Compelling Message just before Death: Ben Breedlove - This is my story

More...

Mitt Romney through the eyes of his b-school friends

I did not pay much attention to Romney in the last presidential cycle. I had watched his promo video about his family holidays somewhere in the Northeast and he came across is deeply inauthentic. This article, for which the NY Times interview many former HBS classmates and professor, gave me a much deeper understanding of Romney, who in all likelihood will be running against Barak Obama. It sure will be an interesting showdown next November.

Read the Full NY Time here More...

Getting in the Holiday Spirit

How to fight being tired in the afternoon: nap and coffee

I have never tried having a cup of coffee before taking a power nap. But I will test this in the weeks to come. Here is the background in the NY Times.

THE FACTS

Late November is the start of the busiest travel season of the year, when millions of drivers hit the road for long-distance treks. Many will be sleep-deprived and looking to pull over for a nap or a dose of caffeine.

But the best idea may be to combine the two, and not in the order one might think. More...

An insider's confession of tabloid journalism in the UK

This must be one of the most intriguing session in the history of the British parliament

British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool
By SARAH LYALL (NY Times)
LONDON -- He admitted that he and his colleagues hacked into people's phones and paid police officers for tips. He confessed to lurking in unmarked vans outside people's houses, stealing confidential documents, rifling through celebrity garbage cans and pretending that he was not a journalist pursuing a story but "Brad the teenage rent boy," propositioning a priest.

After Paul McMullan, a former deputy features editor at Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid, had finished his jaw-droppingly brazen remarks at a judicial inquiry on Tuesday, it was hard to think of any dubious news-gathering technique he had not confessed to, short of pistol-whipping sources for information. More...

Picture of the Day: Chinese Oil Paper Umbrellas

The Moment Perry's Campaign Imploded

M. Jackson doctor convicted in star's 2009 drug death

I would have been surprised if the doctor had not been convicted.

By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson's doctor was convicted Monday of involuntary manslaughter after a trial that painted him as a reckless caregiver who administered a lethal dose of a powerful anesthetic that killed the pop star.
The verdict against Dr. Conrad Murray marked the latest chapter in one of pop culture's most shocking tragedies -- the death of the King of Pop on the eve of the singer's heavily promoted comeback concerts. More...

Inside the iPhone 4S

The Last Days of a Dictator

The last days of a dictator are not particularly fun. Hitler committed suicide in 1945 when the Russians were close to his underground bunker in Berlin. Saddam Hussein loved life too much and come out of a hole in the ground when guns had surrounded him. I am not sure about Qaddafi's attitude toward his own life. Did he remain defiant until the end or were his captors simply more aggressive then the soldiers who found Saddam? Putting the body of a killed dictator in the freezer of a grocery store strikes me as a novel way to preserve it for a few days. People could come and look at the brutal end. Unfortunately, these pictures will not deter other would-be dictators because at the core they are not guided by reason but by delusion.

In His Last Days, Qaddafi Wearied of Fugitive's Life By KAREEM FAHIM (NY Times)
MISURATA, Libya -- After 42 years of absolute power in Libya, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi spent his last days hovering between defiance and delusion, surviving on rice and pasta his guards scrounged from the emptied civilian houses he moved between every few days, according to a senior security official captured with him. More...

A Story that you will not forget

Even for someone who reads a lot this story will stand out and stay burned in your memory if you have children or consider having them in the future

Notes From a Dragon Mom By EMILY RAPP (NT Times)

MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means "little seal" in Irish and it suits him. I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He'll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.. More...

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

More...

The Limits of Empathy

David Brooks describes in the NY Times his key lessons from reading Steven Pinker's new book.

We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place. Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one another and feel each other's pain. School leaders try to attract a diverse set of students so each can understand what it's like to walk in the others' shoes. Religious and community groups try to cultivate empathy. As Steven Pinker writes in his mind-altering new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," we are living in the middle of an "empathy craze." There are shelfloads of books about it: "The Age of Empathy," "The Empathy Gap," "The Empathic Civilization," "Teaching Empathy." There's even a brain theory that we have mirror neurons in our heads that enable us to feel what's in other people's heads and that these neurons lead to sympathetic care and moral action. More...

When Romney Finished Perry?

This just made my morning: Let's Move!

Irene shuts down NYC

By SAMANTHA GROSS and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press reports.

NEW YORK -- The normally bustling streets emptied out and the rumble of the subways came to a stop.
New York buttoned up Saturday against Hurricane Irene, which threatened to paralyze Wall Street and give the big city its worst thrashing from a storm since at least the 1980s.
City officials cautioned that if Irene stayed on track, it could bring gusts of 85 mph overnight that could shatter skyscraper windows. They said there was an outside chance that a storm surge in Lower Manhattan could send seawater streaming into the maze of underground vaults that hold the city's cables and pipes, knocking out power to thousands and crippling the nation's financial capital. More...

Great Short Film: "Storm"

Had this on my "To-see list" and finally got to it. It is quite aggressive as the title already suggests. But who can deny the creativity behind it!

Origins of the debt showdown

Here is another good account of the drama behind the debt showdown by the Washington Post.

In mid-January, newly installed as the GOP House majority leader, Virginia's Eric Cantor rose to the podium inside a spacious hotel ballroom to deliver a message to his troops, including the 87 newcomers who had given the party control of the House. A vote to increase the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit was coming soon, he told the caucus members who had gathered at the Marriott in Baltimore's Inner Harbor for a closed-door retreat less than 10 days after taking power. Think of it as a "hidden" opportunity, he implored them, a chance to achieve their goal of reining in the federal government and its spending habits.

More...

Dream Home in Nevada Dessert

The Cliffhanger: Will the US default and usher in a new era?

All eyes are on Washington. I have a hard time believing that in the end the debt ceiling will not be raised but to be honest, I cannot rule it out completely. And if it does not happen, we are in a new world altogether...
Update August 2: Click on more to read background analysis of public analysis that prevented Obama from negotiating a better deal

Congress closing in on a deal to avert US default By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate plunged on Sunday into what many lawmakers and the White House -- and millions of Americans coast to coast-- hoped would be an all-but-decisive last-minute effort to raise the nation's debt ceiling and defuse a crisis that still could lead to an unprecedented government default.
As senators began debate in a rare Sunday session -- just hours after Saturday night's concluded -- Democratic leader Harry Reid said he was "cautiously optimistic" agreement could be reached.

More...

The Press is Cleaning Itself

It was the Guardian and not the British Police that kept on investigating who knew about or had authorized the bugging of phones. The scandal already has claimed for prominent players. And now the press is turning on Rupert Murdoch has being too old to run his empire. Will he be able to survive. JEANNE WHALEN, DAVID ENRICH and NATALIA RACHLIN filed in The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper Murdoch owns, this fascinating summary of yesterday's state o play.

Scandal's Latest Twists Seem Tabloid-Made

LONDON--If news imitates art, the long-simmering News Corp. scandal over dubious reporting tactics suddenly seems scripted by a master of the spy genre--replete with social drama, cloak-and-dagger mystery and farce. On Tuesday, in the rarified halls of Westminster, a protester attempted to land a pie in Rupert Murdoch's face--only to be thwarted and slapped by the media mogul's wife. The perpetrator, covered in his own foam, was hauled off. More...

Married, With Infidelities

I have been struck by how badly I am able to predict who among my family and friends would stay married and who would get divorced. The couple who had the best marriage ended up having the most acrimonious divorce. Here is an article in the NY Magazine that does a great job laying out how the idea of marriage in the U.S. needs some rediscovery of what people knew over a hundred years ago. I suspect that Schwarzenegger's wife is filing for divorce not because of the infidelity (after all she tolerated his groping for many years) but because her trust in him is irrevocably shattered after he had lied straight to her face for years. The article is a bit long but instead of me excerpting the key parts, I thought my readers would benefit from reading it all.

By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Last month, when the New York congressman Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he had lied, that his Twitter account had not been hacked, that he in fact had sent a picture of his thinly clad undercarriage to a stranger in Seattle, I asked my wife of six years, mother of our three children, what she thought. More specifically, I asked which would upset her more: to learn that I was sending racy self-portraits to random women, Weiner-style, or to discover I was having an actual affair. She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: "An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird." More...

Postcard from Paris: It does not look good for DSK

When I first heard the news about Dominque Strauss-Kahn's arrest, I thought there was a slim chance that he is innocent. After reading what people who know him well say about his relationship to women, DSK is likely to spend a lot of time in a room far less plush than the Soffitel in Manhattan.
Update July 1: Sensational Reversal of Fortune. Case against DSK close to collapse... Click on More and scroll down for details.
Update August 23: Case against DSK dismissed... Click on More and scroll down for details.

STRAUSS-KAHNIKOV by Philip Gourevitch (New Yorker)
In Paris the other day, a woman arrived late to a lively dinner party, accepted a glass of champagne, and, taking a seat, asked, "So? What are we talking about?" Then she let out a mirthless chuckle to signal that the question was rhetorical. Since Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York on charges (which he has denied) of sexually assaulting an African immigrant hotel maid, there really was no other topic of conversation in the Parisian society that had produced him, particularly among the left-of-center caste of politicians and journalists of which he and his wife, Anne Sinclair, were stars.
More...

Watch Magic :)

Gates: Europe is not paying for its defense!

The outgoing secretary of defense gives a blunt analysis of how little Europe contributes to world security.

Gates: NATO alliance future could be 'dim, dismal' By ROBERT BURNS and DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press

BRUSSELS: In a stern rebuke, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Friday that the future of the historic NATO military alliance is at risk because of European penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat. The United States won't carry the alliance as a charity case, the outgoing Pentagon chief said.Some NATO countries bristled, but Britain quickly and heartily agreed. Gates' assessment that NATO could face "a dim if not dismal" future echoes long-standing concern of U.S. policymakers about European defense spending. But rarely, if ever, has it been stated so directly by such a powerful American figure, widely respected in the United States and internationally. The remarks, at the close of Gates' final overseas trip, reflect a new reality of constrained American finances and a smaller global reach. More...

The Dancing Continues...

Can you dance like this?

87-year-old Nigerian faith healer has 86 wives

Other countries, other customs. Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently remarked upon reading this story: "Life is unfair!"

An Islamic faith healer in Nigeria has married 107 women. The wives seem happy, but religious authorities are not amused.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

He fell in love with his first wife because she was sincere and eager to please. His second wife, a cousin, was irresistible because she did everything he wished and nothing he didn't. "That alone made me love her." His third wife won him because she submitted to his every request.
"I saw her, I liked her. I went to her parents and asked for her hand in marriage." Wife No. 4 was very obedient. So was wife No. 5. Wife No. 6, the same. As were wives 7 and 8 and 9 and ...
Well, by then -- it was the late 1980s -- things had taken off for Bello Maasaba, an Islamic faith healer in this city in Niger state. He went from a wedding every few months to one every few weeks. More...

Breaking News: The Terminator is Terminated

I don't share the politics of Arnold. But I feel for him. He was the American dream. He even wanted to get the constitution changed to become president. But then the dream stalled. He didn't turn California around and now is marriage crumbles. This was not how the Arnold story was supposed to end. See the excellent documentary Pumping Iron to get a sense how Arnold rose to the top.

Update May 17: My intuition that the terminator was terminated by his wife was confirmed today. Oops, another Republican with a sex scandal. Click on "More" for more of the story...

Schwarzenegger and Shriver Announce Separation
By ADAM NAGOURNEY (NY Times)
LOS ANGELES -- One of America's most unlikely and riveting couples -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian body builder and movie star who became a Republican governor, and Maria Shriver, the journalist and member of the Kennedy dynasty -- have separated. More...

U.S. Kills Osama Bin Laden decade of 9/11 attacks

I am not a fan of the death penalty. But when it comes to terrorists or military leaders, taking aggressors out is the right cause of action. Psychologically, this is a big moment for Americans. And it surely is different from the Royal Wedding last week in London, which was also a big event. I am sure before long we will see a movie about the end of Osama Bin Laden. KIMBERLY DOZIER and DAVID ESPO of the Associated Press report:

WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale to a furtive decade on the run.
Long believed to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military academy.
More...

Women are Smarter than Men

Great Commercial: to date 39 million people agree

Let's Re-elect Obama!

Virginia Wolfe's Last Letter to her Husband

Virginia Woolf's last letter to her husband, Leonard, reads:

Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness.
I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.

The Japanese People

I only spent a short time in Japan, but I noted in my travel blog how smitten I was by courteous way all Japanese seemed to behave. Nicholas Kristof confirms these observations in the NY Times and digs a lot deeper into psyche of the Japanese. I hope that Japan will be spared a deeper nuclear crisis.

The Japanese Could Teach Us a Thing or Two

When America is under stress, as is happening right now with debates about where to pare the budget, we sometimes trample the least powerful and most vulnerable among us.

So maybe we can learn something from Japan, where the earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaks haven't caused society to come apart at the seams but to be knit together more tightly than ever. The selflessness, stoicism and discipline in Japan these days are epitomized by those workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, uncomplainingly and anonymously risking dangerous doses of radiation as they struggle to prevent a complete meltdown that would endanger their fellow citizens. More...

Optical Illusion

The world is full of mysteries. I have no idea how this stationary picture appears to be moving.

Peggy Noonan executes Don Rumsfeld

I was impressed with Peggy Noonan when she--although a Republican partisan--called Sarah Palin's nomination ridiculous. Her commitment to truth and integrity made her write this scathing review of Donald Rumsfeld memoirs in the WSJ.
The One That Got Away
Memoirist Rumsfeld seems to forget why we went to Afghanistan.

I like Donald Rumsfeld. I've always thought he was a hard-working, intelligent man. I respected his life in public service at the highest and most demanding levels. So it was with some surprise that I found myself flinging his book against a wall in hopes I would break its stupid little spine.
More...

The New Humanism

David Brooks continues to lay out in the NY Times his argument for a new humanism that tries to understand how human beings flourish collectively.

Over the course of my career, I've covered a number of policy failures. When the Soviet Union fell, we sent in teams of economists, oblivious to the lack of social trust that marred that society. While invading Iraq, the nation's leaders were unprepared for the cultural complexities of the place and the psychological aftershocks of Saddam's terror. We had a financial regime based on the notion that bankers are rational creatures who wouldn't do anything stupid en masse. For the past 30 years we've tried many different ways to restructure our educational system -- trying big schools and little schools, charters and vouchers -- that, for years, skirted the core issue: the relationship between a teacher and a student. More...

The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology

Lawrence Wright spent over a year assembling evidence that makes it quite clear that Scientology is a cult rather than a religion. At the center of the story is, Paul Haggis, one of Hollywood's most creative writers and producers, who spent 35 years climbing up the ladders of scientology. Haggis is the proverbial "smoking gun." In the end, Haggis loyalty to his gay daughter proved stronger than the brainwashing of Scientology. He quit Scientology and is now battling the "church" with all that he has got. I cancelled my evening plans to be able to read this article from beginning to end in one sitting. Read the fascinating story in the New Yorker. It is the New Yorker at its very best. You don't want to miss this report about how Scientology to date recruited and retained so successfully Hollywood celebrities. I am quite sure more federal law enforcement agencies will look more vigorously into the practices of Scientology after this expose.

18 Days of Eqypt: NY Time Photo Diary of the Remarkable Events

Click on photo to start the gallery.

The AP reports on Mubarak's final hours: Desperate bids to stay More...

Democracy Watch: In the Middle of the Struggle in Egypt

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF files this dramatic report from Cairo for the NY Times.

Watching Thugs With Razors and Clubs at Tahrir Sq. Pro-government thugs at Tahrir Square used clubs, machetes, swords and straight razors on Wednesday to try to crush Egypt's democracy movement, but, for me, the most memorable moment of a sickening day was one of inspiration: watching two women stand up to a mob.
More...

Miami Concert Hall: The Best Reason to Head South Soon

More...

A Widow's Story

Joyce Carol Oates has written a moving story about the last week of a long mariage. It reminded me a bit of the feelings I had when some years ago my best friend died in front of my eyes although the young body continued to walk on this planet as if nothing had happend.

February 15, 2008. Returning to my car, which I haphazardly parked on a narrow side street near the Princeton Medical Center, I see, thrust beneath a windshield wiper, what appears to be a sheet of stiff paper. At once my heart clenches in dismay--a ticket? A parking ticket? At such a time? Earlier this afternoon, I parked here--hurried, harried, a jangle of admonitions running through my head like shrieking cicadas--on my way to visit my husband in the Telemetry Unit of the medical center, where he was admitted several days ago for pneumonia. Now I need to go home for a few hours, before returning to the medical center in the early evening--anxious, dry-mouthed, and head-aching, yet in a state that might be called hopeful, for since his admission into the medical center Ray has been steadily improving. More...

Obama Pitch Perfect: Mourning the Victims in Arizona

Storm Jameson on Happiness

Marageret Storm Jameson said:

Happiness comes of the capacity
to feel deeply,
to enjoy simply,
to think freely,
to risk life,
to be needed.

Let's Dance through all of 2011 like James Brown

2010 in Pictures Courtesy of the New York Times & Spiegel Online

NY Times: 2010: The Year in Pictures



A more poetic version of the year appeared in:

Spiegel Online: 52 pictures of 2010



Picture: Child in Africa inspired by the World Cup!

Charles Krauthammer: Obama's New Start

Charles Krauthammer, the conservative editorialist of the Washington Post, warns his Republican friends that Obama is not to be written off. It is useful to remember that in politics, just like in any sport or busines, you don't have to be perfect. You only have to be better than the compeitition.

Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia.

Picture: "Die Hard with a Vengeance" More...

The Popular Opinion Behind the Historic Senate Vote

More...

WikiLeaks Exposing the Psychology of America

It is difficult for individuals to change their personalities; it also also difficult for countries to change their personalities. Derek Leebaert desribes the lens through which American diplomats have thinking about the world for a long time.

Our Envoys, Ourselves (NY Times)


A GLOBAL power's diplomatic archives are inevitably full of caustic dispatches. In Britain, a new batch of Foreign Office records is declassified each January under the "30-year rule" (a "50-year rule" before 1968). Historians can peruse elegantly handwritten mockeries of President Eisenhower's name as exotically Eastern European, or files deriding Americans as the planet's "most excitable" people -- other than Bangladeshis.

More...

Rainer Maria Rilke: First Duino Elegy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can
we make use of? Not Angels: not men,
and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at home
in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains
some tree on a slope, that we can see
again each day: there remains to us yesterday's street,
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
wears out our faces - whom would she not stay for,
the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart
with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?
Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.
Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms
to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds
will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.

More...

The Day U.S. Diplomacy was WikiLeaked

Hich 22: If you can hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails you may be well advised to do so

Christopher Hitchens recently was diagnosed with cancer. More often than not I disagree with his positions, but I am never bored by what he has to say. He is also a superb writer. I wish I could write so quickly and eloquently as he can. Andrew Anthony interviewed the pugnacious and hard-driking author this fall to find out if his views have mellowed a bit now that he is staring death in the face.

Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'

In June Christopher Hitchens, the hard-drinking polemicist and atheist, met his toughest opponent yet when he was diagnosed with cancer. The question on many lips was: would his illness alter his beliefs - on Iraq, on Islam, on God? At home in Washington, with a large glass of Johnnie Walker to hand, he responds with characteristic combativeness. More...

The Midterm Election Analysis: In politics, perceptions often matter more than facts

Hendrik Hertzberg provides the facts behind the defeat of the Democrats and highlights that Obama can show in the next two years that he is a great president by overcoming huge challenges.

ELECTORAL DISSONANCE (New Yorker)
Barack Obama had the mot juste last Wednesday for what had just befallen him and his party: a "shellacking." The President's choice of word was one syllable (and one "g") longer than his predecessor's summary after a parallel midterm debacle. But, then, Obama's shellacking was several syllables worse than the "thumpin' " that George W. Bush and the Republicans took in 2006. That year, President Bush's party lost thirty seats in the House of Representatives; this year, President Obama's lost more than twice as many. It was a historic defeat. The Democrats retained their Senate majority, now much reduced, only by the grace of the Tea Party, which, in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, saddled Republicans with nominees so weighted with extremism and general bizarreness that they sank beneath the wave so many others rode. Come January, for only the second time in eight decades and the first in more than six, the House will have fewer than two hundred Democrats in it. And because Democrats also lost eleven governorships and control of nineteen state legislative chambers, the decennial festival of gerrymandering will put their congressional starting line for 2012 at least twenty seats farther back.
More...

Why you need to take naps

I welcome any scientific evidence that proves what I am doing is healthy. Readers of my blog will remember that I took a strong position againt the so-called "power-nap killers." New scientific research shows that naps help your brain to learn better. I sometimes even take two naps to rejuvenate my body and mind. If your boss does not believe in powernaps, show him or her the evidence and say: Don't you want me to be more productive!

An afternoon nap markedly boosts the brain's learning capacity By Yasmin Anwar

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. More...

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety

There is often a fine line between a hero and villain. Many people have a hard time realizing: just because people have done a good thing it does not mean that they are nice people. By the same token, just because somebody is nice, it does not mean that they make a positive difference in the world. Life is complicated and people are complex!

By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA (NY Times)
LONDON -- Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London's rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears. He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.
More...

An Ingenious Graphic: Touch

Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can't save your life?

Atul Gawande, a doctor and staff writer of the New Yorker, has already received numerous awards for this writing. Now he has penned in the New Yorker (August 2, 2010) a report on how American medicine handles the final stages of our lives. This is the most difficult story I have read in many years, perhaps ever. But I forced myself to read it all the way to the end. You owe it to youself to do the same. Gwande deserves the Pulitzer Prize for this article.

Read "Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive interventions--and bad at knowing when to focus, instead, on improving the days that terminal patients have left" here.

General Sherman: "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."

From the the Writer's Almanac: On this day in 1864 Union General Sherman wrote to the Atlanta City Council: "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."

General Sherman had just captured Atlanta. Along the way, his soldiers had taken part in something known as "total war": They'd burned down crops, confiscated millions of pounds of corn and feed, and destroyed thousands of horses and mules and cows. They'd wrecked bridges, torn up railroad tracks to make train transport unusable, and they'd destroyed telegraph lines. In late August, they'd forced the surrender of Atlanta, occupied the city, and demanded that it be evacuated.
More...

Poem of the Day: "This Night Only"

This Night Only
by Kenneth Rexroth

[Eric Satie: GYMNOPÉDIE #1]

Moonlight now on Malibu
The winter night the few stars
Far away millions of miles
The sea going on and on
Forever around the earth
Far and far as your lips are near
Filled with the same light as your eyes
Darling darling darling
The future is long gone by
And the past will never happen
We have only this
Our one forever
So small so infinite
So brief so vast
Immortal as our hands that touch
Deathless as the firelit wine we drink
Almighty as this single kiss
That has no beginning
That will never
Never
End

From the Writer's Almanac

How to lead a good life courtesy of Wolfgang Goethe

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

--Goethe

Tiger Wood's ex Elin Speaks out: Life afer the Cheetah

Priests tell us that revenge is a base motive. But if your husband (or wife) cheated on you with a dozen of other people and you end up in tabloits for months looking like a fool, wanting to get even may be therapeutic. Elin waited to speak out until the divorce from her Tiger was finalized. Now she has given what she calls an exlcusive inteview with People Magazine. She describes the common emotions of any person whose trust was fundamentally violated. "I felt so stupid. How could I not know any thing. ... I have been through the stages of disbelief and shock, to anger and ultimately grief over the loss of the family I so badly wanted for my children." Elin says this was her first and last interview. In true American fashion, despite obvious physical problems caused by the divorce stress (isomnia, weightloss, hairloss, etc.) she ends the interview with this statement: "I also feel stronger than I ever have. I have confidence in my beliefs, my decisions and myself." Elin wants to finish her college degree in psychology. If she does, she will find that psychologically this is not over even though divorce papers are signed. Will Tiger ever regain his golfing ability? I hope he does not rush into another mariage in a quest to recature his golf mojo. What this episode shows once again: reason does not rule the world!

T-Shirt Message: "Meaningful Overnight Relationship Wanted"

I had lunch at a Thai Restaurant today. On the front side of her T-shirt, the attractive waitress had a daring message printed. I could not resist asking her: "What does 'Meaningful Overnight Relationship Wanted' mean?" She smiles and says innocently: "I don't know." This answer left everything open...

Should we mourn the disappearance of the Rocky Mountains locusts?

I am spoiled. I admit it. But in my defense, I shall say: In the industrialized world most of us are spoiled! We are living in far greater comfort than the kings of the middle ages who lacked modern medicine and ipods. If you don't believe me, read on this story about the locust epidemics. The Writer's Almanac reports:


It was on this day in 1875 that the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains. An estimated 3.5 trillion locusts made up the swarm. It was about 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide, ranging from Canada down to Texas.
Swarms would occur once every seven to 12 years, emerging from river valleys in the Rocky Mountains and sweeping east across much of the country. The size of the swarms tended to grow when there was less rain, and in 1873, the American West began to go through one of its driest periods on record. More...

I'm glad I am not David Cameron or Barak Obama

If you have been studying the business pages of major newspapers and business magazines, you will realize that a fierce battle is being waged by believers in demand or supply side economics. Everyone after the Great Depression used to be a demand sider; then Milton Friedman and his conspirators convinced many politians that government spending created short terms fixes but long-term growth problems. I would like to have someone spell out for me what evidence made the majority of economists swing the the demand side camp only in the 1970s and 1980s. David Brooks paints a thoughtful portrait, sympathiszing with demand siders, of the difficult positions Barak Obama and David Cameron are in. With regard to Cameron's proposal to cut government spending by 40%, I think this is simply a negotiation ploy with the British bureaucracy. If not, God save the British people from the economic pain that Cameron will inflict on them in the short term. More...

Rolling Stone on the U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan and the firing of McChrystal

More...

America got Talent: Fighting Gravity

Private Cooling: Al and Tipper Gore separate

Ellen McCarthy (Washington Post) puts her finger on just how significant the news of Al and Tipper Gore's divorce is and spells out what this means for the instution of marriage in a modern wolrd with life expectancies reaching nine decades.

Al and Tipper Gore's separation makes us fear for our parents, ourselves

Please Al and Tipper, don't do this. For our sakes -- don't.
We can't handle it.
These kinds of things stopped bothering us long ago. Name almost any famous couple, and we're happy to place under/over bets on the date they'll divorce.
But the Gores were different. We believed in them. Even if we didn't agree with their politics, we admired their marriage -- the way, after all these years, they still genuinely seemed into each other.
More...

What a mouth will do

Kiss
the impossible hope that love
will last. An end to looking
as if for one glove.

Swallow the sweet
lust of fruit--one way a body

can be pleased.

Tell others why.

Tell others nothing.

Feel the tongue and how
goodness
and mercy can flow
like a river from the north

or how it can rage as only rage can

and know there isn't much to say
after that.

"What a mouth will do" by Betsy Johnson-Miller, from Rain When You Want Rain. © Mayapple Press, 2010. More...

I like this Paul Rand Graphic

Is the Widnening Sex Abuse Scandal the Greatest Challenge to the Catholic Church Since Martin Luther?

If the core of your religion is love for other human beings, allowing priests to sexually abuse children entrusted to them undermines the credibility of the institution. Now the central question is how many committed catholics will not tolerate this hypocrisy and demand changes to church. I doubt that celibacy will go any time soon--but who knows. Here is Henry Herzberg's (New Yorker) take on the situation the church of Peter is in:

INDULGENCE

In October 31, 1517, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Dr. Martin Luther, put the finishing touches on a series of bullet points and, legend has it, nailed the result to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany--the equivalent, for the time and place, of uploading a particularly explosive blog post. Luther's was a protest against the sale of chits that were claimed to entitle buyers or their designees to shorter stays in Purgatory. Such chits, known as indulgences, were being hawked as part of Pope Leo X's fund-raising drive for the renovation of St. Peter's Basilica. The "Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" touched off a high-stakes flame war that rapidly devolved into the real thing, with actual wars, actual flames, and actual stakes. More...

In the Name of Science, I offer my Boobs

This line is coined by Jen McCreigh, a brave student from Indiana. She writes on her blog:

This little bit of supernatural thinking has been floating around the blogosphere today:
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.
I have a modest proposal.

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake!

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

So, who's with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If you'll be joining me on twitter, use the tag #boobquake! Or join the facebook event!

PS April 29, 2009: What I learned from Boobquake

Twitter Yourself into a Historical Figure

The New York Times reports that
the Library of Congress will archive the collected works of Twitter, the blogging service, whose users currently send a daily flood of 55 million messages, all that contain 140 or fewer characters. Library officials explained the agreement as another step in the library's embrace of digital media. Twitter, the Silicon Valley start-up, declared it "very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history." Academic researchers seem pleased as well. For hundreds of years, they say, the historical record has tended to be somewhat elitist because of its selectivity. In books, magazines and newspapers, they say, it is the prominent and the infamous who are written about most frequently. More...

David Brooks takes off his hat but fears for the worst

David Brooks columns are always interesting. Today he takes the reader back to his democratic youth, acknolwedges the success of the Democratic Party, but warns that America will follow Rome into oblivion. At least nobody can say that he did not warn us.

The Democrats Rejoice
Parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.
More...

Historic Health Care Bill passes after 48 Hours of Drama

This was a roller coaster. I am sure there will be lawsuits challenging the bill, but it looks like that America is becoming a modern country when it comes to providing health care. Watch this short video summary of the past 48 hours. Obama delivered in the end.

NY Times 3 min Video on the Battle to Come

Fiction: The Use of Poetry

After watching the film "Atonement", the name "Ian McEwan" is burned into my mind. His recent story in the New Yorker starts out very strong and was a pleasure to read.

It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he'd never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class. More...

Getting Obama Right

DAVID BROOKS (NY Times) responds the last week's column by Frank Rich and explains why it is so difficult for Obama to create on overarching narrative. The poltical odds seem to have changed. Right now the money is on health care passing.

Who is Barack Obama?
If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine. More...

The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama's Presidency

The money in Washington is on Health Care legislation not passing this year. FRANK RICH is hedging his bets on this issue. But he articulates forcefully that Obama needs to create an overarching narrative before it is too late for his presidency.

WEDNESDAY'S health care rally was one of President Obama's finest hours. It was so fine it couldn't be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.
Obama's urgent script didn't need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called "my proposal," stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America's broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with "honest and substantial differences" on fundamental principles wasn't happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss -- insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times. More...

An Amazing Nordic Tale

David Brooks reports an amazing Nordic Tale that I want to see made into a movie.

The Hard and the Soft (NY Times)

The United States, a nation of 300 million, won nine gold medals this year in the Winter Olympics. Norway, a nation of 4.7 million, also won nine. This was no anomaly. Over the years, Norwegians have won more gold medals in Winter Games, and more Winter Olympics medals over all, than people from any other nation.
More...

Somebody's Mother

by Mary Dow Brine

The woman was old and ragged and gray
And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.
The street was wet with a recent snow
And the woman's feet were aged and slow.
She stood at the crossing and waited long,
Alone, uncared for, amid the throng
Of human beings who passed her by
Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eye.
More...

Tiger Woods 15-minute Apology

Parts of the 15-minute "mea culpa" are cheesy. But other parts are remarkable. Tiger claims that he never took performance enhancing drugs and that his wife never hit him.

Romance in the Age of Facebook

Here is a great story by Joe Flint in the LA Times about the challenges about starting and ending a romance with facebook.

More than just Facebook friended

Two longtime acquaintances connect on the website, and it's like a whirlwind -- it sweeps them up together and then hurls them apart.

It was my first romance of the Facebook era. With it came the promise of contact, the ecstasy of connection, the neurosis of being able to peer into her world when she wasn't looking and the torment of trying to figure out what she was thinking through her status updates and posts. More...

The First Solid Data on what drove Voters in the MA Senate Race

I definitely did not see it coming that the Democrats would lose Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts. Here is the first solid information why the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the election. Click on More to find out who the man behind the stunning political upset is.

Brown's Massachusetts victory fueled by frustration with Washington, poll shows
By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen (Washington Post Staff Writer)

Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, according to a new post-election survey of Massachusetts voters. More...

How to Train the Aging Brain

Here are some useful tips for middle aged people on how to get their brain to perform better.

By BARBARA STRAUCH (NY Times)
I LOVE reading history, and the shelves in my living room are lined with fat, fact-filled books. There's "The Hemingses of Monticello," about the family of Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress; there's "House of Cards," about the fall of Bear Stearns; there's "Titan," about John D. Rockefeller Sr.
The problem is, as much as I've enjoyed these books, I don't really remember reading any of them. Certainly I know the main points. But didn't I, after underlining all those interesting parts, retain anything else? It's maddening and, sorry to say, not all that unusual for a brain at middle age: I don't just forget whole books, but movies I just saw, breakfasts I just ate, and the names, oh, the names are awful. Who are you? More...

Now Obama crashes a Party

Health care reforms is hanging in the balance. This is not a good time to have to fly to Copenhagen to salvage even a minimal agreement to contain global warming. President Obama had to resort to some unusual diplomatic tactics: to crash private negotiations. The NYT provides details.

The deal eventually came together after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret. The intrusion led to new talks that cemented central terms of the deal, American officials said. ... But Mr. Obama, who left before the conference considered the accord because of a major storm descending on Washington, noted that the agreement was merely a political statement and not a legally binding treaty and might not need ratification by the entire conference. Mr. Obama said before he left Copenhagen that he was confident that a final accord would be reached here. He looked weary and his eyes were bloodshot as he left the conference center for his motorcade to the airport. More...

Free Ride in the Presidential Flight Simulator

So your mother told you that one day you also can be president ...She exaggerated a bit your chances of getting into the White House -- nothwithstanding the recent episode with Michaele and Tareq Salahi. But today you can step into the presidential flight simulator and make a decision about how to handle the request of your generals to increase signanficantly the troops fighting in Afghanistan. The first article will take you behind the scences of the process that led to the decision over a three months period. Make your decision. Then think about how you would address the country. Give a little speach to anyone who want to listen. Next you can read or watch how Obama did address the nation. Finally, you can read two diametrically opposed reactions. David Brooks cheers your decision wheres Frank Rich finds it fundamentally flawed. After taking the ride, tell your mother whether you still want to be president.

How Obama Came to Plan for 'Surge' in Afghanistan
By PETER BAKER (NY Times, Dec 6, 2009)
WASHINGTON -- On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia. More...

Background: A Novelists explains what just happened in Switzerland

Switzerland's Invisible Minarets

By PETER STAMM Winterthur, Switzerland
THREE years ago I was invited to the Tehran International Book Fair; afterward I traveled around the country. The mosques I visited were so empty as to give the impression that Iran was as secular as Western Europe.It wasn't until I took a trip to a place of pilgrimage in the mountains that I saw large numbers of the faithful. The traffic started piling up even before my group reached the town of Imamzadeh Davood. A few of the pilgrims were making the trek on foot, together with the sheep they intended to sacrifice. The narrow streets were bustling just as at Christian places of pilgrimage: booths crammed with junk, groups of teenagers taking pictures of each other, every nook and cranny packed with candles lighted by believers in the hope their wishes would be fulfilled.
More...

Hot: The Party Crashers Speak!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More...

Couple Crashes Obama's First State Dinner

Crashing a party that you are not invited to takes guts. Crashing Obama's first state dinner takes more than nerve. Before you decide to imitate Michaele and Tareq Salahi and crash the next state dinner, wait and see what happens to the couple. DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer, reports:

WASHINGTON - Crashing a state dinner at the White House apparently takes a security breakdown as well as some kind of nerve. The Secret Service is looking into its own security procedures after determining that a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, managed to slip into Tuesday night's state dinner at the White House even though they were not on the guest list, agency spokesman Ed Donovan said. More...

Why is American history so murderous?

Jill Lapore reviews in the New Yorker a number of books that try to explain why the US is so violent in international comparison. Historians have shown that the murder rate in America has always been higher than in Western Europe. Why?

Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, who met three years ago in a Hartford drug-treatment center and shared a room in a halfway house in between stints in prison, were both seasoned burglars, though Hayes, a forty-four-year-old crack addict, was quite a bit older than Komisarjevsky, who was twenty-six, and the great-grandson of a Russian princess. In the spring of 2007, both men were paroled. More...

China the next America?

David Brooks (NT Times) files this perceptive column in the wake of President Obama's visit in China.
When European settlers first came to North America, they saw flocks of geese so big that it took them 30 minutes to all take flight and forests that seemed to stretch to infinity. They came to two conclusions: that God's plans for humanity could be completed here, and that they could get really rich in the process. This moral materialism fomented a certain sort of manic energy. Americans became famous for their energy and workaholism: for moving around, switching jobs, marrying and divorcing, creating new products and going off on righteous crusades. More...

Avoiding Cancer: What works and what doesn't

More...

How singing up for the military can save your life

Now here comes an incredible story. Did you ever know about these fringe benefits of ROTC programs?

Thieves in Milwaukee Show a Patriotic Side, Declining to Rob Army Reservist. By SUSAN SAULNY (NY Times)
Kyle Windorski, a 21-year-old college student in the Army Reserve, was walking home Tuesday morning on the east side of Milwaukee when four men with stocking caps over their faces forced him into an alley at gunpoint and demanded cash. In an account confirmed by the Milwaukee police, Mr. Windorski said the men ordered him to the ground on his stomach, and he was helpless as they fished his wallet out of a pocket. They counted his $16 and by their raging tone, he could tell they were not happy. More...

A New Interpretation of Dreams

The NY Times published today a facinating article on how scientists have developed a new interpretatin what dreams are for.

A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain (By BENEDICT CAREY)
It's snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyard is in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high school principal, there's even an ex-girlfriend. And is that Elvis, over by the pinata?
Uh-oh. Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche's archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations. Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn't psychological at all? More...

11.08 pm: House Passes Historic Health Care Reform

More...

Poem by Peter Schneider: The Thumb

In a nanosecond David lost his thumb,
the one his mother painted
with pine pitch when he was four
to keep him from forever sucking it.
Unable to distinguish human flesh
the McCormick silo filler
sliced it off--
nail, bone, knuckle--
and blew it skyward
an ounce of humanity
in a thousand tons of silage. More...

Generation Gap in Music Tastes

Frank Rich: In Defense of the 'Balloon Boy' Dad

This is one of the best columns Frank Rich (NY Times) has written in a long time. I am not sure, however, if he does not exaggerate the decline of the media's critical abilities. At the turn of the 20th century, America's journalist were clearly not anywhere close to the role model that Rich is painting for us. Maybe 30 years ago things were better but clearly not 100 years ago.

FOR a country desperate for good news, the now-deflated "balloon boy" spectacle would seem to be the perfect tonic. As Wolf Blitzer of CNN summed up the nation's unrestrained joy upon learning that the imperiled boy had never been in any peril whatsoever: "All of us are so excited that little Falcon is fine." Then came even better news. After little Falcon revealed to Blitzer that his family "did this for the show," we could all luxuriate in a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter what our own faults as parents, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor could we ever be as craven as the news media, especially cable television, which dumped a live broadcast of President Obama in New Orleans to track the supersized Jiffy Pop bag floating over Colorado. More...

Where your Amazon books reside before coming to you