The Czar’s Lost Gold Legend has it that almost a century ago a series of railway wagons stuffed with gold sank into the depths of a lake in Siberia. This week, researchers, exploring the depths by submarine, may have found the Russian royals’ lost gold. As Bair Tsyrenov slowly guided his Mir submersible up an [...]
Archive for September, 2010
Russian Submarine Hunts Clues to Century-Old Mystery
Posted in History on September 3, 2010 | Comments Off
A virtual counter-revolution
Posted in Computers, Media on September 3, 2010 | Comments Off
The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it A fragmenting virtual world THE first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in [...]
Opening Statements: What to Wear to Court
Posted in Law on September 2, 2010 | Comments Off
Pleas of ‘Not Guilty by Reason of Temporary Fashion Insanity’ Won’t Cut It; Lawyers and Witnesses Are Also Offenders Sloppy jeans and exposed tattoos are common in court. There’s a place where first impressions are even more crucial than at a job interview or at dinner with our future in-laws: the courtroom. Yet court officials [...]
How Do You Stop an Elephant Charging?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on September 2, 2010 | Comments Off
Democrats are running out of time to find an answer. Eight weeks out and you don’t have to be a political professional to feel what’s in the air: The Republicans have a big win coming. The question in the House races is: Will they get to 218? Will Republicans pick up the 39 seats they [...]
Our distracted commander in chief
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on September 2, 2010 | Comments Off
Many have charged that President Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan 10 months from now is hampering our war effort. But now it’s official. In a stunning statement last week, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that the July 2011 date is “probably giving our enemy sustenance.” A remarkably bold charge for an active [...]
Mark Pilkington’s top 10 books about UFOs
Posted in Other on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Down to earth accounts … Alien Parking sign in Roswell, New Mexico. Mark Pilkington is a writer with a fascination for the further shores of culture, science and belief. He also publishes books as Strange Attractor Press. In Mirage Men subject’s history and meeting former air force and intelligence insiders, Pilkington concludes that instead of [...]
Think the Answer’s Clear? Look Again
Posted in Health on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
DEBUNKER Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier is an internist-researcher in Toronto. Presidential elections can be fatal. Win an Academy Award and you’re likely to live longer than had you been a runner-up. Interview for medical school on a rainy day, and your chances of being selected could fall. Such are some of the surprising findings of [...]
Phys Ed: Does Stretching Before Running Prevent Injuries?
Posted in Living on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Should you stretch before a run? That question, which has prompted countless academic studies, debates and inter-running-partner squabbles, is now at the heart of a notable new study published in August on the Web site of USA Track and Field, the sport’s national governing body. The study, one of the largest of its kind, involved [...]
Scientists Square Off on Evolutionary Value of Helping Relatives
Posted in Natural sciences on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
NO ANT EGGS OF THEIR OWN Dr. William Hamilton believed that helping your relatives could spread your genes faster Why are worker ants sterile? Why do birds sometimes help their parents raise more chicks, instead of having chicks of their own? Why do bacteria explode with toxins to kill rival colonies? In 1964, the British [...]
They Crawl, They Bite, They Baffle Scientists
Posted in Natural sciences on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
THE ICK FACTOR The lab of Stephen A. Kells, a University of Minnesota entomologist. Bedbugs are not known to transmit disease. Don’t be too quick to dismiss the common bedbug as merely a pestiferous six-legged blood-sucker. Think of it, rather, as Cimex lectularius, international arthropod of mystery. In comparison to other insects that bite man, [...]
The pursuit of evil
Posted in Other on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
A complicated man, obsessed by his search for justice Driven by memory Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends. By Tom Segev. Doubleday; 482 pages; $35. Jonathan Cape; £25. AMONG the 300,000 pieces of paper in Simon Wiesenthal’s private archive is a letter from a Holocaust survivor explaining why he had ceased to believe in God. [...]
Obama’s ‘Come Home America’ Speech
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
A dangerous world needs stronger U.S. leadership. At times Tuesday night, it sounded as if President Barack Obama didn’t know what kind of speech he wanted to give. Was it a foreign policy address aimed at assuring a world-wide audience of America’s resolve in the war against militant Islam? Or was it an election stump [...]
Ye cannae change the laws of physics
Posted in Physical sciences on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Or can you? RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a [...]
Investigators Look into Frameups and Iniquity at German Bank
Posted in Law on September 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Moral Bankruptcy at HSH Nordbank HSH Nordbank’s legal advisor Wolfgang Gössmann (left) was allegedly involved in a smear campaign against bank manager Frank Roth as well as an effort to frame a bank employee in the US, Roland K. Gössmann has since been relieved of his duties. Here, he is speaking with lawyer Joachim Erbe, [...]
