Wednesday-Night

Background Canadian Arctic Sovereignty prepared by staff of the Parliamentary Information and Research Service (PIRS) of the Library of Parliament
David Jones: Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage
More on the Arctic 
Moving beyond Arctic sovereignty
Much of the discussion about Canada and the Far North focuses on “Arctic sovereignty.” And in the minds of many, this evokes […]

See also Vice President (R) Sarah Palin

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla Dick Cavett on “the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High”
11 November
Palin Defends Herself in Fox Interview
In her first national television interview since the election, Gov. Sarah Palin delivered a lengthy post-mortem of the presidential campaign, criticizing the media, her campaign handlers and the aides […]

Cities and growth
The problems—and benefits—of urbanisation on a vast scale
the world’s urban population has risen from 1.6 billion to 3.3 billion, and over the next 30 years cities in the developing world are set to grow by an extra 2 billion. But many governments have become doubtful of their ability to cope with urbanisation on […]

See also U.S. Presidential Campaign - Issues
John McCain on […]

Frank Kinnelly writes: Here’s a link to the candidates’ responses to a series of questions on science policy.  Note that you can click on a link giving the responses side-by-side.  Note that Obama’s goals for reducing GHG are far more ambitious than McCain’s.
The world’s poor deserve better US leadership
The US election has implications for science […]

See Part I of this topic/saga ; The evolving bailout plan ; The world after the (bailout) vote
Reversal of Fortune
How ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, Joseph E. Stiglitz puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s […]

IPS Coverage of the Campaign  ;  BBC   ;  Slate  ;  Politico ; Huffington Post Politics - admittedly pro-Obama, but often with well-founded stories and/or commentary
Powell Stands Against Smears This piece is particularly topical as we have recently received copies of Obama smear e-mails that are quite sickening. In both cases, we forwarded them […]

See also David Jones on How the U.S. election process works
There is so much confusion abroad (and often within the U.S.) about the role of the electoral college in choosing the President of the United States that we thought it useful to post this explanation from Wikipedia.
The Electoral College consists of 538 popularly elected representatives […]

An interesting morning

The good Krugman
Bill Watson in the National Post
Despite his political views, free-market economists find it hard to quarrel with a Nobel for Paul Krugman
You don’t get the Nobel Prize in Economics for writing newspaper columns (as I’ve been trying to explain to my mother the last couple of days). So the prize awarded […]

The Food issue
Farmer in Chief
(NYT Magazine) … with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to […]