Recently in Interesting News and Views Category

Palin goes down in much the same way that Harriet Miers did when Bush nominated her to the Supreme Court.  I really can't understand this as anything other than a transparent ploy by McCain to steal away Hillary supporters.  It seems desperate.  This woman has some skeletons in her closet, and I don't think this will be pretty if Obama surrogates start going for her jugular.

Today's video, on National Cow Day, was silly but leads into a more serious issue.  If cows were capable of conscious thought, they wouldn't want people to eat them.  That's not exactly the point though.  Meat consumption and grain production have become major international issues and the push for biofuels only complicates matters further.  I thought it would be nice to pull together some information and views on the issue, after I was inspired by an interesting discussion today on World Have Your Say on BBC World Services Radio.

As I listened to today's program, "Is Vegetarianism the answer to the global food crisis" I heard some interesting views on how meat consumption is (may be) causing severe environmental damage and contributing to world hunger.  I yielded to a car pulling into McDonalds.  The irony wasn't lost on me.

Hotair has a great link up (you can also head directly to the article, here) to a Christopher Hitchens article in which he insinuates that Hillary Clinton is acting like, you got it, "an unkillable swamp creature or lagoon dweller."   This, because she just won't let reality sink in that her race for the presidency is over.

I read this blog regularly, and it always is interesting and often cracks me up.  Brad goes on a little tirade about the Sex and the City craze today.

"The popularity of Sex and the City confuses me. I'm not upset that people like it---women in particular---I'm just baffled by the manic excitement that it seems to engender. The fever. The way that so many women have elevated the show and its upcoming spin-off movie to exalted status.

In a way, it kind of reminds me of Madonna. I feel much the same way about Madonna. The glory of Madonna escapes me. The glory of Sex and the City escapes me. "

 It is interesting in that he ties it into womens' hero worship of famous women who are emblematic of power.

"What about Dolly Parton? What about Maureen Dowd? What about Toni Morrison? What about Tina Fey? What about any number of women who are more worthy of this kind of hero worship?"

Jump to the blog posting, here.

I recommend his blog, and his book - a favorite of mine (elusive, indeed!): Attention, Deficit, Disorder.

I never intended this blog to turn into a quasi political/societal/global/economic/civil rights forum for my thoughts on these issue areas.  Yet, it seems a natural fit.  I'm constantly emailing articles to friends and family - articles that I think are really interesting or have meaning in my life and the lives of others.  So, you're going to start seeing a lot more posts on here, along with some of my educated (and often not so educated) commentary to accompany them.

This article attempts to quantify how beauty affects our success in careers and other areas of life.  We all know that "pretty" people tend to get a bit further in life than "not so pretty" people.  Yet, to see it in numbers is pretty disgusting:

"... surveys in the United States and Canada which showed that when all other things are taken into account, ugly people earn less than average incomes, while beautiful people earn more than the average. The ugliness "penalty" for men was -9 percent while the beauty premium was +5 percent."

Yet, at least there is some good news:

having a ridiculous first name, be it Fido or Loser or LemonJello, doesn't seem to affect career earnings at all.

Jump, here.