Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize for Economics

"Pfuffnick's Nobel Economics Prize triumph hailed by manyLONDON — The surprise choice of first-year graduate student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel Prize in Economics drew praise from much of the world Friday even as many pointed out the youthful economist has not yet published anything in scholarly journals."

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/10/first-year-grad-student-wins-nobel.html

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize

A former member of the committe of 5 in the Norwegian Parliament can not understand why so many people care about what 5 relatively unknown people think about who should get an award for peace. Neither can I. Especially when the current group of voters in this group seem pre-occupied with influencing US actions, whether to encourage support for Palestinians (Carter 2002) climate change (Gore 2007) or sending more troops to Afghanistan or whatever they voted on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg

http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/10/reasontv-barack-obama-wins-200

US is the most admired country in the world

I find this interesting. US moved up from 7th place in 2008 to first place in 2009 in this poll of admired countries. One of the authors attributes this "astonishing" rise to the election of Obama. Congratulations to the US.
Meanwhile, Canada fell from 4th to 7th.

What I find interesting is not just those results but the idea that the US, which the media says is hated worldwide because of the policies of Bush, ranked 7th in the world. 7th! That is where Canada ranks now. And Canadians think that they are the most admired country in the world. How is it possible for the media to say that the US was despiced when it ranked as high as Canada ranks now?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/06/survey-us-admired/

McDonald's at the Louvre

Apparently, most French don't have a problem with McDonald's opening up at the Louvre but are amused by the non-French reaction. The French generally like McDonalds because they support French farmers and France is the second most profitably country for McDonalds.

"Even Francois Simon, France's best-known food critic and the man said to have inspired Anton Ego in the Pixar film Ratatouille, he thinks the French papers were right to ignore the story. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8297365.stm