A Dime a Dozen Blog

We don’t get the paper here in the morning, so most days I troll through the web haphazardly looking for a few pages of stuff to print out and read over breakfast.  So here we are.  Today we’ll be eating it over fresh baked bread.  MORE snow this morning, no way I’m draggin my self to the bakery in this weather.  I don’t know how people can live with this weather year after year.

Religion May Have Evolved Because Of Its Ability To Help People Exercise Self-control

Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts.

Emerging economists: International bright young things

TWENTY years ago The Economist wrote about eight young economists who were making a big splash in their discipline and beyond. One of them, Paul Krugman, recently won the Nobel prize for his models of international trade and economic geography. Ten years later we tried to repeat the trick, identifying another eight young stars, many of whom were taking their discipline far off-piste. One has since achieved even greater fame than anticipated. Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago became a household name as co-author of “Freakonomics”, a bestselling book published in 2005.

Bertinotti Resigns As Rainbow Left Reaches End of Line: Disastrous night for Italy’s Left as workers celebrate with Northern League

… Communists and greens have vanished, at least from parliament. They do not have a single senator or deputy, or at least that’s how it was looking as the most excruciating, awful night in the history of Italy’s Left drew in. In the stunned eyes of the Rainbow people, the night was made even blacker by the triumph of Silvio Berlusconi, the impressive gains of the Northern League and the hard-to-refute claim of its secretary, Umberto Bossi: “The workers have voted for the Northern League”. Pause for effect: “The workers don’t vote for the Left any more. The Northern League is the new workers’ party”.

Iceland After the Fall

Early Sunday afternoon, I have coffee with Vigdís Grímsdóttir, a writer living in a quiet neighborhood just south of Reykjavík’s main drag. Vigdís is the author of 11 novels, three collections of short stories, two volumes of poetry, a biography, and one children’s book. The first thing she talks about after seizing my coat (“Take off your clothes. Not all of them”) is how the couple downstairs lost their jobs and are moving out. As she speaks, her mind seems to commute between two moods—one distant and portentous, the other brisk, playful, and slightly frazzled. At one point, she stops midsentence to gape in horror at my coffee. “It must be cold!” she says in a half-whisper. “Is it bad?”

French Bread: Classic Four Ingredient Bread Recipe

Here’s a recipe for French bread, that classic Gallic treat: delicious, versatile, and impressive when made at home. But it’s actually very simple to make!