January 2012
45 posts
The pros and cons of Moon Base Gingrich →
Our correspondent examines the practicalities of Newt Gingrich’s plan to build a colony on the moon. All things considered, it would be a rather left-wing place.
1 tag
“In a profession which specialises in hypocrisy, Mr Gingrich’s performance stands...”
– Newt Gingrich harried Bill Clinton for having sex with an intern 27 years his junior when he was having sex with a staffer 23 years younger than himself. His arrogance, meanwhile, verges on monomania. He once wrote of himself as the “definer of the forces of civilisation”.
1 tag
“Mr Dotcom went out of his way to attract attention—and not just by changing his...”
– It’s in print.
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“Mongolia is being dug up and sold to China”
– Our correspondent travels to Ulaanbaatar, capital of the country likely to grow faster than any other in the next decade. Mongolia has a chance of becoming a Qatar or a Brunei: a country that has only a small population but almost all of it, in global terms, loaded.
1 tag
“Parenting is just one part of a French mother’s life, alongside stilettos and a...”
– Ever since “French Women Don’t Get Fat” became a bestseller in America a few years ago, a new genre has emerged devoted to the failings that French women don’t possess. Now a new book turns attention to the impossibly well-mannered offspring of these impossibly chic women.
1 tag
“One sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any...”
– As doctors never tire of reminding people, exercise protects against a host of illnesses, from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection. Just why it has such magical properties is, at last, being understood.
1 tag
“We’re doing it for the kids”
– A fourth-grade teacher in Chester, Pennsylvania, explains why teachers and other school staff have agreed to work for nothing. The local school district’s bank account is almost empty, but it owes suppliers $4m.
1 tag
“Remember the old joke about the dim tailor who makes a loss on each piece of...”
– That describes the market for flat-panel screens for televisions. Why do none of the firms that produce liquid crystal display (LCD) panels make money from it?
1 tag
“Teachers in black state schools work an average of 3.5 hours a day, compared...”
– Officially, 25% of South Africans are unemployed; the real figure is probably nearer 40%. Some accuse the country’s education system of churning out candidates that are largely unemployable.
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“The SNP leader has a right to argue for Scottish independence. But to make that...”
– In his determination to dismember Britain, Scotland’s leader has allies among English Conservatives. But there are reasons sharply to distrust Alex Salmond’s vision of the Scots and English shaking hands over the corpse of Great Britain.
1 tag
