The Morning News needs your support

The Morning News needs your support. Please join us as a Sustaining Member!

Headlines from December 3, 2008

Putin learns how international markets work, deems them "ugly" and "unfair."
Original "dude" Jeff Dowd explains why he likes White Russians.
Russia and U.S. both refuse to sign international ban on civilian-maiming cluster-bombs.
Instapaper for the commute: Crime, punishment, and politics in the United States.
Map of Iceland's meltdown; P.J. O'Rourke visits Disney's future; Fallows interviews Chinese mega-manager.
List of highest-paid world leaders.
Top 60 most popular Japanese words/phrases of 2008, including "it's all good."
Authors pick their favorite obscure books, and we highly applaud Bloom picking Little, Big.
Visions of Dehli's book market day.
Teacher compensates for budget cuts with ads in exams; semester final is sold out.
It's like an endless, chaotic film that can completely overpower me. And there's no stop button. Perfect memory is perfectly agonizing.
Christoph Niemann's ode to coffee, drawn in coffee on napkins.
Digested (soused, rather) read of the Amis drinking book.
Video: Mirage of levitating water.
Update on yesterday's favorite simple weather site: Umbrella Today offers a different take.

Video: Remarkable interview with Odetta, folk-singer and civil rights icon, who died yesterday at 78 (more here).

India fingers Pakistani militant group for Mumbai attacks--a joint response is crucial for Pakistan's "shaky" civilian government.
Movie-plot threats...might be what people worry about, but a bunch of trained...men with guns and grenades is all they needed. Security lessons learned from Mumbai.
Research shows soldiers who have taken a life are more likely to defend the Iraq war.
This election season may have done to the word "Republican" what 1972 did for the word "liberal." How McCain-Palin destroyed the G.O.P. as we knew it.
Nader: Current plans for climate change action will lead to trade anarchy--global carbon tax is the best plan.
How to pay, negotiate, and text message Somalia's pirates.
How New York City enforces traffic laws: frequently, and with heavier fines, to the tune of 64% more this year than in 2002.
New, unfinished David Foster Wallace fiction to see light in a student journal.
Roget, Mr. Thesaurus--grand tour adviser, laughing-gas tester--sought to bottle imagination.
The nine-year-old's dating advice: Make them laugh, pretty girls are like cars, etc.
A map of where babies come from--how the adoption industry manufactures supply to meet demand.
The next victim of the credit crisis: the office holiday party.
Emergency calls reveal high drama, snap psychology (includes audio).