Here's some interesting analysis from Gary Becker:

The report analyzes what happened to incomes and inequality in over 50 countries. It finds that essentially all these countries had large increases in per capita incomes since the early 1980's. While the growth was positive at different income levels, including those at the very bottom, income growth was not uniform among different skills...

However, the most powerful effect on inequality from globalization is due to transfers of modern technologies. The evidence from developed economies has been that modern technologies, like the computer and Internet, favor more educated and other skilled workers; in economic parlance, that these technologies are skill biased. This effect of technological progress has been used to explain the sharply rising gap in earnings between college graduates and others during the past three decades in the United States. Not surprisingly, the IMF's study finds that a similar skill bias applies to international technology transfers, that they raised the earnings gap between more skilled and less skilled workers in developing countries.

Read the full text.

However, if you keep reading to see the actual quotes from his testimony (and actually go look for longer transcripts), it seems that what he is really saying is that the troop surge has been working, that it has largely achieved what they wanted, and that they won't need them much longer.

And yet, I haven't seen a single headline, "Petraeus Calls Surge a Success".

The Texas Senate voted to overturn Gov. Rick Perry's executive order Monday to mandate a vaccine for the Human papillomavirus for school-aged girls.

The bill will head to the Perry's desk, and he is expected to veto it.

The House also voted to overturn the order more than a month ago.

Where are the media when terrorists use chlorine poisonous gas, acids, and ball bearings to kill and hurt more and more civilians in utter disregard to all written and unwritten laws, ethics and values?

I understand it's the duty of the media to practice scrutiny over the work of governments but isn't it equally their duty to expose criminals and their evil deeds?

It's frustrating to see the media turn a blind eye to the nature of the crimes and open fire on an honest endeavor to restore peace to a bleeding nation. I'm sure the terrorists are pleased by the coverage. Why not, when their crimes are being portrayed as successful breakthroughs against the efforts of Iraq and America it's likely motivating them to keep up the killing.

Many discussions of water conservation create the impression that households are large and inefficient users of clean water for drinking, eating, bathing, and toilet flushing. That is a myth. About 40 per cent of all the freshwater use in the United States is for irrigating land for agriculture, another 40 percent is used to produce power, and only 8 percent is used for domestic use; these percentages are similar in other countries. Moreover, about a third of all the water used by households in rich countries goes to water lawns and for other out door purposes, so probably no more than about 5 per cent of the total demand for water is for personal use.

Think about that the next time you have to flush twice.

A transistor consists of an electrode that switches the current on and off within a "channel" using an electric field. In the past, to make the transistor switch faster, and thereby up its performance, chip makers shortened the electrode and thinned the insulating wall that separates it from the channel.

This is far from ideal, as thinning the wall causes current to leak from the channel into the electrode, wasting heat and electricity. Furthermore, it means more current leakage than the transistor could handle.

Now, in an effort to continue shrinking and speeding up its transistors, Intel has come up with an insulator that transmits a fast-switching electric field even at a relatively large size. The exact composition of this "high-k" material is a secret, but Intel says that it contains hafnium. It is claimed to increase transistor switching speed by 20% and leak five times less current.

In 2003, Intel also had to tweak its process to start making 90 nanometre transistors. Its secret then was to use "strained silicon" in its transistors. This increased the speed at which current flowed, although Hutcheson says that advance was "a walk in the park" compared with achieving today's leap to high-k insulators.

The change in insulator has also led to a change in the gate electrode material. When high-k materials are deposited next to an electrode made of polysilicon, defects normally arise at the boundary. But this effect disappears when a metal gate is used instead.

This is not just a research project. It's going into manufacturing later this year under the code name "Penryn" and will be available in products in 2008. Specifically, look for the new versions of the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and the Xeon processors next year.

In short, this should extend the lifetime of Moore's Law well into the 2020's. Intel and AMD are rumored to be close to a similar announcement as well.

This year's advertisement by Masterfoods, a unit of privately-held Mars, showed two auto mechanics locked in an accidental kiss while eating a Snickers candy bar, then ripping out chest hair to prove they are "manly."

"The makers of Snickers and its parent company at Mars should know better," the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement. "If they have any questions about why the ad isn't funny, we can help put them in touch with any number of Americans who have suffered hate crimes."

Masterfoods said that while feedback from its key customers had been positive, it would nonetheless pull the commercial.

"We know that humor is highly subjective and understand that some people may have found the ad offensive," the company said in a statement.

Oh, come on!! Hate Crimes? Even bringing that into the discussion is ridiculous and trivializes hate crimes. This ad doesn't promote homophobia. It mocks it. It takes two guys' love of a Snickers bar, turns it into an awkward violoation of personal space, and then shows how their slavery to homophobia forces them to injure themselves to get rid of the "gay cooties".

Anyway, here it is. Take a look.

Personally, and with a fair dose of cynicism, I think what's really happening here is that someone saw the chance to grind their favorite axe and jumped at it. This lets them get their particular issue out there in the press and the national mindshare, and they think that's a good thing. I, however, think it was a mistake. Instead of focusing on real issues of discrimination and hatred, we're debating whether or not a commercial was sufficiently sensitive to the gay community.

I shit you not.

because at this moment, Carol McClellan Keeton Rhylandor How-Many-Names-Does-One-Grandma-Need Strayhorn is unemployed!

I'd like to say she's also off the public payroll as well, but she's probably got a nice retirement package coming her way after leeching at the public teat for so many years.

Not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

ABC has teamed with the co-creator of "Felicity" to develop a pilot for "Ordinary Joe," a character drama based on a British concept.

In the vein of "Sliding Doors," the project centers on a guy who at 21 wondered whether to go after a girl he was secretly in love with or to get together with the girl that had been after him.

The show joins the guy a dozen years later, chronicling the three different lives he would have had if he'd ended up with one girl or the other or had remained single.

Each episode will follow the three versions of the main character in three separate stories, which will be linked thematically.

I adored Sliding Doors, so I have hopes for this one. Then again, I'm not sure how much of my love for that movie was based on the what-if aspect and how much was just the wonderful characters. We'll see.

(Hat-tip to Zarq)

I just wish we could see this kind of smart political ad here in America.

(Note: This is my first attempt at embedding a YouTube video, so my apologies for any technical fubarness.)