Time to Change your Career?

The internet giants including Facebook's Zuckerberg and Google's Brin decided to award 11 researchers $3mil each for their contributions to science, more precisely for getting closer to finding cure for the most dangerous diseases.
And the winners are...

Should U.K. Apologize for Its Imperial Past?

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron became on Wednesday the first serving British Premier to visit the Jallianwala Bagh memorial in the northern India which marks the 1919 massacre of scores of unarmed Indian protesters by British colonial troops.Although he talked about a shameful act, the British as well as the Indian media noticed that he failed to apologize.

A very interesting discussion followed on the national radio whether he was right not to apologize. What are your views?

You can also read here how he defended himself.

A lawsuit in Michigan

A hospital in Michigan is facing a lawsuit after it allegedly fulfilled father's wish that no African American nurse should be treating his son. 
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/no-black-nurses-request-draws-lawsuit-173026275--abc-news-health.html

After 147 years, slavery abolished in the U.S.!

BIZARRE!

The state of Mississippi ratifited 13th amendment abolishing slavery, only 147 later! Originally the amendment was supposed to be valid from December 6, 1865 and gradually all of the 50 states were to sign it. Mississippi rejected it but later on, in 1995 they approved of it. So why wasn't it valid from 1995?It is more than easy, until February 7, 2013, they had never submitted the required documentation to ratify the 13th Amendment, which means it never officially had abolished slavery. That is more than bizarre I would say.

 

American "exceptionalism"

An American left-wing commentator, Glenn Greenwald, writes in the British Guardian newspaper on an important topic, "American exceptionalism." This term gets used various ways; it refers to America being different from other countries (an "exception") and was used in the past in attempts to explain why Marxist, Communist and explicitly socialistic political parties had not formed in the US the way they did in Europe and in Latin America. (There have been such parties, but they have been small "third" and "fourth" parties and have rarely been serious competitors with the Democrats and Republicans.) Greenwald wonders whether the idea has gotten out of control, citing American commentators -- especially conservatives -- who talk about America as the greatest country in the world, or even the greatest in human history. I'd be particularly interested in the comments that Europeans like yourselves might have on this question.