By 2012 the richest 70 members of China’s national legislature had a net worth of almost $90bn, more than 20 times the combined net worth of the entire US congress. (from “Age of Ambition”, by Evan Osnos). In regimes all over the world corruption has been forever part of the picture. Decent, well-meaning people, who …
WARNING: This post utilizes irony and tongue-in-cheek stuff. A woman in the US state of Idaho has been killed after her two-year-old son accidentally shot her with a gun he found when reaching into her handbag. The woman, named by the local sheriff’s office as Veronica J Rutledge, 29, was shot in a Wal-Mart in …
A reader made the following observation yesterday: “The Epicurean solution (to the turmoil in the Middle East) would be: DON’T INTERVENE. Epicurus was against involvement in politics, especially geopolitics, and for good reason – life is too short to make yourself miserable solving other people’s problems. The reader was talking about Britain, but I entirely …
Continue reading ‘ISIS: a challenge to the readers, Part 2’ »
Tucked away in the recent Congressional spending bill is, believe it or not, a provisions that allows truck drivers to drive for up to 82 hours a week, double the working hours of ordinary office workers. And with no overtime! This is a sign of things to come. The Republicans loath all regulation, and this …
Continue reading ‘Who speaks up for the dead and injured?’ »
Five years ago at the beginning of the US shale oil revolution, drillers started to load up on debt to fund their operations and acquire new acreage, as vast areas of North America started to open up for exploration. There has been a spectacular rise in US oil and gas output. Latest estimates suggest that by …
