Following the passage of Democratic health-care reform legislation, President Obama assured the country that it was a “middle-of-the-road, centrist approach” instead of an intrusive, government power grab. But the government seems incapable of resisting the nannying impulse that undermines this claim. So health reform includes a 10 percent tax on the use of indoor tanning [...]
Archive for April, 2010
With health-care reform, it’s nag, nag, nag
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
A New Lizard? Well, New to Science
Posted in Natural sciences on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
A 6-foot monitor lizard discovered on Luzon Island in he Philippines The number of lizard species in the world — by most counts, around 4,000 — has just increased by one, with the announcement of a new species found on Luzon island in the Philippines. But this is not a reptile you’d want in a [...]
The Price of Assassination
Posted in Editorials and opinion on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me 20 years ago that America would someday be routinely firing missiles into countries it’s not at war with. For that matter, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me a few months ago that America would soon be plotting the assassination of an American citizen [...]
The Shakespeare Whodunit
Posted in Literature on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
A scholar tackles doubters on who wrote the plays; Hollywood weighs in. Doubts about who really wrote the works of William Shakespeare only emerged 200 years after his death in 1616, many scholars say. But today the controversy seems more alive than ever. A Hollywood feature about how the Earl of Oxford secretly wrote Shakespeare’s [...]
Please do not change your password
Posted in Computers on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
You were right: It’s a waste of your time. A study says much computer security advice is not worth following. To continue reading this story, enter your password now. If you do not have a password, please create one. It must contain a minimum of eight characters, including upper- and lower-case letters and one number. [...]
Is Anybody Out There?
Posted in Physical sciences on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
After 50 years, astronomers haven’t found any signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. They could be looking in the wrong places Fifty years ago this week, on April 8, 1960, a little-known astronomer named Frank Drake sat at the controls of an 85-foot radio telescope at an observatory in Green Bank, W.Va., and began to [...]
Rare Bird, Alive and Well and Living in Colombia
Posted in Natural sciences on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
The first-ever photograph of the Santa Marta sabrewing. The mountainous area around Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, is a biological hotspot of sorts, filled with bird species that are found nowhere else. “It’s just chock-full of these rare endemic birds,” said Michael Parr, vice president of American Bird Conservancy, which works to protect wild [...]
Man and the Volcano
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Other on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
We can’t stop it from erupting, but we can adapt to the danger. For the second time in three years, Iceland has been the unlikely source of economic mayhem in Europe. This time around, it was not Iceland’s banks that caused the trouble, but a volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier. For nearly a week, its [...]
Belief In Action
Posted in Religion on April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
In Hitler’s Germany, a Lutheran pastor chooses resistance and pays with his life. In April 1933, during the early months of Nazi rule in Germany, the “Aryan Paragraph,” as it came to be called, went into effect. A new law banned anyone of Jewish descent from government employment. Hitler’s assault on the Jews—already so evidently [...]
For a Nats fan, joy is in the losing
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Editorials and opinion on April 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Among my various idiosyncrasies, such as (twice) driving from Washington to New York to watch a world championship chess match, the most baffling to my friends is my steadfast devotion to the Washington Nationals. When I wax lyrical about having discovered my own private paradise at Nationals Park, eyes begin to roll and it is [...]
The GOP and the Politics of Financial Reform
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 22, 2010 | Comments Off
The Dodd bill favors Wall Street over Main Street. This is a season of discontent for congressional Democrats. This week’s Pew Poll holds plenty of bad news for them. Congress’s favorability ratings stand at 25%, the lowest in the poll’s nearly three decade-long history. The Pew Poll also found that the more upset independents are [...]
On Presidential Rhetoric
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Obama’s ad hominem method and the politics of polarization. President Obama came to office promising an era of political comity, but even he has had to concede that his first 15 months in office haven’t lived up to his campaign hope of transcending partisan divisions. While it takes two to tangle, we think the hyper-polarization [...]
Democrats at the Edge of the Cliff
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Democrats are spending trillions at the worst possible moment, with a new poll showing public trust in government at a historic low of 22%. There was always something eerie about the way the Democrats said their health-care legislation was what the American people had waited “70 years” for. Invoking the ghosts of 1939 was kind [...]
The decline of the Great Writ
Posted in Law on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
The sad history of habeas corpus Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire. By Paul Halliday. Harvard University Press; 502 pages; $39.95 and £29.95. WHEN discussing habeas corpus or the “Great Writ of Liberty”, as the most revered legal device of the Anglophone world is often known, jurists and civil libertarians tend to become misty-eyed. In [...]
The Pop Singer as Ultimate Predator
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, Editorials and opinion on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Take a quiz: Which “feminist” was the most-Googled female celebrity in 2009? Hints: Her debut album topped the charts internationally; and most recently, she has been flashing her private parts in her music video “Telephone,” a nearly 10-minute semipornographic psychedelic fantasy. She’s got enraptured critics buzzing: Is she a serious pop-artiste, like Andy Warhol? Is [...]
Breaking a Thai Taboo
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Thailand on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
The lese majeste law prevents a debate over the role of the monarchy. After the recent bloodletting in the streets of Bangkok, it’s unclear whether the Thai government is willing to start a serious dialogue with the “red shirt” forces that want a quick return to democracy. Last week, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya seemed to [...]
The Violence Card
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Bill Clinton plays politics with Timothy McVeigh. Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They’ve accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate “AstroTurf” effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs. [...]
Finally, a library for our first president
Posted in Editorials and opinion, History on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
It was fitting that the buzz around George Washington’s homestead recently was about the first president’s overdue library books, just as the estate’s guardians were plotting a new presidential library in the Founding Father’s name. It seems that the man who could not tell a lie failed to return a couple of volumes that were [...]
The Joy of –ext
Posted in The Word, tagged April 18 2010 on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Sexting, chexting, drexting…the rise of a salacious suffix As even the most sports-averse people know, Tiger Woods returned to golf this month, which was an excuse, however flimsy, for people to revisit the scandal that led to his hiatus from the sport in the first place. The Tiger Woods story has plenty of head-scratching details [...]
Obama’s nuclear strutting and fretting
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
There was something oddly disproportionate about the just-concluded nuclear summit to which President Obama summoned 46 world leaders, the largest such gathering on American soil since 1945. That meeting was about the founding of the United Nations, which 65 years ago seemed an event of world-historical importance. But this one? What was this great convocation [...]
Captive-TV Nation: Oh, The Humanity
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Living on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
If you have traipsed through a hotel lobby lately; tramped on a health-club treadmill; guzzled a beer at a bar; or nervously anticipated your turn in the dentist’s chair, you likely found your eyes wandering to a video screen. The business of “captive TV,” as it is called, is booming. According to Nielsen, the television [...]
The Case Against Gene Patents
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Genetic sequences are naturally occurring things, not inventions. No company should be allowed to monopolize research on them. Last month, a federal court in New York handed a major victory to science and medical innovation when it ruled that patents were improperly granted to Myriad Genetics on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and [...]
How to Save the Catholic Church
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Religion on April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
The Vatican badly needs new blood—and a woman’s touch. The great second wave of church scandals appears this week to be settling down. In the Vatican they’re likely thinking “the worst is over” and “we’ve weathered the storm.” Is that good? Not to this Catholic. The more relaxed the institution, the less likely it will [...]
Five Best Books Distinguished by Blasphemous Pasts
Posted in Literature on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Diarmaid MacCulloch selects books distinguished by blasphemous pasts 1. The Talmud Edited by Isidore Epstein Soncino Press, 1952 Is it offensive to include the Talmud on this list? Of course— but the point about blasphemy is that one person’s revered sacred book is another one’s blasphemous text, precisely because of its solemn claims about ultimate [...]
Denying Shakespeare
Posted in Literature on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Who wrote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach? Not the Man from Leipzig. It’s self-evidently absurd to suppose that an overworked church organist with 20 children could possibly have had enough brainpower (or spare time) to will into existence such supreme utterances of Western art as the B Minor Mass, the St. Matthew Passion and [...]
Congress vs. Honduran Democrats
Posted in Editorials and opinion, tagged Honduras on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
American liberals are still sore about the ‘coup’ that ousted Manuel Zelaya. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, continues to use his post in Tegucigalpa to advance the political strategy of some of Washington’s most hard-left Democrats. His effort deserves attention because it is part of a broader ideological agenda for the region that [...]
Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron?
Posted in Computers, Editorials and opinion on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Unmoderated, anonymous comments on Web sites create more noise than wisdom. For those of us tempted to hope that new technology might improve human nature, the Web has proved a disappointment. The latest online reality: comment sections so uncivilized and uninformative that it’s clear the free flow of anonymous comments has become way too much [...]
Mobile contempt
Posted in Law, Weird cases on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Judges have occasionally condemned lawyers’ arguments as rubbish. Lord Justice Harman once ruled that “these pleadings ought to go, not to the House of Lords, but to the waste-paper basket”. It’s unusual, though, for a judge to sling visitors’ belongings into the waste-paper basket but that is what Judge Anthony Johnson did recently in Orange [...]
How an Icelandic Volcano Shut Down Europe’s Airspace
Posted in Other on April 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Eyjafjallajökull launched another gigantic cloud of ash into the air Friday evening. The Icelandic volcano has nearly paralyzed air travel across Central and Northern Europe. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull has brought European aviation to a near-standstill in the worst disruptions since 9/11. Airlines are hemorrhaging money and tens of thousands of passengers [...]
Nature hoists Europe back in time
Posted in Editorials and opinion on April 19, 2010 | Comments Off
Did you know that volcanic ash can bring down airplanes? I didn’t know. Nor did I know that there were volcanoes in Europe capable of spewing so much of the stuff into the atmosphere. But since last week, when airports in Britain — and then Germany, France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Scandinavia — began to [...]
