Software that blurs a writer’s meaning is not progress. We all know that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but technology is about to deliver its newest mixed blessing: Soon we won’t be able to tell a book by its author. Last week one of the large textbook publishers, Macmillan, announced new software [...]
Archive for February, 2010
You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Author
Posted in Computers, Editorials and opinion on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Iran’s New World Order
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Iran on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Its nuclear program is part of a larger plan to radically reduce U.S. power. Ahmad Khatami, an influential cleric and mentor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently said publicly that the United States has to “regard Iran as a great power in the political sphere. The people of Iran have realized there is nothing you [...]
Congress Tries to Break Hawaii in Two
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, Politics, tagged Hawaii on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
A racial spoils precedent that could lead to new ‘tribal’ demands across the U.S. Last week, the House of Representatives, in a largely party-line vote, passed the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. Popularly known as “the Akaka bill,” this piece of legislation might turn out to be this Congress’s single most calamitous decision. The bill [...]
Why Financial Reform Is Stalled
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Partisan gridlock is not the reason. The administration’s plans are flawed, and they’re encountering resistance from both sides of the aisle in Congress. According to the media’s narrative about Washington, the Obama administration’s financial regulation proposals have not gotten through Congress because the town is gridlocked by partisan warfare. It’s a simplistic story that does [...]
Viva Zapata
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Cuba on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
A Cuban dissident is murdered while Latin leaders schmooze with Castro. Mexican President Felipe Calderón wore a broad smile as he warmly greeted Cuba’s Raúl Castro at the Rio Group summit on the posh Mexican Riviera last week. The two men, dressed in neatly pressed guayabera shirts, shook hands as Mr. Calderón, with no small [...]
Warning: Your reality is out of date
Posted in Other on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Introducing the mesofact This artist rendering provided by the European South Observatory shows some of the 32 new planets astronomers found outside our solar system When people think of knowledge, they generally think of two sorts of facts: facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest or the capital of the United States, [...]
Uncommon Knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged February 28 2010 on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
What raises murder rates A recent analysis of global homicide rates came up with some interesting conclusions. It turns out that the proportion of young males, population density, degree of urbanization, and income inequality are not significant predictors of the homicide rate. Instead, ethnic and linguistic diversity, education, and the quality of governing institutions were [...]
Tie what on?
Posted in The Word, tagged February 28 2010 on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Unraveling a euphemism for ‘getting drunk’ Etymological sleuthing isn’t one of my usual pursuits, but last month, as I browsed an old slang dictionary, I stumbled onto a clue that seemed too promising to ignore. A nightcap, said John Russell Bartlett’s 1848 “Dictionary of Americanisms,” is “A glass of hot toddy or gin-sling taken before [...]
The week ahead
Posted in The Week ahead, tagged February 28 2010 on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
An election in deeply divided Iraq • IRAQIS finally go to the polls on Sunday March 7th to vote in their long-delayed national elections. But with many candidates barred from standing because of former ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, sectarian rivalries have once more come to the fore. It is far from certain that [...]
And the Orchestra Played On
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
The other day, I found myself rummaging through a closet, searching for my old viola. This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend the afternoon. I hadn’t given a thought to the instrument in years. I barely remembered where it was, much less how to play it. But I had just gotten word that my childhood [...]
Muslims Won’t Play Together
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
WE may scoff at the idea that the Olympic Games have anything to do with the “endeavor to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace,” as the Olympic charter enshrines as its ideal. But at least nations across the world were able to put aside differences for two weeks of [...]
Learning From the Sin of Sodom
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living, Religion on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.” Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become [...]
Handbook suggests that deviations from ‘normality’ are disorders
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Living on February 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Peter De Vries, America’s wittiest novelist, died 17 years ago, but his discernment of this country’s cultural foibles still amazes. In a 1983 novel, he spotted the tendency of America’s therapeutic culture to medicalize character flaws: “Once terms like identity doubts and midlife crisis become current,” De Vries wrote, “the reported cases of them increase [...]
What’s Wrong With ‘Eating Animals’
Posted in Living on February 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Somewhere along the way, Jonathan Safran Foer or his publishers must have realized that the case he makes against American animal farming doesn’t apply tidily to Britain (or to most of Europe). So he’s added a “Preface to the U.K. Edition,” in which he claims that “a remarkably similar story could be told about animal [...]
Depression’s Upside
Posted in Health, Living on February 27, 2010 | Comments Off
The Victorians had many names for depression, and Charles Darwin used them all. There were his “fits” brought on by “excitements,” “flurries” leading to an “uncomfortable palpitation of the heart” and “air fatigues” that triggered his “head symptoms.” In one particularly pitiful letter, written to a specialist in “psychological medicine,” he confessed to “extreme spasmodic [...]
Webinar
Posted in On Language, tagged February 28 2010 on February 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Webinar (Web + seminar) seems like a fine neologism for a seminar offered online. A blend of two common terms, it’s immediately understood by most people. I’ve been taking Webinars lately; I like them and appreciate having a handy word for them — even though I’m often inclined to object to linguistic “innovations.” Lewis Carroll [...]
Acquired Taste
Posted in Living on February 27, 2010 | Comments Off
One rainy afternoon this past December, while visiting my cousin Martin in Ecuador, I found myself surrounded by eight grinning, scantily clad members of the Shuar, an Amazonian tribe with the distinction of having shrunk its last human head during the Reagan administration. I wasn’t in any kind of danger — just the opposite, in [...]
Iron-Horse Stampede
Posted in History on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The rise and fall and possible resurgence of the railroad When Warren Buffett announced last fall that Berkshire Hathaway would buy the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, some kibitzers wondered what he saw in a business based on 19th-century technologies. The answer, for those who care to look, can be found in Christian Wolmar’s “Blood, [...]
The Italian Slow Cooker
Posted in Living on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Culinary progress—like progress in general—is sometimes a matter of rediscovering the obvious by tripping over it. On one of her visits to Rome, cookbook author Michele Scicolone looked into the window of a neighborhood restaurant and noticed a “large, round greenish glass bottle” sitting over a wood-fueled stove. Each morning a cook would fill the [...]
An Expert Rates the Skills of Fictional Spies
Posted in Literature on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Frederick P. Hitz, former inspector general of the CIA, rates the spycraft of his four favorite agents Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’ Kim has excellent cover for action; even though he is Anglo-Irish, he assumes native dress and darkens his face so he can pass as an Indian. Creighton Sahib—his British employer in the Ethnological Survey, which [...]
A Perfectly Framed Assassination
Posted in Conflicts and wars on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Robert Baer on the current state of spycraft. Some of the identity photographs of suspects in the killing of Mahmoud al Mabhouh released by the Dubai police on Wednesday. It was a little after 9 p.m. when a [...]
Five Best Historical Mystery Novels
Posted in Literature on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
These historical mystery novels are superb mixtures of the scholarly and the suspenseful, says David B. Rivkin Jr. 1. Alexandria By Lindsey Davis St. Martin’s/Minotaur, 2009 Set during the first-century reign of the Roman emperor Vespasian, Lindsey Davis’s “Alexandria” is an especially captivating entry in the historical-mystery series featuring Vespasian’s “informer,” sleuth extraordinaire Marcus Didius [...]
Is the Dismal Science Really a Science?
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Some macroeconomists say if we just study the numbers long enough we’ll be able to design better policy. That’s like the sign in the bar: Free Beer Tomorrow. For an economist, these are the best of times and the worst of times. We live in the best of times because everyone wants to understand what [...]
The Great Condescender
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
No one holds a candle to Barack Obama when it comes to making smart liberals feel superior. An exchange between The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait and Commentary’s John Podhoretz vindicates our decision not to watch yesterday’s so-called health-care summit. In her column today, Peggy Noonan–who certainly earned her pay for the week by sitting through [...]
The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447
Posted in Other on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Death in the Atlantic Graphic: The last four minutes of Air France flight 447. The crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris last year is one of the most mysterious accidents in the history of aviation. After months of investigation, a clear picture has emerged of what went wrong. The reconstruction of [...]
German Woman Writes Ground-Breaking Account of WW2 Rape
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Living on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Harrowing Memoir Gabriele Köpp was repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers in 1945, when she was just 15. Now, at the age of 80, she has become the first German woman to write a book under her own name about the sexual violence she experienced during World War II. By the time a person turns 80, [...]
Danish Paper Settles Muhammad Cartoon Issue
Posted in Media, Politics, Religion on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Politiken Corrects The Muslim world was outraged when the Muhammad cartoons first appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands Posten. The Danish daily Politiken, which partners with SPIEGEL ONLINE, has reached a settlement with the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, apologizing for the offence caused by the Muhammad caricatures republished by the paper. Not all politicians [...]
Libya’s Gadhafi Declares Holy War Against Switzerland
Posted in Politics, Strange but true on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Alpine Jihad Gadhafi spoke behind bullet-proof glass in Benghazi, Libya. The feud between Libya and Switzerland has been simmering for months. On Thursday, Moammar Gadhafi went on the offensive, calling for a jihad against the Alpine country. In a rambling address on Thursday, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called for holy war against Switzerland. The bizarre [...]
Christianity’s Modern-Day Martyrs
Posted in Religion on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Victims of Radical Islam The rise of Islamic extremism is putting increasing pressure on Christians in Muslim countries, who are the victims of murder, violence and discrimination. Christians are now considered the most persecuted religious group around the world. Paradoxically, their greatest hope could come from moderate political Islam. By SPIEGEL staff. Kevin Ang is [...]
Signs of life
Posted in Other on February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
As the search for alien life turns 50, its practitioners find new methods Speak to me! HALF a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens. He suggested the following figures should be multiplied: how many stars are formed in the galaxy [...]
