NYT:100 Notable Books of 2009

Take a look at the NYT Review of Books 100 notable of 2009:

What were some of your favorite book this year?

Twelve collections made our fiction list, and four biographies of short-story masters are on the nonfiction list.

Global gold industry and chaos in Congo.

This Sunday “60 Minutes” will present an investigation into how the global gold industry is helping fuel violence and chaos in the Congo. Five million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a war fueled primarily from gold mined in the country by warlords. Scott Pelley reports. 60 Minutes, Sunday, Nov. 29.

Watch the video

NYTIMES photo

Great cartoon on bureacuracy

Take a look at Emad Hajjaj’s cartoon on   bureaucratic procedures:

(VERY rough translation: No, I don’t want to rob the bank, I just want my paycheck without signing 5 times in red ink then with blue ink, without my national ID and ID numbers, my name (mine, father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc), without standing in line for hours, without computer glitches, without authenticity, without stamps, just give me my pay check, give me my paycheck!)