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Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University have compared the recent US subprime mortgage crisis with five downturns in industrialized economies in the past 30 years in their brief paper,
Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? (pdf). Their conclusion: “given the severity of most crisis indicators in the run-up to its 2007 financial crisis, the United States should consider itself quite fortunate if its downturn ends up being a relatively short and mild one.” Summarized, with some data and charts,
here.
Via.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 12:48 PM on February 9, 2008
(19 comments)
NewsFilter:
"A Montgomery minister found in his home this summer died with his hands and feet bound behind his back and dressed in two rubberized suits, an offical autopsy showed. ... The Rev. Gary Michael Aldridge was found dead June 24. Police ruled the 51-year-old pastor of Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone at the time of his death and that there was no foul play involved."
He's a
Liberty University graduate and former Liberty dean.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 2:55 PM on October 12, 2007
(133 comments)
Today's Washington Post:
"The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials."
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 8:45 AM on September 22, 2007
(81 comments)
From a Time magazine article:
A new, innocuously titled book,
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."
Previously on Mother Teresa's doubt,
more generally.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 7:54 PM on August 23, 2007
(110 comments)
Excerpts from and
pictures of Ronald Reagan's diaries while president, with a brief intro from historian Douglas Brinkley.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 7:51 PM on May 24, 2007
(15 comments)
"The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on."
Bill Moyers returned to PBS last night with
this documentary (
transcript) examining the mainstream media's role in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 9:50 AM on April 26, 2007
(56 comments)
"Tired of the
LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears?" At
Conservapedia, a "conservative encyclopedia you can trust," you can learn that "faith" is
a concept "exclusive to Christianity," and about how Wikipedia is
biased in matters such as its description of the Bell Trade Act of 1946, its gossipy treatment of the private life of NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, and its seeming acceptance of evolution. The Wikipedia bias entry also complains of a "rant" against the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group for which Conservapedia founder (and son of conservative gadfly
Phyllis Schafly)
Andrew Schlafly has worked. Signups are
here; its take on evolution is criticized
here.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 5:17 PM on February 23, 2007
(153 comments)
Time magazine recently launched a new politics blog,
Swampland. The blog is, to this point, most interesting for its confrontations between the commenters and the bloggers. [m.i.]
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 11:35 PM on January 26, 2007
(26 comments)
Chief Justice John Roberts, decrying “the personalization of judicial politics,”
describes his efforts to increase comity on the Supreme Court and to decide more cases unanimously. In Roberts' first term as chief justice, “
while a relatively large number of the Court’s decisions” were unanimous, “several important, closely divided cases” were decided by 5-4 votes, with Roberts joining the more conservative justices.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 6:09 PM on January 16, 2007
(17 comments)
Three small classes of high school students, one in Watsonville, California, one in Jos, Nigeria, and one in Dharamsala, India, are
currently collaborating on "Project Happiness". The students are "
exchanging their thoughts about what happiness is, and how to behave in ways that promote happiness all around them," drawing on the Dalai Lama's
Ethics for the New Millennium (useful 50-page pdf study guide; positive review from Christian Century magazine). In their work creating a curriculum for the book, the students communicate via email, a
blog, and videos
(an instructor in India describes the project's focus; a "what life is like here" video from India). The
podcast section of the
official site currently features just one introductory video posted a few weeks ago. The project will culminate in a meeting of all three classes in March 2007 in Dharamsala. A book and a PBS documentary are planned.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 3:44 PM on December 28, 2006
(5 comments)
Baseball nerd fun: Type in which team's at bat, how many outs, which inning, how many on base, and the
Win Expectancy Finder will spit out the likelihood the team wins, based on actual game data from the periods 2000-2004, 1991-1998, and 1979-1990.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 7:45 PM on October 26, 2006
(12 comments)
The Smithsonian's Sackler gallery opened a unique and wide-ranging
new exhibit yesterday featuring fragments of Bibles from before the year 1000.
"
Most of the manuscripts have never been seen outside the countries where they are stored. [Some Smithsonian-owned documents in the exhibition] have never been exhibited and two have not been shown since 1978." Fragments of the
Codex Sinaiticus are included in the exhibit.
Along with the
archaeological interest, these fragments can pose theological and historical challenges for Christians. Some, like UNC's Bart Ehrman, have
lost their faith as a result of studying early Bibles; some, like Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory, believing that Christianity is about a
common cultural and spiritual experience, are unmoved by the "
corruptions" and
differences in the New Testament over time; other Christians try to
refute (MeFi link) claims that the text has changed.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 5:55 PM on October 22, 2006
(36 comments)
Entertainment NewsFilter:
the surviving Beach Boys, including Mike Love and Brian Wilson, appeared together in public today, for the first time in ten years, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds.
Mike Love
recently sued Brian Wilson for royalties and co-writing credits, again, after Brian released SMiLE, a
mere 38 years after originally starting on it. The strife between the two has been ongoing for decades. As Brian grew more musically ambitious in the Pet Sounds and SMiLE era, Mike
legendarily admonished Brian not to "fuck with the formula." [m.i.]
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 12:23 PM on June 14, 2006
(59 comments)
Newsfilter: Washington Post columnist/blogger Dan Froomkin writes the "
White House Briefing," an online "daily anthology of works by other journalists and bloggers," which is often critical of the administration. This past Sunday, the new
Post ombudsman wrote that the paper's White House correspondents worried that Froomkin's column creates an appearance of bias at the Post.
Froomkin responsed, and hundreds of commentors offered their support. Then Post national politics editor
John Harris weighed in, to somewhat less acclaim from commentors. Harris expanded on his views in
this interview. The whole affair raises issues about allegations of a
subservient, stenographic press, how the media
deals with charges of liberal bias, the
perceived vindictiveness of the Bush administration, and the relationship between
in-house bloggers and the traditional media.
posted to MetaFilter by ibmcginty
at 7:36 AM on December 14, 2005
(20 comments)
