Dr. Fuchs’s Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.” [more inside]
posted by cgc373
on Apr 6, 2011 -
16 comments
The Wall Street Journal investigates web snoops. The 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.'s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal's test. [more inside]
posted by chavenet
on Jul 30, 2010 -
59 comments
Demon Denim. Feeding off a earlier
column in the WSJ by Daniel Akst, who wrote, "no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline," conservative columnist George Will takes up the (denim-free) banner in the crusade to rid America of "the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche."
posted by Liver
on Apr 16, 2009 -
158 comments
Remedial economics for the WSJ editorial board An April 26 Wall Street Journal editorial argued that "the overall tax burden grew more progressive" in the last 25 years because upper income taxpayers pay a larger share of total taxes than they did in 1979. But the Journal failed to explain why upper income taxpayers pay a larger share today: The wealthiest Americans earn a much larger share of total income than they did in 1979.
[see, too: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006194.php]
posted by Postroad
on Apr 27, 2005 -
106 comments
Europe versus America (PDF) is a report by a Swedish public policy institute comparing the two economies, concluding that "If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states." The
WSJ has read the report, and highlights that "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near [...]. in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the 'poor' own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.". With a
looming demographic crisis in Europe to boot, will the EU be able to implement much-needed reforms to save their welfare-state system before it is too late?
posted by dagny
on Jun 20, 2004 -
118 comments
How Much is a Human Life Worth? Read the smoke signals that it's nigh time for tort reform.
In the newest bout of self-help jurisprudence, the "good" people of california have gone too far in awarding an obscene amount of money in a case against Philip Morris. Betty Bullock can now take her 28 billion and go shopping for half of Microsoft, or any other Fortune 500 company, if she's so inclined. Assuming that there is a bank in the land that can cash the check.
Smoking my way to the bank.
posted by mr.abominable
on Oct 4, 2002 -
25 comments
Silly Putty supersized. Indulge in tactile manipulation on the kind of scale that would make jealous schoolchildren weep. Do they come in giant plastic shells?
posted by Dukebloo
on Sep 11, 2002 -
10 comments
With friends like the Saudis, who needs enemies? "There is, then, no real need for us to be frightened by the loss of the kingdom's oil friendship. But we should be concerned by the evidence of its strategic enmity. It may be true that the Saudis are neither Iraqis nor Iranians nor Libyans; but it is quite dangerous enough that they are Saudis."
posted by homunculus
on Jul 9, 2002 -
24 comments
Fairly well-reasoned
WSJ Op-Ed piece concerning the Boston Phoenix decision to link the unedited Daniel Pearl video. Apparently the Phoenix's editor claims he would have wanted it shown.
posted by Su
on Jun 12, 2002 -
18 comments
Ideas have consequences. On the subject of the Daniel Pearl kidnapping, an interesting letter to Media News today (scroll down to the "Journalists as Political Operatives" item), reads in part, "I would not want to trivialize it for all the world, but I am constrained to point out that it was only recently that Mr. Pearl's newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, felt compelled to praise the book "Bias" which perports to lay bare the 'liberal bias' of mainstream journalism. In fact, the WSJ editorial board has for years persisted, along with other conservative commentators, to label journalists as political tools in service of a larger political agenda. The kidnappers of Mr. Pearl insist that he is a political tool, a spy, for some foreign government (one day the U.S., the next day Israel.) Where could they have possibly gotten the idea that journalists are not the dedicated professionals they claim to be but are instead something else in disguise?" Thoughts?
posted by nance
on Jan 31, 2002 -
35 comments
The latest on the WSJ Reporter ... Damn. "The group that claims it has kidnapped a Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan has sent e-mail to news organisations threatening to kill him within 24 hours unless the U.S. government released Pakistani prisoners held in the Afghan war."
posted by MidasMulligan
on Jan 30, 2002 -
20 comments
"How Bush should spend his windfall of political capital." Many links have been posted in the past 10 days to cheap political opportunism in the wake of
0.81- but
this takes the cake: an op-ed calling for Bush to
explicitly exploit this tragedy to pass bigger tax cuts, ANWR drilling,
etc. Yep, another sickening WSJ effort; I'm sure the families of the victims will take heart in knowing their loved ones are, in fact, a "
windfall of political capital" for Bush. (
sorry for the two-front-page-posts-in-a-row, btw)
posted by hincandenza
on Sep 21, 2001 -
13 comments
The Greenwood Position. Partisan perhaps, but will Peggy Noonan's latest OpEd in the WSJ be a rallying cry for frustrated conservatives? She offers compelling arguments and solid suggestions for proactive redress. Talk amongst yourselves.
posted by netbros
on Nov 25, 2000 -
6 comments
