| The Kensington Review |
14 December 2005 |
| Latest Commentary: | Volume IV, Number 149 |
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Stanley “Tookie” Williams Executed -- Just after the clock tolled midnight marking the end of Monday and the beginning of Tuesday, the state of California administered a lethal cocktail of drugs to Stanley “Tookie” Williams. His execution for four murders brought an end to very high profile efforts to win mercy from the state. As founder of the Crips street gang, he merited contempt. As a reformed gang-banger, he deserved some measure of respect. However, the entire incident leaves one with mixed emotions at best.
Europe Doesn’t Let CIA Prisons and Rendition Issue Go -- American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice spent last week trying to convince Europeans that the CIA hasn’t been naughty in sending people it doesn’t like to some European countries for torture and other abuse. A Council of Europe report yesterday suggests that she didn’t quite get everything she hoped to get from Europe, if not support, tacit acceptance. Instead, it looks like the Europeans are going to continue to lift lids of cans of worms. Wisconsin Radio Station Sells Naming Rights to News Room -- WIBA is a radio station serving Madison, Wisconsin, the capital of that state and home to one of the nation’s more serious public universities. The station, 1301 AM for those in range, has sold the naming rights to its newsroom to Amcore Bank. In the land of 3Com Stadium, the Staples Center and the late Enron Field, this isn’t even the first time sponsorship of a news room has been sold so overtly -- Clear Channel Milwaukee's WISN-AM 1130 was named for Pyramax Bank last year. So what’s the fuss in the media? At least now, the news is acknowledged as a business proposition and colored accordingly. Magnetic North Pole Moving to Siberia -- The Earth’s magnetic field is shifting. Within fifty years, the magnetic North Pole (distinct from the Geographic Pole) could move out of Canada and into Siberia. First, global warming, then bird flu, and now this. But no need to panic. “This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada,” Joseph Stoner, a palaeomagnetist at Oregon State University, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union [AGU] in San Francisco last week. © Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux. |
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