Brian Gongol
Graphic of the day: Growth Tendencies
3.6% of Americans work full-time from home
California is growing directly into greater fire danger
"No economy in history has ever been able to successfully inflate its way to health"
The US economy needs to fear inflation as it fears the Grim Reaper, yet we're putting a lot of dominoes in place that could lead to a horribly-inflated future -- like the complete abdication of fiscal responsibility by the White House and Congress. Even worse, members of Congress are making things worse by trying to politicize monetary policy. It's been going on since Sen. Conrad called for the resignation of a Federal Reserve Bank president on August 20th. They apparently don't realize just how critical central-bank independence is. And at just the same moment, other countries, like Russia, are flush with cash from commodity sales. That doesn't mean the good times will continue for others, but we can't keep our eyes closed to our own circumstances forever. While we're considering risks to our future, we ought also to consider how insurance markets may be revealing evidence that global-scale climate changes could be a very serious possibility.
"The next five states"
Thomas PM Barnett suggests that Cuba, Panama, British Columbia, and some of the Mexican border states could all become part of the US in this lifetime. It's certainly not impossible; in fact, change of some sort is probably more likely than political/territorial inertia.
Holocaust Museum gets private collection of SS photos
EU considers regulations to keep Russian hands off energy supplies
The European Commission has submitted a plan that would keep any non-EU company from owning a majority stake in gas pipelines or power grids -- unless companies from the EU have access to the markets the outsiders come from
Israeli cabinet considers cutting off electricity to Gaza
There seems to be one huge flaw in the plan: If Gaza is already populated by people who are inclined to dislike Israel, and if Gaza is controlled by Hamas, then wouldn't an act like cutting off electricity to the region have a reasonable chance of making anti-Israeli sentiment even worse? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict just isn't going to get better until the colossal economic gap between the two is closed, at least somewhat. And that's not a matter of making Israelis poorer, it's a matter of fixing the poverty that drives the violence in Gaza.
Firefox 2.0.0.7 released
It fixes one big security flaw
