Standing Still When No One Else Will

My friend Charlie and I stared into the room, mouths agape. There on the floor before us, rolling about on a bunch of mismatched mattresses, were a half dozen naked people, interacting in an unmistakably affectionate manner. It was hot and I began to sweat. I had never seen, well, an orgy before, much less been invited to one. Actually we hadn’t been invited. And we weren’t going to be. Charlie looked at me deadpan and stated the obvious [...]

Tech Week in Review

The first of our newly minted “Global Tech: Week in Review” posts, offering links to the top stories from the past week. We’ll post it every Friday. This week, we take flight with the world’s first completely solar-powered aircraft!

The battle to own Bin Laden’s story

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, a new battle has begun: the rhetorical fight to frame his legacy. The White House got off to a bad start, with its initial claims about the circumstances of the killing. We offer two stabs at this story, one from the perspective of the US government, the other from a cultural point of view. There have been many other such stabs: I especially like [...]

First Impressions of Sydney

My first impression of Sydney was from the air as the plane came in low over Sydney Harbour. In a word: beautiful. The famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House were little flecks, but stunning little flecks. Maybe this was cognitive dissonance setting in along with the sleep deprivation, but I was starting to tingle [...]

New ‘fracking’ report sure to heat up debate

Does natural gas “fracking” contaminate water supplies? A new report strongly suggests it does, and that the “flaming faucet” phenomenon is real [...]

Microsoft to Buy Skype

Computer giant Microsoft says it will buy Internet calling company Skype for $8.5 billion dollars. Tens of millions of Skype users across the globe might be affected by the deal. The World’s Clark Boyd has a round-up of online news, analysis and reactions.

A Visit Down Under

Why am I heading to Australia? I’ve been writing about the global economy for going on three years now, mostly covering bleak stories from economically depressed places, from America’s heartland to West Africa. For a change of pace, my assignment editors thought it would be nice to visit a place that’s economically prospering. By most standard economic evaluators, the top-performing countries in the developed world are Canada, the Scandinavian nations and Australia. I’m here to report on how Australia did it, and pick up some stories behind those numbers [...]

Zahar on reconciliation

Here’s an audio clip from the Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar speaking to reporters yesterday in Cairo about what Palestinian reconciliation means [...]

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The butcher, the baker, and the cabbage gelder

As far as tedium goes, nothing competes with filling out a government form. How best to relieve the tedium? Invent stuff. Not out-and-out lie, just get a bit creative (OK, sometimes out-an-out lie: if I were to identify myself as a 90-year-old Azerbaijani woman or a Jedi knight, I would not be telling the truth) [...]

News from Egypt

Today’s front page of al-Dostour newspaper. I’ll have more from Egypt later today in the broadcast [...]

Radiation, Risk and the “Linear No-Threshold” Model

Earlier this month I posted about the longstanding debate over the ultimate death toll from the Chernobyl accident, and a new look at the data by a Union of Concerned Scientist physicist. Lisbeth Gronlund pored through scattered and hard-to-find data on the distribution of fallout from Chernobyl, crunched the numbers based on a statistical model of likely cancers at different exposure levels, and came up with an estimate of roughly 27,000 additional cancer deaths due to Chernobyl. This stands in stark contrast to a widely-quoted UN estimate of roughly 4,000, but also to estimates by Greenpeace and others of 90,000 or more cancer deaths [...]

Big Brains Strike Again

Two back-to-back studies on how big-brained animals thrive in new habitats piqued my curiosity about the real implications of relative brain size. If you heard last week’s science podcast, you know that species with big brains relative to their bodies are more successful than small-brained ones in new habitats. That holds true for birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles—all of which often land in unfamiliar environments due to human trade and travel. Now another study finds that a big brain-to-body ratio helps birds thrive in cities. [...]

Fukushima’s Collateral Damage

Six weeks after the crisis at the plant began, authorities are now threatening to arrest and fine anyone caught within the roughly 20-kilometer zone around the still-unstable nuclear reactors. The tougher stance is a stark reminder to local residents that while the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has become somewhat less critical in the last couple of weeks, it’s still volatile and dangerous. The disaster has also claimed its first victims here in the US – two new nuclear plants planned for Texas [...]

English-only in the US, translating tweets in Japan and satire in Egypt

The English Only movement in the United States is always active during times of high immigration. Now, the movement has got a shot in the arm from the Tea Party. It may help convince lawmakers and voters in the 19 remaining states that don’t yet have a law on their books declaring English to be the official language [...]

Postcard from Bhutan: Gross National Happiness

When you’re a small, landlocked mountain kingdom, wedged between the giants of China and India, with more than 70 percent of your population living in rural areas, 50 percent illiterate, and much of your budget coming from overseas aid and grants, you play to your strengths [...]