Subversive Art
November 30, 2010
If you get a chance, stop in at LaGuardia Airport’s Marine Air Terminal (also known, much less romantically, as Terminal A) and take a look at James Brooks’ 235-foot circular mural, “Flight.” This was the last and largest mural produced under the Work Projects Administration. The WPA, a key component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, was the nation’s largest employer in the years leading up to World War …
New York’s Not-So-Indispensable Man
November 29, 2010The late French Gen. Charles de Gaulle is credited with one of my favorite sayings: “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.” New York City has functioned, sometimes better and sometimes worse, for around 400 years. In addition to a handful of Dutch directors, the city has had 108 mayors, many of whom are now in the ground. Yet the current mayor has become convinced that he is indispensable. Indispensable …
My Bold Prediction: We’ll Have Summer Next Summer
November 26, 2010I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: We will have summer weather in the Northeast next year. This may seem obvious, but for a while I had my doubts. This year’s volcanic eruptions, first in Iceland and more recently in Indonesia, reminded me of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Like Eyjafjallaj√∂kull in Iceland and Mount Merapi in Indonesia, Mount Pinatubo spewed …
Traveling Turkeys
November 24, 2010If everything goes perfectly, today will bring bedlam at the nation’s airports as millions of Americans journey to gather with loved ones for Thanksgiving. If things don’t go perfectly, a lot of people are going to be very sad. So what can we say about a few individuals who think it would be a great idea to try to foul (or fowl) things up? I avoid name-calling in this column. …
A Place Where Time Stands Still
November 23, 2010
SALMON RIVER, Nova Scotia —In the 48 hours before I sat down to write this column, Facebook announced a plan to make email obsolete; a three-month rally in the financial markets shuddered to at least a temporary halt; and the Beatles finally arrived at the iTunes store. But here, high on a windswept cliff along Nova Scotia’s southwestern coast, time seems to almost stand still. In the tiny fishing village …
The Economic Fujiwara
November 22, 2010The dollar is up against the euro. No, the dollar is down against the euro. Now it’s up again. Until it goes down. Meteorologists have a term, the “Fujiwara effect,” to describe the interaction of two storms in close proximity. In the Northern hemisphere, wind blows counterclockwise around centers of low pressure. When two lows “dance the Fujiwara,” as some scientists put it, the winds of each storm influence the …
Libel And The Shield Of Truth
November 19, 2010In Hungary, two men are involved in a trial. One is a renowned American-Israeli Nazi hunter who has spent the past three decades tracking down war criminals. The other is a former Hungarian soldier who escaped charges of mass murder by fleeing to South America after World War II. The Nazi hunter is the one being tried. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s office in Jerusalem, was …
Protect Our Pastry Heritage
November 18, 2010With the most sacred day on the American culinary calendar — Thanksgiving — only a week away, I have some disturbing news: Our critical national resources in baked goods are being gobbled up by foreigners. No, we are not going to run out of pumpkin or apple pies to put on our holiday tables. I am speaking, and not for the first time, of Sara Lee chocolate swirl pound cake. …
The Golden Elephant
November 17, 2010There is a “golden elephant in the room,” according to Robert Zoellick, the American who heads the World Bank. As world leaders headed to Seoul for the G-20 summit last week, gold hit a record-high price of $1,400 an ounce, and Zoellick made a surprising proposal. In an opinion piece in the Financial Times, he wrote that “The system should…consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations …
A Hypocritical Cloning Ban
November 16, 2010In 1996 the world said hello to Dolly, and to a host of ethical and scientific questions regarding animal cloning. Now the European Union is trying to turn back the clock on biotechnological progress. Last month the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, announced that it would propose a five-year ban on the cloning of animals for food production. John Dalli, the EU commissioner for health and consumer policy, acknowledged …
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