Western readers may not especially like the treatment the latest James Bodh smash hit Skyfall got in today’s edition of Al Jazeera. In a review-essay entitled “James Bond’s Skyfall, or the decadence of the West,” Patricia Viera writes that the film is just chock-full of references to the “post-American world,” not to mention the post-European world. Excrepted below are a few paragraphs paragraphs.
White bias in US fertility care
After the recent U.S. elections, several conservatives remarked that “traditional America” was on the decline, largely due to new voter demographics. But American medical science doesn’t seem to be bending over backwards to help minority families have children––quite the opposite. As reported in today’s Huffington Post by law professor Jim Hawkins, “
“People who study the fertility business have been concerned for years over the fact that racial minorities utilize fertility treatments at a lower rate than whites. Continue reading “White bias in US fertility care”
Facebook, democracy, and world domination
In the Facebook universe the big news is that after signing up half of the world’s population, the company is going for even more subscribers. The smaller story is that Facebook is poised to eliminate democracy (i.e.,voting) among its users. As the LA times reports,
“ Facebook Inc. is finding out just how messy democracy can be. Continue reading “Facebook, democracy, and world domination”
Unlocked iPhone 5 from Apple online
Apple has begun taking orders for unlocked versions of its iPhone 5 through the company’s 
U.S. online store. While the unlocked phone probably will seem a bit pricy for the average consumer, the $659 price may make sense for people who frequently travel internationally or simply want to be free from contacts to service providers. Unlocked version had been available at some Apple stores. According to Apple, the unlocked units are seeing ship-by times of one week, identical to Verizon, AT&T and Sprint iterations, while orders are limited to two handsets per customer. Continue reading “Unlocked iPhone 5 from Apple online”
Conviction in disability ridicule case
“An Ohio man faces one month of jail time for teasing and taunting a 1o-year-old girl with cerebral palsy after a video of the incident went viral.” Reportes Christina Lopez on ABC Online
“ Judge John A. Poulos of the Canton Municipal Court sentenced 43-year-old William Bailey to 29 days in jail. The taunting occurred on Sept. 26, when Tricia Knight and her mother-in-law were waiting for her children’s bus to return from school. Knight’s three children, including 10-year-old Hope, attend Walker Elementary with Bailey’s 9-year-old son, Joseph. Continue reading “Conviction in disability ridicule case”
Obama official sketches end to war on terror
“Neither the George W. Bush nor Barack Obama White House ever laid out a vision for what an end to the war on terrorism would actually look like,” reports Spencer Ackerman in today’s DangerRoom. “But as Obama prepares for his second term in office, one of his top defense officials is arguing that there is an end in sight, and laying out conditions for when the U.S. will reach it.
“On the present course, there will come a tipping point,” Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, told the Oxford Union in the U.K. on Friday, Continue reading “Obama official sketches end to war on terror”
Nations of Laws
In most discussions of nation-building, functioning legal systems are seen as useful indicators of a society’s coherence and long-term stability.
The Asia Times say in a piece today entitled “Asia is short of respect of law” that
“The rule of law – an essential element of good governance – is prospering best in the countries of northern Europe and worst in Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe and Cameroon, according to the latest edition of a five-year-old index released here Wednesday by the World Justice Project (WJP). Continue reading “Nations of Laws”
“Getting to Zero”
On this December 1, 2012, the United Nations GETTING TO ZERO campaign to eradicate HIV/AIDS reports significant progress, while also pointing out limited spending by nations that could be doing more . Getting to Zero reports a 50% drop in new diagnoses in 25 as the world approaches its 1000 day target for certain goals, described by the UN below. For more informaton, see “World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, 2012.
Unborn twins caught fighting in womb
In the “You’ve got to be kidding” category, today’s Huffington Post ran a story about an MRI video of two twins looking like they were fighting while still in mommy’s tummy. Here is how the first couple of paragraphs went:
“’It’s my womb!’ ‘No, it’s my womb!’ Siblings apparently are never too young to be rivals, a video taken from a new high-clarity MRI scan shows.
“The high-tech monitor, also dubbed the “cinematic MRI,” allows doctors to see, in better detail, when twins vie for space in utero, Dr. Marisa Taylor-Clarke of Imperial College’s Robert Steiner MR Unit in London told Reuters. Continue reading “Unborn twins caught fighting in womb”
US considers nuking the moon
Honestly, this isn’t our day for joke entries. In this next item the U.S. Air Force is considering nuking the moon. (Aren’t we in a bit of a fiscal jam?). Slate reports it thus:
“The U.S. Air Force considered detonating a nuclear device on the moon during the late 1950s. In a recent interview with CNN, physicist Leonard Reiffel, who worked on the project, explained that the single explosion would have been “microscopic” with little impact on the moon. But what if it had been bigger—do we have enough nuclear weapons to push the moon out of orbit?
“Not even close. Depending on where the detonation happened, sending the moon careening away from Earth would take somewhere between 10 billion and 10 trillion megatons of TNT. The most powerful nuclear device ever detonated, the Soviet Union’s “Tsar Bomba,” yielded the energy equivalent of 50 megatons of TNT. The combination of every nuclear device ever tested represents just over 500 megatons of TNT worth Continue reading “US considers nuking the moon”