When I can’t sleep, I think about what I’m missing. I glance over at my wife and watch her eyelids flutter. I listen to the steady rhythm of her breath. I wonder if she’s dreaming and, if so, what story she’s telling to herself to pass the time. (The mind is like a shark — [...]
Archive for March, 2010
Why We Need to Dream
Posted in Living on March 21, 2010 | Comments Off
The clouds of unknowing
Posted in Energy and Environment on March 21, 2010 | Comments Off
There are lots of uncertainties in climate science. But that does not mean it is fundamentally wrong FOR anyone who thinks that climate science must be unimpeachable to be useful, the past few months have been a depressing time. A large stash of e-mails from and to investigators at the Climatic Research Unit of [...]
No
Posted in On Language, tagged March 21 2010 on March 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Two of the most basic words in the English language, yes and no, are locked in a constant struggle, embodying abstract forces of agreement and opposition, positivity and negativity, acceptance and denial. Just look at the recent Congressional wrangling over health care reform, where the words have come to stand for much more than simply [...]
I, Translator
Posted in Computers, Language on March 21, 2010 | Comments Off
EVERYBODY has his own tale of terrible translation to tell — an incomprehensible restaurant menu in Croatia, a comically illiterate warning sign on a French beach. “Human-engineered” translation is just as inadequate in more important domains. In our courts and hospitals, in the military and security services, underpaid and overworked translators make muddles out of [...]
America is neither left nor right but centrist
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 21, 2010 | Comments Off
It will surprise few to learn that the big picture often slips unnoticed past Washington’s window. The tea party movement — organic, angry and thriving — is only the most recent to take insiders by surprise. Out yonder, among shuttered storefronts and leaner lifestyles, the tea party has been a predictable response to supersized government [...]
Valencia Burns Giant Sculptures at Annual Fallas Festival
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
The annual Fallas festival is taking place this week in Valencia on the Spanish coast. During the street parties and parades, giant sculptures are exhibited, judged in a competition and then ceremoniously burnt. The annual Fallas festival is taking place this week in Valencia, on the Spanish coast. During the street parties and parades, giant [...]
Singing for Your Supper, and Bed
Posted in Living on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Stuttgart, Germany’s performance hotel may be the only lodging of its kind in the world. Part of an art project, a previously derelict house in the city suburbs now offers all comers a bed for the night — and they can pay for their accommodation by putting on a performance of some kind. Any kind. [...]
Previously Unknown J.D. Salinger Letters Discovered in New York
Posted in Literature on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
He was considered a loner and a misanthrope, but J.D. Salinger, who died recently, also had a warm and affectionate side. Previously undiscovered letters he wrote to an old army friend, which have been seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE, offer fascinating insights into the private life of the reclusive US author. Werner Kleeman is a former [...]
At Midnight, All the Doctors…
Posted in Living on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
“I’m a sleep doctor.” Silence. There is a pause in the conversation, which is common. Sleep medicine, as a field, is new enough that people are often taken off guard: “You do what?” The disheveled older man, who seems to have Ritz crackers woven into the fabric of his tie, leans closer. He appears to [...]
Books About Scandals
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Now it can be told: Henry E. Scott’s favorite books about scandals 1. The Informant By Kurt Eichenwald Broadway, 2000 More than 5,000 book titles on Amazon include the word “scandal”—that says a lot about the theme’s drawing power, but some of the best books on the subject are more subtly titled. Kurt Eichenwald’s “The [...]
The Story Within a Landscape
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Adam Elsheimer’s ‘The Flight Into Egypt’ is a small gem When the National Galleries of Scotland mounted an exhibition of Adam Elsheimer’s paintings in 2006, curators subtitled the show “Devil in the Detail” and provided a free magnifying glass in the £6 ticket price. For the cover of the accompanying catalog, they chose an inky, [...]
The Health Vote and the Constitution—II
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Law, Politics on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
The House can’t approve the Senate bill in the same legislation by which it approves changes to the Senate bill. In just a few days the House of Representatives is expected to act on two different pieces of legislation: the Senate version of the health-care bill (the one that contains the special deals, “Cadillac” insurance [...]
The ObamaCare Crossroads
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on March 20, 2010 | Comments Off
The vote is really about who commands the country’s medical resources. With the House’s climactic vote on ObamaCare tomorrow, Democrats are on the cusp of a profound and historic mistake, comparable in our view to the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act. Everyone is preoccupied now with the politics, but ultimately at stake [...]
The pope should say plainly and loudly that sexual abuse of children is not just sinful. It is criminal IT COULD hardly get worse. Sex scandals are breaking over the Catholic church with such fury that the Vatican has felt bound to defend Pope Benedict XVI himself. Children at some Catholic schools in Germany have [...]
Eric Holder, the attorney general of ineptness
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Attorney General Eric Holder is controversial on the left for preserving much of the Bush administration’s legal structure for conducting the war on terror. He is controversial on the right for overturning portions of that structure in ways that seem both clueless and reckless. But Holder is the most endangered member of the Obama Cabinet [...]
How Obama created the Biden incident
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Why did President Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations? And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in Israel’s Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a [...]
Now for the Slaughter
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Politics on March 19, 2010 | Comments Off
On the road to Demon Pass, our leader encounters a Baier. Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he’s having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he’s been promising for a year will [...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called the sexual abuse of children “abhorrent.” After weeks of keeping silent on the issue, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday spoke out on the mounting allegations of sexual abuse within the German Catholic Church. Also on Wednesday, a Church representative admitted that some cases of abuse had been suppressed. [...]
Nathanael and the Damsel
Posted in Literature on March 19, 2010 | Comments Off
When the ‘Day of the Locust’ author met the ‘My Sister Eileen’ inspiration. Inept at all things mechanical and athletical, Nathanael West was the world’s worst driver. He would let his wife, Eileen McKenney, do the honors until they got close to their house in Los Angeles, but then, fearing that he’d be seen in [...]
Where did all the love go?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 18, 2010 | Comments Off
Barack Obama has lost patience with Israel. But neither side dares risk a break-up IT HAS been like a lovers’ tiff without the love—quickly tamped down but with none of the kissing and making up, and no soothing of the underlying rage. As Palestinian violence flared in Jerusalem, Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, [...]
Assets on the other side
Posted in Law on March 18, 2010 | Comments Off
Mexico’s drugs gangs are getting ever more clever Smells funny ONE case that sticks out, says Jay Abbott, is that of Margarita Crispin. Mr Abbott is the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s El Paso bureau, and Ms Crispin was a customs agent working at the busy port of entry between El Paso, [...]
Where Bad News Is No News
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Nigeria on March 18, 2010 | Comments Off
I’VE heard it said that we Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. We’re also accused of being passive about issues that would stir up revolutions in other countries. For instance, it’s been just over a week since ethno-religious violence left hundreds dead around Jos, a city in central Nigeria, but the slaughtering of our [...]
Sex Scandals to Learn By
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 18, 2010 | Comments Off
Let’s consider the story of Representative Eric Massa, a freshman Democrat from upstate New York who made headlines recently when he resigned from office amid talk about sexual harassment of male staffers. Massa’s defense was that the questionable conduct was boisterous horseplay by an old ex-Navy officer and five of his single male aides, who [...]
The Health-Care Wars Are Only Beginning
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
The president’s health plan won’t solve a problem. It will be the start of bitter fights over funding and policy that will consume the nation for decades to come On Dec. 7, 1941, an announcement was made during the football game between the hometown Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles. All the generals and admirals [...]
There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Deem’
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Politics on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
Dems pushing ObamaCare look increasingly desperate and creepy. Democrats trying to force through ObamaCare over the will of the voters are transforming the House of Representatives into a procedural funhouse hall of mirrors. “House Republicans announced a plan Tuesday that would force Democrats to vote on whether they should have a vote,” the Washington Post [...]
Square Dancing
Posted in Mathematics on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
I bet I can guess your favorite math subject in high school. It was geometry. So many people I’ve met over the years have expressed affection for that subject. Arithmetic and algebra — not many takers there. But geometry, well, there’s something about it that brings a twinkle to the eye. Is it because geometry [...]
Seeing in the Dark
Posted in Living on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
For me, sleep has never come easy — perhaps because I’ve never let it. I can trace my reluctance to succumb to unconsciousness as far back as kindergarten, when Mrs. Casterol inked a firm “X” in the box marked “NO” next to “Sleeps at Naptime.” On the floor, lined up alphabetically on our blankets in [...]
Good Night and Tough Luck
Posted in Living on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
Getting a good night’s sleep is actually a lot more complicated than one would think. Usually the trouble starts with my having to use the bathroom. Even though I am 38 years old, I still find myself hoping the urge will just pass. Which it doesn’t. Another terrible nuisance: midnight hypochondria. In the light of [...]
In the Night Kitchen
Posted in Other on March 17, 2010 | Comments Off
When I was a teenager, my alarm clock went off at 4:25 every morning for swim practice. My routine was this: Still in bed, replace pajamas with the two damp swimsuits drying on the bedroom doorknob and pull them up halfway. Under the covers, don track pants, three T-shirts, a sweatshirt and two pairs of [...]
Pope Benedict XVI attending a concert by the Regensburg Domspatzen with his brother Georg Ratzinger at the Vatican. Ratzinger claims never to have known about sexual abuse that took place at the choir school just prior to the time when he took over the school’s leadership. Allegations of sexual abuse in the German Catholic Church [...]
