• Is Belgium a case-study of intra-America’s divisive future?
Brussels is what complicates the secessionist dream. A Flemish journalist likened the two main regions of Belgium to Siamese twins with only one heart: divide them, and one of them would die. Would Brussels end up as part of Flanders? Wallonia? The European Union? Or as a city-state, perhaps?
• The world as the American pharmaceutical industry’s Petri dish.
Once upon a time, the drugs Americans took to treat chronic diseases, clear up infections, improve their state of mind, and enhance their sexual vitality were tested primarily either in the United States (the vast majority of cases) or in Europe. No longer. As recently as 1990, according to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, a mere 271 trials were being conducted in foreign countries of drugs intended for American use.
By 2008, the number had risen to 6,485—an increase of more than 2,000 percent. A database being compiled by the National Institutes of Health has identified 58,788 such trials in 173 countries outside the United States since 2000. In 2008 alone, according to the inspector general’s report, 80 percent of the applications submitted to the F.D.A. for new drugs contained data from foreign clinical trials. Increasingly, companies are doing 100 percent of their testing offshore.
• What they’ve learned.
– Karl Rove’s dad was a homosexual. Why is he afraid of that? Why does he become one of these guys who stands in the way of gay rights? – Danny Devito.
– I’d rather have to put my teeth in a jar at the end of the day than Twitter. – Mary-Louise Parker.
• Brendan Burke’s death will be remembered as a society-shifting tragedy.
Lying on the side of the road was his 21-year-old son, who had stunned the hockey world three months earlier when he’d come out as the first openly gay man closely connected to the NHL. Listening to the sheriff’s voice down the line, Burke could see Brendan in the snow that was still falling, surrounded by strangers who didn’t know a thing about him. He must be so cold, Burke thought, and he could see the furrow in his brow that Brendan always got when he was worried. He could see the paramedics give up and step away, and already ticking in the background were those ten seconds of knee-buckling fear.
• So will Karen Woo’s.
The driver later told the police that he heard one man say over the phone: “Everything’s finished. We killed them.” He was taken by the attackers to a village investigators believe was Barg-e-Matal, which had been overrun by militants from Pakistan who were then in turn chased out by NATO airstrikes. Maybe these same militants had now struck back?
Whoever it was, the effect was the same. The deaths seemed to signal the end of an old Afghanistan, a magical and alluring place. Woo’s family and her fiancé decided to finish her dream for her with a documentary on her life and the lives of the people she filmed in Afghanistan.
• Of course the recession’s shuttering science fairs. Just like they wanted it to.
Securing financing for these competitions and for the time-honored local science fair has become increasingly difficult because of the poor economy, organizers say. Sponsors have dropped out of local science fairs, while some schools are scaling back extracurricular activities, including science programs, because of state budget cuts.
• Inside the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
This was a disaster with two distinct parts — first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout.
It was not.
• Atlantic City’s mayor doesn’t like Gov. Christie’s takeover plans. Nor should he.
Langford said he would not allow the state to “ride roughshod over us in an attempt to force their agenda down our throat.”
The plan would direct resources toward the city’s visitors, most of whom are white, at the expense of the city’s predominantly nonwhite population, he charged.
• Every problem I have with Republicans/conservatives boiled down to one sentence because it’s based on a level-playing-field assumption which isn’t a reality.
They believe, instead, that in a free society, people make money when they produce goods and services that others value, and that, as a result, what they earn is rightfully theirs.
• Believe.
Eric LeGrand, the Rutgers defensive tackle who was paralyzed from the neck down in a game against Army on Oct. 16, says he has regained some sensation in his entire body and movement in his shoulders.
• Stories I’ve written for Metro:
– The Michael Vick effect on ex-offender re-entry programs.
– Sentencing in the Lewis Palmer case.
– Kim Pawlowski as a Philadelphia hero.