In a move designed to offend those Americans who read literature (and, no, they would not all fit into one small room), Nobel Academy secretary Horace Engdahl says American literature doesn’t deserve consideration for the Nobel Prize in literature:
“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “That ignorance is restraining.”
The response of American literary experts has been to say things like the following (this comes from Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the foundation that offers American literature’s most prestigious prize, the National Book Award):
“Such a comment makes me think that Mr. Engdahl has read little of American literature outside the mainstream and has a very narrow view of what constitutes literature in this age,” he said.
So – who’s right? Engdahl? Augenbraum? And what constitutes American literature, anyway? Full story »
Nuclear power is not, as the industry and some politicians claim, a carbon-free source of electricity. It is truly carbon free when you split uranium in a nuclear fission reaction, but acquiring that uranium-235 and disposing of its wastes are not zero-carbon enterprises. For that matter, nor is constructing the nuclear power plant itself. And now Nature News has reported on a study about how much carbon nuclear power plants emit over their entire life cycle, and the life cycle of its uranium fuel. Full story »
In yet another incredible interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric Tuesday evening, Sarah Palin tackled a response to Couric’s question as to whether climate change is “man-made.”
In a manner imitable only by Tina Fey, Palin gave this response after Couric pressed the question:
“You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with, with these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical, and over history we’ve seen changes there.”
It was what Palin said next that made me hit replay twice to make sure I heard her correctly:
“But it kind of doesn’t matter at this point as we debate what caused it. The point is, it’s real, we need to do something about it.”
Well, at least the governor of Alaska sees that imperative as her state’s permafrost is melting, glaciers are galloping backward, and polar bears are drowning – though the latter is no motivator for Palin, who opposes listing them as an endangered species so they’ll pose no impediment to accelerating oil and gas development. But to suggest that the cause of the unprecedented heating-up of our planet is irrelevant? Full story »
