If there is a shortage, is it because of too few boys in th pipeline?
http://scientistshortage.com/
http://www.breitbart.tv/nbc-news-andrea-mitchell-takes-shot-at-palins-see-ru
ssia-remark/
“We assume they want to be us,” Liebman says. And, to be sure, China has established professional standards that have moved its judiciary in our direction. Since 2002, Liebman notes, new judges have been required to hold undergraduate degrees—though not necessarily in the law—and to pass a national bar exam. (If that sounds like a low standard, it’s worth noting that up until 1994, no qualifications at all were required.)
Yet China’s courts are as deeply committed to populism as they are to professionalism. If Chinese judges decide to ignore a law in order to preserve thousands of jobs, they aren’t violating a sacred legal precept. “They’re supposed to take into account popular interests,” Liebman explains. “Populism in China isn’t just about ensuring courts are controlled by the Party. It’s an effort by courts to make themselves more responsive and accessible to the people. Professionalism hasn’t given courts more authority; the question is whether populism will.”
Last week a North Korean court sentenced American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years of "reform through labor." The women, arrested in March along the North's border with China, were researching the plight of North Korean refugees who flee to China. Their trial was closed, and their crimes -- other than the alleged illegal border crossing -- were unspecified.
In recent years, I have spent many hours interviewing refugees from North Korea, including some who escaped from re-education camps. Their accounts of prison life accord with a recent assessment by the U.S. State Department. Conditions are brutal and life threatening, according to the February report. "Torture occurred," the report notes matter-of-factly. Refugees have spoken to me of newborns separated from their mothers and left to die.
North Koreans can end up in re-education camps for such crimes as listening to foreign radio broadcasts, secretly practicing a religion, or crossing the border to China in search of food. Inmates are subjected to forced labor and are required to memorize political tracts. They receive little food, no medical care and sometimes serve multiyear terms wearing the clothes in which they arrived at camp. I interviewed a woman who had been wearing high heels when she was arrested and had to bind her feet in rags when those wore out. Many prisoners die of abuse or malnutrition.
Political prisoners are held under even harsher conditions in kwan li so penal camps. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates the number of political prisoners at 200,000; the State Department puts it at between 150,000 and 200,000. Political offenses include such crimes as sitting on a newspaper that contains a picture of dictator Kim Jong Il. Punishment is often collective and can extend to three generations of the offender's entire family.
Shin Dong-Hyok may be the only person to have escaped from a kwan li so camp. Mr. Shin, now in his mid-20s and living in Seoul, was born and spent the first 22 years of his life in Camp No. 14, a so-called total control facility. In an interview at The Wall Street Journal's headquarters in New York last year, Mr. Shin spoke of growing up. His formal education was limited to the rudiments of reading and writing. Because political prisoners are usually incarcerated for life, the camps don't bother with political re-education; Mr. Shin said he didn't even know who Kim Jong Il was until after his escape.
At 12 or 13 -- he is unsure of the year in which he was born -- he was forced to watch the executions of his mother, who was hanged, and his brother, who was shot. They had attempted to escape. Hoping to pry information out of him -- Mr. Shin had none -- camp officials bound the boy's hands and feet, embedded a hook in his groin and dangled him over a fire. In the Journal's conference room, Mr. Shin pulled up a leg of his trousers to show me the scars.
Mr. Shin survived thanks to the kindness of a fellow prisoner, a former government official who had run afoul of the regime. They plotted a route to China -- a country Mr. Shin had never heard of -- but his friend was electrocuted on the wire that surrounded the camp. Mr. Shin literally crawled over his body to freedom.
Incredibly, he made his way to the border and on to Shanghai, where he climbed over the wall of the South Korean consulate. In 2005, the Chinese government permitted Mr. Shin to go to Seoul.
...
Do not limit your patience to this or that kind of trial, but extend it universally to whatever God may send, or allow to befall you. Some people will only bear patiently with trials which carry their own salve of dignity,—such as being wounded in battle, becoming a prisoner of war, being ill-used for the sake of their religion, being impoverished by some strife out of which they came triumphant. Now these persons do not love tribulation, but only the honour which attends it. A really patient servant of God is as ready to bear inglorious troubles as those which are honorable. A brave man can easily bear with contempt, slander and false accusation from an evil world; but to bear such injustice at the hands of good men, of friends and relations, is a great test of patience.
| If you desire to be happy | |
|
| |
| From Ryszard Kapuscinski's "Shah of Shahs" (1982): All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process, sometimes accomplished in an instant like a shock or a lustration, demands illuminating. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution. |
| Q: I recently bought a Toyota Tacoma pickup. Does it make a difference in aerodynamics or fuel efficiency if you drive with the tailgate up or down? A: Driving a pickup truck with the tailgate open definitely affects fuel economy and aerodynamics—adversely. It may seem like a closed tailgate would cause a lot of aerodynamic drag that could be eliminated by opening or removing the tailgate. I have seen this done often and think it looks so bad that I almost wouldn’t worry about the drag. But opening the rear of the truck’s bed increases turbulence, drag and fuel consumption. The Society of Automotive Engineers, which has studied this issue at length, concluded it is best to leave the tailgate closed. |
This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize
By STEPHEN MOORE
Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale
prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with
joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the
kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are
of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship
and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave
the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the
nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the
collective narcissism of their parents' generation -- my generation. The
judge said that we baby boomers have bequeathed to the "echo boomers,"
"millennials," or whatever they are to be called, a legacy of "greed, global
warming, and growing income inequality."
And everyone of all age groups seemed to nod in agreement. One affluent
40-something woman with lots of jewelry told me she can barely look her
teenagers in the eyes, so overcome is she with shame over the miseries we
have bestowed upon our children.
...
Well, I'm not. I have two teenagers and an 8-year-old, and I can say
firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's
for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to
soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to
regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has
ever known -- until now. Today's high-school and college students think of
iPods, designer cellphones and $599 lap tops as entitlements. They think
their future should be as mapped out as unambiguously as the GPS system in
their cars.
...
My parents' generation lived in fear of getting polio; many boomers lived in
fear of getting sent to the Vietnam War; this generation's notion of
hardship is TiVo breaking down.
How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the
generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade.
We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of
global thermonuclear war. Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they
think socialism may be better than capitalism after all. Do they expect us
to apologize for winning the Cold War next?
College students gripe about the price of tuition, and it does cost way too
much. But who do these 22-year-old scholars think has been footing the bill
for their courses in transgender studies and Che Guevara? The echo boomers
complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's
$8 trillion national IOU. But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise
tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a
living.
Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much
bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I
graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's
assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the
Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the
net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The
boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets
than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama
taxes it all away. So how about a little gratitude from these trust-fund
babies for our multitrillion-dollar going-away gifts?
My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having
polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in
history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970
pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago,
Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with
unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from
contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.
Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I
explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global
cooling. Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous
generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some
moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly
typical.
The most absurd complaint of all is that the health-care system has been
ruined by our generation. Oh, really? Thanks to massive medical progress in
the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of
cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within
a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen. That
doesn't sound so "selfish" to me.
Yes, we are in a deep economic crisis today -- but it's no worse than what
we boomers faced in the late 1970s after years of hyperinflation, sky-high
tax rates and runaway government spending.
...
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal's editorial
page.
| Huh? http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/news/story?id=4293867 |
In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.
Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.
