Events

Tom Lehrer joked once that all the trouble in the world made him "feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." Leonid Rogozov had appendicitis once...at the Soviet Antarctic base...and he was the only surgeon there: Operating mostly by feeling around, Rogozov worked for an hour and 45 minutes, cutting himself open and removing the appendix. The men he'd chosen as assistants watched as the "calm and focused" doctor completed the operation, resting every five minutes for a few seconds as he battled...

The United States Geological Survey has reported 405 significant aftershocks following Thursday's devastating earthquake off Honshu:

Four weeks ago, someone stole my Kindle at the bar in the Stamford, Conn., Marriott. I noticed the theft within a few seconds, because the Kindle was no more than 10 cm from my left elbow one moment and missing the next. Less than a minute after the theft I'd notified the bartender, everyone around me, hotel security, and the concierge. Less than five minutes after that I'd gone up to my room and deregistered the device, then reported it stolen to Amazon. Whereupon I returned to the bar and announced...

James MacWhyte has posted a video on Facebook that clarifies the issue for all of us who live hundreds of meters above sea level. I never really understood what a "tidal wave" was until watching this video. You may have thought, as I did, that a tsunami was just a great big breaking wave on the beach that smashed everything in its path. Clearly this is what the visual-effects guys on Deep Impact imagined. Only, it's not, and MacWhyte's on-scene video makes the terror of a tsunami clear. The United...

Sanjay Saigal, writing on James Fallow's blog today, discusses the dearth of qualified managers in India, and the failure of MBA programs to keep up with demand: Consider, for instance, the following data from a report published last year by an Indian employment company, MeritTrac: Recognized MBA programs produce around 70,000 graduates each year. Approximately 20,000 of them may be considered "employable". The annual demand for MBAs is estimated to be 128,000. To echo Woody Allen in Annie Hall, the...

CNN examines Japanese cultural roots to explain how Japanese people have acted after Friday's earthquake: “Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’" said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University. Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said. To Merry White, an anthropology professor at Boston...

Via Failbook:

The most powerful earthquake in Japanese history hit today causing widespread damage and a 7.3 m (29 ft) tsunami: Fragmentary early reports of the toll indicate that hundreds of people have been killed. Japanese police officials told the Associated Press that 200 to 300 bodies were found in Sendai, a port city in the northeastern part of the country and the closest main city to the epicenter. Walls of water whisked away houses and cars in northern Japan, where terrified residents fled the coast. Train...

Following up on last night's message from WBEZ, James Fallows today linked back to a piece he wrote last October about why NPR matters: In their current anti-NPR initiative, Fox and the Republicans would like to suggest that the main way NPR differs from Fox is that most NPR employees vote Democratic. That is a difference, but the real difference is what they are trying to do. NPR shows are built around gathering and analyzing the news, rather than using it as a springboard for opinions. And while of...

I'm about to turn in, but I thought this email from Chicago Public Radio that I just received noteworthy: From: Torey Malatia, President and CEO of Chicago Public Media Re: News from NPR I’m writing this to you because you’re an investor in our work here at WBEZ, Chicago Public Media. We are entirely responsible to you, being a community-owned and governed public media institution. I realize that National Public Radio has been in the news over the last two days. NPR is a separate organization from us...