New Republic: Health Disclosure Debate Gets Worse

The health of our nation's leaders is of significant public interest, but is it the public's right to know or the president's right to keep it private? Howard Brody of The New Republic weighs the debate and one thing is for sure ? without treatment it will only get worse.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138602661/new-republic-health-disclosure-debate-gets-worse?ft=1&f=1057

john mccain al gore

Letter To Dads: Stop Letting Moms Win At Parenting

It's pretty hard to compete with being able to produce food naturally. That's why fathers need to start training now if they have any hope of beating moms in the ultimate competition: Parenting. Matthew Tobey has some advice for game preparation.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/137859512/letter-to-dads-stop-letting-moms-win-at-parenting?ft=1&f=1057

harry reid john mccain al gore bill clinton newt gingrich

The Limits of Compromise

Eugene Robinson, Washington PostBefore we make political partisanship a felony, punishable by endless lectures from weather-vane senators and allegedly "wise" commentators, let's remember that some choices are real, consequential and mutually exclusive.I'm not talking about the kind of scorched-earth partisanship that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell espouses -- the notion that Republicans should favor anything that's politically harmful to Democrats, never mind what the impact on the country might be. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to ...

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/07/22/the_limits_of_compromise_110668.html

al gore bill clinton newt gingrich sarah palin al sharpton

Both Sides Point Finger As Debt Talks Falter

House Speaker John Boehner abruptly broke off talks with President Obama Friday night on a deal to make major cuts in federal spending and avert a threatened government default, sending already uncertain compromise efforts into instant crisis.

Within minutes, an obviously peeved Obama virtually ordered congressional leaders to the White House Saturday morning for fresh negotiations on raising the nation's debt limit. "We've got to get it done. It is not an option not to do it," he declared.

"President Obama is this perpetually cool guy. I don't think I have ever seen him as fuming as he was in this news conference," NPR's Ari Shapiro told All Things Considered co-host Michele Norris.

For the first time since talks began, Obama declined to offer assurances, when asked, that default would be avoided. Moments later, however, he said he was confident of that outcome.

At a rebuttal news conference of his own a short while later in the Capitol, Boehner said, "I want to be entirely clear, no one wants default on the full faith and credit of the United States government, and I'm convinced that we will not."

The two men offered sharply different accounts of the compromise efforts so far and who was at fault for the collapse.

"I've been left at the altar now a couple of times," Obama said wryly.

"It's the president who walked away from his agreement," Boehner contended.

Boehner said he spent Friday morning talking to other congressional leaders as well as rank-and-file lawmakers about the proposed deal.

"I think that statement that he spent the morning talking with members is important because Boehner is an old-school Republican who has been a deal-maker for years and years and years," Shapiro said.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138623975/boehner-exits-budget-talks-with-obama?ft=1&f=1003

barak obama hillary clinton george w bush nancy pelosi harry reid

Ants: 'A Global Safari With A Cast Of Trillions'

This interview was originally broadcast on June 17, 2010.

Ants are a sisterhood.

"The guys don't really do too much," entomologist Mark Moffett tells Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies. "They're kind of kicked out of the society soon after they're born. They have a single function: to have sex. OK. They have two functions. To have sex and die. And apparently that's satisfactory for them. They don't participate in the social life."

Moffett, called "the Indiana Jones of entomology" by the National Geographic Society, fell in love with ants when he was a child. He's been studying them professionally for the past 30 years — first as a researcher at Harvard and then at the University of California, Berkeley and the Smithsonian Institution.

For his dissertation, he studied Pheidologeton, commonly known as marauder ants, under the Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson. For three years, Moffett traveled through Sri Lanka, Nepal, New Guinea, Hong Kong and more to track the marauders' social behavior. He discovered that Pheidologeton evolved to avoid swarming attacks from another species called army ants.

Moffett maps his journeys around the world to research various species of ants in his new book, Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions.

Among the species he details include:

  • Leafcutter ants, which can dice up tough fruit with their strong jaws
  • Weaver ants, which spin silk cocoons to protect their larvae
  • Argentine ants, which live in enormous "supercolonies" and are considered an invasive species. (One colony stretched 560 miles down the coast of California.)
  • African army ants, whiich attack prey in a herd effort and chomp down on any potential threats. (Moffett says the "bites on a fingertip were so agonizing that pulling the ant off wasn't an option: When [he] gripped the offender between two fingers of the opposite hand, she would clamp down even more savagely on the delicate finger pad.")

Moffett answers many questions about ants in his conversation with Fresh Air, including why ants attack, how they live communally and what they do when a bystander accidentally steps on their nest. He also explains why he chose to devote his life to one of the smallest creatures on Earth.

"My parents say I watched ants in diapers. That was easy because I was small then. Now I have to get down much lower," he says. "What fascinates kids in general is when [animals] do have traits we recognize in ourselves. Checking each other out ... making of nests. Every child can see similarities. My life became devoted to them. And I've stayed close to ground all my life."

Moffett has received a lifetime achievement award from the Science Museum of Long Island and the Lowell Thomas Medal from the Explorers Club. In addition, three species (including a frog and a beetle) have been named after him. His other books include The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy and Face to Face with Frogs.


Interview Highlights

On being stung by ants

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138576199/ants-a-global-safari-with-a-cast-of-trillions?ft=1&f=1007

hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton george w bush nancy pelosi

Weekly Standard: Mate Was A Mighty Democracy Man

Following the death of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz, television viewers have been reflecting on the impact the shows have had on culture and politics. Victorino Matus of The Weekly Standard reflects on how the Gilligan character represents democracy.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138601492/weekly-standard-mate-was-a-mighty-democracy-man?ft=1&f=1057

nancy pelosi harry reid john mccain al gore bill clinton