Showing posts from March, 2009Show all
Doo Wop Classics
I don't know about you, but I can't do a stitch of work unless there is music playing. There are lots of Doo Wop sites on the Web, but here i…
Read more
The Taliban, united, can never be defeated (at least not militarily)
It's Science Friday and I've got little to show today, although I did write about early millet farming in China yesterday and there's a …
Read more
What's ailing Big Pharma
My friend and colleague Greg Critser has an opinion piece with this title in today's Los Angeles Times . Greg makes some important points about…
Read more
Maize's early days
Today on Science 's online news service, ScienceNOW, I write about two papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting …
Read more
Toxic assets clearinghouse
This is great, the federal government is going to offload all those toxic assets we keep reading about. I'm figuring, since they are worth so li…
Read more
Has the country moved to the left of Obama?
Probably not, and I doubt that I have to prompt many visitors to this blog to read Frank Rich's column, but today's installment makes me won…
Read more
Israeli soldiers say army rabbis framed Gaza as religious war
That's the headline of an online McClatchy Newspapers story by Cliff Churgin . This is a followup to testimony by Israel soldiers who "serve…
Read more
Tempest in a rice bowl
Continuing with Science Friday: In today's print issue of Science , I also report on a paper by Dorian Fuller of Universal College London and Ch…
Read more
Music makes the world go 'round
It's Science Friday, and what better way to end the week than with a musical interlude--musical research interlude, that is. Today in Science …
Read more
War crimes in Gaza: Israeli soldiers speak
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz has begun publishing an explosive series of articles based on testimony from Israeli soldiers about the brutal killi…
Read more
The secrets of cassoulet.
A friend tipped me off to a story about cassoulet , the great southwestern French dish, in Slate , by Katherine Lanpher. The piece is pretty well inf…
Read more
Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But how else to respond to the protests of Republicans , who have banded together to try to defeat ev…
Read more
Courage to Resist
As we all know by now, the Bush administration lied the United States into a war of choice in Iraq. Many Americans were hoodwinked into believing the…
Read more
Jean Seberg, the Los Angeles Times, and the FBI
The Los Angeles Times Opinion page today carries a must-read piece by former Times staffer Allan Jalon about a smear the paper printed back in 197…
Read more
Madoff: How I Did It
Talking Points Memo does us the service of reproducing Madoff's statement to the court after pleading guilty to investment fraud. It's worth…
Read more
Bernie Madoff, Slumdog Billionaire
It looks like Madoff has a good chance of being sentenced to the slammer for what will probably end up being the rest of his life tomorrow. At least,…
Read more
Yet another argument for single payer health insurance
According to today's Los Angeles Times : The Department of Managed Health Care declines to require carriers to pay for applied behavior analysis…
Read more
Duck, that chimp is mad!
Humans are mental time travelers: We remember what we thought and felt in the past, and we anticipate what we might be thinking and feeling in the fu…
Read more
"I killed my baby."
I think I have a pretty good idea about who is going to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism this year. That would be Gene Weingarten, whose story a…
Read more
Catholic pedaphile ring strikes again
I see that the Vatican has endorsed the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a 9-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being rap…
Read more
Glenn Greenwald Saturday
As many readers know, the most astute and principled commentator on the "war on terror" efforts of both the Bush and Obama adminstrations, …
Read more
Science Friday
Every Friday, whenever possible, we will be featuring the latest scientific news. Here's this week's installment. Expert On Anteaters Wasted …
Read more
Gaza: "Closed Zone"
This is a short animated film, called " Closed Zone ," by Yoni Goodman , director of animation for Ari Folman's "Waltz with Bash…
Read more
Is criticizing Obama "playing into the hands of" the right wing?
From time to time, we've had discussions on this blog's Comments section about whether or not President Barack Obama should be directly criti…
Read more
Israel plans massive increase in West Bank housing, potentially doubling the number of settlers
A report by the Israeli group Peace Now , based on Israeli government documents, concludes that the Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning…
Read more
The names of the dead
As the death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq falls, it is rising among GI's serving in Afghanistan (and also among Afghan civilians.) But the names…
Read more![Paleontology: An alleged sexual harasser is passed out of a famous dinosaur lab. Have institutions failed yet again? [Updated Sept 21 2021: A pattern of sexual harassment in the U Saskatchewan Geological Sciences department?]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnbqOtRreF7fWbpGV-k5qlN2redbcbH1cAZkbKZUVtLqA7qpyK9QxdLqjKic6iwMQYdvWbMjzYJV8U66BzRbKKMbcuWalISDwKhI9-zBcIcAv9NsX28LWKghcuBmlisuBs9K4K_gV1yuu_/w680/Aaron+van+der+Reest+LinkedIn.jpeg)
My book about Neolithic Catalhoyuk in Turkey and the origins of civilization, the paperback edition. For more information about it, please visit MY WEB SITE
- Michael Balter
- I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE
Social Media