From the Financial Times There are many gangs who hang out in the high-rise, low-income flats built in the 1960s and 1970s on the outskirts of most Russian cities. It is a world of drugs and warring subcultures of youths, and at the top of that grim heap are the skinheads, the kings of ultra-violence, [...]
December, 2010:
The Lost Canadians
A border dispute with the United States means that there is a community of Manitobans that are now Minnesotans. The good news is that they now have a home province state NHL franchise. Dietzler, sixty-seven, is one of about a hundred year-round residents of the Northwest Angle and Islands, a 302-square-kilometre US exclave unwittingly created [...]
What do Mark and Oliver cost?
Between the two of them it will cost Wendy and I over $400,000 according to the Christian Science Monitor The setting is their spacious three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot suburban home in a neighborhood chosen for the good schools (median home price: $379,000). The kitchen is sizzling as Samantha Gianulis cooks up a comparatively costly meal, both in [...]
(Not) taking care of those that can’t take care of themselves
According to the provincial auditor, the Saskatchewan government doesn’t know how many children are in it’s care But a new report by Brian Atkinson, the acting provincial auditor, released Wednesday said that after two years of urging, the Ministry of Social Services still does not know how many children are under care, who they are [...]
What happens when the supply of OxyContin dries up
Addicts start using heroin An E.R. doctor in the Pacific Northwest who writes a blog called “Movin’ Meat” might seem an unlikely candidate to know the economics of street drugs. But since he treats overdoses, he’s learned quite a bit. Recently, he noticed a spike in novice heroin injectors right around the time that the [...]
Does Canada Need a MI6 or a CIA?
Scott Taylor thinks so Since 9-11, the JTF2 have operated alongside their allied counterparts and earned much deserved praise. However, what Canada has failed to establish is an international intelligence-gathering agency that would compare with the CIA or Britain’s MI5 and MI6. As a result, our Special Forces operatives are completely reliant upon our allies’ [...]
Is the end of the Euro near?
From Business Week If the euro zone were to break up, it would make sense for member nations to regroup in more defensible configurations—ones more nearly resembling the optimal currency areas described by Columbia’s Mundell. To stop the market terror before it engulfs all of the euro zone, the fiscally strongest nations should gather behind [...]
The Fall of Niagara Falls
Decades of decay, corruption, and failed get-rich-quick schemes have made the city one of the most intractable disasters in the U.S. From Business Week: Niagara Falls has something that sets it apart from other terminally depressed Rust Belt towns, something that makes its economic failure all the more remarkable: those falls, the 176-foot-tall cascade of [...]
What Good is Wall Street?
John Cassidy has an article about the social value of what Wall Street and investment banking. Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain’s top financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has described much of what happens on Wall Street and in other financial centers as "socially useless activity" — a comment that suggests it could [...]
Why do professional athletes cheat?
From ESPN The concept of infidelity in sports isn’t exactly new but is seemingly ever-present now with the help of technology, TMZ, message boards and other instant media. Stories about Parker’s divorce, Brett Favre’s alleged racy text messages and Louisville coach Rick Pitino’s sex-extortion case are just a click, tweet and moment away. Two stories [...]
