WSJ Links

WSJ Links

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Section D (Off Duty):

• Some interesting recipes.

Section C (Review):

• Introducing theory on why the new bird-flu virus may not become a pandemic. 

• A genetic market for schizophrenia, miR-383, was found in nasal biopsies.

• A guide to unusual words in the WSJ; a weekly feature.

• Oh, yes, a must visit: the French viaduct -- the highest road deck in Europe when it was built; if you do nothing else today, take a look at the photograph of this stunning bit of work (then imagine the bullet train in California -- for which they have not even yet bought the land).  If you cannot access the WSJ article, google Millau Viaduct.

• Okay, if there's only one thing you do, reflect back on 1967, and the Beatles, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." Baby boomers were so incredibly lucky. 

• Book review, "The American Iliad" --  The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson, the third and concluding volume of his history of the US experience fighting in Europe between 1942 and 1945 (fewer years to enter and conclude a war than it will take President Obama to make a decision on one pipeline; what a loser.)

• Book Review: Wow, having just read James Gleick's The Information, and George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral, this new book, Surfaces and Essences, by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander looks awesome. The argument that analogy-making is the basis of all thought is explored. The reference to "The Analogue World" is very, very interesting.

• Book review: Wow, it just keeps getting better: now a review of Imperial Dreams by Tim Gallagher, the search for the imperial woodpecker, which, at two feet tall, is the largest woodpecker that ever lived, and has not been seen in more than half a century.

• Book review: Eternity in a day. Intriguing. Not sure if it's worth a read. Norwegian author. Think Joyce.

• Book review: "How They Made It, After All," -- the Mary Tyler Moore show. Wow, the baby boomers were lucky.

• William Friedkin offers five best books on Hollywood directors: Elia Kazan, Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Sidney Lumet (memoir and tutorial), and John Ford.

Section B (Business & Finance):

• McDonald's dumps the Angus burger.  People don't visit McDonald's for good food. They go there for Ronald McDonald (the kids), the play area (the kids), cheap food (all of us), locality (they are everywhere), free wi-fi (road warriors). But folks don't go to McDonald's for Angus burgers. For a real hamburger there are a dozen other choices, including Ruth's Chris Steak House, no doubt.

• Weaker yen: mixed blessing for Japan's businesses. I think it spells much, much trouble for that island nation.  It will get worse. Japan increasing its fuel imports; US becoming energy self-sufficient.

Section A:

• As Washington gets more and more embarrassed about how they blew the chance to thwart the Boston Marathon bombers, the government is now blaming Russia for not telling the US enough. And so it goes. The president never runs out of folks to blame.
• Here we go again: the Rutgers men's basketball coach does not have a degree from Rutgers as his bio suggests. My hunch: the bio was written by someone who could read and write, but not play basketball.
• Op-Ed: applying for ObamaCare -- the form -- is still not easy.
• Op-Ed: the inconvenient truth about Benghazi. I won't read it. Like John Kerry said, "it won't tell me anything I didn't already know."