Michael Agger, Slate, August 15, 2007 Perhaps you've noticed: The Internet has an obsession with Starbucks. Maybe it's because the two have grown up together. In 1995, Starbucks had just launched its master plan to become "a third place for people to congregate beyond work or the home," while the Web had a lot of gray pages with text and "hyperlinks." Now, the coffee chain has become the new McDonald's (44 million customers a week), and the Web has become a 24-hour global exercise in collective intelligence gathering. Gourmet coffee culture and Internet culture have fed off each other, and Starbucks in particular has become a punching bag for the indie spirit that pervades the Web. So I wanted to discover who has the upper hand: Does Starbucks dominate us with its convenient locations and potent caffeine, or do we, thanks to the Web, ultimately call the shots? Exhibit A in the online cheekiness and wariness toward Starbucks is an old monument: the Starbucks Oracle, which went online in 2002. You enter a drink, the oracle spits out a profile. Here's the response to my regular order, a tall coffee: Personality type: Lame You're a simple person with modest tastes and a reasonable lifestyle. In other words, you're boring. Going to Starbucks makes you feel sophisticated; you'd like to be snooty and order an espresso but aren't sure if you're ready for that level of excitement. ... Everyone who thinks America's Funniest Home Videos is a great show drinks tall coffee. Sadly accurate. Then I entered Vin Diesel's drink order: decaf triple nonfat espresso. Personality type: Freak No person of sound mind would go to an EXPENSIVE COFFEE SHOP to get a drink WITHOUT CAFFEINE. Your hobbies include going to ski resorts in the summer and flushing $5 bills down the toilet. You are a menace to society. Read More Here

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/08/my_fellow_texan.html Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious, draft-averse, naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God’s anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts, Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat -- a battering ram, aimed at the devil’s minions. Especially at gay people. It’s so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber. And if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew in politics to bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293711,00.html Speaking in Iowa, Edwards responded to an attack on wife Elizabeth Edwards dished out by Coulter when he said, "They attacked Elizabeth personally, because she stood up to that she-devil Ann Coulter," Editor & Publisher reported.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070817/ap_on_sc/low_ice  There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported. "Today is a historic day," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year." Sea ice in the Arctic helps keep those regions cool by reflecting sunlight that might be absorbed by darker land or ocean surfaces. Exposed to direct sun, for example, instead of reflecting 80 percent of the sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90 percent. That causes the ocean to heat up and raises Arctic temperatures. "It is very strong evidence that we are starting to see an effect of greenhouse warming," he said. The puzzling thing, he said, is that the melting is actually occurring faster than computer climate models have predicted.

Several decades ago, the French manufactured, and with a straight face sold, a car. It was called the Fiat. Or at least that’s what I thought. I’ve since been gently but firmly told that the Fiat is made by the Italians. It should have been French, darn it! Why? Because Fiats were motorized garbage cans on wheels, rattling and sputtering down our roads, causing great amusement to everyone except the owners. Hmmm, perhaps their poor quality had something to do with them being called Fiats. The word fiat means: by decree, or authorization. For example, a king may, by fiat, declare the opening day of fishing season a holiday (and he should do so). Or Congress might vote, then get a bill signed by the President, that bans all golf in the United States. So, Congress has the authority to forbid golf by fiat. Incidentally, this also would be a good thing. Rush Limbaugh should be fishing. Why am I concentrating on the word fiat? Because in this country we have fiat money. What is fiat money? Worthless dollars, similar to the old Fiat automobile – neither worth a bucket of warm spit. You should now ask, “How could fiat currency be worthless? I can still buy stuff.” Only because the Federal Government by fiat, has declared that dollars have worth. Allow me to explain by contrast: There used to be another kind of money in the big wide world. Do any of you remember the silver certificate? There was a time, several decades ago, when anyone could take dollars, which at that time were silver certificates, walk up to the Federal Reserve window and say, “Gimme silver.” You would be handed a small bag of silver in exchange for your silver certs. Not any more. So, in economics there are two kinds of money: fiat money and commodity money. The problem with commodity money is you have to have the commodity, exactly as with the deed to a house, you have to have the house. A deed to a house would be worthless without the house to back it up, or the guarantee that you will get a house. “Well gee!” you should now say in wide-eyed innocence, “Why would our beloved government with its honest, loving, hard-working bureaucrats and politicians want fiat money? Shoot, they’ve even removed the silver from our dimes and quarters. Why?” Because dollars backed by gold and silver (called a gold and silver standard) are impossible to inflate – you can’t print silver certificates with wild abandon to pay bills. And get this now, if the money supply can’t be inflated, bureaucrats are left with only one other option: raising taxes. And that goes over about as well as Karl Rove at a Hillary for President pep rally. Raising taxes cost GHWB his re-election bid, remember? Okay, so are you beginning to understand this a little bit? If you are, it’s beginning to slowly dawn on you that with fiat currency, the Fed has created inflation over many decades, inflation being exactly and precisely the Fed printing more dollars causing each dollar to become worth less. “Goodness!” You might say. “How could they have gotten away with this?” Simple – you didn’t understand it. When anyone even breathed the word economics your eyes glazed over. So as our federal government has steadily grown (it’s now the biggest employer in the country) it has quietly inflated our currency to finance itself, counting on you not to understand, or care. This is real easy stuff: A commodity based currency cannot be inflated. A fiat currency can easily be inflated. So what’s wrong with a little inflation? Perhaps nothing if you’re rich, aren’t on a fixed income, or like the taste of dog food. Grimgold

Mark Silva, The Chicago Tribune, August 18, 2007 WASHINGTON - Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans, Michael Brown, who bore the brunt of the criticism for the federal response to the storm, has moved into a career promoting disaster-response and data-mining technology for government agencies and private customers. Brown, who served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Katrina blasted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, has not returned to New Orleans in nearly two years. His last stop was on Sept. 11, 2005, the day before he resigned under pressure. The next time he sees New Orleans, Brown ruefully suggests, it may be in response to lawsuits resulting from Katrina, which left more than 1,000 dead and tens of thousands homeless. But while Brown may be gone from government, some of the private companies he now represents say they stand ready to help the government cope with new storms barreling into the Gulf of Mexico, as well as other potential disasters. Living in Boulder, Colo., Brown has become a traveling salesman for companies selling computer software, high-tech machinery and communications technology. One of the companies focuses on anti-terrorism efforts, trying to help airlines detect potentially dangerous patterns among the flying public. Others specialize in Brown's old field of disaster response, helping communities rebuild and providing technology so the military and first responders can manage casualties on the ground. "I probably, at any one time, have a half-dozen clients involved in different things having to do with homeland security or government in general," Brown said in an interview. "I am called corporate adviser. Some places, I am called vice president for corporate relations. I am called all kinds of names." Read More Here

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, August 17, 2007 In April, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declared that all the signs he saw indicated that the housing market was "at or near the bottom." Earlier this month he was still insisting that problems caused by the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages were "largely contained." But the time for denial is past. According to data released yesterday, both housing starts and applications for building permits have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, showing that home construction is still in free fall. And if historical relationships are any guide, home prices are still way too high. The housing slump will probably be with us for years, not months. Meanwhile, it's becoming clear that the mortgage problem is anything but contained. For one thing, it's not confined to subprime mortgages, which are loans to people who don't satisfy the standard financial criteria. There are also growing problems in so-called Alt-A mortgages (don't ask), which are another 20 percent of the mortgage market. Problems are starting to appear in prime loans, too - all of which is what you would expect given the depth of the housing slump. Many on Wall Street are clamoring for a bailout - for Fannie Mae or the Federal Reserve or someone to step in and buy mortgage-backed securities from troubled hedge funds. But that would be like having the taxpayers bail out Enron or WorldCom when they went bust - it would be saving bad actors from the consequences of their misdeeds. Read More Here