WALKING into church 40 years ago on this first Sunday of Advent, many Roman Catholics might have wondered where they were. The priest not only spoke English rather than Latin, but he faced the congregation instead of the tabernacle; laymen took on duties previously reserved for priests; folk music filled the air. The great changes [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Latin Mass Appeal
Posted in Religion, tagged Catholic Church, Liturgy on November 29, 2009 | Comments Off
America vs. The Narrative
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 29, 2009 | Comments Off
What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood? Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up [...]
Today in History – November 28
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 28 on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Saturday, Nov. 28, the 332nd day of 2009. There are 33 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Nov. 28, 1909, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s notoriously difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 had its world premiere in New York, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony and [...]
The oil sands have been Gored
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment, tagged Canada, Oil sands on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Apparently they jeopardize the very survival of our species Well, it was a very calm and totally unexceptional week, nothing to ruffle the nerves or agitate the conscience. Things rolled demurely along and, in words that Pierre Trudeau borrowed from an inscription that ornaments many an old hippie dish cloth, the universe was very placidly [...]
Separate Beds Lead to Longer-Lasting Love
Posted in Living on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Sheet Music He snores, she suffers. But many couples insist on sleeping together because they worry that having separate beds will lead to emotional distance. Still, scientists say, they are ignoring findings that say that being well-rested — rather than cuddling — might be a whole lot more important for a healthy marriage. Can sleeping [...]
Did the West Break Its Promise to Moscow?
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Politics, tagged Nato, Russia on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused the West of breaking promises made after the fall of the Iron Curtain, saying that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe violated commitments made during the negotiations over German reunification. Newly discovered documents from Western archives support the Russian position. A Latvian army soldier during a military exercise near Riga. [...]
The Incurable Collector
Posted in Other, tagged Collectors on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
A pharmaceutical pioneer and his astonishing hoard of artifacts “An Infinity of Things” By Frances Larson Oxford, 343 pages, $34.95 Henry Wellcome’s collecting started innocently enough: At Sotheby’s December 1898 sale of William Morris’s library, Wellcome bought books on architecture, textiles, printing, bibliography and design. The books were on subjects of particular interest to Wellcome, [...]
A Biography Like No Other
Posted in Literature on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
In ‘The Quest for Corvo,’ a charming man writes about a mad eccentric in the form of a detective story ‘All I can tell you about the book, my dear fellow,” A.J.A. Symons wrote to his brother Julian in mid-composition of “The Quest for Corvo,” “is that it will be unlike any other biography ever [...]
Five Best Books: Historical Fiction
Posted in Literature on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Rebecca Stott says these novels are historical fiction of the first rank 1 – The Rings of Saturn By W.G. Sebald New Directions, 1998 In “Rings of Saturn,” the *German author W.G. Sebald weaves fact and fiction into a book that is part memoir, part travel narrative, part meditative essay and part history. The story [...]
Past climate anomalies explained
Posted in Energy and Environment on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The team reconstructed 1,500 years of climate using “proxies” such as coral Unusually warm and cold periods in Earth’s pre-industrial climate history are linked to how the oceans responded to temperature changes, say scientists. The researchers focused particularly on intervals known as the “little ice age” and “medieval warm period”. In the journal Science, they [...]
Nightmarish memories of Nazis’ Sobibor death camp
Posted in History, Law, tagged Sobibor on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
John Demjanjuk is due to stand trial in Germany accused of helping to murder more than 27,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in occupied Poland. The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg returns to the site of the camp with one man who survived its horrors. In the Jewish cemetery in the town of Izbica, [...]
Suspected Nazi War Criminal Eludes German Justice System
Posted in Law, tagged Germany, Nazis, World War II on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Enjoying a Peaceful Old Age Quietly evading justice? The alleged war criminal takes a stroll. The suspected Nazi war criminal Klaas F., who is number five on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most-wanted list, is enjoying a quiet retirement in Bavaria. While some alleged former Nazis are facing trial in their old age, the 87-year-old has [...]
Europe’s Wild Boar Population Exploding
Posted in Animals, Photo galleries, tagged Wild boars on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Climate Change’s Clear Winners Europe is waging war on the boar, whose numbers have been surging as a result of global warming and the large-scale cultivation of maize and rapeseed for biofuel. While violent confrontations with humans are on the rise, the animal is respected for its intelligence — and remains dear to German hearts. [...]
Innocent Until Sampled
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, tagged DNA on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
DNA testing must be treated with caution and used with care. When it began in 1995, Britain’s national DNA database was hailed as a cutting-edge way to track criminals. But a report this week from government advisory body, the Human Genetics Council, raises the possibility that the database is fast becoming an unofficial operation to [...]
Discovering Jewish Music
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, tagged Jewish music on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Charles Krauthammer’s office in Washington does not lack for artifacts. He obviously cherishes the snapshot of himself with a laughing Ronald Reagan and the board where he plays chess with Natan Sharansky. But the room’s centerpiece is the sepia photograph of a serious-looking man in a fur hat. He was a chief rabbi of Krakow—and [...]
Risky Business
Posted in History, tagged Charles II on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
A bitterly divided nation, a monarchy splendiferously restored. When Charles II stepped ashore in Dover on May 27, 1660, and then entered London in a glorious procession two days later, on his 30th birthday, he was greeted with tolling church bells, cries of joy and expressions of hope. More than a decade had passed since [...]
Exploring China—in America
Posted in Literature on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Ha Jin, author of ‘Waiting,’ returns to short stories The characters in Ha Jin’s new story collection often speak in awkward, tinny phrases, saying things like “I felt as if a dozen awls were stabbing my heart” and “the little fox spirit really knows how to charm her man.” Like the author, the characters in [...]
Through Letters, a Family History Unveiled
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Living on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
A reporter’s seven-year correspondence with his 93-year-old cousin, illustrator Sam Fink, reveals a family’s past and the beauty in old-fashioned letter writing Shortly before Christmas 2002, I received my first letter from Sam Fink. On the envelope, he had drawn an elephant and colored it with orange, yellow, brown and blue crayons. “Good to remember. [...]
People Hear With Skin as Well as Their Ears
Posted in Health on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
We hear with our ears, right? Yes, but scientists have known for years that we also hear with our eyes. In a landmark study published in 1976, researchers found that people integrated both auditory cues and visual ones, like mouth and face movements, when they heard speech. That study, and many that followed, raised this [...]
An Anthology Rooted in the Real
Posted in Literature on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
“The Best American Short Stories 2009″ Edited by Alice Sebold Mariner/Houghton Mifflin, 347 pages Alice Fulton’s “The Shadow Table” is collected in “The Best American Short Stories 2009,” but it gestated for years before finally seeing the light of day, the author says in the contributors’ notes. Set in the 1920s as part of Ms. [...]
How Necessary Is Stretching?
Posted in Health, tagged Stretching on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
For research published earlier this year, physiologists at Nebraska Wesleyan University had distance-running members of the school’s track and field team sit on the ground, legs stretched before them, feet pressed firmly up against a box; then the runners, both men and women, bent forward, reaching as far as they could past their toes. This [...]
Learning His Body, Learning to Dance
Posted in Health, Living, tagged Cerebral palsy on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The choreographer Tamar Rogoff doing “body work” with Gregg Mozgala, who has cerebral palsy and for whom she has created a dance piece. Gregg Mozgala, a 31-year-old actor with cerebral palsy, had 12 years of physical therapy while he was growing up. But in the last eight months, a determined choreographer with an unconventional résumé [...]
Watching the Brain Learn
Posted in Other on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
How do people learn complex new skills, such as juggling and reading? Practice makes perfect, but how? Two groups of neuroscientists using MRI brain imaging announced last month that they were able to see changes inside the brains of people after mastering a new skill. The big surprise is that the part of the brain [...]
Museum Is Displaying Treasures of the Other Evolution Pioneer
Posted in Natural sciences, tagged Alfred Russell Wallace, Charles Darwin on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
COLLECTION A cabinet belonging to Alfred Russel Wallace, who had the idea of natural selection independent of Charles Darwin, will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History. One day in spring 1979, Robert E. Heggestad walked into a small antique shop in Arlington, Va. Mr. Heggestad, a young lawyer from Iowa, was [...]
Artery Disease in Some Very Old Patients
Posted in Health, History, tagged Atherosclerosis on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
MODERN MEETS ANCIENT CT scans of some Egyptian mummies, like the one being done on this priest, reveal signs of atherosclerosis. The Book of Exodus in the King James translation of the Bible describes a pharaoh who “hardened his heart” against the exodus of the Jews from ancient Egypt. But if a research letter published [...]
Scientists Find Molecular Trigger That Helps Prevent Aging and Disease
Posted in Health on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
New research has unraveled a molecular puzzle to determine that within certain parameters, a lower-calorie diet slows the development of some age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, as well as the aging process. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine set out to address a question that has been challenging scientists for years: How does [...]
Physicists Move One Step Closer to Quantum Computing
Posted in Physical sciences, tagged Quantum computing on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in electrically controlling quantum states of electrons, a step that could help in the development of quantum computing. The work is published online November 20 on the Science Express Web site. The researchers have demonstrated the ability to electrically manipulate, at gigahertz rates, the quantum [...]
Dmitry Medvedev’s building project
Posted in Economy and business, Politics, tagged Russia on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Russian modernisation The Russian president talks up modernisation, but to little purpose “STABILITY” was once the buzzword in Russia; now it is “modernisation”. In reality, there is little of either. Russia’s future is less predictable and modernisation more elusive than either was a decade ago. Yet the shift in language creates expectations of change. And [...]
The gloves go on
Posted in Economy and business, Politics, tagged Poverty on November 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Fighting poverty in emerging markets Lessons from Brazil, China and India AT THE recent food summit in Rome, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva donned a pair of bright-red boxing gloves labelled “Hunger Free” and waved to the cameras. They were his prize—if that is the right term—for Brazil’s success in topping a league table [...]
