Hurricane Milton seen from the International Space Station. Photograph by NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Commander Matthew Dominick.
As “A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes” by Eric Jay Dolin demonstrates, hurricanes in the United States have always been about two kinds of storms — meteorological and political.
Read MoreJulius Kronberg’s “Hypatia” (1889), oil on canvas. The particularly brutal murder of this fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician shocked even the Roman Empire. It’s recounted in Islam Issa’s new book “Alexandria: The City That Changed the World” (Pegasus Books, $35, 476 pages).
When I was thinking about what my next blog post should be, there was no lack of ideas. Should it be about the student protests, which, however sincere, lack historical perspective, or dog-, goat- and horse-shooting Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota or the Republicans’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at former President Donald J. Trump’s trial in New York or the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza? Or how about Speaker-vacating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene going after Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s eyelashes verbally, which led to Crockett’s sly rebuke “about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body”?
Then I had an unsettling personal experience that made me realize that what all these events and people have in common is further proof that despite the upward arc of civilization, we live in cruel world.
Read MoreFormer Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on the day he was elected speaker — Jan. 7, 2023 — after 15 attempts. Now he is gone after almost nine months, about the time it takes for a full-term pregnancy and with no baby to show for it. Courtesy the former Speaker.
The Oct. 3 ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a man brought down as much by his own ambition as by the hard right of the Republican Party and the united Democrats, who refused to oppose it — echoes ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, to say nothing of the Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma and Randy Rainbow, who parodied McCarthy’s pathetic groveling for the speakership in a takeoff on “Les Misérables’” “Master of the House.”
Read MoreJ. Robert Oppenheimer speaking in Israel in 1966, the year before he died. Photograph by Boris Carmi /Meitar Collection / National Library of Israel / The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection / CC BY 4.0
“Oppenheimer” is a magnificent film that paints J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called “father of the atom bomb,” in a more sympathetic light than his detractors would like while nevertheless exploring the blindness behind his brilliance.
Read MoreA kindergarten in the village of Javolik, Serbia, built by the Novak Djokovic Foundation. Djokovic is active in social justice issues that might surprise the far right, which has adopted him in its anti-Covid vax mandate crusade. Photograph by
Ванилица.
Among those exulting in Novak Djokovic’s Australian Open triumph Sunday, Jan. 29, were members of the far right, who had adopted the world’s No. 1 male tennis player as the poster boy for their anti-Covid vaccine mandate crusade after the debacle last year in which he was deported from Australia for coming to the tournament unvaccinated, a moment that covered neither Australia nor Djokovic in glory.
Read MoreA macaque at Ngarai Sianok, Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. Monkeypox is so-named because it was first isolated in monkeys. However, it comes from Western and Central African rodents, not monkeys. Photograph by Sakurai Midori
I became a cultural writer in the age of AIDS,. And because my beat, the arts, intersected with the gay community, which was disproportionately affected by the disease in the United States, I was assigned by the newspaper I worked for then to help cover a subject few would touch with a 10-foot pole.
It’s hard to remember now more than 40 years ago as well as to overestimate the feeling of dread AIDS engendered. A wave of it came flooding back with Covid. And another wave of a different variety has come flooding back with monkeypox, wihich the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency even as the Biden Administration weighs appointing a monkeypox coordinator.
Read MoreKaori Sakamoto, seen here at the 2018 Winter Olympics, was a surprising third place finisher after the women’s short program Tuesday, Feb. 15, in which embattled Kamila Valieva took first. Photograph by David W. Carmichael.
The Olympic doping saga continued Tuesday, Feb. 15, in Beijing as Kamila Valieva, who tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, was allowed to compete in the short program by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), pending a fuller investigation of the obvious. Despite finishing first in the short program, ahead of Russian Olympic Committee teammate Anna Shcherbakova and Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, Valieva is in a lose-lose situation — sure to be asterisked if she wins and still facing possible disqualification.
Indeed, there are no winners among the skaters as no one will be awarded medals until the investigation is complete, and that could take months.
For others, however, there may be a “silver lining.”
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