While we are used to men taking lovers from below the salt - after all, kings and nobles, great statesmen and landowners have been at it since time immemorial - it remains a cause for controversy when a woman selects a partner from outside her high-flying natural milieu.

This is the stuff of bodice-ripping chicklit and even highbrow fiction. Lady Chatterley's Lover would probably have been published 30 years earlier had it not been for the fact that the shenanigans it featured took place between a sweaty gamekeeper and a fragrant member of the English aristocracy.

Lady Chatterley's power to engage is as strong now as it was when the novel (written in 1928) was finally allowed to go to print in 1960, and it is set for a resurgence with the imminent release of a new French adaptation, Lady Chatterley Et L'homme Des Bois.   more »

b>Can anyone be surprised by the dumbing down of news?

In case you haven't noticed, we live in a Capitalist society, where profit is THE motive. It is the regulator of news output, as well as a censor.

Broadcast and cable media are driven by advertisement and subscription revenue.

If any were to dare to get serious they'd get their lunch eaten by their competitors, who would rush ahead in the race to dumb it down, tart it up, make it silly, etc.

That is the economy of mass media.   more »

One may wonder, now that we have a memorial to the “victims” of communism, will there also be a memorial erected to the victims of capitalism? Even if we just look at the victims of U.S. capitalism, it’s a mighty long list.

Millions of Native Americans who died for capitalism’s “Manifest Destiny.” Millions of Africans in chattel slavery.

Thousands of African Americans lynched since the end of the Civil War. Millions of workers killed due to lack of safety or outright disregard for their lives by capitalist bosses.

Millions more killed in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo, Iraq, Panama, Grenada and countless other countries in our wars for capitalism.   more »

The huge concentration of wealth at the top is routinely used to tilt the political process in favor of the wealthy.

Lowenstein notes, that "if the very upper crust were banished to a Caribbean island, the America that remained would be a lot more egalitarian."

Well, duh. The point is that it would also be more prosperous, at the individual level, and democratic. In fact, why give the upper crust an island in the Caribbean?

After all they've done for us recently, I think the Aleutians should be more than adequate.   more »

Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it.

This phase of development dates back to the mid-90s, when the country was in the vanguard of the information revolution - the most tech-dependent economy in the world.

After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953.

Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack, and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.   more »