The main problem with President Obama’s nationally televised comment about Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley had less to do with race and justice than it did with the unwise, immature application of presidential power. Given his own background and friendship with Harvard professor Skip Gates, Obama’s immediate reaction to Gates’s arrest was understandable – he [...]
Archive for July, 2009
Obama’s Juvenile Use of Power
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Today in History – July 24
Posted in This day in history, tagged July 24 on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Friday, July 24, the 205th day of 2009. There are 160 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On July 24, 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. (The impromptu exchanges occurred in the kitchen of a [...]
Berlusconi ‘hid ancient graves’
Posted in Politics on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
The PM has seen numerous allegations against him in recent months Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has failed to declare the presence of 30 ancient tombs on his land, according to newly published recordings said to be of him. The recordings allege Mr Berlusconi told escort Patrizia D’Addario of 30 Phoenician tombs at his Sardinia villa. [...]
Russia acts against ‘false’ history
Posted in Conflicts and wars, History on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
It may become a criminal offence to infringe on “historical memory” about WWII. What is worrying Russia? Why is the country convinced that it is the victim of a campaign to make it look bad? President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a commission to counter the falsification of history. He said this [...]
Hot secret behind toucan’s bill
Posted in Animals, Natural sciences on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
For centuries, scientists have puzzled over why the toucan’s bill is so remarkably large – but now one team thinks it might have an answer. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say that the toucan uses its enormous beak to stay cool. They used infrared cameras to show the bird dumping heat from its [...]
Pakistan Consumed by Violence as Taliban Power Grows
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
The Taliban’s power in Pakistan continues to grow and it now has entire towns under its control. Under US pressure, the Pakistani army is fighting the Islamists — with limited success. Pakistani intelligence says the Americans are doing more harm than good. Taliban commander Qari Zainuddin (center) talks to media in Dera Ismail Khan on [...]
The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen
Posted in History on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
A “typical American house,” Moscow, 1959: Nixon explains, Khrushchev complains. Photograph by the author. EXACTLY one-half century ago, one of the great confrontational moments of the cold war seized the world’s attention: Nikita Khrushchev, bombastic anti-capitalist leader of the Soviet Union, and Richard Nixon, vice president of the United States with the reputation of a [...]
Today’s papers – July 24, 2009
Posted in Today's Papers on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Health Reform Deadline In Doubt The Washington Post leads with an overview of the continuing health care battles in Congress as lawmakers appear ready to ignore President Obama’s Aug. 7 deadline. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement that his colleagues wouldn’t be able to vote on legislation before the August recess confirmed the “growing consensus [...]
Jupiter Gets a Black Eye
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Physical sciences, Space on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
We sometimes forget that the universe is a violent place. This week, astronomers in Hawaii recorded an exceedingly rare event. An amazing photograph revealed a comet or asteroid, probably no more than a mile across, plowing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The impact created a fireball roughly the size of the planet earth. The good news is [...]
Stories From the House of Broken Dreams
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Politics on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
President Obama insisted at his news conference last night that he will continue to push Congress to pass health care legislation by next month because, he said, “the stars are aligned, and we need to take advantage of it.” Members of Congress could be forgiven for thinking the stars are crossed and the atmosphere more [...]
Defining Data Down
Posted in Physical sciences on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Like other complex human enterprises, science has a “front” and a “back.” The model here is a restaurant. In the front, waiters in spotless uniforms glide between tables murmuring suggestions and delivering exquisitely arranged platters. Meanwhile, the kitchen—the back—is a chaos of noise, heat, haste, breakage and rancor. Now and then a gross error in [...]
How Obama Stumbled on Health Care
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Politics on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Here’s the dirty secret behind Washington’s health-care “fight”: Democrats won everything in last year’s election. You wouldn’t know it from the way President Barack Obama is blaming the GOP for his flagging health agenda. “There are those [read the GOP] who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill it,” complained [...]
Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
It turns out the president misjudged the nation’s mood. This is big, what’s happening. President Obama appears to have misstepped on a major initiative and defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood, which itself is news: He rose from nothing to everything with the help of his fine-tuned antennae. Resistance to the Democratic health-care [...]
President Obama told the NAACP last week that he believes there is less racial discrimination in America today than ever in our history. So it was passing strange this week to hear Mr. Obama draw a negative national racial lesson from a recent police incident involving black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Last week, [...]
Why Health Care Will Pass
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on July 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Talk about unexpected news: Reforming the health-care system is really hard, and Republicans want President Obama to fail. Oh, yes, and when the public gets a look at the sausage-making process in Washington, it doesn’t like what it sees. And in a bad economy, it’s tough for a president to maintain approval ratings in the [...]
Why Obamacare Is Sinking
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health-care nirvana: more coverage, less cost. But you can’t fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares [...]
The Birds of America
Posted in Birds of America, tagged 106, 107, 108 on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Coragyps atratus Urubu noir / Black Vulture The Black Vulture is a known carrion eater. Nesting in caves, tree-trunks, abandoned buildings and on the edges of rock faces, it is observed mainly in the southern and eastern United States and more recently in the north-east, where it is expanding its presence. Because its weak talons [...]
US pessimistic on Iran overtures
Posted in Conflicts and wars on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
The US secretary of state has said Washington is still willing to engage with Iran but that unrest there means Tehran is currently unable to respond. Hillary Clinton told the BBC the US was waiting for an answer to its overtures, but Iran did not have “any capacity to make that kind of decision right [...]
New Mozart piano music discovered
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Mozart left more than 600 pieces of music before his death at 35 Two piano pieces have been identified as the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, experts in the Austrian city of Salzburg say. The compositions have long been in the possession of the International Mozarteum Foundation in the city, the organisation said. Few details [...]
Humans glow in visible light
Posted in Natural sciences on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Images indicate that glow brightens and fades daily; face shines brightest The first image shows one of the test subjects in full light. Throughout the day, the body gives off weak emissions of visible light in totally dark conditions, as the color-coded middle image shows. The rightmost image of the subject, captured in infrared wavelengths, shows the heat emissions. To learn [...]
The world of the Arabs
Posted in Politics on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
What do they have in common? CONVENIENT as it is to describe the 22 countries (including the unborn Palestine) that belong to the Arab League as “the Arab world”, the neat phrase can mislead. This is a heterogeneous agglomeration of some 350m people—Maronites, Copts, Berbers, Kurds and Africans as well as Arabs and Muslims—inhabiting a [...]
The Arab world waking from its sleep
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
The Arab world has experienced two decades of political stagnation. But there is a fever under the surface IN A special report on the Arab world which The Economist published in 1990, the headline at the top of this page was “When history passes by”. That was when the communist dictatorships of eastern Europe were [...]
Waking from its sleep
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out WHAT ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The [...]
Can he make it better?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Barack Obama pushes plans for reforming health care in America DEMOCRATS dominate both houses of Congress and Barack Obama is a president who is still popular. So why did Mr Obama seem so defensive at a press conference on Wednesday July 22nd when taking a stand on a massive legislative overhaul of health care, a [...]
The Obama cult
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
If Barack Obama disappoints his supporters, they will have only themselves to blame IN JANUARY 2007 Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said he was running for president to revive “our national soul”. He was not alone in taking an expansive view of presidential responsibilities. With the exception of Ron Paul, all the serious [...]
Today in History – July 23
Posted in This day in history, tagged July 23 on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Thursday, July 23, the 204th day of 2009. There are 161 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On July 23, 1914, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum containing a list of demands to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb assassin; the dispute led to World War I. [...]
Climate Fixers’ Hard Sell
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Unfortunately, China’s president had to dash home to suppress ethnic riots. Had he stayed in Italy at the recent Group of Eight summit, he could have continued the Herculean task of disabusing Barack Obama of his amazingly durable belief, shared by the U.S. Congress, that China — and India, Brazil, Mexico and other developing nations [...]
Obama Attacks Docs and Cops
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, Politics on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
President Obama spent most of his press conference tonight denying what President Kennedy famously affirmed — that to govern is to choose. Obama promised us health care this is at once better and cheaper, with both more regulation and more freedom to choose, featuring an assurance that government won’t limit our care and a commitment [...]
The Doctor Is Within
Posted in Health, Living, Religion on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Dalai Lama speaking last month to Tibetan students at the Tibetan Children’s Village School in Dharmsala, India, about the principles of Buddhism. “Dream — nothing!” is one of the many things I’ve heard the 14th Dalai Lama say to large audiences that seem to startle the unprepared. Just before I began an onstage conversation with [...]
Nixon and Khrushchev, the End of an Unscripted Era
Posted in Editorials and opinion, History on July 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Friday is the 50th anniversary of one of the more bizarre clashes of the cold war: the “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon, then 46 and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, and Nikita Khrushchev, the cunning peasant who at 65 had just finished consolidating his position at the pinnacle of Soviet power. Unscripted and often raw, [...]
