An author had to win a major award to stanch the flow of rejection slips After being rejected by dozens of agents and publishers, Miguel Syjuco, 33, is emerging as one of this year’s most surprising literary Cinderella stories. Miguel Syjuco, pictured in Montreal, strayed from his family’s path. His novel, “Ilustrado,” a postmodern mystery [...]
Archive for May, 2010
Climbing the Literary Ladder Backward
Posted in Literature on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Revealing the Young Bureaucrats Behind the Nazi Terror
Posted in History on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
New Third Reich Monument in Berlin Index cards from the post-World War II investigation into members of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt — the amalgamation of the Gestapo and SS. Who exactly were the men who planned and administered the Nazi crimes? The new “Topography of Terror” documentation center opened on Thursday in Berlin at the site [...]
Evidence Suggests Early Humans Mated with Neanderthals
Posted in Other on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Decoding DNA Svante Pääbo with the skull of a Neanderthal. Pääbo led the international team that decoded the Neanderthal’s genome. Researchers in Leipzig have successfully sequenced the genetic code of a Neanderthal, and found some overlap with modern-day Europeans. The finding provides insight into the evolution of humans — and could be a blow [...]
A Writer’s Contradictions
Posted in Literature on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
The disturbing views, and tragic fate, of the ‘Suite Française’ author If there are no second acts in American literature, as the cliché has it, there are often at least two acts in the lives of writers elsewhere, not least those caught up in the turbulent cultural milieu of Europe between the wars. The literary [...]
Does He Still Light Your Fire?
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Ever get the feeling that Jim Morrison and the Doors are more interesting in Hollywood movies than they were in real life? “When You’re Strange,” a documentary on PBS (Wednesday from 9-11 p.m. ET, but check local listings) will do nothing to dispel that notion. But it might make you laugh. True, “Strange” is filled [...]
What Cards Never Say on Mother’s Day
Posted in Living on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
All these years later, women who choose to raise children are still struggling for respect. Mother. This time of year, traditional images of her come to the fore: Giver of life. Homework helper. Life saver. Hem adjuster. Maker of peanut-butter sandwiches. All true, all real, all important. Even so, I was surprised—and even fearful— when [...]
Pass the Plate and Grow Rich in Spirit
Posted in Religion on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Tithing changes in tough times, but it has lasted for millenia. Near the end of last year, prominent evangelical pastor Rick Warren sent out a plea to members of his Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. “This is an urgent letter unlike any I’ve written in 30 years,” Warren wrote. “On the last weekend of [...]
Don’t Overstay Your Welcome In My Mind
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Whether it’s a movies or a jazz tune, shorter is usually sweeter. New to American theaters is “Harry Brown,” a movie in which Michael Caine plays an emphysemic codger living out his days in a London housing project terrorized by feral youth. When the drug-dealing nasties kill the last of his old pub-mates, Mr. Caine [...]
Have the Undead Become Americanized?
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Academics Lament How Vampires in Modern Culture Are ‘Losing Their British Passports’; Decaffeinated Version of Dracula Here’s another thing to worry about when it comes to vampires: How American they have become. Vampire experts gathered last month at the University of Hertfordshire, just north of London, at a conference titled “Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires [...]
Satan Goes Secular
Posted in Religion on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Does evil exist in the absence of God? Over the course of centuries, many smart people have debated whether evil’s existence in the world entails God’s nonexistence. Surely God—at least, an omnipotent and benevolent God—would not allow pain, suffering, brutality and depravity to thrive. That they do exist, therefore, means that God doesn’t. In reply, [...]
Pakistan Is Fighting Terror
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, tagged Pakistan on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
But U.S. drone attacks continue to radicalize its citizens. Once again a terrorist attack, albeit a failed one, has brought Pakistan under the microscope. Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American arrested in connection with the Times Square bomb plot, is less American than he is Pakistani so the focus on Pakistan is not unwarranted. But caricaturing my [...]
There He Goes Again
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Every Obama critic is a Wall Street stooge. Last Saturday at the University of Michigan, President Obama noted the importance of maintaining “a basic level of civility in our public debate.” He added, “You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism.” You certainly can, but it seems Mr. [...]
Lessons From Another ‘Long War’
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
The British stood their ground when they were under terror siege. New York remains on high alert. There is virtually no one here who does not understand that we and Washington are what we were on Sept. 11 almost nine years ago: the main and primary targets. Last weekend’s events in Times Square demonstrated again [...]
How to modernize Miranda for the Age of Terror
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
“[Law enforcement] interviewed Mr. Shahzad . . . under the public safety exception to the Miranda rule. . . . He was eventually transported to another location, Mirandized and continued talking.” – John Pistole, FBI deputy director, May 4 All well and good. But what if Faisal Shahzad, the confessed Times Square bomber, had stopped [...]
A disobedient man
Posted in Weird cases on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
In her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft said that women and men were equal and that men should not control women. Karen Salmansohn went further in 1994 in her book How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less – Using the Secrets of Professional [...]
The Memoirs of a German Jihadist
Posted in Conflicts and wars on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Eric Breininger’s Death “My Path to Paradise”: The cover of a German jihadist’s memoirs. It is a document from the heart of the jihad: Eric Breininger, a German homegrown terrorist recently killed in Pakistan, worked on his memoirs until just days before his death. On Wednesday, the document was posted on the Internet. “So [...]
Schreiber Gets Eight Years for Tax Evasion
Posted in Law on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Karlheinz Schreiber in court on Wednesday. Karlheinz Schreiber rose to prominence due to a scandal that engulfed the CDU in the 1990s and caused Helmut Kohl’s disgrace. Now the 76-year-old arms dealer has been jailed for eight years for tax evasion. An arms dealer with close ties to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats was jailed [...]
The best books
Posted in Language on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
The Economist‘s international correspondent on books about language Robert Lane Greene is an international correspondent for The Economist, currently covering American politics and foreign policy online. His book on the politics of language around the world, “You Are What You Speak”, will be published by Bantam (Random House) in the spring of 2011. Monitors of [...]
A sunnier outlook
Posted in Natural sciences on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Artificial photosynthesis Using a virus to help produce energy the way plants do The ultimate green-energy source IN HIS latest novel, “Solar”, Ian McEwan’s protagonist is Michael Beard, a Nobel prize-winning physicist who has been resting on his laurels for two decades specialising in “after-dinner speeches and eulogies for retiring or about-to-be-cremated colleagues”. To reinvigorate [...]
Raiders of the Night Kitchen
Posted in Living on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
This morning, I wake at 4 and can’t get back to sleep. By 5, I am up, with my dog. As I stand outside in the chill and he pads around in the dark, I decide to make brownies. I had baked a successful batch of them at my brother’s house in Toronto not long [...]
Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish
Posted in Language on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Shanghai has been trying to harness English translations that sometimes wander, like “cash recyling machine For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” [...]
The Irrelevant Yuan?
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
You’re not going to change the balance of China trade by adding 25 cents to the cost of a T-shirt. To some in Washington these days, adjusting the yuan-dollar exchange rate is the fix for all America’s ills. That single number supposedly determines which jobs stay in the United States and which go to China. [...]
Professor Mearsheimer and His Useful Jews
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Other on May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
An American political scientist talks in terms reminiscent of Tsarist Russia. At some point in the early part of the 20th century, the Tsarist authorities deemed my great grandfather to be a “useful Jew.” He was a pianist and his musical talents fit nicely with Russia’s classical preoccupation with high European culture. And so, under [...]
Time to Junk the Corporate Tax
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas says reform would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it “the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen.’ President Obama has put tax reform on the agenda, but surprisingly little attention is being paid to fixing the most growth-inhibiting, anticompetitive tax of all: the corporate income tax. Reducing or [...]
Surviving the Age of Humiliation
Posted in Living on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Steven Fink recently received an unsolicited email containing nude photos of a woman whose jilted ex-boyfriend wanted to embarrass her. The guy presumably hoped these private photos would go viral online, and now countless strangers are obliging him in his mean-spirited campaign. In the pre-Internet age, the dumped boyfriend may have expressed his anger by [...]
Successful Spadework
Posted in Literature on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Detective-fiction readers hate saying the long goodbye. They want new cases solved by their favorite sleuths even after those heroes’ author/creators have died. Publishers and estates sometimes oblige them. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was resuscitated at the hands of Robert B. Parker. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe entertained more clients with the help of Robert Goldsborough. [...]
Blame Obama. Why Not?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Your Uncle Sam has spent 100 years turning himself into Jabba the Hut. The left and the media knee-capped the Bush presidency for not making Hurricane Katrina go away fast enough. So now, like a village feud in ancient Sicily, the right and its media are knee-capping the Obama presidency for not making the Gulf’s [...]
The President and the Politics of Civility
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Barack Obama should lead by example Last Saturday, Americans were again instructed on their political manners by their Moralizer in Chief. While delivering a commencement address to the University of Michigan’s graduating students, President Barack Obama’s comments were really meant for the nation’s political class. His speech dealt with the importance of “a basic level [...]
The Claim: Green Tea Can Help Lower Blood Pressure
Posted in Health on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
THE FACTS Few foods have a reputation for soothing stress quite like a hot cup of tea. Green tea, in particular, has been linked to reduced stress and anxiety, and it contains compounds that are said to relax blood vessels. But when scientists have looked at whether it lowers blood pressure, even by a little, [...]
Carrots Share Trait With Tiny Pea Aphid
Posted in Natural sciences on May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Pea aphids are the first creatures in the animal kingdom to have been shown to produce carotenoids. There’s a reason your parents kept after you to eat your carrots. The vegetables (and lots of others, too) supply carotenoids, compounds that are good for vision and overall health. Animals, humans included, cannot manufacture them. Check that. [...]
