From the Norwegian Meteorological Office, via The Map Room, here’s an animation of the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that’s disrupting air travel and sowing PANIC!!!!! all across Europe. “Yellow indicates ash that has fallen by itself, red ash that has fallen as a result of precipitation, and black where the ash cloud is at that moment in… Read more »
Andrew Sullivan: Their partisanship and cultural hostility to Obama are far more intense, it seems to me, than their genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. And this is largely because they have no genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. They seem very protective of Medicare and Social Security – and their older age bracket underlines this. They also… Read more »
The SEC: it’s a WAR!! Against Goldman Sachs!! Fear!! Fire!! Foes!! Awake!! PANIC!!!!! In an absolutely stunning development, Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs, whose influence is so pervasive that it’s been accused of being virtually a branch of the federal government unto itself, has been sued by the federal government — specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission — for alleged… Read more »
NPR’s Planet Money and This American Life, in collaboration with ProPublica, have once again produced a brilliant piece of journalism about the financial crisis, this time focusing on the machinations of an evil-genius Wall Street hedge fund that made a killing by deliberately inflating the housing bubble while simultaneously betting that it would pop, thereby helping wreak incalculable havoc on… Read more »
Kyle Whelliston’s post-basketball-season Twitter stream pointed me to this fascinating Esquire profile of sprinter Usain Bolt, the title of which I’ve stolen in my headline above: “Biography of Usain Bolt, Mutant.” Kyle highlights one of the article’s two money quotes: “Mathematically, Bolt belonged not in the 2008 Olympics but the 2040 Olympics.” The other is this: There’s a perception in… Read more »
…to lifting Butler to the national championship, over mighty Duke, in Indianapolis, on a halfcourt buzzer-beater, in the greatest moment in NCAA Tournament history, bar none — never to be surpassed if they keep playing the tourney for 500 years — and one of the greatest moments in American sports history? Really, really close. (Hat tip: Danny Pilz.) … [Bumped…. Read more »
I’ve blogged before about the UConn women’s march toward the UCLA men’s record 88-game winning streak. Now that the foregone conclusion of the 2010 NCAA UConn Huskies Invitational Championship is in the record books, it’s time to re-ask the question that I posed in early February: The Huskies could tie UCLA’s record in their tenth game of 2010-11, and break… Read more »
[Bumped to top — again — and edited/re-ordered a bit. -ed.] Kyle Whelliston’s “Epilogue, the Sixth” — an 8,173 epic featuring a quasi-political rant, a look back at the season that was, a look forward to the seasons that will be, major news about the composition of the Other 24 25, a non-sequitur about some girl Kyle has a crush… Read more »
Is Matt Drudge really expending his considerable political and “journalistic” clout … making fun of an 11-year-old? Why yes, yes he is: