Anne Applebaum wants to know why responses to swine flu outbreaks vary so widely: How did we get to this point? That is, how did we get to a point where outbreaks treated with the utmost seriousness by the World Health Organization — swine flu has been officially declared a “pandemic” — receive vastly different [...]
A week or two back, a student in one of my classes brought up the issue of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. I said that the first step in understanding Iran was to first reject the notion that President Ahmadinejad (and the Council of Clerics) is crazy. In fact, if we don’t reject that notion, [...]
One of the more insulting commercials run by the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary featured an anonymous phone ringing in what was supposed to be the Presidential residence. “When the phone rings at 2am…” the voice-over said ominously. The idea was to tell everyone that Clinton was “ready to go on Day One” [...]
CNN is mulitple terror attacks in Mumbai, India. The coordination and use of military-style weapons, to me, indicates that this is not a simple home-grown cell that aimed at random mayhem. Consider that they reportedly targeted American and/or British citizens and the financial district of the area. My concern here is that this could be [...]
If for no other reason that for using a great word, this caught my eye: “We were gobsmacked to discover that though the law was changed hundreds of years ago and society had moved on, the victims were never officially pardoned.” It could be humorous – until you realize that people were actually tortured and [...]
Well, it won’t be long now until Eastern elites are attacked for their brand…er, flavor of condom: Ethiopians claim they hate condoms because the smell of latex sickens them. To combat the odor, DKT International, a United Sates nonprofit, created coffee condoms. These dark brown condoms allegedly (I’m not testing the products) taste and smell [...]
Today is the Hindu celebration of lights known as Diwali or Deepavali. The backstory from Wikipedia: In many parts of India, it is the homecoming of Lord Ram of Ayodhya after a 14-year exile in the forest, after he defeated the evil and demonic Ravan.[5] The people of Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) welcomed [...]
Hope you had a good nap. Because you’ll need to be rested to deal with this: Stock around the world took another heavy beating Monday, with shares in Japan falling to their lowest level in 26 years, as fears of a global recession continued to sweep markets. U.S. futures, which offer an indication of how [...]
Via CNN: The U.S. military said it is investigating claims from Syria that U.S. helicopters based in Iraq killed eight people and wounded another Sunday in an attack inside Syria’s territory Sunday. Syria’s state news agency SANA said four U.S. helicopters crossed the border and struck a farm about 8 kilometers (5 miles) inside Syria [...]
From Time magazine: Asia’s space race just got a whole lot tighter: India’s successful launch on Wednesday of its first moon mission, the unmanned Chandrayaan-I, marked a dramatic step forward in its race with China to put a man on the moon. China had stolen a march in 2003 by becoming only the third nation [...]
