"I was born a poor black child." So begins Steve Martin's character (who is white) in the 1979 film The Jerk. Adopted by an African American family, he only later comes to realise he is white.
I was born a privileged, white, middle-class American. But since 9/11, I have slowly been made to realise that I am a brown person.
9/11 stole my whiteness
Nokia Slashes 10,000 Jobs
Nokia plans to cut one in five jobs at its global cellphone business as it loses market share to rivals Apple and Samsung and burns through cash, raising new fears over its future.
In a second profit warning in nine weeks, Nokia said on Thursday that its phone business would post a deeper-than-expected loss in the second quarter due to tougher competition.
Japan's debris clean up may last for years to come
Biologists are equally worried about the threat from invasive species attached to the debris. How big a threat remains to be seen. They fear that foreign species that arrive on our shores — crabs, barnacles, starfish, snails and plants — could establish a foothold and crowd out native creatures and plants.
Indiana legalizes shooting cops
Governor Mitch Daniels, a Republican, has authorized changes to a 2006 legislation that legalizes the use of deadly force on a public servant — including an officer of the law — in cases of “unlawful intrusion.” Proponents of both the Second and Fourth Amendments — those that allow for the ownership of firearms and the security against unlawful searches, respectively — are celebrating the update by saying it ensures that residents are protected from authorities that abuse the powers of the badge.
Giant nuclear cover-up? Explosions, military helicopters filmed near elevated radiation zone at border of Indiana and Michigan
It all began when separate radiation monitoring stations -- a privately-owned Radiation Network station near South Bend, Ind., and a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) RadNet station near Fort Wayne, Ind. -- detected extremely high levels of nuclear radiation around the same time between June 6 and June 7. Both stations reportedly began to give radiation readings ranging as high as 7,139 counts per minute (CPM), when a normal reading is typically between five and 60 CPM.
11 Years in Prison for Posting on an Atheist Website?
Aan was arrested in a small town in West Sumatra on January 18 after a number of local residents assaulted him at work in an act of self-styled vigilantism. They were reacting to some of his postings on a Facebook page devoted to atheism: a note entitled “the Prophet Muhammad was attracted to his own daughter-in-law”; a comic suggesting the Prophet slept with his wife’s maid; and a status update reading, “If you believe in god, then please show him to me.”
Study fingers humans for ocean heat rise: ‘No matter how you look at it, we did it’
A study published last weekend on Nature Climate Change claims to give the lie to the notion that if the world is warming, it’s not our fault.
With the kind of certainty that will send the Heartland Institute reaching for Plan C (“the world should focus on mitigation”), the study, The study, Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales, ends with the bald factual statement: “We have identified a human-induced fingerprint in observed estimates of upper-ocean warming on multidecadal timescales”.
Climate change will boost number of West's wildfires
Climate change will make wildfires in the West, like those now raging in parts of Colorado and New Mexico, more frequent over the next 30 years, researchers reported on Tuesday.
More broadly, almost all of North America and most of Europe will see an increase in wildfires by the year 2100, the scientists wrote in the journal Ecosphere, a publication of the Ecological Society of America.
Institute’s Gas Drilling Report Leads to Claims of Bias and Concern for a University’s Image
A report from a new institute at the State University at Buffalo asserting that state oversight has made natural gas drilling safer is causing tumult on campus and beyond, with critics arguing that the institute is biased toward industry and could undercut the university’s reputation.
The study, issued on May 15, said that state regulation in Pennsylvania had made drilling there far safer and that New York rules were even more likely to ensure safety once drilling gets under way in the state.
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