Lunch Links

From the latest New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman and Robin Wells examine recent books on economics to figure out why the slump continues and how to get out of it. With footnotes! If you’re interested in understanding how we got here and how to emerge, it’s required reading.

If you’re a fan of hip-hop or spoken word, check out the new free mixtape from Guante + Big Cats!. (The exclamation mark is part of the name). Guante’s been on the national champion slam poetry team for two years running, and Big Cats! serves up quality beats. The thoughtful politics of Guante, who aims his pen at right and left alike, are only part of the draw.

If you’re a fan of baseball or the civil rights movement, you might be interested in this interesting historical piece about Calvin Griffith, Rod Carew and the integration of the Minnesota Twins.

If you’re a fan of rabbit high-jumping competitions in Denmark … OK, that would be very unlikely. But you might become one after watching this:

The best part of the video is that sometimes, when the bunny faces a particularly tough challenge, they perform visualization exercises with it by holding the animal up to the jump and talking to it before it attempts the jump.

Everybody duck! Asteroids!

Finally, Judge Royce Lamberth has upheld the ban on federal funding for any research using embryonic stem cells.

This is bad news for any American who has a disease, might have a disease in the future, has a loved one with a disease, or might love anyone who has now or might have a disease in the future. It’s good news for … the people who don’t want us to be able to use contraception or have in vitro fertilization available, I guess.