Extension 720 tonight is pre-empted by a 9:15 p.m. Cubs game.
Friday, August 06, 2004
DESPITE "NEVER AGAIN" IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN! A genocide is underway in Sudan and all the relevant agencies, organizations and governments, says Richard Holbrooke in today's Boston Globe, vary from being sluggish to being grossly irresponsible.
IN PURSUIT OF AL QAEDA. The rush of new captures, exposures and trackings has been somewhat under-reported. But the Christian Science Monitor has, as usual, been providing valuable coverage. Here is today's update story which features, as well, many useful links.
KRAUTHAMMER FILES A LITTLE LATE...on the Kerry speech to the Democrat's convention. But, as usual, he has some sharp and perceptive things to say and he says them with his accustomed ironic clarity.
WHAT IF JOE BIDEN WERE THE NOMINEE? The people at The New Republic (with their special concern about Islamic fundamentalist terorism) would probably be a good deal happier with their (putative) party. As witness this from the magazine's current editor.
CAMPAIGNING TAKES A NEW TURN...namely, threatening legal action to supress the other side's TV ads. That, apparently, is what the Dems have done in response to the "Swift Boat Veterans" campaign. Human Events here gives the text of the warning letter that has been sent to TV stations and networks by the General Counsel for the Democratic National Committee.
SAM HUNTINGTON'S SCARY DEMOGRAPHIC THESIS. He has presented it in a major, recent book and, just a few weeks ago, on our program. Now in this article from the current issue of American Enterprise he recapitulates and remains, to say the least, worried.
WAS IT PITA, MATZOH, CHALLAH...OR WHAT? An exciting archeological find, as reported in today's Washington Post, suggests that they were baking some kind of bread in Israel about 22,000 years ago. And that's at least 10,000 years before the beginnings of cultivated agriculture!!
WHEN THE WORLD SPEAKS ENGLISH...will hip-hop and valley speak be absorbed back into the consensual language or will we let a thousand Englishes bloom? This is a question not answered in this otherwise highly informative article, from The Economist, about the lingua frankishness of notre langue maternelle.
WHY DO WE (ALL OF US!) LIE? The question is well worth asking and a new book gives a Darwinian sort of answer which doesn't satisfy the reviewer at the Metapsychology site. Your views? Tell the truth, now.
WHY ARE THE ITALIANS BIG DUBBERS? Because that's what Mussolini wanted. This curious bit of film history and updated observation is from the current issue of Walrus, the Canadian equivalent of the New Yorker. (Well, that's what they say about themselves.)
SEARCHING FOR LOVE...WHILE A MEMBER OF CONGRESS may require some professional assistance. This Democrat from a safe New Jersey district is looking for the proverbial nice, Jewish girl and the folks at JTA are assisting with this story released today.
HE DID PHILOSOPHER'S STAND-UP. In the academic world almost everyone had (and has) his favorite Sidney Morgenbesser story. Here's a fine collection of them disguised as an obituary in last Tuesday's New York Sun.
AND NOW THEY ARE ALL IN THAT GREAT SALON IN THE SKY. The three long-reigning queens of beauty are memorialized--but not apotheosized--in this sharp article by Stefan Kanfer in the current City Journal.
RACHMANINOV DIDN'T FOOL AROUND...particularly when he was composing a "major work," as his Second Symphony most assuredly is. This Russian performance of a decidedly Russian-romantic work is by the Kirov Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Tonight on Extension 720, Milt talks with NASA expert Mark Wolverton about the Pioneer Space Probes during the first hour. The second hour of the program will be devoted to the latest developments in the Illinois Senate race with guests Joe Morris and Liam Ford. More information is available on this and other programs at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
GENOCIDE CONTINUES IN DARFUR. Upwards of fifty thousand have already been murdered while hundreds die every day in refugee camps. This report from the World Church Service highlights the extent of the Sudanese national crime and the continuing sluggishness of the U.N.
IT IS A REAL WAR...and we are in it for the long term says Bill Buckley in this column from today's National Review which seems to have been prompted by some reflections on what the Dems assembled in Boston did not say.
BUSH WILL WIN...according to Zev Chafets in the New York Daily News . Here's why.
BUSH WILL LOSE...UH, PROBABLY...according to William Saletan in today's Slate who has been scanning the recent polls. We think (or is it hope?) he's wrong. But as they say in New York; "Go know!"
CAN AMERICAN ISLAM BRING ITSELF TO CONDEMN TERRORISM? A close reading of a new book by a leading New York Imam seems to suggest, according to this op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, that the answer is "not yet"!
AND SPEAKING OF ISLAM: WHAT DOES A PHILOLOGICAL, CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE KORAN REVEAL? Nicholas Kristof, in this column fromn today's New York Times, reports that scholars now cast doubt on the paradisical greeting party of seventy-two virgins.
IS THERE A FINAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING? And, if not, will there ever be such a theory? Roger Penrose is one of the active seekers and he has just laid out the claims of his cohort in the challenging (and probably quite valuable) new book reviewed here for the U.K. Independent.
THE HIGHER FOREIGN POLICY WISDOM AT HAHVAHD. Is there a touch of authentic elitist smugness in this colloquy reported in the Harvard Gazette? Anyway, the pictures are worth the price.
A MOVING MEMOIR OF PARIS IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR. This remarkable essay has just appeared in the Paris Review. It evokes the time when the appaling memories of subjection and brutality still hung over the city.
SOMEONE HAD TO DO IT...and now the team of Horowitz and Collier have put together in book form some (not all!) of the critical commentary on Noam Chomsky, the Pied Piper of juvelile leftist extremism. Here is Bruce Thorton's telling introduction to the volume.
AL QAIDA AS A SOURCE OF ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM. This author in the Washington Post asks what the buildings on the terrorist's hit list have in common. The answer he comes up with is, we think, compelling and probably correct.
HOW THE OTHER .001% LIVES. Forbes magazine is once again looking in on the most expensive homes in the country (from 20 million upwards, mostly decidedly upwards). Here are the most costly in the northeast. Be sure to scroll down and catch the "slide show."
GREAT COUNTRY MUSIC FROM THE FIFTIES. This collection evokes the honesty and directness that country music once had and has now largely lost. Among our favorites: Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Jim Reeves and George Jones.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
WHAT IS THE REAL SITUATION IN PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN? This disturbing account published today in the Wall Street Journal has the ring of experiential authenticity. Worrying though it may be it seems to us to be essential reading.
THE COUNTER-TERRORISM WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS. This new information about the target dates set by Al-Qaida may or may not be "true." But, is anyone worrying about disinformation as a terror tactic?
DOES DICK MORRIS STILL KNOW HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS? If he does, this evaluation of the Kerry convention strategy, as published in today's New York Post, should be of concern to the DNC masterminds...and could prod the candidate and his managers toward some basic changes of their "line." Though recent events suggest that they are regressing to simple hate-Bushism.
ON THE LIGHTNESS OF THE KERRY BOUNCE. Another column today on the apparent fizzle of the Dems convention strategy--this one by Joel Mowberry, a political veteran now a Knight-Ridder columnist.
THE RODHAM-CLINTON CARPETBAG PLOY FOR ILLINOIS? The state from which we write and broadcast is rather excited today (as witness this story fromn the Chicago Sun-Times) with the possibility that Alan Keyes may oppose Barack Obama for the open senate seat. Stay tuned...
WATCH WHAT YOU EAT...particularly if you are a presidential candidate and Mark Steyn is watching. This column from today's UK Telegraph goes from Wendy's and the Newburgh Yacht Club to some of the rich being "very different from us."
HOW DO YOU GET INTO ORBIT AROUND MERCURY? Very carefully and slowly and by following a rather circuitous course as the newly launched Messenger spacecraft is programmed to do. The details are well conveyed here in this morning's Houston Chronicle.
ON THE VALUE OF MEMORIZATION....and the chaotic state of modern pedagogical theory. Michael Knox Beran tracks, in this valuable essay from City Journal, the continuing idiocies of curriculum and method in our schools. Our kids, he argues persuasively, are being denied the likelihood of achieving adequate cognitive development and true literacy.
DILLINGER, HOOVER AND THE "CRIME WAVE" OF THE THIRTIES. An engrossing new book dealing with that period is here reviewed with appropriate enthusiasm in the New York Times.
WHAT DOES BOBBY FISCHER REALLY WANT...except for the destruction of Israel which he has long advocated? Apparently, the rather "eccentric" former world chess champion would like to stay in Japan where he is now under arrest while his "supporters" clamor for "justice." See if you can sort it out through this heated coverage in Japan Today.
NOT ENOUGH BAD NEWS? How about this article reporting on the rise of a Nazi movement in Russia? The source is Time Europe last week.
WHAT GOES IN CHICAGO MAY NOT SUIT JERUSALEM! Frank Gehry's new amphitheatre in Chicago looks not unlike his planned Wiesenthal museum. What Chicagoans accept (or, at least, yield to) seems to have left many Israeli observers confounded and conflicted. The account in last Sunday's New York Times is, perhaps, the latest instance of the rising resistance to the excesses of the architectural hustle.
CLASSIC ARMSTRONG! Here are the great, mid-twenties recordings by the Armstong Hot Five. Everyone of these is of classic significance but essential are: Struttin' With Some Barbeque; West End Blues; Cornet Chop Suey; Basin Street.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Tonight on the show, Milt welcomes noted columnist and commentator Jack Germond, of the Baltimore Sun to talk about what's wrong with American politics. More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the program from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.
