Author: The Mound of Sound

Sweden – less than 10-million people.    Canada – just over 35-million.   Sweden – GDP 538-billion.   Canada – GDP 1.74-trillion. How is it that Sweden, with a population slightly smaller than Michigan’s, can build its own fighter aircraft and the engines to power them?   And how do they do it under

Chinese officials are now admitting the existence of “cancer villages” in areas where pollution and environmental degradation have resulted in cancer rates far above normal. According to Chinese business magazine Caijing, Chinese officials with the Ministry of Environment Protection confirmed the existence of cancer villages in a statement announcing plans

Oh those Americans and their silly budget showdowns.   As some observers say, these confrontations have come to resemble kabuki theatre. Sequestration is scheduled to take effect on March 1, a mere week away.   Budgets get cut about 10%.   The effects may not be terminal overall but some government

It’s this simple.   If you don’t have money to maintain our Coast Guard stations and our fisheries monitors, you don’t have money to squander on an Office of Religious Freedoms. Sideshow Steve Harper’s twisted, theocratic brain thinks depriving Canadians of their basic protections is a dandy cost-cutting measure especially when

Globalization has transferred a great deal of political power into corporate boardrooms.   And, for some businessmen, it’s gone to their heads – guys like Maurice (Morry) “The Grizz” Taylor, CEO of U.S. tire company, Titan. Morry was in France to check out a faltering tire plant he thought Titan might

Veep Joe Biden is carrying the White House campaign to rein in assault rifles.   And, predictably, he’s shooting straight. He challenged the National Rifle Association’s arguments opposing Barack Obama’s plans, declaring: ”They say, ‘Well, it’s about our culture … The facts are, our culture’s not killing 25 people a day.

 Could the United States Supreme Court open the door for rolling back decades of progress for America’s black minority?  When a black man won the White House in 2008, many in the commentariat declared the United States a “post-racial” society, no longer hamstrung by old hatreds, freed at last from

There’s nothing like self-interest to shape one’s perspective. With the ascendancy of the emerging economies: – China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and South Africa – those of us in the developed world face the prospect of possibly having to do with less as our rivals muscle us out of some

What does social science have to do with climate change?  Quite a bit, actually.   Climate change denialism has given social scientists rich pickings to scrutinize, pick apart and analyze.  One finding they’ve reached is that the ranks of climate change denialists are heavily populated with conspiracy theorists.  It’s a hoax,

The Pope and the gay clergy scandal? The Rome daily La Repubblica reports that Pope Benny’s hasty departure from the Holy See could be linked to a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom were being blackmailed by outsiders. The paper said the pope had taken the

A team of researchers, led by Oxford University scientists, has concluded that global warming of just 1.5 degrees Celsius will trigger the melting of the world’s permafrost and, with it, the release of the CO2 and methane greenhouse gases it now holds safely trapped. The circumpolar permafrost belt that makes