In April of last year the country was riveted by news of another coal mine explosion. As the last camera was shut off, 29 men had died; twenty nine families torn apart. … [Keep reading >>]

Junot Díaz, fiction editor for the Boston Review and author of the marvelous  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, offers thoughtful ideas about apocalyptic disasters, from the Haitian earthquake to the crippling of … [Keep reading >>]

Mark Bittman, the NY Times foodie who is branching out to a weekly column on the Op-Ed page, marks the one year anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil disaster with … [Keep reading >>]

Blooney Tunes!
It’s time for a change of lyrics in that kids’ praise song, “J is for Jesus.” According to Rev. Franklin Graham, J is not only for Jesus, it’s for … [Keep reading >>]

We’ll miss Frank Rich in the Sunday NY Times.  At least today Thomas Friedman hits one of his good notes.
It is hard to read the news from Japan to the … [Keep reading >>]

The NY Times Sunday “Week In Review” has four good pieces on the back page.
Humans have become increasingly arrogant, believing they have conquered nature. We build ever larger, ever more … [Keep reading >>]

We haven’t seen anything like the crisis in Japan in our life times — a triple emergency of earthquake — the largest ever recorded– tsunami and nuclear disaster.  Now it … [Keep reading >>]

What is happening in Japan these days reduces San Francisco’s 1989 earthquake to merely a passing problem.  Even the 1906 earthquake and the fire following are small compared to what … [Keep reading >>]

More Pictures

Twitter reporting

Map of North Eastern Honshu (The big island) and places affected.

Kyodo news agency reports radiation levels 8 times normal levels near main gate of Fukushima nuclear plant with … [Keep reading >>]

It happens my brother was in Christchurch, New Zealand when the earthquake hit:
I was in the lobby for the Rydges hotel in Christchurch…left with LM’s New Zealand director at … [Keep reading >>]

“Halliburton officials knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well … [Keep reading >>]

Through the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and telethons held in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, some $1 billion has … [Keep reading >>]