Are American policy makers listening to the sound of their own voices to the detriment of better relations with China and the world? Correspondent Rong Xiaoqing of China’s state-run Global Times dismisses U.S. complaints about Chinese trade, intellectual and foreign policies, arguing that if President Obama manages to put himself in China’s shoes during President Hu’s visit, a successful great...

With President Hu visiting the country, perhaps he’ll take a moment to use America’s open Internet to read this article about history and academic freedom by columnist Ding Dong of China’s state-controlled Nan Fang Daily. Did the United States achieve most of its scientific and industrial prowess by absorbing the Jewish intellectual elite from Hitler’s Germany and the rest of Europe?...

Rumors about Steve Jobs’s health surfaced again after he didn’t show up at the Apple iPhone launch on Verizon Wireless in New York last week, as was expected. This morning Apple released the following email to all Apple employees: Team, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions...

Only a policy created in Washington DC could drive up the prices of gasoline and food, with the added benefits of costing the American taxpayer billions in tax subsidies and killing people in 3rd world countries. ~Jim Quinn There is not much we can all agree on but one of them is that while corn makes a great whiskey it makes a lousy liquid fuel.  It actually has a negative EROEI – it takes more...

What politician is going to be able to standup in front of the American people and tell them the truth?” Heinberg asks. “Every politician is going to want to promise more economic growth and blame the lack of growth on the other political party…. The whole political system starts to get more and more polarized and more and more radical until it just comes apart at the seams. ~Richard Heinberg If...

One of the dirty secrets in the climate change community is that the IPCC consensus is widely seen as the lower bound of likely warming because the models do not incorporate the slower and much more powerful positive feedbacks such as increased methane release from permafrost and bogs. In the years since it was released, every study that has looked at the issue has concluded that the models are far far more...

Tom Whipple of the Falls Church News is one of the best at discussing the social implications of peak oil.  He makes the following observation: Buried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. The implication, of course, is that as 87 percent or roughly...

My Google Alert for Wikileaks-related news brings me this item, from IT Security & Network Security News:

With Goldman Sachs’ $50 billion Facebook buy-in, is a new type of dot.com bubble being created? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, in order to recoup such a mammoth sum, Facebook will have to become a conglomerate – a step that has killed off many of the world’s most innovative tech-savvy companies. The Financial Times Deutschland editorial says...

How transformational are WikiLeaks and Facebook? According to columnist Antonio Pedro Vansconcelos of Portugal’s Sol newspaper, Julian Assange and Mark Zuckerberg have just heralded a brave new world, and those hoping for a smooth transition from the old civilization to the new are going to be ‘sorely disappointed.’ For Portugal’s Sol, Antonio Pedro Vansconcelos writes in part: If Facebook...

I think it’s hilarious that the government-funded Voice of America publishes an article about a Wikileaks-released cable that indicates Israel would have only 10 to 12 minutes warning before an Iranian rocket attack while this same government’s State Department (among other government agencies) forbids its employees to read Wikileaks on government computers and the government’s Department of...

So this explains Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh: Today’s human brain is 10% smaller than that of our Cro-Magnon ancestors, but scientists are divided on whether that means we are getting smarter or dumber. Some say it does represent a dumbing down, but that our increasingly complex society means individuals don’t need as much intelligence to survive and reproduce. Others think it’s a sign of...

There are numerous social, political and economic events and accomplishments that will make 2010 go down in history as a very remarkable year. When it comes to equal rights in the military, of course the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” will rank as one of the most significant achievements in that area in decades. But we shouldn’t forget that 2010 also marked the year when the Navy decided...

My friend Vlasta Molak informs me that the world’s oldest Jewish woman is Alice Herz-Sommer, who celebrated her 107th birthday recently on November 26, 2010. In my recent article I had mentioned that this honour goes to India’s Fori Nehru, 102. Thank you Vlasta. I had given the heading based on the information in The Week magazine. The author had stated: “While researching for this story,...

Uncle Sam: Hands off the Internet! by Michael Reagan The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to get its grasping hands around the throat of the Internet, the international town hall where Americans have been free to express their opinions without Big Brother’s permission or interference. That makes the FCC unhappy. It seems that this taxpayer-supported, intrusive federal agency simply can’t bring...

Here’s an interesting question: would the release of internal White House documents before the Iraq War began have prevented the Bush Administration from going ahead with it? According to columnist Ulrich Ladurner of Germany’s Die Zeit, not only is it likely that the war would have been prevented – but Julian Assange may well have won the Nobel Peace Prize. For Die Zeit, Ulrich Ladurner writes...

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has had raised his public profile of late. After last week signing off on a partnership between WikiLeaks and Rossiyskaya Gazeta – the newspaper he partly owns – this week he is opining on the New START Treaty, which was passed by the U.S. Senate last week. Gorbachev wrote one op-ed piece for the English-speaking press, and a different version for the Russian....

I have been a great admirer of Hollywood’s great war classics. Who can forget “All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)”, “The Longest Day’, “The Bridge on The River Kwai”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, and so on. But in the present times some see an unholy nexus between the war machine and the Hollywood. Al Jazeera has an interesting article and panel discussion...

It seems as though the operations of WikiLeaks have set almost every source of power on the attack against a new enemy. But according to Liberation columnist Daniel Schneiderman, despite the focus on Julian Assange, pinpointing precisely what or who the enemy is – and how to stop it – is proving exceedingly difficult. For Liberation, after outlining the importance of making sure that the sexual...

With the purchase of a 2010 Prius I quickly morphed from a speed demon to a hypermiler, complaining anytime the car’s gas mileage dips below 50 MPG. Toyota’s simple energy monitor with instant fuel consumption metering and fuel consumption history has changed the way I drive, gently incentivizing greater fuel efficiency. But that Toyota Multi-Information Display has been around for nearly a decade....

This out of Michigan. Leon Walker (pictured above) of Rochester Hills is charged under a law meant to prevent identity theft, and could face up to five years in prison, for reading his wife’s email. Using a laptop in the couple’s home, Walker logged on to his wife’s Gmail account and learned she was having an affair. Walker believed the affair involved a man with an abusive history and provided information...

Time Magazine has chosen its 2010 Man of the Year: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. France’s Le Monde, a member of the five newspaper consortium publishing U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, has made a different choice: Julian Assange. In this excerpt from the long version published in Le Monde’s Sunday magazine, reporter Yves Eudes gives a sense of why the French newspaper chose...

Ralph Hall, Republican member of Congress from Texas, and incoming chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, commenting on the BP oil rig explosion:

Can Julian Assange compare to the Rolling Stones in terms of public fame and elite rejection? In this lighthearted holiday analysis of the WikiLeaks saga, columnist Quico Alsedo of Spain’s El Pais depicts Assange as a man who enrages the ruling classes and is loved by the common man – as was Jagger – but with a difference: Assange has also exposed the major media as apathetic, ineffectual,...

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