Friday rant: Nothing we can do about it edition
By Tom Toles

Did you notice the change in the storyline? These changes happen from time to time, without warning nor explanation. The off-the-charts concentration in wealth in the United States is now the “inevitable” result of globalization, and desirable or not, “there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.” Really? I don’t remember EITHER of these rather significant points being made by proponents of freer trade back when we supposedly were deciding whether we liked the idea. I remember a lot of talk of shared prosperity all around. Maybe that part comes later.

And nice try on the “there’s nothing we can do about it anyway” assertion. I don’t think we’ve even BEGUN to talk that one through. I think there are LOTS of things we could do. Raising taxes on the rich would be a place to start. How much? Let’s use a real version of the Laffable Curve to figure out what level of taxation yields the most revenue. Let’s start a conversation about INCREASING the estate tax, so rich kids have the OPPORTUNITY to learn the meaning of “hard work!” Will we drive the Galtmasters out of the country? Let’s discuss that too, if that’s all their American citizenship means to them. I’d be curious on that point, since patriotism is such a big deal that they wrapped the front of the NY Stock Exchange in an American flag.

And speaking of Galtmasters and patriotism, we have a new confession about how hard the “job creators” were working to “create jobs” for us through economy-destroying lending practices. “The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

We could have a converstion about “jail” for this kind of behavior. That would be one way to keep these patriots in the US. We could also have a discussion of whether we look at people like this with envy and admiration, or contempt. That’s a starter list of things we could do right there!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-to...

By Desmond Howard
ESPN The Magazine


Howard: What does it feel like to run at a speed that no human being had ever achieved before?

Bolt: You can't really tell; it's just very smooth. But I do like to see the slo-mo. When they zoom in on the legs, the amount of time you spend in the air is like a couple of seconds -- you're flying and it looks so good. But you can't really tell how you're feeling; you're just focused on getting to the line.

When does it hit you?
When you get to the lines and you look at the clock. You keep staring at that clock and you're like, Wow.

What's going through your mind in one of those big races?
I've learned over the years that if you start thinking about the race, it stresses you out a little bit. I just try to relax and think about video games, what I'm gonna do after the race, what I'm gonna do just to chill. Stuff like that to relax a little before the race.

So you think about video games, huh? What sort of video games do you play?
Right now I'm on "Call of Duty" -- that's all we play. Black Ops .

How about during the race? What do you see? What do you hear?
The first 40 or 50 meters, I'm aware of almost everything because that's the weakest part of my race, so I always check immediately if I got a good start. Maybe after 20 meters, I check again -- trying to tell myself to keep my technique right. I look around a little bit, but I don't really hear the crowd much over 100 meters because I'm so focused.


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http://espn.go.com/olympics/story/_/id/729...

Posted by Steve Coll


In late 2008, the United States intelligence community produced a classified National Intelligence Estimate on the war in Afghanistan that has never been released to the public. The N.I.E. described a “grim situation” overall, according to an intelligence officer’s private briefing for NATO ambassadors.

In late 2010, there was another N.I.E. on the war. This one painted a “gloomy picture,” warning that “large swaths of Afghanistan are still at risk of falling to the Taliban,” the Los Angeles Times reported. This N.I.E., too, has never been published.

This autumn, intelligence analysts have again been poring over their secret district-by-district maps of Afghanistan, finding and assessing patterns. A new N.I.E. on Afghanistan is just about finished, people familiar with the latest draft told me this week. This one looks forward to 2014, when President Obama has said U.S. troops will be reduced to a minimal number, and Afghan security forces will take the lead in the war.

The new draft Afghanistan N.I.E. is a lengthy document, running about a hundred pages or more. As is typically the case, it is a synthesis, primarily written by civilian intelligence analysts—career civil servants, mainly—who work in sixteen different intelligence agencies. These days, an Estimate usually contains “Key Judgments” backed by analysis near the front of the document. There are six such judgments in the Afghanistan draft, I was told. I wasn’t able to learn what all of them were; according to the accounts I heard, however, the draft on the whole is gloomier than the typical public statements made by U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan.



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By Erin Richards of the Journal Sentinel
Nov. 26, 2011

Eastern Helsinki - If it weren't tucked into a forest more than 4,000 miles from Wisconsin, Vesala Comprehensive School could stand in for a public school in Milwaukee.

The industrial-looking building from the 1960s serves 365 students, most of whom live in nearby public housing projects. More than half come from single-parent households, and 70% are low-income. Twenty-two percent qualify for special-education services.

About 30% are immigrants or students who speak a first language other than the official languages of Finnish and Swedish.

But unlike in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, where the achievement level of a school can generally be predicted by its ZIP code and student poverty rate, Vesala is part of a national system where the performance gap between the lowest and highest achieving students is one of the narrowest among developed countries, according to a respected international exam.

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http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/fin...