Aug 17 2018
Dear editor:
Here’s a make-believe but often real nightmare scenario: You have just received the terrible and terrifying news, “You have cancer.” After biopsying your mass, your surgeon wants to refer you to a medical oncologist (a cancer treatment specialist). Many are available in your area. He then asks you, “Do you want a medical oncologist with a good bedside manner who is barely competent and will probably not successfully treat your cancer? Or do you want … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2018/08/17/oh-doctor-an-analogy-scorned/
Aug 28 2017
By Frankie Boyle, Sunday 27 August 2017 04.00 EDT
So are we heading for a Mad Max-style future? I don’t think so. After having lived through Donald Trump we’ll surely just call him Max. Trump is behaving so strangely, we’re probably about a month away from not being allowed to make jokes about him. He’s gone past Charlie Sheen and we’re now … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2017/08/28/turning-america-into-a-giant-glastonbury/
Jul 02 2017
By Garrison Keillor, June 27, 2017 at 2:28 pm
A splendid week in Norway and now it’s good to be back home, driving around town in my old beat-up Volvo and listening to The Drifters. Norway is a land of bicycles and public transit, lean healthy long-legged people striding up into the hills, but I love my car where I can add a bass vocal to “At night the stars they put … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2017/07/02/a-tip-of-the-hat-to-borre-and-alice/
Oct 05 2016
By Ted Gup, October 3, 2016
It was an obscure item last week that drew little media attention. An apartment building in Afghanistan’s remote Nangarhar province was apparently hit by an American drone strike, killing at least fifteen civilians and injuring thirteen more. The villagers were gathered to welcome a returning tribal leader.
Such stories are easy to ignore as inevitable errors of war. But the tally … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2016/10/05/act-in-haste-repent-in-leisure/
Feb 07 2015
By Donald Cunningham, February 7, 2015
Recently, our planet had a visitor from outer space, and I don’t mean Klaatu.
It was what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has labeled “2004 BL86,” a giant asteroid, passing just 745,000 miles from the Earth. That’s about three times the distance we are to the moon, and is the closest any large-sized object has come in several centuries.
As I watched the TV news report on this … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2015/02/07/you-may-find-yourself-left-behind/
Oct 31 2014
It looks like some kind of sci-fi blob from outer space, but it’s actually a high-speed photograph of a nuclear explosion. It was captured less than 1 millisecond after the detonation using a rapatronic camera, which is capable of exposure times as brief as 10 nanoseconds (one nanosecond is one billionth of a second). The photograph was shot from roughly 7 miles away during the Tumbler-Snapper tests in Nevada (1952). The fireball is roughly 20 meters in diameter, and … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2014/10/31/scariest-jack-o-lantern-ever/
Jun 01 2014
By Daniel Ellsberg, Friday 30 May 2014 07.45 EDT
John Kerry was in my mind Wednesday morning, and not because he had called me a patriot on NBC News. I was reading the lead story in the New York Times – “US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016” – with a photo of American soldiers looking for caves. I recalled not the … [more]
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2014/06/01/the-measure-of-patriotism/
