I guess some people would rather die than just loop around the block.  Damn.

And what, exactly, is the penalty for not obeying this particular traffic law?  Like a fine is gonna matter.

I guess some people would rather die than just loop around the block.  Damn.

And what, exactly, is the penalty for not obeying this particular traffic law?  Like a fine is gonna matter.

Watching CNN today, 11:14 am PT, as they’re coming back from a commercial.

"Three of the stories we’re working on…" the anchor intones, highlighting these:

1. Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize,
2. Ted Kennedy undergoes surgery, and
3. "Eight search warrants have been served in the death of Anna Nicole Smith…"

Come on. Do we have to? Annalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, again splashed across literally hundreds of newspapers and TV stations? Thankfully, it’s hardly the wall-to-wall all-else-annihilating festival of eight months ago (see the cartoon below for a quick review of other things that happened that day).  But still. Aagh.

Just to review this news cycle’s largest events which may have been neglected, depending on which "news" show one’s eyeballs fell on, in favor of today’s yellow-alert Anna Nicolitude: the US and Russia are getting notably tense. So are the US and Turkey — and just as Turkey and the Kurds could blow up any minute, with large implications for Iraq. To the good, Israel and the Palestinians are making headway for once, but in Sudan, things blew up again badly in Darfur the other day, while desperately needed peace talks in South Sudan have now gone all wobbly, after decades of war there which have killed maybe 1.5 to two million people.

(Sadly, this last grim news was fairly predictable; southern Sudan has been in a state of civil war pretty much straight through since before independence even began in 1956, with the exception of one 11-year break that ended in 1983 and this fresh flail at peace starting in 2005. None of which I recall even hearing about until writing Who Hates Whom. Despite the death toll. And today’s failure, which may set off another horrid war, seems to have gone nearly 100% unnoticed in the US press.  Again.  Depressed sigh.)

Almost eight hours later, Anderson Cooper (whose work I often respect greatly) and his producers chose to make the Annalissimo one of their top three lead stories as well.  By evening, Ted Kennedy’s bloodstream and Al Gore’s award had been replaced by (a) retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez verbally fragging his former civilian commanders and (b) a police-custody death in the Phoenix airport.

Only Anna Nicole still remained in the top three.

Forgive me, but I feel compelled to repost this video, reviewing the other teensy stuff that happened on the day Anna Nicole died:

That’s the headline of this front-page story in today’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, concerning how the African nation of Malawi has rapidly transformed its food economy from famine to surplus, saving countless lives:

Bottom line: food production is up 150%. But at what cost?

In other words, the subsidies only cost half as much as previous measures, and generated enough income to pay for themselves. Twice over. In addition to ending the famine.

This is, of course, pure sacrilege to those who hold "free" markets as a hallowed force of religious power. (Odd to see it front-paged in a national newspaper. Of course, I’m not in the US at the moment. I’m in Canada, where well-funded public health, education, transport, and educational systems would have destroyed the economy by now, if some disembodied heads on CNBC were remotely tethered to earth.)

My point here is not to promote or decry any particular economic agenda — I have none, personally — but to yearn for the sort of open-minded pragmatism that allows, y’know, a newspaper to actually report something useful like this without being instantly denounced for a breach of ideology.

What worked in Malawi may or may not work anywhere else. But it worked in Malawi.

Ideology apparently helped cause a famine. Moving past ideology helped stop one.

That’s the headline of this front-page story in today’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, concerning how the African nation of Malawi has rapidly transformed its food economy from famine to surplus, saving countless lives:

Bottom line: food production is up 150%. But at what cost?

In other words, the subsidies only cost half as much as previous measures, and generated enough income to pay for themselves. Twice over. In addition to ending the famine.

This is, of course, pure sacrilege to those who hold "free" markets as a hallowed force of religious power. (Odd to see it front-paged in a national newspaper. Of course, I’m not in the US at the moment. I’m in Canada, where well-funded public health, education, transport, and educational systems would have destroyed the economy by now, if some disembodied heads on CNBC were remotely tethered to earth.)

My point here is not to promote or decry any particular economic agenda — I have none, personally — but to yearn for the sort of open-minded pragmatism that allows, y’know, a newspaper to actually report something useful like this without being instantly denounced for a breach of ideology.

What worked in Malawi may or may not work anywhere else. But it worked in Malawi.

Ideology apparently helped cause a famine. Moving past ideology helped stop one.