March 29, 2014

If Putin and Obama reach a deal, we won't know what it is

Nikita Kruschev and John F. Kennedy agreed during the missile crisis to make concessions to each other: JFK would vow not to invade Cuba and to withdraw missiles from Turkey, while Russia withdrew all its missiles from Cuba.

Only years later did we know that the deal was reached.

March 28, 2014

WaPo on Colbert: "If you’re making fun of someone else’s racism, is it still possible to be racist?"

If you’re making fun of someone else’s racism, is it still possible to be racist?

Stephen Colbert found himself in quite the mess after his “Colbert Report” tweeted a quote from his Wednesday night show, making fun of Washington football team owner Daniel Snyder:

“I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever,” the Colbert Report posted in a March 27 tweet that was later taken down. The Report later clarified that the account is a publicity account run by the Comedy Central network, not Colbert, nor his show.


Snyder was pilloried by the online Native American community Monday night after releasing a four-page letter saying that he would be creating the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation. Many were outraged by what they felt was an ersatz show of support from the man who refuses to change the team’s name, which many consider a slur.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/28/tvs-colbert-in-hot-water/?tid=pm_pop

March 28, 2014

Caveat on the statistic that autism is up considerably

It was under-diagnosed 20 years ago:

However, experts such as Wiznitzer and Goldstein are concerned that the new CDC report is not describing the same autism that was present and diagnosed 20 years ago, when the numbers first shot up.

"Twenty years ago we thought of autism with intellectual disability. We never looked at children who had normal intelligence" -- doctors never considered that high-functioning children had autism too, says Goldstein.

The number of children with autism is too high and should be addressed. However, it is unclear whether the actual autism rate is higher than it was 20 years ago, since a large chunk of children (i.e. those with normal intelligence) were ignored back then.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/health/cdc-autism/