Click here for the full list of this year's Pultizer winners: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2024 One of my pet peeves is a matter of pronunciation, the common mis pronunciation of the word "Pulitzer". whether used of a man, and corporation, or a prize. It is often slaughtered into "pule-itzer" where the first syllable rhymes with "yule" or "mule". That is wrong, though, The word is pull-it-sir, as if a titled gentleman had just asked you "how do I get this cork out of this bottle"! Anyway: I wish to draw your attention specifically today to one of the two National Reporting Pulitzers. Both of the National Reporting awards went to the "staff of" major news organizations for their work on a big ongoing issue. One went to staff of WaPo for its " sobering examination of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle." The other? to the staff of Reuters, my old stomping ground, for stories of Elon Musk's aut...
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Coke Roberts was a presence on America's television screens for more than forty years. One of her regular tasks was to comment intelligently on public affairs. She did this with analytical skill and civility without becoming a bullying blowhard and without chasing after shocks. Instead she focused on adding value. That isn't a bad legacy to leave. Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2002. She was treated at that time and, by all accounts, the treatment was successful. But cancer is a mean MF once it has its tentacles in you. It made an encore appearance this summer and she is said to have died to "complications" arising from that relapse. Our class-act President chose to respond to her death with, "She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well." Of course it wasn't her job to treat the powerful "nicely." Another good legacy,
I'm writing today simple to express my awe about the courage of so many of the people of the city of Hong Kong, in regard especially to their resistance to the extradition bill that their Overlords attempted to force upon them. I'll do so with three Reuters links. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-extradition/hong-kong-vows-to-press-ahead-with-extradition-bill-despite-huge-protest-idUSKCN1TB08W They paralyzed a financial hub, not something that Beijing can ignore. They risked a Tiananmen-type event in hopes of winning a great victory for liberty. The treaty secured before Britain's withdrawal allowed the people of Hong Kong the continued benefits of a British style legal system. Those benefits will surely be lost as it becomes easier for Beijing to drage citizens of the supposedly autonomous region into the mainland and try them there. https://www.reuters.tv/v/PQi0/2019/06/12/hong-kong-s-financial-hub-paralyzed-by-protests Over time, Beijing may y...
This is great science news, something for all my friends named Bruce and their sheilas to enjoy. Scientists say that Australia's tectonic plate is the world's fastest. As a consequence, mapping positions based on Australia's position in 1994 are now wrong by 1.5 meters, because everything Down Under is now further north than it was 22 years ago. This may require some revision of what is meant by expressions like "geological time." Here's Reuters' report: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-maps-idUSKCN10C1GM No wonder Bindi was such a good dancer on DWTS. Her whole bloomin' continent can dance!
I left off this chronology/linkfarm on Friday morning (eastern time) March 22, mentioning tough talk from Germany at that time. So we resume there. That was also the morning when Greek banks swooped in to buy the units of Cypriot banks that operated in Greece. For some reason this seemed to calm world markets. A bit later Friday, an EC spokesman, Simon O'Connor, announced "an improved spirit of cooperation on the part of the Cypriot authorities." Its parliament passed a law allowing it to restructure the failed Laiki Bank , separating some of its assets into a so-called "bad bank." Under this plan, uninsured depositors would lose up to 40 percent o their savings, though the insured deposits would remain protected within the "good" bank. But this still left the question of raising the bail-in money that the Troika demanded . And by this time the crisis in Cyprus had analysts wondering about the next domino. One emerging markets researcher, ...
The Cyprus/bank/bailout story is big. Really big . Too much for me to handle in my own voice just now. So I'll just provide a few links, following chronological order, in this post and the next. The above photo is Cyprus' finance minister, Michael Sarris. By February 28, Cyprus was clearly 'next up,' the new center of the ever-shifting limelight in Europe's traveling crisis over banks and sovereign debts. The new president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, said that day that though Cyprus would have to negotiate terms of a bail-out, "no reference to a haircut on public debt or deposits will be tolerated." A big EU meeting in Brussels began on March 3d, and involved a good deal of discussion of the matters that Anastasiades had tried to wish off the table. Skipping ahead a bit ... by March 14th, EU officials, as well as those from the IMF, were in round-the-clock talks on a bail-out of Cyprus that would include a depositor sacrifice, known politel...