Western ingenuity and creativeness never cease to both impress and fascinate.  Lack of creativity and innovation is what is really stifling us in the global South.  One of the many ways in which lag is advertising.

The bad news: the GRACE data now available shows accelarating ice loss in the polar ice caps and glaciated regions (though not, comfortingly for us, in the Himalayas, which seem to be collecting enough snow precipitation to compensate).

In our family we had always known that my engineer grandfather had emigrated to the USA before WW1 - to the Detroit area, we think - where the newly developing automobile industry had employment opportunities.  Why America?  Emigration to the USA was unusual for people from here - Britain and Europe was the natural region.  

Several diaries below, and comments on open threads would lead one to think that the major issues of the day are crimes of violence.  However problematic data recording is, it seems that, overall, violent crime rates are indeed down.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12472#toc

Perhaps MA is correct in linking this to decrease in lead levels, but it is truly remarkable that, in the situation of overcrowding, rising populations and increasing rich-poor division, violent crime seems to be under control.

Opium production in Afghanistan is decreasing.

The one thing I know I'll miss this May-June while in the US is vegetables.
Why is that? I'm going by what I saw on my last visit in what was considered a standard supermarket.  Green leaves - spinach, lettuce.  Solid vegetables - one sort of beans, leeks, peppers, mushrooms.  Root vegetables - carrots, beetroot.  Pumpkins.  Cauliflower.  Broccoli.  Tomatoes.  Some salad stuff.  And that was about it.

Its the anniversary this month of the much talked about photos in Der Spiegel last year.

For the ordinary Afghan, on the one side, there was the "Kill Team". A better description of the "Kill Team" activity in Maiwand in in Rolling Stone.

Analyses of the Russian intervention in Afghanistan, perhaps the source of our troubles today, are now beginning to appear (though not available here, yet.)  The reviews of much of the new archival material and scholarly work are giving a better view of what had happened in those years of early confusion, and the messages for today.

http://easterncampaign.com/2012/01/11/soviet-lessons-for-america-in-afgh...

OK, so pregnancy and childbirth are safe events in the Western industrialised world.  But it is instructive to note how this came about.  There has been much discussion about traditional birthing methods, and the increasing 'medicalisationof childbirth' (a term popularised by one of my favourite writers Ivan Illich).  Here is a fairly typical polemic.

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ From a very cool site. http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-maps/index.html Also, in praise of e-books.