IT was with great trepidation that I approached 3704 N Street in Washington on Nov. 10, 1960. I had just been given the assignment of providing protection for the wife of the newly elected president of the United States, and I was about to meet her for the first time. I soon realized I had [...]
Archive for November, 2010
On Mrs. Kennedy’s Detail
Posted in Editorials and opinion, History on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Who Cares About Haiti?
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Extortionists drain the country’s economic lifeblood while the U.N. stands by idly. Ten months after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake killed more than 200,000 Haitians and destroyed an already decrepit infrastructure, some 1.3 million impoverished souls are still barely surviving in tent cities around the country. Living conditions are deplorable and after nearly a year, optimism [...]
The Uproar Over Pat-Downs
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Americans understand the need for security screenings at airports and are remarkably patient. So there is no excuse for the bumbling, arrogant way the Transportation Security Administration has handled questions and complaints about its new body-scanning machines and more aggressive pat-downs. The Times reported on Friday that civil liberties groups have collected more than 400 [...]
Ireland’s Paradise Lost
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
For an American tourist weaned on Gaelic kitsch and screenings of “The Quiet Man,” the landscape of contemporary Ireland comes as something of a shock. Drive from Dublin to the western coast and back, as I did two months ago, and you’ll still find all the thatched-roof farmhouses, winding stone walls and placid sheep that [...]
Vatican Rushes to Clarify Pope’s Comments in Book
Posted in Religion on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
The Vatican on Sunday rushed to clarify a recent interview by Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff states for the first time that there may be some cases in which the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on condoms isn’t absolute. The pope made the comments in a book-length interview over the summer with the German [...]
Drama in Milledgeville
Posted in History on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
Nov. 16 – 22, 1860 With ardent secessionist activity in South Carolina having a week ago reached a heated peak, a pregnant pause has followed. Until the secession convention comes to order in December, the focus of the disunion crisis last week shifted elsewhere. In Georgia, men of probity and wisdom tried to decide what [...]
Making It New
Posted in Literature on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
How the Greek and Latin classics have been imitated, adulated and misunderstood over the centuries. For the ancient Romans, the word “classicus” originally designated somebody belonging to the highest tax bracket. To be “classical” was to be in the upper crust. By the fifth century A.D., the term had taken on wider meanings; the classical [...]
Beyond Understanding
Posted in Living on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
I ought to have known better than to have lunch with a psychologist. “Take you, for example,” he said. “You are definitely autistic.” “What!?” “I rest my case,” he shot back. “Q.E.D.” His ironic point seemed to be that if I didn’t instantly grasp his point — which clearly I didn’t — then, at some [...]
Doctors Mystified by Case of World’s Thinnest Woman
Posted in Health on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
8,000 Calories a Day Lizzie Velasquez is a mystery to doctors. Texas native Lizzie Velasquez, 21, is thinner than anyone thought possible. She spends her days wolfing down burgers, fries and cake, consuming more than three times the normal calorie requirements. Doctors can’t explain how she can be so underweight and still alive. She starts the [...]
Phonograph, CD, MP3—What’s Next?
Posted in Computers on November 22, 2010 | Comments Off
The Beatles finally make it to iTunes. ‘I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes,” said Ringo Starr last week as the Fab Four’s record company finally agreed to have their music sold through digital downloads by Apple. This agreement could mark the beginning of the end [...]
All the president’s books
Posted in Other on November 21, 2010 | Comments Off
In my two years working in the president’s office at Harvard, before I was laid off in spring, I gave myself the job of steward of her books. Gift books would arrive in the mail, or from campus visitors, or from her hosts when she traveled; books by Harvard professors were kept on display in [...]
Thanks for asking
Posted in The Word, tagged 11-21 2010 on November 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Questions that led surprising places “Where do you get your ideas?” people often ask. And for years, I’ve answered, truthfully, “Mostly from readers.” It’s great to have that constant feedback. But here’s the best part: The most routine-looking questions, on the most familiar usage issues, can lead us down the rabbit hole to a land [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged November 21 2010 on November 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Hug to win! Normally, touching co-workers is a big no-no. Unless you want your team to win. That’s the implication of a recent analysis of all NBA basketball teams during the 2008-2009 regular season. Researchers recorded all non-game-play touching (e.g., fist bumps, head slaps, high fives, hugs) among players in a game during the early [...]
Russia’s Dictatorship of Law
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on November 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Russia’s newly outrageous legal treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the country’s largest oil company, is a reminder that Russia has yet to grasp the idea of equal justice under law — especially when the Kremlin decides someone is in the way. Mr. Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 on trumped-up charges of fraud [...]
Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on November 21, 2010 | Comments Off
“THE perception I had, anyway, was that we were on top of the world,” Sarah Palin said at the climax of last Sunday’s premiere of her new television series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” At that point our fearless heroine had just completed a perilous rock climb, and if she looked as if she’d just stepped out [...]
Ten of the best angels in literature
Posted in Literature on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Il Paradiso by Dante Guided by Beatrice, Dante ascends to the Primum Mobile, where the angels dwell. Beatrice explains the nine orders of angels, hierarchically arranged: Seraphim (the closest to God), Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. “Aire and Angels” by John Donne In amorous enthusiasm, Donne takes literally the notion that [...]
Should This Be the Last Generation?
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are [...]
The Workout Enigma
Posted in Health on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Recently, researchers in Finland made the discovery that some people’s bodies do not respond as expected to weight training, others don’t respond to endurance exercise and, in some lamentable cases, some don’t respond to either. In other words, there are those who just do not become fitter or stronger, no matter what exercise they undertake. [...]
‘Resonate’
Posted in On Language, tagged November 21 2010 on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Allan Curry writes: “What’s to account for the ubiquity of the word resonate, once largely confined to the concert hall, now more (and more) often used to suggest receptivity (to an idea, a political message, etc)?” Twenty years ago in this space, William Safire pegged resonate as a “vogue word” that had “gone out of [...]
God-loving Linguists
Posted in Language on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Christian missionaries have become strangely vital to conserving endangered languages In 1963 Barbara and Joseph Grimes sat down with their Huichol neighbours to discuss what to do about the bandits terrorising their remote community. It was clear to everyone that the Grimes themselves were the problem. Seeing Americans living there, at the southern tip of [...]
Who Can Resist a Man Who Sings Like a Woman?
Posted in Arts and Entertainment on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
The countertenor Philippe Jaroussky performing in New York in 2007. One afternoon last July, a small, anxious crowd gathered in the lobby of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, hoping for a glimpse of Philippe Jaroussky, the young French countertenor who was to give a Baroque recital later that night. Among them were a Japanese woman in a black-and-white [...]
Hollowed by time
Posted in Literature on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
LEO TOLSTOY died one hundred years ago today, aged 82. His last days and hours succumbing to pneumonia in a railway master’s house were followed by the entire world. A special telegraphic wire was installed in Astapovo to transmit news about the state of his health, and newspapers carried reports from the Russian and foreign [...]
Religious Persuasion
Posted in Religion on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
At first glance, the authors of “American Grace” would seem to suffer from very bad timing. Between the completion of their manuscript and its publication, the dispute over the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan erupted, followed by the Koran-burning controversy, and somewhere along the way a New York cabdriver was stabbed, apparently for being a [...]
Friendship in an Age of Economics
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
When I was 17 years old, I had the honor of being the youngest person in the history of New York Hospital to undergo surgery for a herniated disc. This was at a time in which operations like this kept people in the hospital for over a week. The day after my surgery, I awoke [...]
Two Friendships: A Response
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Earlier columns in The Stone have raised the question of what philosophy is. Surely among its tasks is to think about matters that are at once urgent, personal and of general significance. When one is lucky, one finds interlocutors who are willing to share that thought, add to it in one way or another, or [...]
A Naturalist’s Feast for the Eyes
Posted in Birds of America on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
Hardly a Thanksgiving goes by without someone mentioning Benjamin Franklin’s affection for the American turkey. That founding father famously proposed it as the country’s national bird, arguing that it was a more virtuous creature than the bald eagle, which he despised as “a bird of bad moral character.” But the turkey has had at least [...]
Beyond the Veil: A Response
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
I’m extraordinarily grateful to the many people who posted comments on my piece, “Veiled Threats?” I note that many have come from educated and active Muslim women (in countries ranging from the U. S. to India), who have expressed a sense of “relief” at having their convictions and voices taken seriously. I’ll begin my reply [...]
Moral Camouflage or Moral Monkeys?
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
After being shown proudly around the campus of a prestigious American university built in gothic style, Bertrand Russell is said to have exclaimed, “Remarkable. As near Oxford as monkeys can make.” Much earlier, Immanuel Kant had expressed a less ironic amazement, “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe … [...]
Memory Makers
Posted in Literature on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
On the publication of scrapbooks by legendary photographer and bon vivant Cecil Beaton, fellow nostalgist Charlotte Moss revels in the art of cut and paste Scrapbooks are diaries of a sort. While I have yet to come across a scrapbook with scandalous confessions or incriminating evidence, a private collection of pictures and ephemera can reveal [...]
Your Move: The Maze of Free Will
Posted in Living on November 20, 2010 | Comments Off
You arrive at a bakery. It’s the evening of a national holiday. You want to buy a cake with your last 10 dollars to round off the preparations you’ve already made. There’s only one thing left in the store — a 10-dollar cake. On the steps of the store, someone is shaking an Oxfam tin. [...]
