“For more than three decades, visionaries have imagined tapping solar power where the sun always shines—in space. If we could place giant solar panels in orbit around the Earth, and beam even a fraction of the available energy back to Earth, they could deliver nonstop electricity to any place on the planet. The technology may […]
“The feathered creature called archaeopteryx, easily the world’s most famous fossil remains, had been considered the first bird since Charles Darwin’s day. When researchers put its celebrity bones under the microscope recently, though, they discovered that this icon of evolution might not have been a bird at all.” more@WSJ.com
“A new study found that rates of marriage outside the faith were sharply curbed among young Jews who have taken “birthright” trips to Israel, a development that could hearten Jewish leaders worried about assimilation. Fears of shrinkage among the American Jewish population heightened after studies in the early 1990s showed that more than 50% of […]
“Here we go again: A paper published by two researchers at the University of London claims to prove that music affects our responses to visual images. In “Crossmodal Transfer of Emotion by Music,” Joydeep Bhattacharya and Nidhya Logeswaran report that people who look at a picture of a human face can be influenced in how […]
“On Monday, a secret Hezbollah munitions bunker in South Lebanon blew up under mysterious circumstances, injuring a senior official in the organization. This is the second such incident in recent months. The first occurred on July 14, when an explosion destroyed a major Hezbollah munitions dump in the South Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim. Hezbollah […]
“We’re canning.
This two-century-old technique of preserving food—or “putting up,” in canning-speak—is making a big comeback.
The worst recession in decades and a trend toward healthier eating are inspiring many Americans to grow their own food. Now the harvest season is turning many of these gardeners into canners looking to stretch the bounty of the garden into […]
Prosecutors noted the process of identifying and verifying victim losses has been difficult. Mr. Picard has received about 15,870 claims in total, prosecutors said. There were about 4,902 active customer accounts as of Dec. 11, the date of Mr. Madoff’s arrest. Of those active customers, about half didn’t suffer a net loss — they withdrew […]
“Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law. To cite just a few […]
“The Internal Revenue Service will expand a program designed to catch tax cheats that searches for inconsistencies between mortgage payments and income. After prompting from an IRS auditor, the agency will study whether it should make greater use of data on mortgage-interest payments provided to it by banks. The IRS currently uses such data to […]
“The State Department is trying to persuade the Libyans to steer clear of New Jersey. “We’re expecting that we’ll be able to come to some sort of agreement where all of these sensitivities are respected,” spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday. But New York City is defiantly anti-tent. A few weeks ago, Libya’s government asked if […]
“The Obama family’s Seder tonight might be the first at the White House, but it won’t be the first that a sitting president has attended. Notably, President Jimmy Carter attended an emotional Seder in 1979 at the Washington home of then- domestic policy adviser Stuart Eizenstat, just days after the conclusion of a U.S.-Egypt peace […]
“According to Talmudic calculations, every 28 years the sun is in the exact position it occupied at the time of Creation. As it happens, that moment falls on Wednesday, April 8, of this year, at sunrise — just hours before Passover begins. There is a brief blessing for the occasion, too. It is called Birchat […]
