what they hate about mumbai

Excellent op-ed by Suketu Mehta; an excerpt does not do it justice.
 
My bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.
Mumbai is all [...]

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the view from hubble: loner starburst galaxy

Starburst Galaxy NGC 1569
 
This image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases the brilliant core of one of the most active galaxies in our local neighborhood. The entire core is 5,000 light-years wide.
The galaxy, called NGC 1569, sparkles with the light from millions of newly formed young stars. NGC 1569 is pumping out stars at [...]

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paul krugman: lest we forget

Learn ye your history here:
 
In fact, both the crisis of 1997-98 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble probably had the perverse effect of making both investors and public officials more, not less, complacent. Because neither crisis quite lived up to our worst fears, because neither brought about another Great Depression, investors came to believe [...]

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bush’s f-you to obama and america: 11th-hour regulations

Just sickening. If only Bush were TRULY a lame duck, unable to push through all of these disgusting new rules.
 
The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are [...]

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2008 election results map

This one is good enough to have state names on it, for those of us a tad shaky on placing all 50 states. Click through for the handy dandy interactive version, compliments Talking Points Memo.

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samantha power tapped for state department transition

Oy. Here comes the Team of Rivals Extreme Awkward Moments
 
Samantha Power, the Obama foreign-policy adviser who had to resign from the campaign after she called Hillary Clinton a “monster” who was “stooping to anything” in the primaries, and who also got in a bit of trouble for saying Obama wouldn’t necessarily be sticking to his [...]

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talking points memo itemizes fed spending

We’ve heard a number of reports over recent days putting the total government bailout costs at several trillions of dollars. But there are a lot of apples and oranges being thrown around. There are directly appropriated US government spending on the TARP. Then there’s Fed lending, which is different. Then there are various loan guarantees [...]

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apropos of nothing #7

Mr. Adorable, aka diet soda box cat, takes to the sink
 

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i’m not one of those “love thy neighbor” christians

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She’s way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with [...]

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if it’s not illegal, it ought to be–religious activism for prop 8

Another view on the matter of 501(c)(3) donations:
 
“They almost certainly have not violated their tax exemption,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the leading advocacy organization on the issue. “While the tax code has a zero tolerance for endorsements of candidates, the tax code gives wide [...]

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