Well, before that, a summary of Nixon's health reform plan. Pretty similar in spirit to Obama's, but more assertively defined, and maybe further to the left in helping the poor. The country may have moved to the left on gay, women, and black rights, but well to the right on economic issues. AFAIK *Truman's* attempt would have been Medicare for all, essentially, sweeping government insurance a la Canada or Australia.

* "freshwater" economist backlash. These are the "unemployment is voluntary" types if you haven't been keeping up. Chicago school, neo-Friedmanites (more radical than Milton himself.) Followup and dissection of their rage, with brief mention of their mistakes.

* 19th century globalization: the jute industry in Dundee Scotland, using Indian raw materials.

* Even the WTO agrees that carbon tariffs are an allowable and possible essential tool. But free market fundamentalists and fetishists won't.
* Review of a biography of Keynes.

* "Memories of the Carter Administration". Actually on the macroeconomic debate in the late 1970s. Robert Lucas claiming government policies couldn't affect recession or employment, Robert Barro expressing a negative interest in contradictory data. Someone asked him how he could reconcile his model with the severe recession taking place as he spoke. “I’m not interested in the latest residual,” Barro snapped.
** John Quiggin on the same subject. And, back in 2003,

In fact, it’s striking that there is now almost no academic discipline whose conclusions can be considered acceptable to orthodox Republicans. The other social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political science) are even more suspect than economics. The natural sciences are all implicated in support for evolution against creationism, and for their conclusions about global warming, CFCs and other environmental threats. Even the physicists have mostly been sceptical about Star Wars and its offspring. And of course the humanities are beyond the pale.

* Bankers are going straight back to the pay policies that contributed to the current crisis. "In this case populism is good economics." Obama, of course, gives few signs of actually being a populist.

* The low cost of saving the environment. Not a deep essay, but of interest is Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.
** The missing depth (blogs don't have word limits.) Even Greg Mankiw supports externalty (e.g. pollution) taxes.
** And more depth, graph and better explanation.

* SF geek: Animation of multiple-star systems. (From a Firefly thread.) How to show time-lagged STL comms on screen.
* Cute studies: Children of lesbian mothers less susceptible to mental illness. Take with as much salt as a single study deserves, but cute result anyway given the debates.
* Politics geek: Overseas departments of France. Unlike the American empire, or the American capital, they get representation in the legislature.
* Hope: Confucian enviornmentalism?
* Less Hope: Spain limits universal jurisdiction.
* Tech: Bicycle cars!
* Human interest: Gay Iraqi Jew Israeli who helps Palestinians.
* Current events: Honduran 'coup'. You've probably seen the standard version (military coup!), see the other side. I've been looking at bad translations of the Honduran Constitution (Google Translate is a bit less bad than Babelfish) and yeah, it *does* look like the President disqualified himself from office -- and that there's no formal impeachment mechanism. Noel Maurer
* RPG geek: 4e D&D for taking a shit
* Rainbow flag: not just for gays
* "Gayby boom": the wave of kids who've grown up with gay parents.
* How the media incorporates blogs on Iran.
* Corporate crooks: travel protection fraud. Bankrupted with health insurance.
* Freedom, Environment: now legal to collect rainwater in Colorado
* Mad Science!: hot rock projects underway, and causing earthquakes. Geo-engineering. The global ant super-colony.
* Retro-tech: 13 year old experiences Walkman.
* Interrogating Saddam Hussein
* Gay sex decriminalized in India for now. Illegal (10 years in prison) under British colonial law; Delhi High Court has overturned. Religious leaders object; case may be appealed to the Supreme Court.
* Forced marriages and Britain
* CBO analyzes plan with public option, hey, this time it works. President of the AMA comes out in support, sort of.
* Swine flu: US deaths (updated Fridays). Spread in Argentina.

Iran may have a decades-long democratic past but it's looking bad at the moment. Ahmadinejad had been polling at 40%, but the gov't claims a 60% win. Fraud seems likely given various factors, analogous to Obama winning Arizona or McCain winning Chicago.

* In other news, GOP denounces climate change plan as an energy tax. Half-right: we need a *fossil carbon* tax, to harness market forces in making people use it less. They propose

In the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence said Congress should instead open the way for more domestic oil and natural gas production and ease regulatory barriers for building new nuclear power plants.

Nukes are fine (though "easing regulatory barriers" needs a wary eye), but encouraging more oil and gas production? No, that's the exact opposite of what you need in a climate-change bill. We need to replace production, not expand it.

A debate here:
http://scienceblogs.com/shiftingbaselines/2007/04/a_seafood_debate_to_eat_or_not.php

And various guides:
http://www.audubon.org/campaign/lo/seafood/seafood_wallet.pdf
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp
http://www.blueocean.org/Seafood/
http://www.enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=509#Anchor-list2

Alaskan salmon good, US farmed shrimp might be okay, especially from Ocean Boy, imported shrimp bad, tuna depends on variety and how its caught.