~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Given the escalating crisis in Greece, the future of the Eurozone is expected to dominate the talks, raising the stakes for the summit and for Obama.
By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times
May 18, 2012
For months, President Obama has been urging his European allies to balance their zeal for spending cuts with policies to spur economic growth. His pleas have mostly been ignored.
But now, as Obama prepares to host the Group of 8 industrialized nations' summit Friday and Saturday, his pro-growth argument has taken on new force - and some measure of desperation.
The G-8 gathering at Camp David will cover an array of topics, but given the escalating crisis in Greece, the future of the Eurozone is expected to dominate the talks, raising the stakes for the summit and for Obama.
The newsroom and film editing studio has never been closer .....
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - film star George Clooney and CNN Washington correspondent Jim Acosta.
Yikes ..... well, help keep the crazee at bay, and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
Is China's crackdown on foreigners about crime or illegal immigration?
By Ed Flanagan, NBC News
BEIJING - China has launched a 100-day crackdown against illegal immigration and illegal employment in the wake of a high-profile sexual assault case involving a British national who was videotaped allegedly attempting to force himself on a Chinese woman.
The disturbing three-minute video surfaced on the Internet last week and has been viewed more than 8 million times on the Chinese video-sharing website youku.com, provoking outrage across China's web-sphere.
I wish I could transcribe the whole thing. My typing skills are good, but not quite THAT good. So, just watch. He's wonderful. If I were a churchgoing person, I'd want him as my preacher. He's THAT good.
Mexico's leading presidential candidate is handsome, popular and still a mystery
By Nick Miroff and William Booth, Published: May 14
ATLACOMULCO, Mexico - In his campaign for president, Mexico's handsome front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, looks down from towering billboards with a movie-star smile. "Tu me conoces," he says. You know me.
With the July 1 presidential vote only weeks away, Peña Nieto holds a solid double-digit lead in the polls. But Mexican voters and U.S. observers confess that they do not really know what the candidate stands for. Nor are they sure how he would govern Mexico, a vital trade partner for the United States, Mexico's ally in the fight against drug cartels.
As I've mentioned before in these diaries, right now I'm on my annual pilgrimage to the Western Michigan University International Congress on Medieval Studies, known affectionately among medievalists as K'zoo. This is quite simply the largest and most prestigious gathering of medievalists in North America, with over 3,000 scholars and graduate students presenting and listening to thousands of papers, workshops, musical performances, and material culture demonstrations. The book room alone is worth the price of admission, as 20-30 of the best academic publishers and used book dealers display their wares, often at very deep discounts, and when I say that it would be shockingly easy to drop the equivalent of a mortgage payment in about five minutes, I speak from personal experience.
I've presented twice as part of DISTAFF, Robin Netherton's coterie of medieval textile specialists, and hope to present next year or the year after as well. All my work for Robin has been serious, well researched, and (God willing) of lasting merit, and I am honored to call myself part of DISTAFF even though I am a lousy spinner.
Tonight, though...is a bit different.
Last night I presented as part of the annual Saturday night session sponsored by the Societas Fontibus Historiae Medii Aevi Inveniendis, vulgo dicta, "The Pseudo Society." This exclusive coterie of insane dedicated jokesters scholars presents papers on such amazing discoveries as Geoffrey Chaucer being reincarnated as Bruce Springsteen, the sad death of St. Guthlac thanks to evil mortgage brokers and a real estate bubble, or the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon poem about Beowabbit (relative of Crusader Rabbit, who was alas killed and eaten by pious Muslims during the First Crusade), and I am honored to join their ranks this year.
Only a few hundred people can cram into Fetzer Auditorium at WMU to hear me live, but since you have all become like family to me over the past year or so, I'm going to share my paper with you, my loyal readers. Even better, I've included links to the images I've created to illustrate my paper! Please click to see what I'm talking about, and enjoy!
Journalist expelled from China reflects on experience
Melissa Chan of Walnut is the first accredited foreign correspondent to be barred from China in 14 years. She is not sure what prompted her expulsion.
By Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times
After filing 400 stories from China, reporter Melissa Chan never thought she'd wind up in the headlines herself.
Chan returned to Southern California last week as the first accredited foreign correspondent to be expelled from China in 14 years, an act that sparked a flurry of news reports and expressions of solidarity from fellow journalists.
Chan, who was the sole Al Jazeera English correspondent in China, said she knew she was on shaky ground for most of this year.
Well after a longer than expected hiatus, Sunday Bread is once more out there in the world! I had been feeling burnt-out about the whole blogging thing in general and decided that I'd take some time off until I felt like I really wanted to do it again, that time has come.
But enough of that! This week we are going to bake a new recipe, one that took longer than I thought to put together, Blueberry Scones.
Now, we've made scones before but they were always with dried fruit, never with fresh blueberries. At the start I knew that I did not want to use the very small wild blueberries, they are really expensive (as if blueberries are not) and not that easy to put your hands to any time you want a batch of scones, so there were out from the start.
Then there was the issue of making sure that the bread of the scone was the right texture to hold the berries, as well as provide a slightly sweet counterpoint to the tartness of fresh blueberries. The following recipe is the result of those requirements, and if I do say so myself, I think you're going to love them and love serving them to your friends and family.
U.S. May Scrap Costly Efforts to Train Iraqi Police
By TIM ARANGO
Published: May 13, 2012
BAGHDAD - In the face of spiraling costs and Iraqi officials who say they never wanted it in the first place, the State Department has slashed - and may jettison entirely by the end of the year - a multibillion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here.
What was originally envisioned as a training cadre of about 350 American law enforcement officers was quickly scaled back to 190 and then to 100. The latest restructuring calls for 50 advisers, but most experts and even some State Department officials say even they may be withdrawn by the end of this year.
The training effort, which began in October and has already cost $500 million, was conceived of as the largest component of a mission billed as the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan.
