Month: September 2001
Is stopping-while-you’re-ahead a lost art?
“Top Bush advisers have become image profiteers, spinning tall tales in a greedy quest to transform the president they had fretted was coming across as too small before the crisis into a larger-than-life figure now. ‘They’re trying so hard to make him look Churchillian and it’s entirely unnecessary,’ says one Republican who advises the administration.…
North America is headed for an inevitable union
“In the last half of the Twentieth Century, Canada effectively abandoned the vision of being an economic and military power separate from the United States. Recognizing that our north-south axis ultimately trumped our east-west arrangements, we accepted the continentalization of North American defence and the economy. The logic of the gradual erasure of the border…
A melting pot of the extraordinary
“Only 25 to 30 seconds had elapsed since I had missed the earlier elevator. I turned again and walked a few steps, three or four seconds, maybe less, and was opposite an adjoining hallway. I stopped, faced the hallway, heard an explosion, turned to my left and saw a wall of debris and smoke heading…
We’ve all seen the graveyard of exercise devices concealed in cupboards
“A cigarette is a suitable substitute for almost all distracting bodily desires. The peaceful prescription to all your daily worries. Whether you’re tired, cold, hungry, sad, angry or just bored
How did Diego Serna, a former seminary student turned rebel, get that close?
“The bizarre case surfaced Monday, when a Colombian television station aired footage of a May ceremony at Bogota’s National Museum at which Colombian President Andres Pastrana and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were seated together at a table. Helping to push in Chavez’s chair and then standing behind the two leaders during the ceremony was a…
A trade-off of higher education over primary led to 200,000 engineers abroad
“This is Radha Basu, General Manager of Hewlett Packard. She was sent to India to open their Bangalore office. She was telling me that all the officials wanted to know was: what is this thing called software that you are sending to the earth station. They kept telling her that they wanted a hard copy,…
Through the sieve of the self he relentlessly processes the world
“I took it to the Barclays Bank, where I used to deposit my little cheques of five and ten pounds that I got from the Carribean service of the BBC. When I gave it to the clerk sitting behind the counter, he looked at it, and then he stood up and he shook my hand.”
I was probably the most experienced doctor in the room, which disturbed me
“At this point some National Guardsmen brought in a body bag and laid it on the stretcher. The female doctor unzipped it and inspected the contents. ‘Holy mother of God,’ she said, and she turned away. In the bag was a left leg and part of a pelvis, to which a penis was still attached.…
The only Alamo Don King knows is the one where he rents his stretch limo
“‘Just like an execution, everyone is entitled to a last meal,’ Hopkins told Felix Trinidad Wednesday inside Madison Square Garden. ‘Some want steak. Some want lobster. I’ve got something special for you. I had to ask some of my Spanish friends in Philadelphia.’ Hopkins threw a bag of rice on the table in front of…
Taxes? We haven’t even started the alphabet yet
“A boy named Vasylko makes a journey into a forest that is plagued by evil. The young tyke is horrified to discover that hospitals and schools in the forest are crippled, while needy animals can barely make a living. Eventually he finds the source of the discontent: Zahrebun, a wicked warlock, has stolen the forest