There's a lot of anger that the banks were bailed out, back in the waning days of the Bush Administration. Here's a reminder of why they were bailed out:

Watching the paper markets freeze is a experience I won’t ever forget. There was a palpable sense that we might be watching the end of Western Capitalism ( Read more... )

The (English) Royal Navy emerged as surprisingly powerful, when a fleet built for cannon engagement only defeated the Spanish Armada. The Spanish ships were so cramped that reloading cannon in battle was considered impractical, while the English ships were designed for continuous cannon fire, with guns reloading and repeating as rapidly as state-of ( Read more... )

OK, minor hyperbole there. We might still muddle through. Think I'm exaggerating? Let's pay a visit to Mr. History ( Read more... )

Management consultants. It seems that everyone who's worked in an office in the corporate world has had them running around the office two or three times over the last decade and a half. When they're good, they point out something critical that nobody ever noticed before. When they're bottom-feeders, they take the same things that upper management ( Read more... )

While I knew wealth is concentrated in America, I had no idea how highly concentrated it is. For example, I'd incorrectly assumed that the bottom 120 million of us had at least a couple percent of the wealth that exists. I was wrong.

A second source claims that, in 1983, the "bottom 40%" had about three times as great a share of national wealth ( Read more... )

From two entities that both cater to the financial industry, in chronological order. First from Bloomberg, October 7, 2010:

Man Who Had No Mortgage Faced Foreclosure Anyway ( Read more... )

For your enjoyment.

So, in tonight's class, the instructor mentioned in passing that CSS 3.0 includes a command to the effect of "and, if you don't have this font, download it from here." Cruel man that I am, I immediately thought of Futhark, Futhorc, and Fraktur.

When it existed, I was a fan of the Ann Arbor News' election guide. Like most election guides, it sent questionnaires to candidates, and published the responses. In the wake of the News' demise, it looks like its successor, annarbor.com, has an election guide that's at least as good -- for political geek comedy. (Unfortunately, the way it's set up ( Read more... )

When American politics has been riven by partisan wrangling, the driver has always been between two visions of America. This was true when Washington's cabinet was split by arguments between Alexander Hamilton's Big Business agenda and Thomas Jefferson's Small Farmer agenda, and it's true today ( Read more... )