From the New York Times, Drilling Down – Internet Mirrors Recession’s Gloom: Americans’ search patterns reflect their narrowing financial straits, according to the marketing research firm comScore. The number of Internet searches incorporating the word “unemployment” more than tripled from December 2007 to December 2008. Bankruptcy appeared in more than twice as many searches, and [...]

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The Times of London has a great interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the guru of uncertainty and author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Black Swan is a great book, and especially valuable as a wake-up call to the critical importance of randomness and uncertainty in the modern world. And Taleb has proved very prescient in his prediction several years ago of all the trauma our economy is currently mired in…

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The Boston Globe published an article, How disasters help, making the case that “natural disasters can give a boost to the countries where they occur – and sometimes, the more the better.” A little over a month after a massive earthquake struck China’s Province, the Chinese government is claiming that despite the catastrophic amount of damage, thanks to the huge rebuilding effort the quake will actually boost national economic growth by .3 percent this year, and it may not be just government hype…

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In case you had any doubts about the frenzy of building activity in China, this graph from The Oil Drum paints an amazing picture…

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Citizens in the small town of Musiri, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, can now make 14 cents a month using the bathroom (CNN): The government-backed program serves two purposes: It encourages people to discard age-old practices of urinating and defecating in the open, leading to diseases. And the waste products go into research to [...]

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A top story on CNN.com from last July, Oil billionaire Pickens puts his money on wind power, is a breath of fresh air. First, T-Boone Pickens states the obvious (unless you’re a politician in the thrall of other Texas oil billionaires that only break wind): “Our dependence on imported oil is killing our economy. It [...]

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