Boy, was I wrong!
Daily Archives: October 5, 2011
2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Daniel Shechtman
From Nancy Jackson, President of the American Chemical Society:
“It’s a great work of discovery, with potential applications that range from light-emitting diodes to improved diesel engines. As President of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, I am delighted to give warm congratulations on behalf of our more than 163,000 members. Coming as it does during the International Year of Chemistry, the prize showcases chemistry’s global reach and impact in improving life. Years of hard work and dedication lie behind this Nobel Prize. Great people like Dr. Shechtman inspire us all with their contributions to science and humanity”
This is an interesting story of scientific discovery. Here’s a write-up revealing the sordid truth of how science works.
Today is a big day on Wall Street
But not for the stock brokers…
Starting today several new groups will add to the ranks of those “occupying” Wall Street, including MoveOn.org and various unions.
The anti-bank campaign has in fact been incubating for years — a “seed beneath the snow,†as the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone once termed the slow-to-arrive left. The sit-ins, teach-ins and street demonstrations popping up in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles are formally the handiwork of a coalition of community groups that recently gathered together as the New Bottom Line. Many of these groups have focused on immediate goals — such as stopping particular banks from foreclosing on more homes. They, along with unions, have demonstrated on Wall Street many times since the 2008 financial crisis. But only now, as Occupy Wall Street — an organization that they didn’t create — has grabbed the public imagination the past few weeks, are the myriad mobilizations commanding the media’s attention.
See the rest of this essay by Harold Meyerson
In related news, a new poll reported by the Washington Post (but not on their web site yet) indicates that about 14 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is moving. And, finally, Obama is starting to become aggressive in his campaigning for “change.”
In Texas on Tuesday, the president went after a leading Republican by name: “Yesterday the Republican majority leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now he won’t even let this jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives,†Obama said. “I would like Mr. Cantor to come here to Dallas and explain what exactly in this jobs bill does he not believe in, what exactly he is opposed to. Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges? Does he not believe in tax breaks for small businesses or efforts to help our veterans?â€
This is obviously follow-up to Obama’s state of the economy speech in which he kicked the ball into Congresses’s (and mainly the Republicans’, and really, mainly the Tea Party’s) court.
This is going to be an interesting, and crucial, election season.