When political names become insults ENGLISH ADDED another word to its political lexicon recently: Breitbarting, or intentionally taking a statement out of context for political ends. The new word surfaced on political websites after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Shirley Sherrod, a Department of Agriculture official, edited so she appeared to admit [...]
Archive for August, 2010
Bad name
Posted in The Word, tagged August 8 2010 on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
Sun storm
Posted in Physical sciences on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
Meet the northern lights THIS PAST week, residents of several US states had a rare opportunity to see the northern lights bathe the sky in their eerie glow of pale green and red. The lights are normally only visible in far northern latitudes, but a surge of activity from the sun pushed them far enough [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged August 8 2010 on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
Have less, give more ACCORDING TO a team of psychologists, the lower classes are a cut above. Given the opportunity to share money with an anonymous person, people who considered themselves lower in socioeconomic status shared more. When asked how much of one’s salary should be donated to charity, they designated a higher percentage. And, [...]
The next chapter in civil rights Cassandra Smith, 20, of Roseville, Mich. filed a lawsuit against Hooters, saying she was placed on a 30-day weight probation and told to agree to lose weight or lose her job. Beauty may only be skin deep, but that’s plenty deep enough to cost you a job, a promotion, [...]
How we drown
Posted in Living on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
You can be watching, and still not know someone is going down THE SCENE in the popular imagination is almost always the same. A swimmer in the water — typically a child or a young woman in a bikini — calls out for help, splashing and screaming for a lifeguard. The swimmer is drowning. Of [...]
Das Lied der Deutschen
Posted in Language on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
The German Language A new history of German shows how it came to be, and how it could have been German: Biography of a Language. By Ruth H. Sanders. Oxford University Press MOST people regard grammar books and dictionaries as a codified set of rules prescribing dos and don’ts. For professional scholars of language, though, [...]
The coming days
Posted in The Week ahead, tagged August 8 2010 on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
RWANDA holds a presidential election on Monday 9th August. President Paul Kagame is sure to win a second seven year term. This will provide a headache for the country’s foreign donors, who fund half of the government’s budget. Stick with Mr Kagame and their money will be spent well, perhaps better than anywhere else in [...]
Beach-Blanket Lingo
Posted in Language, tagged August 8 2010 on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
When Jake Tapper of ABC’s “This Week” asked Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey last month for his opinion of the MTV reality series “Jersey Shore,” the contempt in the governor’s voice was obvious. “What it does is it takes a bunch of New Yorkers — most of the people on ‘Jersey Shore’ are New [...]
My Life in Therapy
Posted in Health on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
All those years, all that money, all that unrequited love. It began way back when I was a child, an anxiety-riddled 10-year-old who didn’t want to go to school in the morning and had difficulty falling asleep at night. Even in a family like mine, where there were many siblings (six in all) and little [...]
A Journey Through Darkness
Posted in Health on August 8, 2010 | Comments Off
IT IS A SPARKLING DAY IN MID-JUNE, the sun out in full force, the sky a limpid blue. I am lying on my back on the grass, listening to the intermittent chirping of nearby birds; my eyes are closed, the better to savor the warmth on my face. As I soak up the rays I [...]
Five Best Books on Doctors’ Lives
Posted in Other on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Abraham Verghese prescribes these books on doctors’ lives 1. The Life of Sir William Osler By Harvey Cushing Oxford, 1925 This two-volume work tops my list not just because William Osler is endlessly fascinating but because his biographer was the pioneering neuro surgeon Harvey Cushing, himself the subject of more than one biography. Cushing won [...]
Five Best Books on Disgrace
Posted in Literature on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Rachel Cusk on novels that present indelible portraits of disgrace 1. The House of Mirth By Edith Wharton Scribner’s, 1905 The compromised woman has been a popular constant in the literature of disgrace: By the time Edith Wharton wrote “The House of Mirth,” the Victorian novel had rather gorged itself on this horror. Wharton offers [...]
Five Best Books on Alcohol
Posted in Living on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
These books on booze deserve a toast, says Daniel Okrent 1. The Alcoholic Republic By W.J. Rorabaugh Oxford, 1979 This excavation of the most drink-sodden era in U.S. history (1790-1840) is as damning as it is enlightening. At a time of easy access (there were 14,000 American distilleries by 1810), rough frontier mores and poor [...]
Five Best Books on Female Adventurers
Posted in Literature on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Frances Osborne says these books about female adventurers offer thrilling rides 1. Rebel Heart By Mary S. Lovell Norton, 1995 Pamela Harriman, one of the leading 20th-century seductresses of the great and the good, is said to have been inspired by the adventures of her great-great-aunt, Jane Digby (1807-81). As Mary Lovell recounts in “Rebel [...]
Five Best Books on Success
Posted in Literature on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Success in its many guises is central to these novels—which are triumphs in themselves, says Tad Friend 1. Of Human Bondage By W. Somerset Maugham George H. Doran, 1915 A wrenching tale overdue for a revival. Philip Carey is a prickly, club-footed orphan whose youth in a rural vicarage is sustained by dreams of greatness—he’s [...]
Great Books About the Beach
Posted in Literature on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Mention beach books, and most people think of the same thing: the latest political thriller or pulp romance that’s meant to be read beneath umbrellas near the sun and surf. But this summer, I’ve found myself turning once again to another kind of beach reading. What I mean are books about the beach, a small [...]
Five Best Books about Appeasement
Posted in Other on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Bruce Bawer selects powerful books about appeasement 1. Guilty Men By “Cato” Frederick A. Stokes, 1940 This brief, impassioned j’accuse, written under the pseudonym Cato by British journalists Michael Foot, Peter Howard and Frank Owen, was churned out and published at lightning speed in July 1940, a month after the British escape at Dunkirk from [...]
Five Best Books on Statesmanship
Posted in Other on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
1. Hands Off By Dexter Perkins Little, Brown, 1941 All presidents since George Washington have dealt with diplomatic problems and conducted foreign policy. Washington, in his farewell address (“it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances”), sought to advise successors who would have to deal with Napoleon, Barbary pirates and armed conflict [...]
The Enemy of My Enemy
Posted in Conflicts and wars on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Facing the threat of a nuclear Iran, the hostile Arab-Israeli relationship is giving way to a more complex picture An Israeli F-16i jet fighter. Being an Arab leader has its rewards: the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria during the United Nations General Assembly, travel in your own plane, plenty of cash, even job security—whether kings, sheiks [...]
Coming of Age in Hell
Posted in Literature on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
In “Siberian Education,” Nicolai Lilin remembers growing-up in a violent criminal underworld. Even if only one-tenth of it is true, says reviewer Toby Lichtig, the book still achieves something impressive. Nicolai Lilin’s “Siberian Education” depicts the author’s early life growing up in Transnistria, a breakaway enclave of the Soviet Union, on the border of Ukraine [...]
Shame on Elie Wiesel
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on August 7, 2010 | Comments Off
He trampled on a playwright’s freedom of speech Do you have a right not to be written about? Elie Wiesel thinks he does—and he’s prepared to sic his lawyers on anyone who thinks otherwise. Deb Margolin recently wrote a play called “Imagining Madoff” that purported to offer audiences a fictional version of the relationship between [...]
The Internet Generation Prefers the Real World
Posted in Computers, Living on August 6, 2010 | Comments Off
They may have been dubbed the “Internet generation,” but young people are more interested in their real-world friends than Facebook. New research shows that the majority of children and teenagers are not the Web-savvy digital natives of legend. In fact, many of them don’t even know how to google properly. Seventeen-year-old Jetlir is online every [...]
Annals of executive overreach
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Last week, a draft memo surfaced from the Department of Homeland Security suggesting ways to administratively circumvent existing law to allow several categories of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation and, indeed, for some to be granted permanent residency. Most disturbing was the stated rationale. This was being proposed “in the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” [...]
Democrats’ tactics worsen their problems
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Politicians under stress tend to confirm, not refute, the criticisms that got them into trouble in the first place. Vacillating politicians vacillate. Thin-skinned politicians explode. Democrats are now feeling enormous political stress. Independents have fled the Obama coalition, largely out of concern about debt, deficits and spending. Intensity is all on the Republican and conservative [...]
America Is at Risk of Boiling Over
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 5, 2010 | Comments Off
And out-of-touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off. It is, obviously, self-referential to quote yourself, but I do it to make a point. I wrote the following on New Year’s day, 1994. America 16 years ago was a relatively content nation, though full of political sparks: 10 months later the Republicans would [...]
Why Dictators Hate to See Us Moved by Music
Posted in Other on August 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Iran’s ultimate supremo, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave a remarkable endorsement to music this week, declaring it “not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.” He didn’t exactly mean to praise song, but if music is a threat to the sort of murderous theocracy over which Mr. Khamenei presides, [...]
Now What for Marriage?
Posted in Living on August 5, 2010 | Comments Off
This week, a verdict was delivered in the federal case on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that defined marriage in that state as exclusively between a man and woman. Ninth Circuit District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker came down on the side of legalization of same-sex marriage, declaring that marriage is [...]
Bye-Bye Bookstores
Posted in Living on August 5, 2010 | Comments Off
As much as the books I read, they fired in me the desire to read, creating an electric sense of ‘midst’ that no one book in the hand ever could by itself. The printed book—so we are assured by publishers and e-book mavens—is not going to disappear any time soon. It may already be giving [...]
Will the GOP Storm the Statehouses?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Expect to see a lot of Republican governors elected in November. It must have been gloomy for Democrats when the nation’s governors met last month in Boston for their annual summer get-together. The reason: If congressional races look bad for Democrats, the 37 gubernatorial contests are even worse. A quick survey of the political landscape [...]
Obama’s cool is leaving more people cold
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 4, 2010 | Comments Off
“The trouble with you is,” she continued steadily, “you think people should stay in their own sealed packages. You don’t believe in opening up. You don’t believe in trading back and forth.” “I certainly don’t,” Macon said, buttoning his shirt front. – Anne Tyler, “The Accidental Tourist“ If politics were literature, Bill Clinton would be [...]
