National/International Politics

It’s Time…

August 29, 2008
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Hedge Your Gas Prices

July 8, 2008

From Ireland’s prolific Pat Phelan comes word of a new web site that can allow you to hedge your gas prices against the rising tide. Check out Pat’s blog for details.

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Go Blue Devils!

April 14, 2008

The UW-Stout community was saddened last week by a tragic house fire that resulted in the deaths of three students. The opportunistic nut-jobs at Westboro Baptist Church, known for showing up at military funerals to tout their belief that God is punishing the U.S. for its acceptance of gays, decided this was another golden opportunity [...]

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Privacy? How quaint!

February 26, 2008

Bernard Goldbach has a good post up on his blog about one of the dangers in traveling with a laptop. As someone who regularly travels internationally with my laptop, this has been a big, and growing, concern to me. The United States’ Transportation Security Administration can be truly draconian in their approach to travelers. Those [...]

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Yes We Can!

February 15, 2008

This video, based on a Barack Obama speech, has been making the rounds lately. I’m a fan of Obama, I’m excited by the possibility that he’s going to be the nominee. I’m proud of the fact that America seems to be getting excited by an intelligent, eloquent speaker, a thinker. I think good changes are [...]

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Robot Attack Planes

July 18, 2007

An Associated Press article from this past weekend describes a new breed of remotely-piloted vehicle, called the Reaper, that the U.S. Air Force is preparing to deploy to Iraq. This plane is similar to the Predator aircraft which has been used throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, mostly for surveillance activities. The Reaper, as the [...]

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Department of Rural Affairs

July 9, 2007

A couple of weeks ago Senator Hillary Clinton addressed the National Rural Assembly via a video link-up. This gathering of 400-people, part of the Kellogg Foundation’s Rural People, Rural Policy initiative, was an effort to highlight the issues facing rural areas, and to broaden the discussion beyond agriculture policy, which has generally been the focus [...]

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Defining a Nation

July 9, 2007

Following his July 4th celebration, author Scott Berkun posted an interesting question on his blog (for my American readers) – when was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution? I’ll confess to being a bit of a geek, so honestly it hasn’t been that long for me, just a [...]

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Dancing Data

June 27, 2007

Anyone who’s spent any time watching CSPAN lately knows that public policy debates in the U.S. often center on dramatic stories. Opposing sides compete to see who can bring the most tearful witnesses to the table, who can show the most heart-wrenching photos, or who can present the most dramatic anger. That’s a natural tactic. [...]

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Public Policy CAN Change Behavior

June 26, 2007

One of the things we had to adjust to when we moved to Ireland was taking our own cloth shopping bags to the grocery store. Why? Well, Ireland levies a €0.15 tax on plastic grocery bags, so every time we forgot to take our own (a lot, at first), we had to spend 30 or [...]

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