Island erholt sich von der Krise – auch weil es sich weigerte, die Bankenschulden zu sozialisieren, und mehr Demokratie zugelassen hat. Nun stellt sich der IWF hinter Island …

heise.de/tp/artikel/36/36305

How Iceland Recovered from its Near-Death Experience

(iMFdirect) – Poul M. Thomsen:

Growth has returned to the economy, and new jobs are being created: unemployment, although still unacceptably high for a country used to near-full employment, has dropped below 7 percent of the work force. In June 2011, the government successfully issued a $1 billion sovereign bond, marking a return to international financial markets …

blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2011/10/26/…near-death-experience

Iceland provides lessons for dealing with slumps

(chron.com) – Paul Krugman:

A funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver …

chron…2241646

In 2011, thanks to the heavy hand of our pals in the oligarchy, scared out of their imported Peruvian virgin wool britches by Occupy Wall Street, the freedom index in the USA has plummeted to 47th place. That will happen when you begin arresting journalists …

farleftside.com/2012/1-30-12-freedom-of-press

“After the 1990s, the first decade of cognitive brain imaging, it was already clear to some researchers that the anterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus was a more likely site for word recognition. The majority of imagers, however, were reluctant to overturn a century of prior understanding on account of what was then a relatively new methodology,” says Iain DeWitt from Georgetown’s Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. “The point of our paper is to force a reconciliation between the data and theory” …

georgetown.edu…61864

E.J. Dionne makes the liberal case that the Obama administration screwed up when it issued rules requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives …

I’m tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars — and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy …

motherjones…2012/01/…taxpayer-rules

Early in December 2011, a brace of 42 radio telescopes, known as the Allen Telescope Array, nestled in the shadow of Lassen Peak, came to life and resumed hopping from star to star in the constellation Cygnus, listening for radio broadcasts from alien civilizations. The lines are now open, but with lingering financial problems, how long they will remain that way is anybody’s guess …

nytimes…2012/01/30/…seti

He’s been married three times and his middle name is Leroy. But that’s not the half of the things you might not know about the latest big hope of the Republican right . . .

newstatesman…2012/01/newt

Eine “schwere Meise” hat Gregor Gysi, der Fraktionschef der Linkspartei, dem Verfassungsschutz bescheinigt, der ihn und mindestens 26 andere linke Abgeordnete beobachtet …

heise.de/tp/artikel/36/36316

Der CDU-Bundestagsabgeordnete Ansgar Heveling hat es geschafft: Mit einem Gastbeitrag fürs “Handelsblatt” hat er sich zum Gespött gemacht. Er greift darin die “Netzgemeinde” an und warnt in eigentümlichen Sprachbildern vor dem Untergang der Gesellschaft…

spiegel…0,1518,812249,00

Die Marie Antoinette der CDU

(Telepolis) – Peter Mühlbauer:

Ansgar Heveling offenbart, wie weit die Welten von Bürgern und Politikern auseinanderliegen können …

heise.de/tp/blogs/8/151331

Facebook and Spotify automatically want to share my every waking action, so that I’m like a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll …

guardian…2012/jan/29/…detail

Sarah Otto Marxhausen: … Ultimately, I am an atheist because my lovely, loving, faithful Christian parents let me learn too much. When I asked questions they didn’t know the answer to, they would say, “I don’t know. Why don’t you go see if you can learn the answer?” …

pharyngula/2012/01/28/…marxhausen