On January 21st the Washington Post carried a distressing article headed “A Librarian’s Lament,” by Thomas Washington. He said that librarians are no longer focused on books, but on information management, databases and research tools, and , indeed were not even called librarians any more. Meanwhile, according to the 2004 Reading at risk report by …
Owing to the Common Agricultural Policy, every cow in France gets $2.00 a day in subsidies (you read it right – – $2.00). Indeed, the OECD gives $350 billion dollars in subsidies to farmers and gives a magnificent $50 billion dollars in aid to developing countries. The hypocrisy needs no comment from me. This being …
Victor Kioulaphides gave this succinct explanation of the downfall of Athens on the Yahoo Epicurean discussion group site. It has eerie echoes of our current problems: The demise of ancient Athens was the hapless Sicilian campaign. False data: A. Athenians thought it took about one day to sail around Sicily; it took triremes no less than …
A school district in Washington State has prohibited teachers from showing Vice President Al Gore’s documentary on global warming. Last month, a national organization of science teachers turned down an offer of free copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" citing controversy surrounding the film, but Federal Way public schools may be the first school district to …
Some while ago Harpshot commented on the fact that the body was constantly renewing itself, and went on to the problem of ageing. I wanted to comment on his remarks (below): I was amazed (some years ago) to learn that one’s body is constantly re-building itself. Cells just don’t live very long, it seems. Thus, …
