When NBA legend Dennis Rodman returned from his recent visit to North Korea, he suggested that basketball could heal the rift between that country and the US. According to the WSJ, Rodman said that Pres. Obama and new Nork leader Kim Jong Un both like basketball, so “let’s start there.”The success of this diplomacy-by-basketball might be uncertain, […]

The Keystone Pipeline may just have taken another step towards official approval, as the State Department said yesterday that it’s construction wouldn’t have any real effect on climate change. McClatchy Newspapers has the story: The 1,700-mile pipeline would bring oil from the Alberta oil sands in Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. The Congressional […]

New York’s Federal Reserve Bank held a press briefing this week to discuss its quarterly report on household debt and credit, and it contained some sobering numbers on student debt. According to the presentation  by Senior Economist Donghoon Lee, student debt has now reached almost one trillion dollars, nearly tripling between 2004 and 2012. Moreover, excluding borrowers not in repayment, […]

If the rhetoric coming out of Caracas is an accurate indicator, Hugo Chavez may actually be at death’s door. Speaking to supporters outside of the chapel of the Military Hospital Carlos Arvelo after Friday’s mass, vice president Nicolas Maduro, who has been singled out by Chavez as the person he’d most like to succeed him, […]

According to the The Asahi Shimbun, Hideki Watanabe, a dentist from Tobe, Japan, invented the “Kurukuru nabe” (or ‘swirly pot’) to help cooks keep their hands free when preparing dinner. The pan has special groves that makes a small whirlpool when the water is heated, causing the contents inside to spin. Check out the video.While neat in […]

In Thursday’s budget announcement, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram made an important but overlooked decision to begin upgrading the infrastructure of northeast India. “Combining the Look East policy and the interests of the northeastern states, I propose to seek the assistance of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to build roads in the northeastern States […]

As regular readers know, I’m teaching a class for aspiring young writers and thinkers at Bard this semester, and one of the exercises I’ve asked them to do involves using heroic couplets to write satires and expository essays. Looking at the way that writers like John Dryden and Alexander Pope were able to use the […]

The US is using less energy and emitting less carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP than ever before, according to the latest data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). This is not a short-term trend: America will continue to become more efficient through 2040.Energy intensity, or the amount of energy we use to create one dollar […]

Detroit is officially in a “State of Fiscal Emergency,” and the state is about to take control of the city’s finances. Governor Rick Snyder will soon name an emergency manager, who may have the city file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. The manager will have broad powers, […]

More bad news for Europe: the Netherlands will be joining the ranks of countries not abiding by the EU’s target of keeping budget deficits under 3 percent of GDP. Its deficit will come in at around 3.3 percent for 2013.European leaders, however, aren’t too worried, says the Financial Times: In principle, the European budget commissioner, […]