The Utah Jazz are just terrible. What happened here?

The Utah Jazz are 0-8. They weren’t expected to be very good — or any good, depending on how you look at it — but they’re just plain turrible through the first couple of weeks. They’re losing by an average of 14… Continue Reading

What exactly is the life of an aid worker like?

Given the current situation in the Philippines, aid workers are very much in the news. But what exactly do they do? And how does one become an aid worker? First off, it’s probably important to realize that humanitarian aid field workers… Continue Reading

Is Tennessee one of the next great places to live?

Some big news on the education front recently is that Tennessee, long hardly considered a hotbed of public education reform, is now making faster strides than any other state in that area. This process likely all began in 2011, when the… Continue Reading

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Maybe it’s time to walk back the Thailand rice subsidy

Here was the plan: the government of Thailand would buy rice at a higher-than-market rate — say, 40 to 50 percent — then store it, wait for the global adjustment in demand (because of how much rice Thailand exports), and… Continue Reading

Pedro Quezada is another in a long line of awkward lottery winner stories

Pedro Quezada won $338 million in New Jersey’s Powerball last spring; now he’s in court because his ex-girlfriend (they broke up after the winning) wants a share of it. Probably the best line written about the Quezada situation is at the… Continue Reading

Sarah Palin’s second act

Sarah Palin has this new book out, about protecting the heart of Christmas, so she’s on a bit of a media tour at present. Above is an odd, perhaps-best-defined-as-awkward clip between her and Matt Lauer on The Today Show over the rollout… Continue Reading

So … Elizabeth Warren and 2016

There are two major topics that will dominate Internet bandwith for the next 10 days: one is anything-and-everything associated with JFK and his untimely murder on the streets of Dallas (for example, we’re now evaluating the single-bullet theory using the latest… Continue Reading

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China’s going to spend about $5 billion on the web today, KTHXBYE

Today is ‘Singles Day’ in China; for better or worse, that’s their equivalent of Cyber Monday. ‘Singles Day’ is November 11 each year — 11.11 — because the ‘ones’ (1s) in 11.11 represent bare branches, or Chinese slang for bachelors. Around… Continue Reading