JONATHAN LIU
Nixon Library Exhibits Dirty Laundry of Watergate
The Watergate exhibit opened at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Why not go have a gander at some of the nation's most infamous dirty laundry.
From Chernobyl With Fear: Lessons for Japan About How We Terrify Ourselves
Is our species's error here actually unhinged hysteria? As long as it's still fissioning and belching, Fukushima will be an acute crisis in anyone's book. As at Chernobyl, some plant workers will probably die from their exposure, and probably rushed to...
An Obscene Tweet in the Motor City Leads Chrysler to Throw Social Mad Men to the Fire
Chrysler, the barely big-3 automaker that saw its annual unit sales drop by roughly two-thirds between 1999 and 2009, needed friends. Having alienated two or three generations of the driving public, the company--now owned by Fiat, the American and...
Fifteen Years and $380 Billion Later, Do We Really Need a New Super Fighter Jet?
The JSF is in a league of its own as military-industrial contract, and represents perhaps the last great orgy of spending in the age of manned, armed flight. But do we even need it?
Are You There God Particle? It's Me, Large Hadron Collider
A mere 3.9 miles in circumference, the Tevatron, in Illinois, is slated to be closed this September, putting the full pressure of human cosmology on LHC's broad shoulders. Dun Dun Duuuuuuuun.
New Egyptian Antiquities Czar: Same as the Old Antiquities Czar
He refuses to go long after others have given up, has barricaded himself in his HQ, commands a collapsing personality cult mostly via television, and taunts his critics like an abusive dad--is Zahi Hawass the Qadaffi of near-eastern antiquity?
Roundabouts and Revolutions: The “Arab Street” Begins and Ends In a Circle
By now, perceptive news watchers know that Cairo’s Tahrir Square is not in the least square—it’s a traffic circle. Now attention has turned to Bahrain’s increasingly ecumenical revolt against its ruler, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa (a mere emir before...
The Sun Never Sets on Top Gear: Cars, Cads, and the Exhaust of Empire
Today, Britain’s car industry is like its royal family—kept around as an over-the-top pantomime of Britishness, and more or less German by blood. Volkswagen, which sells about six million vehicles a year, owns Bentley, which sells about 5,000. The...