Events

He really should know better: Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert has signed two bills authorizing the state to use eminent domain to seize some of the federal government's most valuable land. Supporters hope the bills, which the Republican governor signed Saturday, will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West and, eventually, a Supreme Court battle that they hope to win -- against long odds. Um...no. Starting with the Supremacy Clause, moving on to the Federal applicability of the 5th...

Yesterday I expressed more relief than dread after finishing my Term 3 finals. Dread just won: Subject: FedEx Shipment Notification [Redacted] of Duke Fuqua School of Business sent David Braverman 1 FedEx Express Saver package(s). This shipment is scheduled to be sent on 03/29/2010. Oh. Joy. The Term 4 books are coming. Sigh.

I've just finished my final exams for Duke CCMBA Term 3. Total time: 10.8 hours on statistics, 8.2 hours for marketing, 4.9 hours sobbing quietly at my desk about not having studied more. As the program has six terms, in a sane universe this would mean I'm half-way done with my MBA. Sadly, I'm not even done with Term 3 yet. And anyway the end of Term 3, officially April 7th, isn't really the half-way point. First, I have the Delhi Culture Dash video to produce. My team has succeeded mightily with a...

To hear the right wingers describe it, passing the Health-Care Reform Act ranked somewhere between breaking the second seal and sending Federal troops to Birmingham in atrocity. I cannot fathom the rage, not one bit. Nor can I fathom the hypocrisy. For example, as the New York Times reported this morning, a sizable chunk of the Tea Party movement have the luxury of banging on against the welfare state because—why else—they're supported by it: Tom Grimes, [who] lost his job as a financial consultant 15...

My dad has a new novel out. Right now it's available for the Amazon Kindle only; in a couple of weeks he'll have paperbacks as well. As soon as he does, expect to find them in random locations around the world. I've read about 20 different drafts of the book, and each was better than the last. It's a page-turner. And creepy. And funny. An excerpt: It all played out in less than three seconds. Like an errant missile, the two-and-a-half-ton stretch Cadillac slammed into the stunned crowd of mourners...

An island claimed by both India and Bangladesh has vanished, ending a territorial dispute going back to 1971: The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis. Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Professor Sugata Hazra of...

Nothing special about the game, but I do love the shot:

Today the Vatican announced that there has been no cover-up in the latest U.S. sex-abuse scandal, and could we all just leave the Pope alone? This whole thing must feel like someone stampeded cattle through St. Peter's. But let's be serious. It looks quite like the current Pope intervened in the Ecclesiastical trial of a priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys, and failed to act on dozens of other cases: The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the...

But not according to John Boehner: I laughed so hard I cried. Oh, by the way, John? Yes we did.

If you believe in small government, individual liberty, and all the other things that conservatives traditionally believe, then equal rights for gays naturally follows. As evidence I give you the British Conservative Party's leader (and probably the next prime minister), David Cameron: [N]o-one should be in any doubt that the Conservative party abhors homophobia, that we support equal rights, that we support civil partnerships, that we think that part of being a strong central right party in Britain...