Curated knowlege, trenchant insights & witty bon mots
In 2006, Leftist U.S. media commentator Eric Boelhert took a merciless look at the U.S. news media’s performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War a decade ago in a Salon piece headlined Lapdogs. Today marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the war. Boelhert’s jeremiad still stands.
Tue, March 19 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
With a 4.9-magnitude earthquake detected in North Korea close to the secretive country’s known nuclear test site, speculation is rife that the communist dictatorship has carried out its third nuclear weapons test.
Mon, February 11 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Esquire magazine has a very interesting story: A now-retired member of SEAL Team 6, the man who actually killed Osama bin Laden, is struggling in civilian life with no pension, health care or job. The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the U.S. armed forces, has already picked away at some of the 15,000-word article.
Mon, February 11 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders followed up on work by his colleague Colin Freeze by interpreting what a report tells us about who becomes a violent extremist, and just as importantly, who doesn’t.
Sat, February 9 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
The New York Times had a big scoop within a story on drone strikes: The CIA was operating a drone base in Saudi Arabia. However, as NYT public editor Margaret Sullivan notes, the paper had the information more than a year before they published it. They withheld publication at the request of the CIA, which [...]
Sat, February 9 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
War photographer Al Rockoff witnessed the fall of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to the sullen teenage brigades of the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. On Jan. 28, nearly two generations later Rockoff was back in Phnom Penh to tell told his story of those terrifying days to a special tribunal hearing cases of [...]
Tue, January 29 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
That would be cats. Pet felines are credited in a new study with killing birds and small animals by the billions in the United States.
Tue, January 29 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Nicholas Stern, who authored a landmark report seven years ago for the British government on climate and the economy, now says he was too conservative on estimating the risks posed by a warming planet.
Sat, January 26 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Margaret Wente, the disgraced Globe and Mail columnist, picked a cold snap to launch one of her occasional trolls on the global warming issue.
Sat, January 26 2013 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » 1 Comment
Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig compares today’s oil companies to the Luddites of the Industrial Revolution for blocking progress in the battle against global warming. She highlighted some interesting numbers from a July 19 Bill McKibben article for Rolling Stone on climate change:
Tue, November 20 2012 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, politics » Comments Off