…Calmly observing the changing world

Property rights may be under assault in the United States, but we would do well to remember that there are some places in the world where they don’t even exist.  One of those places is China. You know, the kind of place where the workers of the world unite only to find out that somehow [...]

As the world develops a pleasant Libyan narrative that it hopes is true, fissures occasionally appear in the story.  Reality has a way of curbing our enthusiasm like that.  An interesting bit of reality caught my eye today: According to Baja, Qaddafi loyalists in Sirte have two options: “To speed up the negotiations process and [...]

On the whole, May was a pretty brutal month.  The stock market is aimless, but the real action has been elsewhere: protests, extreme weather, currency worries, sovereign debt.  There was a lighter side to the news this month, but you really had to dig deep: Exploding Chinese Watermelons Sure, you’ve heard about lead paint on [...]

Machiavelli proposed that you could determine how well a population was governed by the changes in its population over time: the more the better.  A very sober thought, then, for the inhabitants of Detroit that the census found 238,270 fewer of them than in 2000. It almost goes without saying that those governing the city [...]

Towering over the desert-city landscape in Dubai, you can now find the world’s tallest building . At more than 1000 feet taller than its nearest rival, “Dubai Tower” as it was thought to be named before today, represents – well… it depends who  you ask. A little known secret is that if you build it, [...]

Just Say No – To Minarets The Swiss people have passed a ban on all minaret (a Moslem tower from which prayers are sung) construction within the country – despite the Swiss government’s active campaign against the ban. Unsurprisingly, worldwide criticism quickly flooded European media outlets. Presumably, tolerance should be extended to everyone – except [...]

Last night we made our second attempt at signing loan documents – we barely made it as we finished up at 11:58PM. The long, grueling battle was triggered when we embarked on a course called an “e-signing”. Instead of physically signing documents, we could just click a button with a notary present. As with most [...]