select links to ponder:
Krugman ponders lack of leadership and consensus at G7 meeting
Naked Capitalism ponders the Lehman Bros CDS auction
Steve Hsu at Information Processing has more on Lehman CDS auction - somebody is paying a couple of hundred billion or so to other people by Oct 21 - if they don't have the cash to do so, then there will be cascading defaults due to counterparty failures. Basically people making bets without having the reserves or assets to honor them in case the bet goes bad.
More like this
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
In 1817, Karl August Weinhold had a go at a real-life Frankenstein's monster -- only in his version he uses a cat. The German scooped out the brain and spinal cord of a recently dead cat. He then pured a molten mixture of zinc and silver into the skull and spinal cavity.
"At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lie undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innovative space mission to reveal them.
The incoherent ponderer has interesting advice on efficiency in research
Take note.
Ohhhh, that last one is interesting.