Opinion | New "hard choices" rhetoric leads to same old budget earmarks | Seattle Times Newspaper

Earmarks One of McCain's longstanding campaigns has been to eliminate the practice of earmarks and he is one of only 13 congressmen and senators that do not practice earmarking. It is the principle reason he was known as a "maverick". This article rather ironically shows how annoyed he is that the practice continues under the new administration of "change".

Earmarking is an American method of quick payments outside of normal budget processes for unexpected and worthy local needs. But it has become a principle expression of political corruption. The people and firms that get the money do not submit to competitive bid or even surveillance. Worse it was discovered by the Seattle Times that following the earmark awards, the receivers serious political contributions to the very politicians that gave them the money - an astonishing 55.000 coorelations!

This came particularly into view a year or so ago when a reporter at the Seattle Times first found these corrupt links. His editor gave him help and set him up to do a complete research. This work was compiled into a database "The Favour Factory" that can be queried in any was for any congressman, or senator or particular earmark details. Check it out.

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What do you get if you divide science by God?

BBC A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.

Writing in Faith

Writing in Faith i just love the serendipity of the net. but this is a bit like campbell's bliss following!

i started wanting to search for more current videos of marcus borg - hopefully some lectures. spent a half day sunday routing through the oysters of google search to find the 3 new pearls of living the questions. so i think, let's ask google to recommend a better search engine. i know, rather a paradox. but i did. i asked for video search engines and google obligingly did so - a long list. first was blinkx.com

put in marcus borg. wow. 41 hits. and they line right up and start playing in little screens. started plowing through. have the first 20, but then i see "to be" a videopoem by sandy carlson, inspired by borg "...and a bit of love". lovely.

so i chase down her site that leads here to her blog. what a busy lady. do check out her poetry. and her other endeavors are worthy as well.

Truthdig - Arts and Culture - Chalmers Johnson on the Myth of Free Trade

Bad Samaritans Another Truthdig piece. Ha-Joon Chang is a Korean economist at Cambridge (UK) that raises a critical voice against the economic principles presently running the world. This piece is a marvellously deep and educational (and long) piece in the form of a review of Chang's new book.

I found this piece searching the book title after listening to a 20 minute interview today (wed mar 11)with Chang and wanting to learn more about him. Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. You might want to check that out. Amy does a daily one hour news broadcast in the tradition of Bill Moyer. It is a rare bit of good journalism on news simply not covered in the mainstream.

Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Saudi Woman, 75, Faces Lashing for Letting In Delivery Men

A special piece of wahabi horror. There is much fear of the fundamentalist fervour. It's hard to imagine a worse example of human behaviour than a legalism that would lash an old lady for letting the bread delivery guys into her home because they were not her relatives. Let's hope the international outcry halts this travesty.

eBooks@Adelaide: Free Web Books, Online

eBooks@Adelaide: Free Web Books, Online Australian law puts books into the public domain whose authors died in 1956. This makes available a considerable number of books that are not available in the US. A good new resource. From Tactitus to Orwell.

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis Lewis addressing the Chautauqua Symposium in his usual enthusiastic way. He may well be the most emotive speaker alive today, and the cause he espouses the most needful of it.

Introduction to the Cosmic Microwave Background

In a series of easy tutorials, Wayne Hu tells the story of the CMB. Rather well done. He shows how we are bathed in primoridial light, briefs us on the strange geometry of time and distance in cosmology and shows why we need to know this stuff.