The U.N. Population Fund reveals that true concern for humans on Earth means not producing any. Forget about saving the environment for the sake of your children. It turns out that if you really care about the planet, you probably shouldn’t have any children to begin with. That’s the thrust of the 2009 report from [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Life: It’s Killing the Planet
Posted in Other, tagged Population on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
How Big Pharma Profits from Swine Flu
Posted in Economy and business, Health, tagged Swine flu on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The Vaccine Renaissance The Novartis swine flu vaccine Celtura Once spurned by drugmakers as low-margin and risky, vaccines to fight diseases such as H1N1 are now a growing business for Novartis and others. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis gave US efforts to combat pandemic influenzas a boost with the Nov. 24 opening of the country’s first [...]
The Difficulties of Predicting Climate Change
Posted in Energy and Environment on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Modeling the Future Climate researchers use some of the most powerful computers in the world to run their models. Still, the sheer amount of data that must be crunched mandates that many details are simply left out. How accurate are the results? “Give me ten parameters, and I’ll simulate an elephant for you. Give me [...]
At hospitals, gastric distress is a part of the holiday tradition
Posted in Health, tagged Thanksgiving on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
As millions sit down to Thanksgiving dinners, emergency room staffs are getting ready for a busy day. ‘It never fails,’ one doctor says. Take this as a cautionary tale. The man was covered in sweat, clutching his chest, when he entered an emergency room on Thanksgiving some years back. His words are fixed in the [...]
In Snails and Snakes, Features to Delight Darwin
Posted in Natural sciences, tagged Darwin on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
DIFFERENCES In this pair of land snails, the one on the right, with the shell opening on the right, is the more common of the species. Charles Darwin seems to have had a boundless interest in the many forms life takes on earth. He could find something about any animal or plant that piqued his [...]
Web-wide war
Posted in Computers, Economy and business, tagged Bing, Google, Microsoft, News Corporation, Web 2.0 on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Bing and online newspapers Microsoft opens a new front in its battle with Google EVEN technology pundits can sometimes be right. Jason Calacanis, an entrepreneur and noted agent provocateur, recently argued that there is a simple solution to the woes of both Microsoft and big media companies. The world’s largest software firm should pay Time [...]
Redmen of Alcatraz
Posted in Living, tagged Thanksgiving on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
From the archive 1969: A Thanksgiving protest on Alcatraz One of last week’s Thanksgiving celebrations reversed the seventeenth-century original. This time it was white men who brought turkeys to hungry redskins and it was on the west coast of America not the east: the Indians have been starved almost off their native continent. To dramatise [...]
Not just Hitler’s fool
Posted in Conflicts and wars, History, tagged Clara Petacci, Hitler, Italy, Mussolini on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
History of Italian fascism A mistress’s diary shows Benito Mussolini was a rabid anti-Semite The Duce’s lover, and chronicler “THESE disgusting Jews, I must destroy them all.” Adolf Hitler’s dinnertime conversation? No. This is one of several anti-Semitic rants ascribed to Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, by his mistress, Clara Petacci. Both were executed by [...]
Holder’s decision is embarrassing and offensive
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Law on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Two weeks ago, in the Friday news black hole with President Obama safely on the way to Asia, Attorney General Eric Holder announced his decision to award five Sept. 11 conspirators, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the full rights of American citizens at a federal trial. Holder perhaps hoped the tides of the cable cycle would [...]
When Dreams Take Flight
Posted in Living on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
IN my 20s I was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, and I remember the holiday season as the most exhausting of the year. But I loved my job. From the first day Northwest hired me in Minneapolis in 1969, I tried to be a model flight attendant, to develop the qualities my operations manual [...]
An Evolve-By Date
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Natural sciences, tagged Darwin, Evolution on November 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Yesterday, Tuesday, Nov. 24, was The Big Day: it was exactly 150 years since Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was first published. In this book, Darwin described how evolution by natural selection works — and presented a huge body of evidence, drawn from every field of biology then known, that evolution can account [...]
Today in History – November 24
Posted in This day in history, tagged November 24 on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 24, the 328th day of 2009. There are 37 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Nov. 24, 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. On this date In 1531, the second Peace [...]
Words And Swords
Posted in History, tagged Byzantium on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
After Rome fell, Byzantium lasted another 1,000 years. How? In A.D. 395, Roman Emperor Theodosius I split his realm between his two sons, giving the Western empire—with Rome at its heart—to Honorius, and the eastern half—Byzantium—to his brother, Arkadios. Honorius seemed to get the better deal. Byzantium was a disjointed empire made up of regions [...]
Not-So-Silent Cal Wrote With Eloquence
Posted in Editorials and opinion, History, tagged Calvin Coolidge on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Recently, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, gushed that “if you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.” He skipped right over Calvin Coolidge. Most Americans can [...]
Onstage, Terrified
Posted in Living, tagged Public speaking on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Practice, arrive early and remember that the audience’s expectations are low. It is always reassuring to read about the performance anxiety of the successful—whether it’s a star pitcher feeling jittery before starting a World Series game or a concert violinist who admits to going into a meditative trance before walking out onstage. The stress of [...]
Happy Franksgiving
Posted in Editorials and opinion, History, tagged Thanksgiving on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
How FDR tried, and failed, to change a national holiday. Last I checked, Thanksgiving is still scheduled to take place tomorrow. The economic news may be gloomy, but unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, President Barack Obama has not tinkered with the date of the holiday. In 1939, FDR decided to move [...]
And the Fair Land
Posted in Editorials and opinion, tagged Thanksgiving on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
‘For all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators.’ Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful. This [...]
The Desolate Wilderness
Posted in Editorials and opinion, tagged Thanksgiving on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
A chronicle of the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton. Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof: So they left that goodly and pleasant city [...]
The Uncertainty Economy
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Tim Geithner is not the Democrats’ biggest problem. Preparing to write about yesterday’s downward revision in third-quarter GDP, we were tempted to say the Obama Administration has hit a speed-bump on its promised exit out of the recession. But it is the American economy that has hit a speed bump, and on the evidence of [...]
A Liberal Thanksgiving
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Thanksgiving on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
We hear much less nonsense about the wisdom of markets these days. The positive psychologists tell us that being thankful makes us healthy and happy. For entirely selfish reasons, it seems, we need to show lots of gratitude as we go through life. And with Thanksgiving coming up, I figure it’s time to get with [...]
Don’t disturb the bears
Posted in Law, Weird cases on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
A disturbed young man is prosecuted for unlawfully entering the grizzly bear enclosure at San Francisco zoo The punishment for someone who unlawfully enters an enclosure with a dangerous animal is usually delivered without the involvement of the legal system. But when a 21-year-old man recently entered the grizzly bear pit at San Francisco zoo, [...]
You can put a price on happiness, and new study says it’s a bargain
Posted in Health, Living on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Money can’t buy me love, The Beatles sang, and the best things in life are free – but according to new research, they couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only is the happiness of falling in love indistinguishable from that of winning the pools but, says a leading Australian economist, it’s worth a lot less. [...]
The Biology Behind the Milk of Human Kindness
Posted in Health on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
As the festival of mandatory gratitude looms into view, allow me to offer a few suggestions on what, exactly, you should be thankful for. Be thankful that, on at least one occasion, your mother did not fend off your father with a pair of nunchucks, but instead allowed enough contact to facilitate your happy conception. [...]
Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email
Posted in Computers, Law on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Companies Face Tougher Tests to Justify Monitoring Workers’ Personal Accounts; Rulings Hinge on ‘Expectation of Privacy’ Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email. But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email [...]
A Nasty Way With Words
Posted in Literature on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
A survey of literary envy, irritation, resentment, condescension and contempt “Poisoned Pens” Edited by Gary Dexter Portly G.K. Chesterton once remarked to the exiguous George Bernard Shaw: “To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England.” To which Shaw replied: “To look at you, anyone would think you caused it.” “Poisoned [...]
What Happens to Immigrants Who Don’t Make It?
Posted in Living, tagged Immigration on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Dying to Live in Europe Would-be illegal immigrants are taken to Malta after being rescued from a sinking dinghy. Thousands of people have died in recent years trying to get to “Fortress Europe.” Not one single government in Europe registers how many immigrants die attempting to get across its borders. Nor do they try to [...]
Yes, she can: Palin has a shot at the presidency
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Palin on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
President Sarah Palin. To many pundits and late-night comedians, this sounds like a punch line, and to many die-hard Democrats it sounds like a reason to leave the country. Yet while the conventional wisdom has it that Palin is too badly damaged to make a serious run in 2012 — and I agree that her [...]
The currency quarrel
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, tagged China, Currency, United States on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
China won’t change on command. America must retake control of its own financial destiny. BY NOW it is a cliche that the United States has no more important bilateral relationship than that with China. Yet in the wake of President Obama’s sometimes awkward visit to Beijing, it is becoming clear that, in one crucial respect, [...]
Death to law
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Human rights, tagged Russia on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
What Russia’s ‘legal nihilism’ means in practice RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Dmitry Medvedev keeps giving speeches about ending the lawlessness and corruption that have overtaken his country. That would be encouraging — except that Russians who try to act on the president’s words keep turning up dead. The latest victim of what Mr. Medvedev calls “legal nihilism” [...]
Superpower without a partner
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Like comets hurtling at one another from opposite points in outer space, two different phenomena in different parts of the world soared into public awareness last week. Separately, they might not have had cosmic importance. Put together, however, they could prove an interesting harbinger of things to come. In China, President Obama met his counterpart, [...]
