The Parsi bodies are piling up in India. Parsis are modern adherents of the ancient Zoroastrian faith that emerged in the 6th century B.C. in Persia, predating Christianity and Islam. According to many scholars, Zoroastrianism influenced these religions and Judaism with its fundamental concept of a dualistic world of light versus darkness, with a good [...]
Archive for April, 2010
A Crisis for the Faithful
Posted in Religion on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Hurry Up and Wait
Posted in Living on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Seeing life as a pattern of furious blasts surrounded by oceans of inactivity. Like most white-collar workers, I often feel as if I write email nonstop. Every minute at my desk brings another message to deal with: an editor wondering about a deadline, a friend asking about lunch, weird quasi-spam from Facebook or Twitter. But [...]
Have Gun, Must Flaunt It?
Posted in Living on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Like a fly on a birthday cake, the subject of open carry—legally wearing a gun in public—keeps landing in the news and nobody can swat it down. Those who would like to be rid of it range from some of the most ardent gun-controllers to some of the fiercest believers in the Second Amendment right [...]
The North Korea Endgame
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
However difficult, unification must be the ultimate objective. As the U.S. and its allies frame plans for dealing with North Korea in the aftermath of the recent sinking of a South Korean warship, political leaders must recognize that security will depend not just upon deterring Kim Jong Il today. Northeast Asia’s future security—and America’s—will be [...]
The Big Alienation
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Uncontrolled borders and Washington’s lack of self-control We are at a remarkable moment. We have an open, 2,000-mile border to our south, and the entity with the power to enforce the law and impose safety and order will not do it. Wall Street collapsed, taking Main Street’s money with it, and the government can’t really [...]
Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages
Posted in Language on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Valnea Smilovic, 59, left, with her mother, 92, in Queens. They still speak Vlashki, a language spoken by the Istrians. The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago. At [...]
Art Dealer Admits Lying to FBI Over Faked $2 Million Picasso
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
A West Hollywood art dealer pleaded guilty today to selling a fake Pablo Picasso drawing of a woman in a blue hat for $2 million, according to the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. This fake Pablo Picasso drawing of a woman in a blue hat was for sale for $2 million. The dealer, Tatiana Khan, [...]
How Parents Became Cool
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
TV Finds Teens Like Their Moms And Attempts to Flatter Both After she is caught stealing designer sunglasses, Hanna, a popular blond teen on the new TV series “Pretty Little Liars,” shares a heartfelt moment with her understanding and fashionable single mother. The two agree to put the shoplifting incident behind them. Informing the scene [...]
The Rake’s Progress
Posted in Conflicts and wars on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
A virtuoso ladies’ man and stealer of secrets. The skills were related. In 1935 Adolf Hitler renounced the limits on German militarization that had been imposed by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I. Hitler publicly introduced conscription to vastly increase the size of the German army; more secretly he launched a massive rearmament [...]
Bing Crosby, Beyond His Greatest Hits
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Bing Crosby wasn’t the single most important figure in 20th century popular music—and, in particular, the most influential singer of the great American songbook—it’s difficult to know who would be. He cast a giant shadow over the entire landscape of American music, touching upon the pop icons who followed him (Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and [...]
Child of Impressionism
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
“In my view,” the great French director Jean Renoir (1894–1979) wrote in his autobiography, “originality and success are strangers to one another; but I also hold that originality, despite appearances, will end by making itself felt, and that easy success is soon forgotten.” The now-towering reputation of his glittering social critique “La Règle du jeu” [...]
Sleep: Loss
Posted in Living on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
I used to think that the only thing worse than having insomnia is having insomnia next to someone who falls fast asleep and stays soundlessly so till morning. That was my life for 16 years. I lived with a man who slept, yes, like a baby. There were nights, many nights, when I literally wanted [...]
Traveling a Primeval Medical Landscape
Posted in Health on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
The world was young, leafy green and overrun with dinosaurs so many eons ago that stories from prehistoric times are mostly fantasy and supposition. But the medical world was exactly that young, primitive and full of unusual creatures barely a century ago, giving historians ample fodder for true stories stranger than any fantasy. Few of [...]
Fish versus Flax
Posted in Health on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Q. How does flaxseed oil compare with fish oil in nutritional benefits? A. Flaxseed oil and fish oil are believed to have similar nutritional benefits, but it takes much more flaxseed oil to obtain these possible benefits, said Dr. Sheldon S. Hendler, co-editor of the “PDR for Nutritional Supplements,” the standard reference in the field. [...]
Three-Spined Stickleback Proves a Purposeful Cannibal
Posted in Natural sciences on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
The three spined stickleback makes fine-tuned decisions It’s a fact of life in the animal world that some fish (and birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, crustaceans — you name it) eat their young. The three-spined stickleback, a species found around much of the globe, is one such finned filial cannibal. The males, who care for the [...]
Insect May Make Moves to Survive the Harvest
Posted in Natural sciences on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
One thing about evolution — you never know what’s going to influence it. Take the European corn borer, for instance. Researchers have just made a strong case that a certain aspect of its behavior has evolved because of human harvesting of corn. The corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis, is a pest caterpillar that spends spring and [...]
Like Origami, Pollen Grains Fold Just So
Posted in Natural sciences on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
After it is released from a flower’s anther, a pollen grain walks a humidity tightrope. It dries up a bit as it travels through the air, the cellular material inside becoming dormant so it survives until it reaches the humid environment of another flower’s stigma. But it can’t become so dry that the material dies. [...]
Video Shows Chimpanzees Reacting to Death Like Humans
Posted in Natural sciences on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Rare video footage taken at a wildlife park has showed that chimpanzees react to the death of a group member just like humans do when a close relative dies, researchers said Monday. Videos of a group of four chimpanzees at Scotland’s Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park showed three of the animals caressing and grooming [...]
Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs
Posted in Other on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Some scientists say that although the series “The Big Bang Theory” is funny and scientifically accurate, they are put off by it. Others are lining up for guest spots on the show. Shudders and groans went around the blogs and coffee rooms of the physics world back in the summer of 2007, when CBS announced [...]
The Search for Genes Leads to Unexpected Places
Posted in Health on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
HUNTER Edward M. Marcotte and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have found hundreds of genes involved in human disorders. Edward M. Marcotte is looking for drugs that can kill tumors by stopping blood vessel growth, and he and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin recently found some good targets [...]
Researchers Find Rare Giant Worm Doesn’t Live Up to Its Billing
Posted in Natural sciences on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Once feared extinct, the giant Palouse earthworm, reputed to grow up to three feet long and smell like lilies, has been found alive. It turns out though, experts say, the worm is not a giant, nor does it have a lilylike scent. Researchers thought the translucent worm with the pink head, last seen in the [...]
Porn Didn’t Give Bernie Madoff His Start
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Surfing the Web is not the cause of the SEC’s problems. Ever since the dawn of the culture wars, when widespread obscenity seemed to symbolize all that was going wrong with America, no subject has furnished more demagogue gold than pornography. Of course, it backfires against the family values set on a fairly regular basis—the [...]
Is Financial Innovation the Enemy?
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Hedging against risk is hardly evidence of misbehavior. Whether Goldman is bad, very bad or very, very good depends on what business you think it should be in. But its troubles have also brought out the dime-store Jeremiahs declaiming on the perniciousness of “derivatives.” First off, no security is more derivative than a share of [...]
International Law and Order
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law, Politics on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
President Obama flirts with the ‘world court.’ Step by tentative step, the Obama Administration is getting closer to embracing the International Criminal Court. The White House won’t join the Hague-based body soon, but that’s its logical endpoint. Answerable to virtually no one, the ICC was created by the 1998 United Nations’s Rome Statute to prosecute [...]
It’s Only Called the Bully Pulpit
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Attacking the motives of critics is not presidential. President Barack Obama’s speech last week at New York Cooper’s Union showcased two unattractive verbal leitmotifs. The first was the president’s reliance on straw-man arguments. America, he said, need not “choose between two extremes . . . markets that are unfettered by even modest protections against crisis, [...]
Obama’s Jerusalem Stonewall
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
Demanding a construction freeze in the capital reverses decades of U.S. policy. Thanks to a deadlock engineered by the U.S. government, the Middle East peace process is stalled. President Obama began this stalemate last year when he called for a settlement freeze, and he escalates it now with a major change of American policy regarding [...]
Smart Aleck-in-Chief?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 28, 2010 | Comments Off
There may be good reasons for Obama to go negative, but doing so could wreck his presidency. Here’s a quiz: For which of the following reasons is the 44th president of the United States bad-mouthing Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, bankers, mine operators, insurers, Glenn Beck, the tea party, the Supreme Court [...]
Corriere della Sera Joins European Network
Posted in Media on April 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Italy’s Corriere della Sera on Tuesday joined the network of high quality European newspapers and magazines publishing in English created by Germany’s SPIEGEL ONLINE, Holland’s NRC Handelsblad and Denmark’s Politiken. Milan’s Piazza Del Duomo: The city is also home to the website of Italy’s newspaper of record, Corriere della Sera. Italy’s respected daily Corriere della [...]
How Russia really won
Posted in History on April 27, 2010 | Comments Off
It was not just the cold or the dogged spirit of the Russian people that forced Napoleon and his army to retreat Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace. By Dominic Lieven. Viking; 618 pages; $35.95. Allen Lane; £30. FEW wars in modern history produced national myths more durable [...]
A God-given way to communicate
Posted in Language on April 27, 2010 | Comments Off
Fears about the demise of Arabic are misplaced THE Arabic language is dying. Its disloyal children are ditching their mother tongue for English and French. It is stagnating in classrooms, mosques and the dusty corridors of government. Even such leaders as the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, and Jordan’s foreign-educated King Abdullah struggle with its [...]
