Beijing Fatter and sicker: Prevalence of type 2 diabetes has more than tripled in China over the past decade as Chinese people adopt a more Western diet and lifestyle. “China, unfortunately, has become the world’s capital for diabetes,” said Michael Rosenblatt, chief medical officer of pharmaceutical giant Merck. “The government is starting to pay more attention, as this is the […]
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“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” – George Orwell
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“If I were God, I would make a world just like this one, where everyone comes raw and naked and dependent into it; where everyone enters bloody between the legs or through the cut belly of a woman; where nothing is for certain and there is so much to learn. I would make the world unfair as this world is […]
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A cybersecurity firm has traced scores of attacks on U.S. corporate and government computers to a single building in Shanghai. The security firm, Mandiant, found that the attacks originated in a 12-story building known as the headquarters of People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398. Intelligence analysts say that the unit has about 2,000 employees and 1,000 servers, and is the most […]
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Sponging Up Succor I’m suffering through vinegary days, as if I’m Jesus at His Calvary. Arrested from my customary ways by modern versions of its harsh decree, I bend beneath the burden of my cross. Recalling laurels in Jerusalem, I’m painfully reminded of my loss who sport a fool’s cap for a diadem. As I secure my seat at […]
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New Horizons has found a more distant world out beyond Pluto about 1 billion miles away from the sun on its travels through the Kuiper Belt. This new world may be an icy relic left over from the formation of the planet Pluto. Right now, NASA is calling it 2014 MU69 and will eventually give a proper name. 2014 MU69 […]
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Rio De Janeiro No rain forest beef: Hoping to prevent Amazon deforestation, Brazilian grocery stores say they will no longer sell beef from cattle raised on land clear-cut from the rain forests. Brazil is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of beef, and an area of the Amazon larger than France has been cleared to create pastureland for […]
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THE MAN WHO ATE HIS BOOTS I remember now. Air so still you could hear it breathing through the frozen shrouds, the crack of floes caressing hulls as if ships could talk to each other. Men slept fully clothed, smoked, drank tea, cooked, read books from the library, and pretended that this was all normal. On holidays […]
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Reflections of Infinity – By Fern G. Z. Carr At opposing ends of a corridor, two mirrors confront each other in a contest of wills stubbornly flinging images into infinity – a cycle of reincarnation animating the essence of reflected light. FERN G. Z. CARR is a director of Project Literacy, lawyer, teacher and past president of the Society for […]
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