Good Reads: A European bailout plan explained, and yoga lawsuits

Today's papers help make sense of the incomprehensible European debt crisis, and what European governments plan to do about it.

One of the biggest problems with the economic crisis that has beset the developed world over the past few years is that you have to be an expert to understand it, though you only have to have a pulse to feel its effects.

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If the house next door catches fire, we all know enough to call the fire department. Some of us will stand on the opposite side of the street and give unasked-for advice on where to point the fire hose. But when the entire financial systems of countries like Greece and Italy and Ireland simply stop functioning ? and when stronger European countries like Germany and France start scurrying around pointing fingers ? ?there is no smoke, no flames, no fire department, and no obvious solution. All we see are people in distress, displaced from their homes, kicked out of jobs, struggling to survive. Protesters can sit outside the New York Stock Exchange for hours and days, but it isn?t always clear what should be done to fix a problem that is seems too complex to be understood.

That, however, is why we have newspapers. While most of us go about our business, newspapers can send one or a dozen people, day after day, to study a subject, pester people with questions, wait around for answers, and write a story simple enough for those of us with a pulse to understand.

In the hands of a skilled and compassionate reporter, like The Washington Post?s Anthony Faiola, certain parts of the economic crisis can be explained in ways that a range of possible solutions become more clear. In today?s Post, Mr. Faiola writes about how a few of Europe?s stronger economies are coming up with a plan to rescue the common currency called the euro from complete collapse.

The euro, which links up strong economies like France and Germany with weaker economies like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, has been falling in value as it becomes clearer that certain eurozone member governments (side eye at Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy) have been spending more than they take in in tax revenues. Now, according to the Post?s Faiola, France and Germany plan to set up new rules that would force such nations to ?forfeit full independence over national budgets and potentially give their neighbors the right to slap penalties on big spenders.?

Cutting spending in the future certainly seems like an excellent idea. The house is well and truly engulfed in flames. Perhaps we should stop throwing gasoline onto it. But as Megan McArdle points out, the next step (turning on the fire hose and putting out the flames) isn?t as easy as it may sound. Some European economies are so deeply in debt that there simply isn?t enough money in the world to bail them out, she writes.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/nLGQImUypqU/Good-Reads-A-European-bailout-plan-explained-and-yoga-lawsuits

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Brazil: Amazon destruction at lowest level

SAO PAULO (AP) ? Annual destruction of the Amazon rain forest fell to its lowest recorded level this year, Brazilian authorities said Monday, hailing an enforcement crackdown for the drop.

The destruction between August 2010 through July 2011 was about 2,410 square miles (6,240 square kilometers), according to the National Institute for Space Research.

That's an area about the size of the U.S. state of Delaware.

The institute has tracked Amazon destruction since 1988 by analyzing satellite images. The destruction peaked in 1995, when 11,220 square miles (29,060 square kilometers) were destroyed.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the government's fast action to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions led to the drop.

"We'll continue with determination to reduce the illegal deforestation in the Amazon," she told a news conference in the capital of Brasilia.

Brazil's government has stepped up enforcement of environmental laws in recent years, mostly by sending armed environmental agents into the jungle to carrying out large raids on deforestation hotspots.

The announcement of the drop comes as Brazil's Senate prepares to vote this week on changes to the nation's benchmark environmental laws that would loosen restrictions on how small farmers use their land in the Amazon.

Environmentalists fear the bill would bring increased deforestation and warn the current drop is likely due less to the government's crackdown and more to the global economic downturn. They say that has reduced demand for products, such as soy, cattle raised in illegally cleared pastures, and timber, that lead to the destruction.

Operators of small-scale farms and ranches defend the measure as letting them produce to full capacity and boost Brazil's food output.

The bill would let farmers and ranchers with small holdings work land closer to riverbanks and to use hilltops, practices that are currently outlawed. It also grants amnesty from harsh fines levied on farms and ranches of any size that cleared more tree cover than legally allowed before July 2008.

While bigger landholders also would be freed from penalties already levied, they would still have to replant land that they cleared beyond legal limits or buy and preserve the same amount of forested land elsewhere to make up for what they cut. In the Amazon, 80 percent of property is supposed to remain untouched forest. Elsewhere in Brazil, the limit ranges from 35 percent to 20 percent, depending on the area.

Farmers with less than 990 acres (400 hectares) of land would not have to replant forest land cleared before July 2008, but would still have to plant trees in areas illegally felled since then.

The measure already passed Brazil's lower house and is expected to clear the Senate before going before President Dilma Rousseff, who's expected to sign it.

About 20 percent of the Brazilian rain forest has already been destroyed, and 75 percent of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to come from forest clearing as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.

Brazil is estimated to be the globe's sixth-biggest producer of carbon emissions.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-05-LT-Brazil-Amazon-Destruction/id-9baa435507d5434ba9e4e2e998470d72

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This 1.8-Ton WW2 Bomb Could Have Destroyed a German City Today [Weapons]

World War II is still affecting life in Europe: 45,000 people had to be evacuated after two extremely dangerous bombs were found in the Rhine River, 65 years after they were dropped by British and American bombers. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/e-tO4ermny4/this-18+ton-ww2-bomb-could-have-destroyed-a-german-city-today

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University pioneers research on surf industry (Providence Journal)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/169469721?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Examination Of Privacy Policies Shows A Few Troubling Trends

A superficial comparison of privacy policies around the web by privacy service company TRUSTe has produced a few interesting statistics. Of course the most interesting bits are usually buried deep in the agreements and authorize things like the use of your child's likeness for doll faces. Nothing sinister like that was discovered, but the standout stats should cause a bit of head-shaking.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9hJ9Z4eutDw/

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Republican Presidential Candidates on Future Terrorist Attacks (ContributorNetwork)

During the 2000 presidential debates between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the words Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were not mentioned once, according to The Huffington Post. And yet, in less than a year, they would stand at the epicenter of a national crisis and shape national security and foreign policy discourse for a decade. As a result, the candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination were asked at the CNN-sponsored, GOP debate which security threats, receiving little national attention, posed the greatest risk to Americans.

Here is what they said, according to 2012presidentialelectionnews:

* Newt Gingrich: "I helped create the Hart-Rudman Commission with President Clinton, and they came back after three years and said the greatest threat to the United States was the weapon of mass destruction in an American city, probably from a terrorist. That was before 9/11. That's one of the three great threats. The second is an electromagnetic pulse attack which would literally destroy the country's capacity to function. And the third ??? is a cyberattack. All three of those are outside the current capacity of our system to deal with."

* Herman Cain: "Having been a ballistics analyst and a computer scientist early in my career, cyberattacks, that's something that we do not talk enough about, and I happen to believe that that is a national security area that we do need to be concerned about."

* Mitt Romney: "Immediately, the most significant threat is, of course, Iran becoming nuclear. But I happen to think ? the one that may come up that we haven't thought about ? is Latin America. Because, in fact ... we have been attacked. We were attacked on 9/11. There have been dozens of attacks that have been thwarted by our security forces. And we have, right now, Hezbollah, which is working throughout Latin America, in Venezuela, in Mexico, which poses a very significant and imminent threat to the United States of America."

* Jon Huntsman: "I have to say that our biggest problem is right here at home. And you can see it on every street corner. It's called joblessness. It's called lack of opportunity. It's called debt. That has become a national security problem in this country. And it's also called a trust deficit, a Congress that nobody believes in anymore, an executive branch that has no leadership, institutions of power that we no longer believe in. How can we have any effect on foreign policy abroad when we are so weak at home? We have no choice. We've got to get on our feet here domestically."

* Ron Paul: "I worry most about overreaction on our part, getting involved in another war when we don't need to, when we have been attacked, and our national security has not been at threat. And I worry a lot about people never have come around to understanding who the Taliban is and why they are motivated. Taliban doesn't mean they want to come here and kill us. The Taliban means they want to kill us over there because all they want to do is get people who occupy their country out of their country, just like we would if anybody tried to occupy us."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111130/us_ac/10558755_republican_presidential_candidates_on_future_terrorist_attacks

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The Library Phantom Returns!

He? She? It? Whoever it is, the Phantom Sculptor is suddenly back!

As I recently reported, somebody has been dropping glorious little paper sculptures into libraries and museums all over Edinburgh, Scotland, and we've just heard (thank you, alert reader Paul Smith) that there are now three more.

And they will be the last.

In mid-November, someone at the Scottish Poetry Library spotted a fresh, handwritten entry in the guest book, which said "I've left a little something for you," at the shelf marked "Women's Anthologies X."

When they went to check, there were three objects on the shelf. The first, a cap that could fit on a small head, was fashioned to look like a wren, head pointing forward, the back a puffed up haze of feathers.

?

The feathers, as documented by photographer Chris Scott, are exquisitely fashioned.

...then alongside the cap, was a pair of gloves with the pale markings of a bumble bee

And, finally, alongside the cap and gloves, whoever it is that makes these things, left an explanatory note, which revealed first, that she is a woman, ("Some even thought it was a 'he'!...As if!"), that she is not, as many thought, an artist who specializes in sculpting books ("this was the first time"), that these sculptures were thank you gestures "in support of special places," and that she had no intention of revealing her identity and anyway, newspaper readers across Edinburgh were happy "not to know...which was the point, really."

She also mentioned that this was the "last" sculpture she would do, the last of 10, and therefore it seemed only right to put it in the Poetry Library, where she had started.

Wait a second! Did she say 10? As of mid-November there had been 7 surprise sculptures found in Edinburgh. Counting the new one, that's 8. What happened to the other two? Had they been ignored, or worse, thrown away?

Everybody told everybody else to take a look...and, very quickly, (whew)...up they popped. Turns out the phantom had made a new deposit at the National Museum of Scotland. It was hard to notice at first, because viewed from the binding, this book had a suspicious little tail peeking through...

But when you turned it around, there, peeking out of pages was an adorably ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex.

And over at the Writer's Museum ? it's not clear how long it had been there ? was a sculpture propped atop the donations box in the Robert Louis Stevenson room. It was a street scene, with birds, people, cobblestones, all under a dangling moon hanging in the sky.

Ten gifts. All accounted for. And that, it seems, is the end of our story. Somebody who chose and whose neighbors chose to never identify spent the spring, summer and fall expressing her thanks for the continuing existence of libraries, museums and books in Scotland, "a tiny gesture," she called it.

Tiny, yes, but also, in its way, very grand.

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For a picture-rich version of this tale, go to This is Central Station, an Edinburgh-based website that features many more photos (shared here, but they've got many more of them) from photographer Chris Scott.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/11/29/142910393/the-library-phantom-returns?ft=1&f=1007

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