Wrestling Greco-Roman Mythology

2011-11-20T14:34:00.001+01:00

"Greece and our money" You hear it all the time. The Greeks are lazy. Those indolent loafers deserve what they get seeing as they've been living high on the hog for the past decade on cheap credit. Retiring at 50 after a life on the payroll of the state where they took ouzo-filled three-hour coffee breaks filled with idle chit-chat about how to avoid paying their taxes before kicking off work

A Crack in the Curtain

2011-11-01T00:38:00.012+01:00

Wizard of Oz: pay no attention to man behind curtain Imagine how differently the Wizard of Oz would have ended if Dorothy and the gang had listened to that order from the great and powerful wizard behind the curtain. The scarecrow wouldn't have gotten his brain, the lion, courage, the tinman his heart and of course Dorothy may never have made it back home to Kansas. Well, ignoring the

Polish Political Predictability

2011-10-07T17:48:00.003+02:00

Here we go again. Poland goes to the poles October 9th to elect members of the lower (the Sejm) and upper (the Senate) houses of parliament. Owing much to the language barrier and the near-indecipherability of the alphabet soup that makes up the party system, I've learned more about politics in Afghanistan than in Poland over my five years of living here. But it's more than just words with

Bailout!

2011-10-04T01:25:00.001+02:00

That's the video for the single Bailout off Guitar Not So Slim's forthcoming album of the same name. Full disclosure - that's my brother Troy playing guitar and singing while the video was made by my beautiful and talented wife, with a little, non-technical, help from me. The story's pretty self-explanatory, the economic crisis caused by the greed of financial speculators who were then of

A Corporate Death Penalty

2011-09-21T23:41:00.008+02:00

Here at In Case You Missed It we like to fess up to our mistakes, errors, follies and bone-headed pleas whenever we can. A couple of years back we published one of our most popular posts titled Rent Seeking Parasites which accused the financial industry of parasitism, getting a free ride on the backs of its host, society - you and me. While this seemed a reasonable metaphor at the time operating

Set, 9/11, Hut, Hut!

2011-09-09T02:15:00.002+02:00

Whether you're in Poznan, Poland watching the road crews finally get to work seven months before the Euro 2012 tournament, or settling into the couch to watch the NFL kickoff tonight, all that matters is the game, futbol or football. It seems like just yesterday the Green Bay Packers took out the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the Super Bowl, a win clouded over by the threat of an owner's lockout to

Let Them Eat iPads!

2011-09-05T23:13:00.001+02:00

Whether or not Marie Antoinette ever uttered the phrase that modern myth-makers have attributed to the much maligned monarch to help spark the French Revolution, there is less doubt surrounding the harsh realities of a peasant's life in late18th century France. Rising bread prices, unemployment, rising war-related debt, an inefficient financial system leading to difficulties managing said debt

A Keystone XL Rube Goldberg Machine

2011-08-31T22:43:00.004+02:00

Not so long ago it seemed like the world had woken up to the fact that perpetual growth powered by finite resources on a finite planet was impossible. People spoke of a transition to a green economy in which little bunnies would frolic among solar collector panels while soaring birds would circle wind turbines. Gas prices were skyrocketing, people were talking about peak oil and it was clear that

Blindness

2011-08-13T14:59:00.002+02:00

Last week London was hit by mindless violence, so mindless it spread to Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham. Amazingly, the social safety net led to this by both existing and being torn apart. Daily Mail readers (US translation: Faux News watchers) have and will continue to read stories increasing their fear of the feral youths, part of an evil socialist experiment breeding a violent underclass with

Democrazy

2011-06-09T14:49:00.000+02:00

"Choosing between AIDS and cancer"So maybe not every democratic election is as bad as that in Peru. According to Mario Vargas Llosa, these were the alternatives facing Peruvians as they decided where to mark their ballot in last Sunday's presidential election. Yet, a closer look at the state of democracy around the world reveals an unsettling picture. Not only do most voters usually face a choice

A Post-Easter Trinity Post

2011-04-29T01:02:00.002+02:00

The fundamentalists are on the march again. It's not surprising, times of crisis invevitably bring about an upsurge in wackos as the true believers emerge from their caves to reveal the secrets revealed to them and only them. The coming week will bear witness to a triptych of delusion, a true masterpiece that deserves to be hung alongside Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado. For those

This Month in Wingnuttery

2011-03-21T00:04:00.001+01:00

As events spin ever faster out of control it's getting harder and harder to tell if the tail is wagging the dog or if the mongrel is simply chasing his hind end in a circle. WMD's (weapons of mass distraction) flash from son of Hollywood royalty 80's pretty boy-shoot a fiance-beat a hooker or two-ex-wife restraining order champion but pay him a couple million an episode to appear in a sitcom

Balk, Talk and Walk Like an Egyptian

2011-02-23T03:15:00.001+01:00

"Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world" - Walid Rachid, member of the Egyptian April 6 Youth MovementReading the headlines and commentary from the mainstream media one would think the revolutions in Tunis and Egypt have succeeded. The corrupt, authoritarian regimes have been toppled and a future of freedom guaranteed with the only

Memory Holes and Pyramid Schemes

2011-02-11T01:46:00.002+01:00

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.- 1984 George

XLV

2011-01-28T19:51:00.004+01:00

My third Super Bowl post, second with the Pittsburgh Steelers making it to the big dance. This time they'll be playing the Green Bay Packers in Jerry Jones' almost-new gladiator arena down in Arlington, just outside Dallas, Texas. XLV sounds cool. As does Steelers-Packers which means we're in for a treat. The fewer Roman numerals there are the bigger deal the event seems to be and this one has

From 50 Cent to $50 Billion and Beyond

2011-01-17T13:03:00.000+01:00

As the world's economy continues to lurch forward and stumble backwards, I noticed a few stories this week that exemplify the intractability of our economic problems. Stock markets have been performing well, banks have long returned to profitability (along with their absurd bonuses) and retailers are reporting the predicted strong Christmas sales. Conversely, the price of oil has been steadily

Cattle Car Cronyism

2011-01-08T01:06:00.004+01:00

Editor's note: Cross posted on the Polish student's site Kontra - thus the occasional Polish student reference and Polish links Thanks to the internet and Orwell's Animal Farm, I've always thought of people being like sheep, sheeple having become a common blog buzzword and the tendency of people to move in flocks like, well, sheep. On the train somewhere between Warsaw and Poznań though I

Bah, Humbug!

2010-12-29T21:41:00.003+01:00

Thanks to the word of the year, austerity, the weeks leading up to Christmahanukwanza saw riots on the streets of London, Rome and Athens with images that we more easily associate with Dhaka, Nairobi or Quito. Brits woke up to photos of their terrorized prince and um, what do you call Camilla, splashed across the tabloid covers. Italians to scenes of scuffles in parliament overflowing to the

The War You Don't See

2010-12-18T17:41:00.003+01:00

I don't know how long this link will stay viable but until it goes down, here's John Pilger's latest movie, The War You Don't See, which chronicles the evolution and omnipresence of propaganda in pushing governments' war agenda: If you're just looking for Wikileaks' Julian Assange, he's interviewed at about the hour and a quarter mark (1:15).

The Fix Needs a Leak

2010-12-15T02:41:00.001+01:00

My blog's first Kardashian Remember getting your first ice-cream headache? Or the last hot summer day when that icy, syrupy 7/11 slurpee froze your brain? Now, imagine walking around with that pain all the time, 24/7. If you've never experienced the torture associated with greedily guzzling some frozen treat on a hot summer's day, it's one of those things that's hard to explain - it's a sudden,

My Hero!

2010-12-04T00:26:00.001+01:00

Well, it seems that at least one person has been reading my blog: Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, is usually referred to as the only socialist in the US Congress. If being socialist means wanting a level playing field in which we all have an equal opportunity to contribute to society, you can definitely keep calling me a socialist.

Lepre-conned

2010-11-27T02:16:00.001+01:00

It's somehow fitting that the €600 million giant glass and steel new airport terminal in Dublin opened on the very day the army of technocrats sent by the IMF and EU arrived to take over Ireland. A white elephant to symbolize how quickly a Celtic Tiger can be transformed into one of the PIIGS. Floating in and out of the international news stream I keep seeing the financial world in terms of a

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

2010-11-13T17:59:00.003+01:00

Well, it seems there are some folks out there a little brighter than me who have figured out that it's impossible to convince people that their 140 character attention spans are limiting their ability to understand the world and are instead trying to speak to them in a way they can follow. Nothing better than a little rap to explain the economic battle between John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek:

This Month in Wingnuttery

2010-10-23T20:03:00.003+02:00

You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. -George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-FourIt seems like just a couple of years ago that there was an election in the US to distract the public from the problems at hand. What's that you say? There was. Right, I forgot that part of a

Coming to a Consensus

2010-10-09T00:57:00.002+02:00

Way back in time, before there was Twitter, before the perpetual recession had come, in 2007 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had a mere $2 billion in lending commitments on its books. Two billion. Avatar made that in seven weeks. That's the monthly increase in the cost of the Afghanistan war this year. From its inception at Bretton Woods in 1945, the fund had been transformed from an