Brian Gongol
Researcher: "Droughts don't need to be as severe these days to have major impacts"
The US Senate annualy holds "Seersucker Thursday"
That doesn't mean that people wearing it look good. In fact, there's quite a good chance that hipsters wearing seersucker will look like idiots.
"It's sad to see the Bush Republicans now at open war with the Reagan base of the party"
"We have a dilemma in transferring knowledge from one generation to another"
That's Norman Borlaug's commentary on the problem of training new agricultural scientists, but it's applicable well beyond that field as well. It's appalling that most textbooks today are written to try to mimic the flash and dazzle of online presentations -- while completely ignoring the fundamentals of where the knowledge came from that they're trying to promote. A bunch of factoids sewn together with a bare thread of chapter headings and glossary notes is hardly the way to ensure that students know where the knowledge that they're trying to absorb came from. It's hard to name ten recent textbooks -- from any field -- that adequately describe where the knowledge came from, and why people in the past asked the questions they did, resulting in the answers they derived that we study now. And for as wonderful as the Internet is, it's hardly helping.
The right of the people peaceably to assemble
Opposition groups in the republic of Georgia say that the government is using strong-arm tactics to prevent people from getting to political rallies
Ukraine will get its natural gas this year
Russia has been using natural gas as a point of leverage with its neighbors and with much of Europe -- and Ukraine has settled its bill for gas already used this year (to the tune of $729 million) to ensure that they get the gas they need this coming winter. With oil prices hitting just under $100 a barrel, energy supplies may be a vastly more effective tool than conventional weapons of war.
Paul Tibbets is dead
The pilot of the Enola Gay has died. How interesting to note that the man who piloted the plane that brought about a conclusive end to World War II lived all the way through the Cold War and into an era in which the President of the United States has managed to declare perpetual war on a nebulous enemy
