KABUL, Afghanistan — In one of his sternest warnings yet concerning civilian casualties, PresidentHamid Karaki said Tuesday that NATO must stop air attacks on Afghan homes immediately, or face “unilateral action” from the Afghan government.Speaking at a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai declined to say what actions the government would or could take, saying only that Afghanistan “has a lot of ways of stopping it.”
There’s an anti-intellectual flavor to your dismissal of the liberal arts, saying the only thing an M.A. in English can do is bag groceries. You don’t consider yourself an intellectual?
I don’t know. If you look at Paul Johnson’s or Thomas Sowell’s description of the term, it would be a guy who’s not aware that he doesn’t know anything.
In researching my current book, I read lots of historians who say WW II German airmen were "dedicated" and the Japanese "fanatical". Zat so?
Now time for our email of the week. It comes from reader Adam, who was Randy Savage's second cousin. He offers this tribute:
Adam:
When I was a kid, Randy's Mother (aka Macho Mom) would always make sure that Randy would put aside tickets for when the WWF or WCW would come to Chicago. During a show in 1992 or 1993, me and my brother were actually granted the opportunity to go backstage. For the 6-year-old me, this was the most awesomest thing possible.
I don't remember what happened during the show, but I do have a vague memory of what happened when I was able to go backstage. I'm not sure of what my expectations were of going backstage, but at that point in my life I was sure of 3 things: Wrestling was 100% real, there were Good Guys who were super heroes, and there were Bad Guys that were super villains.
We were met backstage by some WWF people who were leading us into the locker room area, and we were brought to Randy to say hello. There were a bunch of other wrestlers around, which was really cool but there was one problem: the good guys were hanging out and being cordial to the bad guys! Seeing good guys like Brett Hart sharing laughs with bad guys like Jake "The Snake" Roberts was almost traumatic to see; like seeing your Dad french kiss your aunt. It simply wasn't supposed to happen.
I was sad, scared and confused. I gathered up the courage to ask why the Good Guys were friends with the Bad Guys. Randy said, "We're not. We're just tricking them. You'll see."
After this, a WWF rep was showing us some other areas of the backstage. I don't remember what we saw, but I know when we circled back to the area where Randy was, all of the wrestlers I had seen before were back in character. Bad guys were yelling at Good Guys about how they were going to kick their butt and Good Guys were holding each other back from attacking the bad guys.
This. Was. Awesome. It IS real! Of course it is!
Randy didn't know me too well, but he cared enough about a young fan and professional wrestling to keep the illusion and innocence alive.
While, as I said earlier, I cannot claim that we were particularly close, I do send my condolences to those in our family who were. He made a lot of people happy.
Former president Bill Clinton expressed optimism Wednesday about the immediate consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling by the August 2 deadline.
"If we defaulted on the debt once for a couple of days, it might not be calamitous," said Clinton.
Fourteen is a formative age, especially for people growing up in social contexts framed by pop culture. You’re in the ninth grade, confronting the tyrannies of sex and adulthood, struggling to figure out what kind of adult you’d like to be, and you turn to the cultural products most important in your day as sources of cool — the capital of young life.
“Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes,” says Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University. “Pubertal growth hormones make everything we’re experiencing, including music, seem very important. We’re just reaching a point in our cognitive development when we’re developing our own tastes. And musical tastes become a badge of identity.”
Rest of the article here.
"I can tell you that China does not have the capability to challenge the United States," Gen. Chen Bingde said, adding that China's wealth and military strength pales in comparison with that of the United States. He said China's navy is 20 years behind the U.S. Navy.
It's something that no one else in the entire world can truthfully say: I've eaten 25,000 Big Macs.
Don Gorske can't say it yet either - but by tomorrow he will be able to.
Mr Gorske, 57, is set to eat his 25,000th McDonald's Big Mac on Tuesday, May 17 - the 39th anniversary of the first time he tasted the iconic burger.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387785/Don-Gorske-set-consume-25-000th-Big-Mac-cholesterol-normal.html#ixzz1McaoFtI2
The nation’s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits, enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans who are postponing or forgoing medical care. . . .Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care.(Full story here.)
Regnery History
A New Imprint from Regnery Publishing
History is full of heroes and villains, stories and back stories. But too often, only one side of the story reaches the public. That’s why Regnery Publishing is proud to announce the launch of its new imprint: Regnery History. Beginning in fall 2011, Regnery History will publish new titles within the history, biography, and military categories. Following the Regnery tradition of challenging the status quo, Regnery History will bring new light to old subjects and will introduce figures and topics that deserve attention, but may have been ignored, overlooked, or even covered up in the past.
This fall, Regnery History will release three new hardcover titles and one paperback reprint. Included is a biography of the historically-neglected World War II general Omar Bradley; an in-depth look at the James Madison versus James Monroe election that ultimately shaped the U.S. Constitution; and a narrative political biography of Theodore Roosevelt complemented with more than 200 full-color and black and white vintage political cartoons. And new in paperback is the critically acclaimed biography of General Curtis LeMay by Warren Kozak. Early 2012 releases include a look at the Constitution from the perspective of the Founding Fathers as well as a gripping drama about the U.S.S. Grunion, the World War II submarine lost at sea, and the ensuing silence and cover up. We hope you enjoy our new line of books!
More info - go here:http://www.regneryhistory.com/
The first new console installment in Namco Bandai's arcade fighter-jet series since 2007's Xbox 360-exclusive Ace Combat 6, Assault Horizon is being positioned as a "reinvention" of the action shooter genre. The game's single-player mode features a storyline by New York Times best-selling author Jim DeFelice (Leopards Kill, Threat Level Black), offering conflict in real-world locales that range from Dubai to Russia. It also introduces a variety of aircraft to the franchise, such as supersonic jets and attack helicopters.
BOGOTA -- Colombia’s FARC rebels financed the presidential campaign of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and had such deep ties with Venezuela’s government that they may have carried out political assassinations on its behalf, according to a two-year analysis of thousands of the guerrilla group’s archives.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/10/2210416/study-details-regional-farc-ties.html#ixzz1M2kQftPx
U.S. Braced for Fights With Pakistanis in Bin Laden Raid
Item: For the second time in five months, the Pakistani authorities have angered the Central Intelligence Agency by tipping the Pakistani news media to the identity of the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, a deliberate effort to complicate the work of the American spy agency in the aftermath of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, American officials said.
Mr. Keller questioned why Bin Laden would live in Abbottabad, unless he had some assurance of protection or patronage from military or intelligence officers. “At best, it was willful blindness on the part of the ISI,” Mr. Keller said. “Willful blindness is a survival mechanism in Pakistan.”
When the end came for Bin Laden, he was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a massive compound about an hour’s drive north from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. He was hiding in the medium-sized city of Abbottabad, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy of the Pakistani Army.
UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest commercial health insurers, reported robust profits on Thursday. The company, which is the first of the major insurers to make public its quarterly earnings, is viewed as something of a bellwether for the rest of the industry.
In addition to besting Wall Street estimates, UnitedHealth’s results would seem to suggest that life under the new federal health care law may not be so bad for insurers after all.
Story, what little there is of it, here.
And note that it's not all that much different than this story, published about the previous quarter.
A Philadelphia professor is the subject of an investigation following allegations he hired strippers to take part in a symposium where he and students received lap dances, MyFoxPhilly.com reports.
