Have American teenagers gone wild? Parents have worried for generations about changing moral values and risky behavior among young people, and the latest news seems particularly worrisome. It came from the National Center for Health Statistics, which reported this month that births to 15- to 19-year-olds had risen for the first time in more than [...]
Archive for January, 2009
The myth of rampant teenage promiscuity
Posted in Living on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
When the nameless are this shameless, the feedback frenzy has gone too far
Posted in Computers, Living on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
On three recent occasions the hyperinflationary growth in hyperinteractivity has frightened me In January 2007, Joel Stein, a columnist on the Los Angeles Times, wrote an entertaining article railing at having to put an e-mail address at the end of his columns. Describing himself as “arrogant” and “solipsistic”, he claimed to have no interest in [...]
Barack Obama tells the Middle East: ‘Americans are not your enemy’
Posted in Politics, tagged Middle East on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
US President Barack Obama sits with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast Envoy George Mitchell (right) in Washington US President Barack Obama has told the Muslim world that “Americans are not your enemy” and renewed his pledge to travel to make an address in the capital of a major Muslim nation. In his first [...]
“They brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them,” Mr Meza told journalists at a construction site where he disposed of the bodies over a 10-year period. “I didn’t feel anything.” As the nation’s drug war rages on, with its weekly tallies of headless torsos, it is getting harder to produce a [...]
Waxing Poetic about Injustice
Posted in Entertainment, Law, tagged Blagojevich on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
While (soon-to-be-former) Gov. Rod Blagojevich was making the media rounds in New York, including a chat with Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America”, his impeachment trial was getting underway in Illinois, where state Senate President John Cullerton (D), left, introduced state Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald during the proceedings. Rod Blagojevich may be about [...]
Who’s reading insider e-mails? Try the IT guys
Posted in Law on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
As insiders of Synenco Energy Inc. feverishly negotiated a takeover bid last spring, they did not know the progress of their talks was being monitored by an unseen observer. Regulators revealed Monday that an information technology analyst working at TD Securities Inc. in Calgary was reading the personal e-mails of investment bankers working on the deal, [...]
Blagojevich media blitz ‘a horrible, horrible idea’
Posted in Law, Media, Politics on January 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Gov. Blagojevich reaches to sign an autograph after appearing on “The View.” VETERAN LAWYERS SHAKE THEIR HEADS | ‘No defense attorney in his right mind would sanction this campaign’ Gov. Blagojevich’s media blitz might make him feel better about his case, but all those recent high-profile interviews are likely to come back to bite him [...]
The quality of mercy is not strain’d
Posted in Poetry, tagged Merchant of Venice, Portia, William Shakespeare on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The [...]
On President Harry S. Truman’s desk there was a famous sign: “The Buck Stops Here.” This chiseled line of native scripture hailed from the same age of ethical fundamentalism as the somber children’s fable (to which I was subjected every time I lied about feeding my pet hamster) of George Washington’s winning mea culpa concerning [...]
Little Houses on the Prairie
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Living on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Michal Friedrich named his property Wesoła Polana, meaning “happy meadow” in Polish. On the road to Mazama, Wash., there are ponderosa pines, hairpin turns, teal-blue lakes, salmon hatcheries and a 1930s hydroelectric plant. The Methow River rushes down from Robinson Mountain, through this tranquil valley of horse farms and subdued affluence, past Winthrop and Pateros, [...]
Firms face giant phone bills after voice mail hacked
Posted in Computers on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Businesses are crying foul after receiving sky-high phone bills that charged them upwards of $200,000 because hackers broke into their voicemail system and hijacked it to make long-distance calls. While a spokeswoman for BCE’s Bell Canada (TSX:BCE) says the bills have been reduced by the phone company, the businesses insist they shouldn’t be forced to [...]
Past Sins, With Hell to Pay
Posted in Law, Literature, tagged Grisham, The Associate on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
In 2005, as part of an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program, a Las Vegas man wrote letters of apology to people he might have harmed in his drinking days. One letter went to a woman who in 1984 had claimed that he raped her at a fraternity party when they were students at the University of [...]
U.S. Supreme Court says district attorneys are immune from wrongful-conviction suits
Posted in Law on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lawsuit by a Los Angeles man wrongfully convicted of murder and gave district attorneys a broad shield against being sued even if their management mistakes send an innocent person to prison. Thomas L. Goldstein, a former Marine convicted in a 1979 shooting in Long Beach, spent 24 [...]
Britain’s House of Lords atwitter over corruption scandal
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged England, House of Lords on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The silhouette of the Palace of Westminster appears against a winter sky today in London. Their robes are red, their fur cuffs are white and now a corruption scandal has Britain’s House of Lords feeling blue. The British government announced Monday that it had launched an investigation into four members of the venerable, if anachronistic-seeming, [...]
‘Borderless’ aid groups don’t always see eye to eye
Posted in Other on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
A Doctors Without Borders nurse looking after patients outside a health clinic in Kebkabyia, North Darfur. Back in 1971, in the wake of the famine in Biafra, Nigeria, Bernard Kouchner, now the French foreign minister, and a group of close friends sat around a table in Paris and founded Médecins Sans Frontiers, or Doctors Without [...]
As a new year begins, the party’s over in Hong Kong
Posted in Other, tagged Hong Kong on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
At a temple in Beijing on Monday, residents burned joss sticks and offered prayers during the first day of the Lunar New Year. Hong Kong’s gleaming past and current desperation are right there, plain to see, on Vincent Chan’s wall – photographs of more than a hundred Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Jaguars for sale, luxury cars [...]
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls for pre-approval of changes
Posted in Computers, tagged Wikipedia on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is considering a radical revision to the way it can be edited by anyone after two US senators were “killed off” in its pages. Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales has proposed a controversial new system under which any changes to pages about living people would have [...]
The Garden of Love
Posted in Poetry, tagged Blake, The Garden of Love on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
I went to the Garden of Love. And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And “Thou Shalt Not”, writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so [...]
Obama to put Bush car pollution policies into reverse
Posted in Energy and Environment on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Cars on a US freeway at night Barack Obama was today expected to begin the process of reversing George Bush’s policies on climate change by allowing individual US states to set their own, stricter standards for vehicle emissions. The new president will instruct the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to look again at a request [...]
Silvio Berlusconi under fire for rape gaffe
Posted in Other, Politics, tagged Berlusconi on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Silvio Berlusconi: the latest in a long string of gaffes Silvio Berlusconi has found himself in hot water again after saying that deploying more troops on Italian streets following a series of rape cases would not guarantee the safety of the country’s women because “we would need as many soldiers as there are beautiful girls [...]
International Court Begins First Trial
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law, tagged International Criminal Court on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, met his legal team at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague Monday. More than six years after opening its doors, the International Criminal Court in The Hague began its first trial on Monday, as Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, took his [...]
Obama aunt case back in the news
Posted in Law, Other, Politics on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
It was an out-of-nowhere, last-minute potential glitch in Barack Obama’s road to destiny. In the waning days before the November election, reports emerged that an aunt had been living in public housing in Boston — despite an immigration judge’s order to leave the country four years earlier. Three days before Election Day, Obama was forced [...]
Supreme Court rules for worker over retaliation
Posted in Law on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The Supreme Court has ruled that workers who cooperate with internal investigations of retaliation by their employers are sheltered by federal laws prohibiting job discrimination. In an opinion Monday, the justices held that a longtime school system employee in Tennessee can pursue a civil rights lawsuit over her firing. The court voted unanimously to reverse [...]
US Supreme Court says passenger can be frisked
Posted in Law on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers have leeway to frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so. The court on Monday unanimously overruled an Arizona appeals court that threw out evidence found during such [...]
Did Israel Commit War Crimes in Gaza?
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Law, tagged Israel, Palestine on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Inhuman calculations Did Israel violate international law in Gaza? The immense number of Palestinian civilian casualties suggests that it did. But can the laws of war really be applied to asymmetrical conflicts such as Israel’s war with Hamas? The Palmachim air force base is 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Tel Aviv, tucked away in [...]
Northern Wildlife – Here and abroad
Posted in Photo galleries, tagged Alaska, Germany on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
A polar bear sow rests with her cubs on the pack ice in northern Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. Results of a federal study show that most pregnant females are now making their dens on land. A Bohemian Waxwing sits on the branch of a crab apple tree in downtown Anchorage. A mother moose takes care of [...]
Layers of graffiti on walls tell history of Iraq war
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Living, Media on January 26, 2009 | Comments Off
WRITING ON THE WALL A man in Baghdad sits in front of graffiti urging Shiite-Sunni unity and a democratic Iraq. Iraq is a nation of walls: Tall concrete blast walls built during the past six years, ancient mud-brick barricades that date to antiquity and walls built of various materials from the centuries in between. The [...]
Getting into the habit
Posted in Health on January 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Monasteries and convents are advertising weekend retreats as a way of enticing people into religious orders. I’ve been thinking I should try it and see how it goes. I need a retreat. There are several things about life in a convent or monastery that would suit me. To begin with, the wardrobe. A baggy mumu [...]
Let me count the ways
Posted in Living on January 25, 2009 | Comments Off
From traditional to cutting-edge, Carlene Thomas-Bailey introduces a handful of ways to meet your match Blind dates Remember Cilla? Our Graham? That moment when the screen rolled back and you wondered if the couple seeing each other for the first time would last? This is the real-life version. Will your blind [...]
The West’s selective reading of history
Posted in History, Politics on January 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Shortly after the first world war, the French literary critic and historian Henri Massis (1886-1970) preached a crusade against the dangers threatening European values and thought – largely identified with those of France, in his mind. He wasn’t entirely misguided: across the world, colonised nations were in revolt. He wrote: “The future of western civilisation, [...]
