absorb more of the workforce, employers have to do more to make people happy -- like providing nicer porta-potties on construction sites
Interest rates jump in Europe
The Bank of England raised rates and so did the European Central Bank. The Fed has raised rates 18 times in a row and will decide Tuesday whether to do it again.
AOL will give content away for free
That's a big change for a company that made its name providing content you could only get by subscription
CBS will become a film studio
In addition to its normal network stuff, CBS will start to produce theatrical releases. More evidence that the days of being just a TV network, radio station, or newspaper are gone forever.
The lost Mac ads
Absolutely hilarious. Few people are more aggravating than Mac fundamentalists. A little risquee.
How rising oil prices can lead to higher demand for frozen dinners
The future of news has arrived
London's Guardian has launched G24, a PDF newspaper that's updated every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Countdown to the day when all other newspapers catch up starts now. It smashes some of the old rules of newspaper economics by virtually eliminating production, printing, and distribution costs. How will newspaper designers react?
Mozilla releases Firefox 1.5.0.6
It's only been a week since the last release
Arguments for the profitability of ethanol
Lebanon situation will get much worse
People have been forced from their homes for three weeks now -- that's three weeks without regular income, which is much more than enough to radicalize many people
10,000 dead in North Korean floods
And they're refusing offers of aid. The floods may have also done serious damage to North Korea's food supply. Disasters don't kill on their own -- it almost always takes poverty to cause massive casualties. Famine in North Korea killed 3.5 million people in the 1990s.
Polio outbreak in India could threaten neighbors
People with religious objections to vaccine may be to blame
The low expectations of socialism
North Korea's propaganda mill is bragging about the brisk construction of new homes: "Each household has two rooms, a vestibule, a kitchen, a washroom, a pen and a storehouse." Those are some pretty low expectations, given that their neighbors in South Korea have per-capita income of $20,000 a year. Chris Rock made some related remarks about people with low expectations.
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