Portside

If most homeowners have not hedged themselves against the possibility that home prices, like bond prices, may fall if interest rates rise, we may be in for another round of very bad news if interest rates ever return to more normal levels. It is remarkable that the latest run-up in house prices has received so little attention from people in policy positions. There may be an enormous price to pay for the continued lack of attention to housing bubbles.

One day, sometime around the middle of this century, during the lifetime of people now alive, the population of the planet will be smaller than it was the day before. Global population growth is slowing, will level off, and one remarkable day, decline.

"The End of Nature", "guns and butter" , Syria, student loans, secret surveillance , Steve Wozniak

The timing of Rice’s announcement is eerily reminiscent of what occurred a decade ago when Powell was at the Bush Administration’s foreign policy helm. Then, as now, the decision to escalate the conflict came amid feverish international effort to prevent war

You have the right to meet, plan and organize without having the government looking over your shoulder (or tracking your calls and stealing your email) because all power in the government’s hands can and eventually will be abused in the absence of strong “checks and balances”.

Grass Roots Movement Needed

The movement is battlefield, highlighting all the contradictions of Brazilian society.

The first global survey of domestic violence reveals the staggering extent of the problem.

The cumulative effect of Convicting the Innocent is stunning. Almost all of the 250 DNA exonerations occurred in murder or rape cases. Murder and rape amounts to less than 1% of all felony convictions. The errors typically flowed not from malicious motives but from the normal cognitive biases that lead detectives and prosecutors to be convinced that they have the right person. The result must be thousands of erroneous guilty pleas and trial convictions each year.

James Gandolfini's genius was his knack for humanizing but not sentimentalizing his tough guy characters.