Thanks to Wikicommons

Give peace a chance. Egyptian army will not open fire on protesters.

Islam, a target of terrorism. Bombing of Detroit mosque prevented.

Seeking profits where there is not air. Businesses look to enter space race with NASA’s help.

Thanks to Wikicommons

Some of our readers may recall we recently suffered from a minor inconvenience called “the World Financial Meltdown”.

If you are still asking yourself, How the @#$%&!! did that disaster happen?…we have good news!

The US Government has the answers in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Final Report.

It is a beast of a report so rather than have you wade through hundreds of pages of financial analysis, we’ll let the Internet do the mining for you.

The wonderful financial blog Calculated Risk highlights the reports BIG conclusion that the

financial crisis was avoidable. …

Despite the expressed view of many on Wall Street and in Washington that the crisis could not have been foreseen or avoided, there were warning signs. … Yet there was pervasive permissiveness; little meaningful action was taken to quell the threats in a timely manner.

Expanding on the points produced in the report Calculated Risk describes

the keys to the crisis are 1) the willful lack of regulators to do their jobs, combined with 2) the rapid “innovation” in the mortgage market

For a deeper look at who’s to blame check out Frum Forum’s collection of posts on the report.

The system may have failed in the past but this new information should let us prevent future meltdowns right?

Don’t count on it.  As Sewell Chan, of Economix, notes:

The Wall Street overhaul enacted last year hopes to blunt the impact of such boom-and-bust cycles — by reining in the use of exotic financial instruments, better supervising big banks and limiting the damage if one of them fails.

But the first two efforts are under attack by the new Republican majority in the House, and the new process for containing the fallout from a giant bank’s collapse is untested. Meanwhile, the financial sector’s outsize role in the economy hasn’t changed; the giant banks that were considered “too big to fail” have only gotten bigger.

Not very comforting is it?

A comic strip created by Donna Lewis ’86, English, an attorney in Washington, D.C., will be syndicated through the Washington Post Writers Group, according to the Baltimore Jewish Times.

Enter Lizzie, the “star” of “Reply All,” a new comic strip scheduled to debut on Monday, Feb. 28, through the Washington Post Writers Group syndicate. Penned by Baltimore-born cartoonist Donna A. Lewis, “Reply All” is loosely based on the artist’s own life: Lizzie is a single woman who is doing well in her career, but who still harbors self-doubts.

“She’s modeled after successful women who like who they’ve become,” says Ms. Lewis, 48. “She’s confident, yet insecure, about everything she does. It’s like when someone says, ‘I love your outfit’ and your response is ‘really?’ Does Bill Gates question his every thought?”

Read the full story in the Baltimore Jewish Times here.

Read another story about Donna in the Baltimore Sun.

Ethiopia’s victory at Adwa is the focus of both this celebration and, the feature of this film.
     Haile Gerima made this masterpiece from the oral history accounts of his own father, and  other Ethiopians whose fathers may have fought in the conflict or otherwise provided accounts of the event from the  geopolitical or pan-African perspectives.

 The film is respected as “a spiritual documentary” and “among the greatest films to absorb art treasures into their being and make these come alive, both to the eye and the soul of the viewer… 
     

Emperor Menelik may have seemed the hero, but it was always the people: vast numbers that gathered from distant communities to face their well-armored, well-weaponed Goliath with a stone and a sling—whatever they had. Those who had nothing took weapons from fallen Italian soldiers. Their victory grew into the sunlight of legend, inspiring movements—Pan-African; nationalist ones; the U.S. civil rights movement. .” ..Gru

The event will also feature tributes from Baltimore attorney, Dejazmatch Georgis Rose, student groups and other personalities. 

Brian Dannelly ’97, visual arts, has been tapped to direct actor Chris Colfer in the high school comedy film, “Struck by Lightning.” Colfer recently won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Kurt Hummel in the popular TV show “Glee.” On January 20, Variety reported, “Dannelly will be in familiar territory with ‘Lightning,’ having previously helmed teen dramedy ‘Saved!,’ which starred Jenna Malone, Mandy Moore and Macauley Culkin. Dannelly’s smallscreen directing credits include the pilot for ‘Weeds,’ as well as ‘Pushing Daisies’ and ‘United States of Tara.’”

Dannelly received a UMBC Alumni of the Year Award in 2005. More information can be found here and here.