SO MUCH FOR THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE PROMISED: How Canada broke up with the U.S. “It is clear that on a number of issues there is a gathering sense of grievance on the Canadian side, a feeling that Canada’s concerns are not taken seriously in official Washington. . . . In response, Canada has moved to more aggressively assert its interests, for example warning it might cultivate China and other export markets for its crude oil, scaling back its commitment to Afghanistan and changing its Facebook status to ‘it’s complicated.'”
Archive for 2012
July 8, 2012
REX MURPHY: Oprah Winfrey, the Obama supporter fame left behind.
Oprah was the queen of all that she surveyed. She was regularly highlighted as one of the most, if not the most, influential persons in the United States. If she touted a book, it went to the top of the best seller lists. She waved a wand and the already famous were made more famous. And she was ardently “non-political.”
But four years ago, the House of Oprah made an epic decision: It chose to endorse Barack Obama. Oprah featured Obama on her show, with Michelle, and put the celebrated Oprah muscle to task for his campaign. It was a truly momentous event — the most powerful woman in entertainment endorsing a presidential candidate.
The move was timely. Obama had not yet crested to the great heights of adulation that marked the later stages of his campaign. Oprah endorsed him when it counted, then — having made her point — withdrew from the stage. I can’t think of a more significant moment in the modern intersection of the worlds of Hollywood and Washington, celebrity and power.
Was Oprah’s benediction a “tipping point”? Was it the moment when Obama jumped from being just another candidate to being a star in a class of his own?
Perhaps, but that was then. What of now? Well, something strange has happened. Oprah has lost her chi. She ended her long-time relationship with mainstream television and decided that she should have her own network. It is one of the very few examples of a person ordering her own self-exile. And the result is that she has simply ceased — in television terms — to be. I cannot recall a more precipitous drop in status, and in the influence status bestows, than Oprah’s almost complete fall from entertainment eminence.
Who speaks of Oprah now, save in valediction? Is she endorsing Obama this time? Who cares?
Everything Obama touches . . . .
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Study: Coffee Lowers Colon Cancer Risk. “Over the years, most studies of the subject have been either small or plagued by methodological flaws. But recently a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute followed half a million Americans over 15 years. The researchers looked in detail at their diets, habits and health, and found that people who drank four or more cups of coffee a day — regular or decaf — had a 15 percent lower risk of colon cancer compared with coffee abstainers. While the researchers could not prove cause and effect, they did find that the link was dose-responsive: Greater coffee consumption was correlated with a lower colon cancer risk. The effect held even after they adjusted their findings for factors like exercise, family history of cancer, body weight, and alcohol and cigarette use.”
July 7, 2012
I THINK I’D RATHER HAVE OUR HEAT WAVE: Britain’s Worst Summer Ever: “Britain is facing its ‘worst ever’ summer with cold wet weather ruining family holidays and blighting the Olympics, forecasters warned last night.”
Brits can comfort themselves with the knowledge that what they’re experiencing is merely variable weather, while the United States is experiencing climate change.
WELL, OUR POLITICAL CLASS ISN’T LOOKING TOO PROMISING: Spain May Not Be Uganda, But Will America Soon Be Argentina?
THE MEDIA AS TERRORIST AMPLIFIERS: “Media Exposure Increases Emotional Pain From Terrorism.” “Ease of access to media has increased the advantages to be had by managing your exposures to media. Your emotional and intellectual state can become too impacted by distant events that don’t even educate you about larger important trends in the world. emotional state by selecting your exposures to media becomes more important as media reports become more immediate. When wireless and cellular high speed connections become even faster and cheaper and tablets or video head gear make it easy to watch media everywhere we need to step back and turn off the constant flow.”
Don’t I know it.
DEMYSTIFYING THE IMMORTALITY OF CANCER CELLS: “In cancer cells, normal mechanisms governing the cellular life cycle have gone haywire. Cancer cells continue to divide indefinitely, without ever dying off, thus creating rapidly growing tumors. Swiss scientists have discovered a protein complex involved this deregulated process, and hope to be able to exploit it to stop tumor formation in its tracks.”
AN OPEN LETTER TO MAYOR BLOOMBERG: “I’m sorry, but with all due respect, sir, ARE YOU MY MOTHER?”
NEW STUFF coming out on Blu-Ray.
SUDDENLY NOTICING “ONLINE HARASSMENT.” As Stacy McCain emails, if it weren’t for double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
KEEPING THE FLU AWAY: Synthetic protein EP67 helps kick-start the immune system.
WHY WOMEN WATCH THE OLYMPICS: “A recent study conducted by Erin Whiteside (University of Tennessee) and Marie Hardin (Pennsylvania State University) explores these questions. The results, published in Communication, Culture & Critique, show that women prefer condensed sporting events like the Olympics to sports with longer seasons, and that in selecting which particular Olympic sport to watch, women often select events that are seen as traditionally ‘feminine,’ like gymnastics and figure skating.”
SKYNET WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Giddyup, Robot Doggies! Autonomous Soldiers Square Off at Army Robotics Rodeo.
AT AMAZON, 69 Cent Songs on MP3.
LIFE AMONG THE BARBARIANS: “We are against tourism. They foster debauchery.”
MONDAY: Internet Cutoff For Some. “Starting that day, computers still infected with the notorious DNSChanger malware will be unable to connect to websites.”
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader C.J. Casey writes about his book, A Flight of Dwarfs. “It’s a mix of steampunk and fantasy, where Dwarfs have split off from their traditional Elf antagonists and developed technology in order to keep their bid at independence. I grew up reading cold war era spy fiction, and I had a lot of fun re-imagining the conflict in a different world.”
Done!
THE FOUR BEST riding lawnmowers under $2000.
UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!
DON’T GIVE RAY LAHOOD any ideas.
IN THE MAIL: From Poul Anderson, The High Crusade.
PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 10 weeks on: Still no word from WaPo about apparent digital scrubbing of Jessica Lynch articles.
So what’s to be concluded, 10 weeks after my initial inquiry to Pexton?
Not unlike Vanity Fair, the Post appears to have scrubbed the digital reminders of an embarrassing misstep, of a high-profile story that the newspaper got utterly wrong.
It’s also pretty clear the Post has no interest in making freely available online its botched reporting about Jessica Lynch.
It’s pretty clear, too, that Pexton doesn’t eagerly follow through on his rhetoric about the value and importance of “iconoclastic, questioning voices.”
Ouch.