World News
Happy Birthday, Israel, and don’t wait for peace to happen soon
The nation of Israel marked its 60th birthday today. There was celebration throughout the land and a number of world leaders, including President Bush, gathered in Jerusalem to make speeches and exchange good wishes.
At the same time the celebration was going on, a Palestinian rocket launched in the Gaza Strip hit a marketplace in Israel, [...]
One of my favorite people, the ex-president with nothing to lose, Jimmy Carter
I admired President Jimmy Carter when he was president, and not a year goes by following his presidency that I don’t admire the guy a little bit more.
Let me first issue my standard caveat — nobody morally and ethically clean as a whistle makes it into the presidency. Having said that, I’ll have to say [...]
Global warming? Maybe we’ll just boil like the frog in the slowly heating pot
I don’t know when I first heard this, or whether it’s even true. The story goes that if you put a frog in a large part of water and very slowly raise the temperature under the pot, the frog will sit in the water as it gets hotter, hotter, and finally boils the frog.
Sounds sort [...]
Charlton Heston, wonderful as a man and in movies, lousy in politics, dies at 83
Charlton Heston, the actor who went through life being “typecast” in popular culture as “God,” died last night in his home in Los Angeles. He was a consummate actor to whom the cliche “larger than life” really did seem to apply.
He also was a leader in conservative political movements — and president of the National [...]
Today has been declared World Autism Day by the UN
My wife, Shirley, and I have been blessed with two wonderful children, now grown and living successful, happy lives. We have known people with autistic children, hence we’ve known a few autistic children. But we have never had to face this challenge ourselves.
I do not know the current statistics, but I believe either autism has [...]
Good to know our president plans a ‘happy trip’ to African countries
What it the world is a “happy trip” in regard to the president’s visit to five African countries?
With all the grief, all the warfare, and all the general suffering and crises plaguing most of the continent, how could anyone associate the phrase “happy trip” with a visit by President and Mrs. Bush? Isn’t that sort [...]
How can the World Health Organization possibly hope to win a worldwide anti-smoking battle?
I just read this news story about a new, worldwide anti-smoking campaign ready to be launched by the World Health Organization (WHO). The campaign, which will be based on a big study funded in part by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, will attempt to cut tobacco use in the world’s poorest nations. According to the news story, [...]
Undersea cable repairs will restore Asia, Middle East Internet access
I posted last week about the undersea cables which were damaged, shutting down Internet access to large sections of Asia and the Middle East. It seems the companies involved are busy repairing the damages now and it should take a week or so to get the job done. The story I linked to in that [...]
You can do anything on the Internet, I guess, but watch out for those cables
In this incredibly high-tech world, it’s always good now and again to remember how vulnerable we are to “low-tech” glitches: Large sections of Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa were taken off the Internet by a speed-bump on the information super highway: Two undersea cables were cut or damaged.
I don’t know how often such [...]
That’s the problem with ‘peace talks’ — always some of the crazies ignore the memo
Peace in the Middle East. Does that phrase ring of fantasy to you, too? Or is it just me?
President Bush, God bless him, seems to have taken all that seriously and made some legitimate efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians talking, even just agreeing to talk more, with the Annapolis meetings a couple of [...]
