Archive for November, 2009
November 30, 2009 at 12:01 am
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Natalie Portman popped headphones onto Zach Braff's head and said, "This song will change your life." The resulting sound was not only that of carefully composed dullness, but of a million wealthy white kids investing in dull acoustic music to soundtrack their own romantic melodrama.
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By lowering its sights and concentrating on order, the international community has helped to stabilize Tajikistan. The same cheap, simple approach could work in Afghanistan, too.
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Humanities Washington, formerly known as Washington Commission for the Humanities, is a statewide organization dedicated to the humanities. We are a resource for other non-profit organizations, scholars, parents, writers, teachers, students, documentary filmmakers, journalists and other groups and individuals across the state. We are dedicated to providing humanities programs that nurture creativity, promote dialogue and spark critical thinking.
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November 26, 2009 at 12:01 am
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At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
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November 24, 2009 at 12:01 am
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Economics concerns the allocation of scarce resources. No scarcity, no
economic problem – everyone can have as much as they desire. In more
colloquial terms, economics is about how to portion out the cake. As dividing a
growing cake is a much more pleasant problem than dividing a static cake (or,
heaven forbid, a shrinking cake), much of economics is about growth.
Capitalism has become the dominant economic framework for engendering
world growth. (By capitalism, we refer to the risking of private capital for the
prospect of reward and this implies certain things such as markets, property
rights and the enforcement of contracts. We make no assumption regarding
politics — for example, democracy.) The end of capitalism is therefore the
ultimate extreme risk – constrained growth and the end of investing!
In this paper we consider investment risks – those that could affect asset
returns (and, in some cases, the associated liabilities).
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November 23, 2009 at 12:00 am
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* December Issue Contents
* | Geography Awareness Week
Senators' Statements
To help kick off Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic invited all 100 U.S. Senators to draw a map of their home state from memory and to label at least three important places. Here's the gallery of maps from the brave Senators who took the challenge. The maps reveal home-state pride, personal history, and even some geographic humor.
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November 19, 2009 at 12:01 am
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November 18, 2009 at 12:01 am
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CPAC is Canada’s only privately-owned, commercial free, not for profit, bilingual licensed television service. Created in 1992 by a consortium of cable companies to preserve an independent editorial voice for Canada’s democratic process, CPAC provides a window on Parliament, politics and public affairs in Canada and around the world. Since 1992, the cable industry has invested close to $50 million in CPAC, and today CPAC programming is delivered by cable, satellite and wireless distributors to over 10 million homes in Canada, and worldwide via 24/7 webcasting and podcasts available on this website.
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November 17, 2009 at 12:01 am
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China is growing fast and, as it grows, it is faced with urgent environmental challenges. Environmental costs may account for 10 per cent of China's GDP and the effects of pollution, desertification and climate change are already beginning to be felt within China and outside her borders. Climate change, species loss, pollution, water scarcity and environment damage are not problems confined to one country: they are challenges that concern all the world's citizens, but the rise of China gives them a new urgency. Tackling these challenges will require a common effort and common understanding. Here at chinadialogue we aim to promote that common understanding. By establishing the world's first fully bilingual website devoted to the environment we aim to promote direct dialogue and the search for solutions to our shared environmental challenges.
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November 16, 2009 at 12:01 am
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November 14, 2009 at 12:01 am
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November 12, 2009 at 12:01 am
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Monocle looks at the building boom in the western Afghan city of Herat, where gaudy palaces are wiping out the face of the medieval city. Much of the construction is being fuelled by money from drugs, guns or graft, although all of the interiors photographed by Monocle belonged to businessmen importing materials for the country's reconstruction boom. Less savoury characters were not so welcoming. We were turned away from one house after the militia commander who lived next door threatened the owner.
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When the Berlin Wall cracked on November 9, 1989, the clock struck thirteen in the Soviet bloc, and its hands halted. History went on. Rotting dictatorships in eastern and central Europe, long sustained by and for Moscow, had been crumpling for some time. Western-style democratic structures (some sturdy, some less so) would supplant them. Europe’s politics and that of the world were recast in a largely unforeseen but exhilarating year of liberation from police states. In its aftermath, a newly unified Germany integrated both into Europe and the Western alliance, while a hobbling Soviet Union dissolved after a failed coup against Communist Party Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev in summer 1991. Then Boris Yeltsin’s “shock therapy” enfeebled further its Russian successor.
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On November 9, 1989, the East German underground guitar band Die Anderen—the Others—had a gig on the other side of the Berlin Wall. They were playing the Pike Club, in the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg, home to the legendarily decadent and anarchic scene that inspired David Bowie and Iggy Pop and Nick Cave. It was actually to be their second concert on the other side of the anti-fascist protection barrier, as it was officially known in the East. The GDR had in recent months started granting travel permission to some bands—even bands from the conspicuously non-conformist punk scene. Die Anderen played West Berlin for the first time on May 26, 1989, crossing the death strip at the Invalidenstrasse checkpoint in an official-looking van being driven by a government apparatchik who was accompanying them. It was the type of van used by the police and traveling sports teams. “It was more about teenage rebellion—it was fun and cool.
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A West German dessert. A "flour box." A female driver. The East German secret police took an interest in all manner of banal details as it oppressed its citizenry. Now that Germany is celebrating 20 years since the fall of the Wall, more people than ever are taking a look into their Stasi files. A West German pudding. That was all it took. Once the Stasi found out about it, a family breadwinner was fired from his army job and an East German household was plunged into destitution. Even worse, the family later found out that they had been turned in by a close friend. "She was watering the plants and went through the cupboards to find a Dr. Oetker dessert," Vera Iburg, who has worked with files kept by the East German secret police for the last 20 years, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, referring to the snoop. "What was she doing? She had no business there!" The murky world of Stasi spying is hardly a secret, particularly since the 2006 Oscar winning film "The Lives of Others."
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The ex-communist countries of central Europe have fared well, mostly, since 1989. But they still have to shed their image as poor and troubled relations.
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Do you call a ‘bread roll’ a cob, batch, bread cake, barm cake or scuffler? How do you pronounce the words cup and plant? And are you sitting or sat at this computer? The UK is a rich landscape of regional accents and dialects, each evidence of our society’ s continuity and change, our local history and our day-to-day lives. This site captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century.
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Haitian cabbie Pierre Jean-Charles climbed into his yellow taxi van while cradling a bottle of Coke and a bag of Doritos — the customary get-me-through snack for the 51-year-old full-time student and father of five. He had parked at a meter in front of a corner store at 75th Street and Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. It was before noon September 7, Labor Day, and the sweltering streets were full of people draped in towels, wearing bathing suits, and flip-flopping to the beach. Jean-Charles found that an SUV had parked inches behind him, jamming him in. He honked and stepped out of the taxi, gesturing for the woman behind the SUV's steering wheel to back up. A short, stocky Hispanic man emerged from the passenger side and stomped toward the cab. "Where you from?" the man snapped.
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Known as Navajo Code Talkers, they were young Navajo men who transmitted secret communications on the battlefields of WWII. At a time when America's best cryptographers were falling short, these modest sheepherders and farmers were able to fashion the most ingenious and successful code in military history. They drew upon their proud warrior tradition to brave the dense jungles of Guadalcanal and the exposed beachheads of Iwo Jima. Serving with distinction in every major engagement of the Pacific theater from 1942-1945, their unbreakable code played a pivotal role in saving countless lives and hastening the war's end.
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This is the definitive guide to becoming a seasoned all-you-can-eat buffeter. If you would like to gain knowledge of each and every aspect that lay between you and getting the most fulfilling meal possible you have come to the right place. You will learn with specific techniques the dos and don’ts that every professional smorgasbord eater must adhere to. Within these tough economic times it is important to make sure our dollar stretches as far as possible.
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How do American Jews speak English? Who uses Hebrew and Yiddish words and New York regional features? When using Hebrew words, who prefers Israeli pronunciations and who prefers Ashkenazic ones? Which Yiddish-origin features do some non-Jews use? Two researchers from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion have begun to answer these questions. Linguist Sarah Bunin Benor and Sociologist Steven M. Cohen have released the results of a large-scale survey of Jews and non-Jews in the United States.
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