Nigel Hey's Blog, page 5
December 1, 2013
A Lake Like We’ve Never Seen Before
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November 20, 2013
Books, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life
Kepler-78b, the first Earth-sized exoplanet, ventures near its parent sun. Rendering: NASAIt’s been a busy month, with house guests, autumnal yard-work, and internet chores stealing my attention from favorite TV fare (news and Britcoms) and my current writing project. The last-named is a treatise on...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>
October 20, 2013
The Law v. The Press
The iconic News of the World's last front pageYears ago in “the hot type days,” when typewriters and Linotypes were used to produce newspapers, I worked diligently for my degree in journalism, slaved on my university newspaper staff, and joined Sigma Delta Chi and Kappa Tau Alpha. The last-named were not social fraternities, as the names might suggest, but journalism organizations. Kappa Tau Alpha was the academic honorary society. Sigma Delta Chi is now the Society for Professional Journalis...
October 9, 2013
UK press controls charter to be completed by October 30
Daily Mail story revived public interest in plans to regulate media. (Image: Daily Mail)
Ministers who sit on Britain’s Privy Council yesterday turned thumbs-down on a revised self-regulation plan proposed by newspaper publishers. Instead they endorsed a system devised last March by members of parliament and Hacked Off, a pressure group backed by individuals who believe they have been damaged by sensationalism. Actor Hugh Grant and novelist J. K. Rowling are...<![endif]--><![endif]--><!--[if gte vml 1]>
October 1, 2013
A Sweet and Sour Autumn
After the cool, windy days that signalled the end of our New Mexico summer, September 30, 2013 was a beautiful, sunny, warm autumnal day.
Over breakfast Dee told me about her grade-school days, when she and her family lived deep in the wooded Ozark Mountains of southwestern Missouri. She attended a one-room school, and the teacher, likely recruited from the graduates of a local high school, would arrive early to ready the room, draw water for her thirsty charges from the well, and, in winter,...
September 15, 2013
Syria: Not time yet to celebrate. . .
It seems the entire world rejoiced with the September 14 disclosure of a plan whereby Syria will join the chemical weapons convention and submit its stores of sarin, mustard gas, etc., to the United Nations for what we hope will be their final and complete destruction. It happened fast! A new speed record in U.N.-related diplomacy may have been achieved. Note that word may.
That's about all we can say about it, though admittedly this is a welcome and much-needed step that if consummated perhap...
That's about all we can say about it, though admittedly this is a welcome and much-needed step that if consummated perhap...
Syria: No time yet to celebrate. . .
It seems the entire world rejoiced with the September 12 announcement that Syria would join the chemical weapons convention and submit its stores of sarin, mustard gas, etc., to the United Nations for what we hope will be their final and complete destruction. It happened fast! Thanks to the cosiness of the Russian-Syrian axis, a new record in U.N.-related diplomacy may have been achieved. Note that word may.
That's about all we can say about it, though admittedly this is a welcome and much-nee...
That's about all we can say about it, though admittedly this is a welcome and much-nee...
September 2, 2013
Syria: The Crisis Continues
A tranquil Syrian town as seldom seen in today’s media reportage. (Photo: BBC) <!--[if gte mso 9]>
Syria: The Crisis Accelerates
A tranquil Syrian town as seldom seen in today’s media reportage. (Photo: BBC) <!--[if gte mso 9]>
