Surf the web on almost any subject and eventually you’ll get a hit at About.com, which bills itself as a resource offering expert guidance from people like you and me.

A new economic report this week warns that specialty retailers are likely to start tanking once the stimulus checks are spent.

For the first time since the women’s movement came about, an economic recovery has come and gone and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Has girl power lost its momentum? Women continue to be underrepresented in top management positions on both sides of the Atlantic.…

When asked to think of vacation hotspots, not many people choose Canada.

On July 16, scientists at Brown University availed themselves of instrumentation aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to report that the southern part of Mars was once bathed in water and capable of sustaining biological life.

In Maine, as they contemplate the costs for this coming heating season, pundits are calling it the "Frozen Economy."

I know it doesn’t do much good around my house. Vacuum one day, and the next the floors look like the bottom of a chicken coop.

Photo: epicharmus, Creative Commons, Flickr On July 14, William Greider, a man after my own heart, published astinging commentary on the current financial crisis.

In 1965, a group called The Mamas & the Papas came out with a song, “California Dreamin’. The lyrics describe a New York winter and a nostalgia for Los Angeles, a place described as safe and warm.

From Liesl Schillinger’s New York Times Book Review of Rivka Glachen’s Atmospheric Disturbances: Leo hops a plane to Argentina to find out, using Gal-Chen’s research on retrieving "thermodynamic variables from within deep convective clouds" to guide his own blundering "attempts at retrieval" of the "real" Rema. No, this is not chick lit. It’s unusual —…

Photo: davipt, Creative Commons, Flickr A recent article from Reuters states that environmental activists are opening a new frontier in their fight against coal-fired power plants by questioning the use of tax-exempt bonds to help fund such projects.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. – Amendment II of the Constitution’s “Bill of Rights”

Photo: Woodcock Johnson, Creative Commons, Flickr Originally published in the Washington Post and picked up by Forbes, the story reports that 92 percent of Americans believe in God or a higher power – “including one in five of those who call themselves atheists”.

Just when I thought we’d gotten over the silliness of trying to ameliorate our fossil-fuel misbehavior with geoengineering tactics like seeding the oceans with iron particles (to reduce acidification), along comes another wild idea; sending sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to deflect the sun’s rays and cool the earth.

Photo: Venkane, Creative Commons, Flickr There are two ways to look at recent economic problems, especially as they affect the stock market, the American economy, and jobs.

“Of course not!” A diminishing majority still clinging to the American dream responds.

Picture dumping ice water on a hobo shivering in the snow, or dumping gasoline on a man’s burning face.

Sometimes history is spelled in large block letters, on the front page of the newspaper. From the New York Times:

Call them what you will, alien invaders, invasive species, or just aliens, these ecological-niche invaders are increasingly present in ecosystems on land and in water, and increasingly difficult to eradicate because they always seem to thrive, even when displaced, and frequently feed on – or otherwise eradicate – native populations.

Those of us not susceptible to Bush Derangement Syndrome have always known that "Bush lied, kids died" is a phony story line for the political usage of the democrats; a rallying cry for the angry left; a mental disease with no known cure.

This week, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, issued a public apology to Canada’s nearly one million Native Americans for past actions taken by his government to deprive them of their culture and rights.

Bruce said it best when he wrote the song, "One Step Up," bewailing the fact that we humans don’t seem to be able to learn even from the hard lessons, creating a history that is almost consistently one step up and two steps back.

Drowned out by the uproar over global warming, the issue of ocean acidification doesn’t get much press lately, even though its cause (carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels) is identical and the results are even more disturbing.