In response to my “Was Oppenheimer Indeed a Communist?” post, historian Jerome Sternstein passed along the following: I noticed you called attention to the piece in the SF Chronicle about Oppenheimer. You might want your readers to see this link where they can parse the new, fascinating documents uncovered by Gregg Herken and mentioned in […]
Archive | April, 2004
You’re No Psychic:
From Jim Holt’s review of Debunked! by Georges Charpak and Henri Broch (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press) in today’s Wall Street Journal: Have you ever had a premonition? Did you once have, say, a passing thought about an uncle, only to receive a phone call five minutes later informing you that the beloved relative has dropped […]
“The Wrong Venue for Partisanship”:
That’s what James Taranto (Best of the Web) says, and it seems to me he’s right: “Former US first lady Hillary Clinton said the “stubborn” policies of President George W. Bush’s administration were endangering stability in the Middle East,” Agence France-Presse reports: The New York Democrat senator told the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that […]
No sex, please, we’re astronauts: Dr Rachel Armstrong, speaking yesterday at a British Interplanetary Society symposium on the Human Future and Space, said the US space agency Nasa was considering how to deal with the natural urges of astronauts travelling on long journeys such as a three-year trip to Mars, where the six-strong crew would […]
Haitian history in one short sentence:
“Haiti doesn’t really have the choice of missing this new last chance.” That’s from James Foley, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti. Here is the New York Times article. As an aside, I am struck by how words such as “really” and “essentially” alter or reflect the true meaning of sentences. They are almost words of negation. […]
The Beltway at War:
David Brooks has a column in Tuesday’s New York Times expressing a feeling I have been having for some time. Here is the gist of it: These are the crucial months in Iraq. The events in Najaf and Falluja will largely determine whether Iraq will move toward normalcy or slide into chaos. So how is […]
Unethical:
I’ve tried not to keep beating the Randy “Ethicist” Cohen horse; I’ve had my say, and he’s still a famous syndicated and NTYM columnist and I’m not, so I guess the market has spoken. I try to exercise the willpower not to check up on him, sometimes lapse, and am sometimes annoyed and sometimes bored. […]
Chinese demographics and sex ratios:
The ever-insightful Randall Parker has much to say about these issues. First, by 2040 China will have a higher proportion of elderly than will the United States. This will create fiscal problems, but on the bright side such a China is unlikely to be militarily aggressive. Yet there will be other problems: “In 1993 and […]
Another Bushism, this one from the Financial Times, debunked, by my former student, Raffi Melkonian: My favorite newspaper, the Financial Times, enjoys its forays into the land of Bush-isms . . . . Here’s today’s entirely misguided effort in the admittedly lighthearted “Observer” column: Where’s the beef? George W. Bush is proud of his “No […]
Michael Kinsley will head L.A. Times opinion and editorial section: So says Editor & Publisher. I think Kinsley did a very good job as founding editor of Slate — and, in particular, welcomed a wide mix of political perspectives, including the unorthodox — so I’m quite pleased by this move.
Vieth v. Jubelirer: In one of two decisions issued this morning, the Supreme Court come’s within a hair’s breadth of overturning Davis v. Bandemer. Four Justices — Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist and O’Connor — were ready to hold all claims of partisan gerrymandering to be nonjusticiable. Justice Kennedy, while rejecting the challenge to Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered Congressional […]
An Analysis of Current Military Tactics in Fallujah:
Coverage in the media of actual military developments in Falluja has been pretty thin. We hear about deaths and some fighting in identified towns, but next to nothing about ongoing and possible military tactics. This is understandable. The last thing the military would do is share its tactics with the public in the middle of […]
Debra Saunders on the New York Times and Jose Padilla: Here’s an excerpt from her piece in the San Francisco Chronicle (thanks to How Appealing for the pointer): [H]ere’s the paragraph in the story by [New York Times] reporter Deborah Sontag that truly baffles me: Padilla’s “journey covered significant territory, geographically, emotionally and spiritually, and […]
Other errors by Washington Gov. Locke:
The same story contains the following: Locke delivered a free-ranging speech that also . . . said the federal Patriot Act reminded him of the internment of the Japanese during World War II. . . . Locke also criticized the Patriot Act approved in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Apparently referring to detainment of suspected […]
Washington governor urges judges not to drink in public: Gov. Gary Locke, in a valedictory to the judiciary, on Monday urged judges to take the pledge against drinking in public — or at least to hold themselves to a single drink. Locke advocated a “stringent and even harsh standard of conduct,” which he said could […]