The new oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (The Week)
New York – A miles-long slick contaminates a stretch of beach hit hard by last year’s massive BP spill.
Have scientists cracked the speed at which the universe is expanding? (The Week)
New York – Yes — and you’ll be pleased to know the magic figure is 73.8 km/sec/megaparsec. So…
Apple’s software guru departs: Is the tech giant going all mobile? (The Week)
New York – Bertrand Serlet, who helped rebuild Apple in the late ’90s, is leaving, and the tech world buzzes over what it means for Steve Jobs and Co. Apple announced on Wednesday that Bertrand Serlet, the software engineer instrumental in the development of Mac OS X, is leaving the company. Serlet, who said in his departure statement that he wants to “focus less on products and more on science,” has worked with Steve Jobs for 22 years, and was the driving force behind the software that helped launch the company back into prominence in 1997
The real March Madness: Duke, Uncle Tom, and success as a ‘white’ value (The Christian Science Monitor)
New York – A few summers ago, I took my daughter and a few of her friends to see the rapper Lil Wayne in concert. He bounded onto the stage in a blaze of blinking lights, then served up the usual menu of songs about gangsters, hustlers, and pimps. And the mostly white audience cheered
It really is about regime change in Libya (The Week)
New York – Ignore the president’s hysterical critics. Obama’s aim is to topple Gadhafi — and he knows the stakes are high The commentary on the president’s course in Libya has been instinctively adversarial. Much of the press may be compensating for its cheerleading or supine acquiescence in the fraud of the Iraq War.
Newt Gingrich’s Libya ‘flip-flop’: What was he thinking? (The Week)
New York – Gingrich hammered President Obama earlier this month for not intervening in Libya. Now he’s griping, “I would not have intervened.” Huh? Former House speaker and current GOP presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich has done a “complete flip-flop” on his Libya position, says George Zornick at ThinkProgress
March Madness: By the numbers (The Week)
New York – The annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament is down to 16 teams. Does anyone in America still have a perfect bracket
Can Republican Scott Brown save Planned Parenthood? (The Week)
New York – The Massachusetts senator joins two GOP colleagues in opposing a House bid to strip federal funding from the family-planning group House Republicans’ hopes of stripping all federal funding from Planned Parenthood hit a big obstacle Tuesday, and his name is Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass). The junior senator from Massachusetts (and one-time Tea Party favorite) said the measure simply “goes too far.” Two other GOP senators, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), had already voiced their opposition to the House plan
Evangelical shift on gays: Why ‘clobber scriptures’ are losing ground (The Christian Science Monitor)
Atlanta – In 1987, Jim Bakker’s sex scandal shocked the evangelical world. The husband of mascara-laden Tammy Faye was a super-televangelist with an average viewership numbering over 12 million and ministry contributions estimated at $1 million per week.
Could the West’s anti-Gadhafi coalition fall apart? (The Week)
New York – Tensions are flaring as the U.S. and its allies debate who should take charge of the military mission in Libya Allied planes and warships continued to pummel Moammar Gadhafi’s forces with bombs and missiles on Thursday, but the coalition is showing signs of splintering.
