Visual Source: Newseum
Gideon Rose offers up what at first seems like an odd role model for Obama as he seeks to get out of Afghanistan.
What he needs is a strategy for getting out without turning a retreat into a rout — and he would be wise to borrow one from the last American administration to extricate itself from a thankless, seemingly endless counterinsurgency in a remote and strategically marginal region. Mr. Obama should ask himself, in short: What would Nixon do?
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It may seem crazy to regard the American withdrawal from Vietnam as anything but disastrous. Our local ally collapsed two years after signing a peace deal, our enemies triumphantly conquered the country we had fought for more than a decade to defend, and the image of panicked friends reaching in vain for the last helicopter out of Saigon remains seared into our national consciousness. But Mr. Nixon actually did a lot right in Vietnam, and his approach there was not the primary cause of the war’s ignominious end.
Stephanie Clifford looks at the uses of that 2% oil that doesn't end up going into pushing a vehicle along road, rails, or sky.
Since petroleum replaced whale oil as a main fuel source more than a century ago, chemical companies and refineries have found a startling range of uses for it, from asphalt to vanilla flavoring in ice cream to pills from the drugstore. It has oozed into everyday life...
It's nice to think about what we'll do for lubricants when the oil runs out, but first let's stop burning the other 98% of oil so there will be plenty around for other things. Speaking of which...
Joe Nocera gets a glimpse of our future from the seat of the Chevy Volt.
People who follow the car business like to say that this particular moment in automotive history is the closest we’ll ever come to seeing what the industry was like a century ago. Back then, there were dozens of auto companies, all experimenting with different ways to power a car, a race ultimately won by the gasoline-powered combustible engine. ... nobody yet knows what kind of infrastructure will develop around the electric car. Is lithium ion ultimately the right battery chemistry? How quickly will the cost of the battery — which is the most expensive feature in an electric car — come down? When will the battery size shrink, and its power increase?
At least it's a glimpse of
my future, since the Volt is otherwise known as that-car-I-put-in-a-downpayment-for-but-won't-get-until-November.
Carl Zimmer researches one of the most difficult problems in science – how to handle bad science.
n May, for instance, the journal Science published eight critiques of a controversial paper that it had run in December. In the paper, a team of scientists described a species of bacteria that seemed to defy the known rules of biology by using arsenic instead of phosphorus to build its DNA. Chemists and microbiologists roundly condemned the paper; in the eight critiques, researchers attacked the study for using sloppy techniques and failing to rule out more plausible alternatives.
But none of those critics had actually tried to replicate the initial results.
Science may be "self-correcting," but when addressing studies that involved months or years of original research, it can be years or decades before anyone gets around to trying to replicate the results. Scientists can also run into an issue that's very familiar to journalists, including bloggers.
Even when scientists rerun an experiment, and even when they find that the original result is flawed, they still may have trouble getting their paper published. The reason is surprisingly mundane: journal editors typically prefer to publish groundbreaking new research, not dutiful replications.
Susan Cain boldly peeks into the question of shyness. Is it really a disorder?
Before 1980, this would have seemed a strange question. Social anxiety disorder did not officially exist until it appeared in that year’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-III, the psychiatrist’s bible of mental disorders, under the name “social phobia.” It was not widely known until the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies received F.D.A. approval to treat social anxiety with S.S.R.I.’s and poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising its existence.
Or do these traits actually give their "sufferers" an evolutionary advantage in many circumstances?
According to Daniel Nettle, a Newcastle University evolutionary psychologist, extroverts are more likely than introverts to be hospitalized as a result of an injury, have affairs (men) and change relationships (women). One study of bus drivers even found that accidents are more likely to occur when extroverts are at the wheel.
George Will joins those who look to Texas for another Republican savior.
Supposed examples of Perry’s extremism evaporate in sunlight. One is that he intimated support for Texas’s secession from the Union. After people shouted “Secede!” at a rally, he said that he understood their frustration but added: “We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it.” He signed a law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown sonograms of their babies. Do people objecting to this mandatory provision of information object to the new graphic warnings on cigarette packs?
See? Perry isn't an egotistical extremist who thinks that climate change is a hoax and that the best way to deal with water resource issues is prayer, he's a reluctant politician who will have to be dragged into the spotlight to save the party. Glad we cleared that up.
Dana Milbank voices some of the anger from the left.
Democrats are less angry with Obama now than when he struck a deal with Republicans preserving the Bush tax cuts. But the breadth of Obama’s fights with his political base is striking.
Compounding the feeling of betrayal is the progressive lawmakers’ belief that Obama was one of them – not some centrist, Clintonian character. I’m sympathetic to Obama’s instincts to keep to the political center, but the routine spurning of his political base does seem extravagant.
On top of that, Obama has little to show for his intramural squabbles. Clinton’s heresies earned him the support of independents (the expanding economy certainly helped), but, according to the latest Bloomberg poll, only 23 percent of independent likely voters support Obama’s reelection, while 36 percent say they will definitely back another candidate.
Maybe that's because poll after poll has demonstrated that no matter what they call themselves, most Americans hold positions on a whole raft of issues that are progressive. Now if we could only find someone who was a great orator and in a perfect position to defend and push those positions. Oh wait, we have... nope, still waiting.