Thursday, March 19, 2009

Icelandic Men

I just heard an NPR report about the financial collapse in Iceland. For years, Iceland had a profitable fishing industry -- so profitable that they were able to pay for extensive education for everybody, including things like graduate school and even study abroad.

One problem: highly educated people don't like fishing, or smelting aluminum (Iceland's only two real job sectors.)

Enter investment banking. In the last few years, Iceland emerged as a financial powerhouse of sorts. Led by well-educated males, Iceland's economy emerged with tons of apparent assets.

Then the collapse.

I think each person who lives in Iceland would owe something like $330,000 to pay off the country's debt. Obviously this is unlikely to happen.

What came next, of course, is that Iceland elected new government, featuring the first openly gay head-of-state -- a lesbian who blames Iceland's economic woes, in part, to meddling men who thought they were smarter than they were.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Noam Chomsky on Pornography

Leading intellectual Noam Chomsky did an interview with Hustler magazine. He says he wasn't aware of the content of the magazine and he doesn't approve of porn. He talks about it in this video.