NOTA BENE

• Advice on Using Credit Cards While Traveling Abroad - NYT
  Here are some things to watch out for if you plan on paying with plastic, which isn’t quite as widely accepted as the ad campaigns for credit cards would have you believe.
• BlackBerry Security Stance Sows Anxiety
  Speaking privately, several United States law enforcement and security officials would not say whether the government has a way to decrypt BlackBerry messages, explaining that they were reluctant to divulge whether any particular service posed difficultie
• Is Technology Making Your Students Stupid?
  But what the evidence suggests is that, unless it’s very carefully planned with an eye to how the brain processes information, multimedia actually impedes learning rather than enhances it, simply because it divides our attention. Studies pretty clearly sh
• Jazz, Very Much Alive, in Paris
  Still among jazz’s biggest supporters, the French hold terrific festivals, like Jazz à la Villette, which runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 12 in beautiful Parc de la Villette and other venues around Paris.
• Mexico: Mexico: safer than Canada | The Economist
  OK, so the headline is a bit of a fib. But a report on Mexico’s security situation has painted a more detailed picture than the one we hear about in the news most of the time. When I told friends I was moving to Mexico City, some asked if I would be pro
• Pro-Arizona rhetoric will haunt Republicans - Andres Oppenheimer -
  Republican Party candidates who won Tuesday’s primary elections have gone so far to the right on the immigration issue, that they may have shot themselves in the foot.
• Taking disarmament seriously
  As we commemorate the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should recognize that our luck is running out
• This Is Not a Recovery - Paul Krugman
  In Opinion, Paul Krugman writes, “It’s time to admit that what we have now isn’t a recovery, and do whatever we can to change that situation