Charles Krauthammer has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal: The Neoconservative Convergence. I'd say my favorite part is where he claims that the US is justified in dealing with and supporting dictators, even though we stand for democracy around the world. I can't quote it because it's not argued -- just asserted.
The most useful piece of information was that women gained suffrage in Kuwait sometime since January's elections in Iraq. I hadn't heard that before.
Strangely, this article from an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia appears to be original reporting; or at least, I didn't find any other reference in Google News to the names of the two programmers interviewed.
I find several points interesting:
In general I hope that the success of The Sims will prove that games for women can be highly lucrative, and that the market will rush to supply more of them without the need for the sort of fatheaded intervention that seems to be coming down the road. But it will probably take at least two more blockbuster "women's games" to convince the industry that The Sims a) is not just a fluke and b) is not just something that EA can make.
Below, TFox writes:
The dollar has already fallen, and will do more if China decides it no longer needs so many dollars in its banks.
To which I can only say, It's about time. The dollar has been needing to fall -- or something else had to happen to countervail the US balance of payments -- for many years. Andrew Coyne pointed out (in 1989!) that, as Herbert Stein says, Anything that cannot go on forever will eventually stop.
China dumps the peg to the dollar, finally. Here's the NY Times. Two points: 1) not just changing the pegged value, but going to a band -- more flexibility, and 2) not against the USD, but against an undisclosed "basket" of currencies -- i.e., whatever they want. The dollar has already fallen, and will do more if China decides it no longer needs so many dollars in its banks.