Today is Wednesday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2009. There are 358 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Jan. 7th, 1789, the first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation’s first president. On this date: In 1608, [...]
Archive for May, 2009
Today In History – January 7
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 7 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today In History – January 6
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 6 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Tuesday, Jan. 6, the sixth day of 2009. There are 359 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Jan. 6, 1838, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail gave the first successful public demonstration of their telegraph, in Morristown, N.J. On this date: In 1540, England’s King Henry VIII married his fourth [...]
Today In History – January 5
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 5 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Monday, Jan. 5, the fifth day of 2009. There are 360 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Jan. 5th, 1896, an Austrian newspaper Wiener Presse reported the discovery by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen of a type of radiation that came to be known as “X-rays.” On this date: In [...]
Today In History – January 4
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 4 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Sunday, Jan. 4, the fourth day of 2009. There are 361 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History Two hundred years ago, on Jan. 4, 1809, Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille raised-dot reading system for the blind, was born in Coupvray, France. On this date: In 1821, the first native-born [...]
Today In History – January 3
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 3 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Saturday, Jan. 3, the 3rd day of 2009. There are 362 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska became the 49th state as President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation. On this date: In 1521, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope [...]
Today In History – January 2
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 2 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Friday, Jan. 2, the 2nd day of 2009. There are 363 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History Fifty years ago, on Jan. 2, 1959, the Soviet Union launched its space probe Luna 1, the first manmade object to fly past the moon, its apparent intended target. On this date: In [...]
Today In History – January 1
Posted in This day in history, tagged January 1 on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Thursday, Jan. 1, the 1st day of 2009. There are 364 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History Fifty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrew Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who fled to the Dominican Republic. On this date In 1808, a law prohibiting the importation [...]
Today in History – May 26
Posted in This day in history on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Tuesday, May 26, the 146th day of 2009. There are 219 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On May 26, 1940, the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II. On this date In 1521, Martin Luther was banned by the Edict of Worms because of [...]
Psychiatrists rewriting the mental health bible
Posted in Health, tagged Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly called DSM, is getting an update. Now experts must decide what is a disorder and what falls in the range of normal human behavior. Is the compulsion to hoard things a mental disorder? How about the practice of eating excessively at night? And what of Internet [...]
Prop. 8 upheld by California Supreme Court
Posted in Law, tagged California, Same-sex unions on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Same-sex marriage demonstrators wait in front of San Francisco City Hall for the California State Supreme Court to rule on the legality of a voter-approved ban on same-sex unions, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 in San Francisco. The justices uphold the same-sex marriage ban but also rule that the 18,000 gay couples who wed before the [...]
Obama Picks Sotomayor, Citing Intellect
Posted in Law, tagged Sotomayor on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
President Obama with Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the White House on Tuesday. President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the [...]
Justices Ease Rules on Questioning Suspects
Posted in Law, tagged Criminal law, Evidence, Miranda on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The Supreme Court has overturned a long-standing ruling that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects. The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a [...]
A Most Prolific Peasant Poet
Posted in Poetry, tagged John Clare on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
John Clare (1793-1864) is one of English poetry’s most enduring hardship cases. He was born into a barely literate, impoverished peasant family of farm laborers in the village of Helpston, Northamptonshire. His random schooling, interrupted at harvest times, fully ended at age 12. He never learned proper spelling, punctuation — he called it “pointing” — [...]
A Web Presence From Scratch
Posted in Computers, Economy and business, Practical advice on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
With unemployment at a 23-year high, job seekers need to expand the ways in which they search, say career and workplace experts. These days setting up and maintaining an online presence is often critical to finding work. But for an accomplished professional, it might seem daunting to build up a social-networking presence from scratch. Here’s [...]
Early Transition to Blog Pro
Posted in Computers, Living, tagged Blogs, Websites on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
When blogs first came to the Internet over a decade ago, nobody believed they would make money. But Mark Frauenfelder, a former engineer and writer, believed otherwise. He quit his job at Wired magazine and turned his popular print zine into boingboing.net. The blog has since become one of the most popular sites, according to [...]
Polaroid Lovers Try to Revive Its Instant Film
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Economy and business, Living, tagged Polaroid on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Two former Polaroid workers, Henk Minnen, left, and Marin Steinmeijer, checking some tests. ENSCHEDE, the Netherlands — In this small town just across the border from Germany, a small group of Dutch scientists and one irrepressible Austrian salesman have dedicated themselves to the task of reinventing one of the great inventions of the 20th century [...]
Iran’s Ahmadinejad Rejects Western Nuclear Proposal
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Iran on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a Western proposal for it to “freeze” its nuclear work in return for no new sanctions and ruled out any talks with major powers on the issue. The comments by the conservative president, who is seeking a second term in a June 12 election, are likely to further [...]
Poverty’s Two-Way Street
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged Poverty on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
The world is agog with tales of the “nouveau poor.” The well-to-do are tightening their belts: Wealthy women are reappearing in the same designer dresses, shoppers are shyly pulling coupons from their pockets, and flying commercial is back in style. But the rich and the middle class are not the only ones losing money. Millions [...]
A Fast Way to Lose the Arms Race
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Nuclear weapons on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
PRESIDENT OBAMA has called for a world without nuclear weapons, not as a distant goal, but as something imminently achievable. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up, saying that American and Russian “leadership” in arms control and nonproliferation was “at the top of the list” of her priorities. Although the administration may be counting on [...]
Happy Like God
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
What is happiness? How does one get a grip on this most elusive, intractable and perhaps unanswerable of questions? I teach philosophy for a living, so let me begin with a philosophical answer. For the philosophers of Antiquity, notably Aristotle, it was assumed that the goal of the philosophical life — the good life, [...]
Obama Will Nominate Sotomayor for Supreme Court
Posted in Law, tagged Sotomayor on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, via Associated Press U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White [...]
The other night, my neighbor called, in tears. Her mule had foundered — that is, the inner tissue of its feet had swollen, a condition that causes intense pain and immobility. The vet was coming, and there was a very real chance the mule would have to be put down. She wanted me to listen [...]
Our Crumbling Foundation
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
I’m not sure that the catastrophic job losses of this recession, the worst since the Great Depression, have really sunk into the public’s consciousness. And that would mean that the ground has not been prepared for the kind of high-powered remedies needed to get the economy back into some kind of reasonable shape. The Times [...]
And the Angels Rejoice
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment, Politics on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
There is nothing so inspiring as public service, so I’ve been incredibly moved over the past few weeks to watch squads of corporate executives come to the White House so President Obama could announce that he was giving away their money. A few weeks ago, we were privileged to see a gathering of health care [...]
Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi testifies in court
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, told a court Tuesday that she had not broken the law when she allowed an uninvited American intruder to spend the night three weeks ago, according to reports from the court. “I didn’t,” she said, when a judge asked her if she had violated the terms of [...]
Prom Excesses, Indignities and Flashbacks
Posted in Living, tagged Proms on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Prom night in New Rochelle, N.Y. The prom — that annual rite of American teenagers — is annually analyzed, lionized, bemoaned and mocked. Do the complaints about the bacchanalia — the limos, the thousand-dollar dresses, the catered feasts, the beer binges — strike a stronger chord this year, because of the hunkered-down economy? While some [...]
The Case for Taxing E-Mail
Posted in Computers, tagged Taxing emails on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Spam a lot less? As long as we’re talking about getting people to pay for what they value online, Edward Gottesman suggests in the British magazine Prospect, what about taxing everyone a few cents per e-mail to cut down on the estimated 90 percent of it that is unwanted spam choking the Web? Such a [...]
In Defiance, North Korea Is Said to Test More Missiles
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Missiles, North Korea on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
One day after a surprise nuclear test drew angry and widespread condemnation, North Korea continued its defiance of the international community on Tuesday by test-firing two more short-range missiles, a South Korean government official said. The missile firings came just hours after South Korea said it would join an American-led operation to stop the global [...]
Gates Says Taliban Have Momentum in Afghanistan
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Afghanistan, Iraq on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Defense Secretary Robert Gates attends graduation ceremonies Saturday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In an interview en route to the academy, he said momentum in the Afghan war is with the Taliban. American public support for the Afghan war will dissipate in less than a year unless the Obama administration achieves “a [...]
Government Motors
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged G.M. on May 26, 2009 | Comments Off
GM’s new owner (the Obama administration) should stop bullying the company’s bondholders. IN THEORY, a government bailout should provide a short-term infusion of cash to give a struggling company the chance to right itself. But in its aggressive dealings with U.S. automakers, most recently General Motors, the Obama administration is coming dangerously close to engaging [...]
