Current Affairs

Agreed that "a wise Latina woman . . ." was a stupid thing to say -- even Sonia Sotomayor thinks so by now -- did the senators have to go over and over it? It showed an unfortunate mindset of Sotomayor's to sink into group-identity politics, but getting her to recant it (or as close as a nominee will get to that) did nothing special for me.

Well, duh, yes:

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

It appears the president and congressional Democrats want to pay for about half of $1 trillion-plus health plan by hitting the rich (a new surtax on those making $350,000 and above) and about half by hitting the poor (reduced spending on Medicare and Medicaid). How wickedly awesome! Those of us in the broad middle class will get all that great new health care for free!

So why am I worried? Oh,

My current favorite neologism comes from a commentary about a motion in a Florida case made against the Posted in: Current Affairs, Film, The law and the jungle, Words and all that

This is one of the best pieces I've seen on the chatoic state of journalism -- appropriately titled "Not an upgrade -- an upheval." No one can predict what's going to happen -- as this piece notes -- but the writer does a good job of describing the forces that are in play and so lets us imagine some of the possible contours of change. "The news," he observes, has always been subsidized. Of late it's been by advertising, sports fans and coupon clippers.

The Pentagon wants the military to become smoke-free:

Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property, a change that could dramatically alter a culture intertwined with smoking.

Whoever came up with the idea of taking stray dogs into prison was brilliant -- it helps the dogs and can give the inmates an idea of what it's like to be a responsible human being. But now they're trying the same thing with cats, and I'm not so sure about that one:

Schlusser and his fellow offenders work in eight-hour shifts caring for 59 cats who entered the facility on June 22.

Another group with a big image problem turns to the government for help:

Little People of America, at its annual conference in Brooklyn this week, has called for the Federal Communications Commission to ban the use of the word "midget" on broadcast TV.

Guns don't kill people, the "gun culture" kills people:

The flag won't be flying at half-mast at the Morris compound today:

Robert Strange McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93.

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