Financial Times:

It is not uncommon for the emperor to be accused of having no clothes. It is less usual for the emperor himself to say he is naked and proud of it.

This is essentially what John Snow, the US Treasury secretary, has done with his recent comments on the strong dollar policy.

4:05:07 PM    

Guardian Unlimited:

To track and thwart terrorists, the Pentagon wants to give U.S. agents fingertip access to records from around the world that could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times. The library's collection includes more than 18 million books.

3:50:43 PM    

International Herald Tribune:

The population of America's jails and prisons passed two million last year, for the first time in history. The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and one that falls unevenly. An estimated 12 percent of African-American men between 20 and 34 are behind bars, more than seven times the rate for white men the same age.

There is clearly a direct tie-in with the research I saw presented last Wednesday. According to Mark Coehn in The Monetary Value of Saving a High Risk Youth, the lifetime cost to society of a career criminal is $1.3 million per prisoner. The cost to society, therefore, is $2.6 trillion to deal with 2 million prisoners.

What to do? Support an early prevention and intervention program, such as Friends of the Children, which finds seriously at-risk children and gives them a paid adult mentor from age 6 through 18.

An ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure.

-Tim
2:08:53 PM    

CIOL:

Girls stole the show at the Intel International Science & Engineering fair held in Cleveland. The top awards this year went to Anila Madiraju, of Canada, Elena Glassman of Pennsylvania and Lisa Glukhovsky of Connecticut.

This is further evidence of the advances that girls are making at all levels.

-Tim
1:05:41 PM    

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

There are explanations, and all of them are valid.

The weather has been brutal. Schools are just now letting out. The economy is restless. There was a war.

11:07:08 AM    

PBS.org by Robert X. Cringely

Security and privacy always seem to be in the balance when we think about emerging digital technologies. Encryption vies with detection Entire industries are built around the opposite ideas of maintaining privacy and invading it.

Ultimately, we have to decide how much we are willing to give up in order to feel safe. Or at least, it seems we have that decision when actually we probably don't. Get ready for a brave new world where someone will likely know where you are at every second, whether it is at the movies with your kids or at the Bide-A-Wee Motel with your neighbor's wife.

Sounds much like the future envisioned in the recent Tom Cruise's movie, Minority Report.

-Tim
10:09:50 AM